t*?^ Vv vt» ^ >» THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES WILLIAM CLARKE William Clarke. [Froniis/'hce WILLIAM OLAEKE A COLLECTION OF HIS WRITINGS WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. LTD. 26 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C. 1908 H PREFACE The present volume, unfortunately delayed in its publication, contains a selection of the writings of the late William Clarke. A gathering of personal friends, resolving that some abiding memorial of his work should exist, entrusted a small committee with the execution of that resolve, expressing a particular desire that this memorial should, in part, take the shape of a reprint of a number of his finest and most representative writmgs. As a result of the action of this committee, a pre- sentation of a portion of Mr. Clarke's library was made to the National Liberal Club, of which he Avas a member, and is there known as the " Clarke Memorial Library." A portrait of Mr. Clarke, painted by his old friend Mr. Felix Moscheles, was also presented to the club, and hangs in one of the club rooms. This volume, the preparation of which was entrusted to two of Mr. Clarke's intimate friends, fulfils the third and most valued part of the intentions of the committee. To his many friends, and to other readers, some explanation of the method of selection which has guided the editors is due. Though by far the larger part of his writings was irrecover- ably lost in the anonymity of daily or weekly journalism, in the pages of many English and American publications, his signed and otherwise known writings were so numerous as to render the task of choosing matter for this volume no easy one. Two chief motives guided us in our choice as editors : VI PREFACE first, the desire to present articles which would indicate the remarkable versatility of literary power and of subject-matter which William Clarke exhibited; secondly, the duty of pre- serving and presenting those utterances which embodied his more profound thoughts and feelings, and which may be regarded as his important permanent contribution to the intellectual life of his age. In order to obtain a compact volume, we were compelled to exclude much that was in itself both interesting and valuable, especially for those of his friends who would have liked to trace in some fuller and more leisurely arrangement of his writings the growth of his powers from youth to middle age and the maturing of his thought and literary style. But we believe that what remains and is printed here will be a revelation of a variety and richness of literary gifts hardly suspected by some who thought they knew William Clarke well. Few journalists, if any, have brought to their daily task so rich an equipment of political and literary learning, extending from the narrowest details of the life of even minor personages and events to the most profound gi-asp of the significance of the wider movements in the outer and the inner history of nations. The greater number of the articles reprinted here belong, however, to that group of more leisurely contributions made to serious political reviews, or to the hterary "middles" written in his later years for the Spectator and other weekly or monthly journals. Divided, as was inevitable, between our desire to arrange the writings according to subject and literary form and our desire to present them in the time order of production, we preferred the former method of arrangement, as doing fuller justice to the inherent value of the material. The volume is therefore divided into three parts, the first containing portions of his longer and more substantial articles upon political and other subjects, the second consisting of PREFACE vii biographical studies and appreciations, the third reproducing a number of essays in general criticism, mainly social, Uterary, and philosophical. In each case the name of the publication and the date of the appearance of the article is given ; and we take this opportunity of thankmg the proprietors of the various journals and magazines in England and America for their courtesy in permitting the reprint of these articles. Especially do we wish to express our gratitude to the Editors of the Spectator, the Daily Chronicle, the Contemporary Itevicio, the Neio Englmid Magaziiu, and the Political Science Quarterly for their trouble in assisting to collect for the use of this volume articles written by William Clarke for those publications. We also wish to thank Mr. Van der Weyde for permission to reproduce the portrait which forms the frontispiece. Herbert Burrows! „,., T A TT ]Aa%tors. John A. Hobson J CONTENTS Biographical Sketch I'AGE xi POLITICAL ESSAYS The Industrial Basis of Socialism TftE Limits of Collectivism The Social Future of England Political Defects of the Old Radicalism An English Imperialist Bubble The House of Lords The Genesis of Jingoism . The Curse of Militarism . The Future of the Canadian Dominion Aristotle's " Politics "... 3 24 44 59 76 90 108 118 129 159 APPRECIATIONS Walt Whitman ..... Ralph Waldo Emerson Bismarck ...... Edward Augustus Freeman Stopford a. Brooke William Dean Howells . The Rt. Hon. Leonard Courtney . Charles Spurgeon .... William Ewart Gladstone Max Nordau: The Man and his Messao Principal Cairo .... James Martineau .... A Great Scottish Teacher A Modern Wandering Scholar 175 191 209 229 242 259 269 277 281 286 299 304 308 312 CONTENTS CULTURE AND CRITICISM America's Debt to Washington The Tragedy of a Millionaire American Social Forces . Democracy and Personal Eule The Tidiness of Rural England Scientific Optimism . Christianity and Social Reform The Rule of the Exceptional Man Art in our Towns . Statesmanship and Literature Human Immortality . The Charm of Winter Scenery The Uses of Agnosticism . The Philosophy of Nietzsche . Wesley's Services to England England's Debt to Wordsworth England's Debt to Milton John Ruskin Germany and Heine. Women and Culture The Freemasonry of Poetry The Spiritual Movement in the Nineteenth Century PAGE 319 324 332 337 342 347 352 357 362 S66 371 376 380 384 389 393 397 401 405 409 413 417 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH HIS EARLY YEARS The subject of this brief sketch, born in Norwich, was of mixed parentage, a Scotch father and an English mother, and the Scotch blood was itself a mixture. The Lowland father had had a Highland grandfather, who was not only his grandfather but his hero, and the companion of his bojash days spent among the Peeblesshire hills. Many a Sunday had the father walked over those hills from Peebles to meet his gmndfather, go to the kirk with him, each with his "piece" (oat-cake) in his pocket to sustain nature between the morning and early afternoon service ; the whole round covering some thirty miles. To Highland grandfather and Lowland grandson alike communion with Nature was an aid to communion with God. Both had felt " white presences upon the hills " ; both had a share in that soothing reverence which stole over William Clarke when amid the beauties of Natuie by sea, wood, lake, or mountain. The son of a Scotch country laddie could not but have affinity with country life, and though it was his fate to find and do his life's work in London, yet his real sympathies were all with the country ; and the great city, whether of our civilisation or of those ancient ones of Rome and far-ofi' Babylon, he regarded as a monstrosity. But love of Nature was not the only characteristic bequeathed by his Scotch forebears : the sturdy independence of the Scotch peasantry, their abhorrence of compromise, their intense reserve, their deeply religious spirit, the mysticism of the Celt blending with intense Puritanism, their view of life as a solemn trust and not a matter for flippant trifling — all these traits, as those who knew William Clarke best will admit, met in him. Perhaps, too, the Celtic strain was responsible for the artist-nature that was William Clarke's ; for he was a "tertiary" artist, as Frances Power Cobbe would have said, i.e., an artist in conception and spirit, though not in power and manipula- tion. The literary gifts that he possessed, however, certainly came from the mother's side, for many of her family were known among their own circle for the ease with which they could reel oil" verses, pathetic or humorous ; from the same side came also his command over language on the platform or at the lecturer's desk. His keen enjoyment too of the social side of town life — an enjoyment which seemed an amusing xii WILLIAM CLARKE contradiction to his denunciation of the city and all its ways — was a maternal legacy. A sadder legacy was perhaps left him by that frail yet active mother, viz., a singular blend of physical strength and weak- ness. William Clarke could outdo most of his friends in the distances that he could walk and the hours that he could go without food, yet he was never athletic, and what at times seemed tremendous bodily strength was more probably, as in his mother's case, energy of will — what we call " vitality " without knowing exactly what we mean by the term. Fi'om her too came that delicate nervous organisation which made noise and bustle a torture to him, which prevented him from playing with his constitution as more robust men can do apparently with impunity, and which was at the root of the disease which killed him at the time when many men have yet to give to the world the fruits of mature thought. So much for the share that parentage had in William Clarke's personality : birthplace and early surroundings covinted for something too. A childhood passed for the first twelve years in the beautiful old city of Norwich — " the most unspoiled city in England," William Morris in after years told him he had found it — and then in Cam- bridge surely awakened and fostered that passion for architecture which in later years rivalled William Clarke's love of Nature, and which, unconsciously perhaps, sowed the seeds of revolt in him against that commercialism which has maiTed our fair island. It is no slight privilege to have had one's tastes moulded in early years by daily moving amid such picturesque surroundings as Norwich or Cambridge market-places, the one dominated by St. Peter Mancroft's, the other by the plain though stately University Church, with King's College Chapel spires on the sky-hne ; or the cathedral close and river-side of the one city and the college backs and bridges of the other. It is an aesthetic education, and may well in William Clarke's case have led up to a mental review of whether modern industrialism had given us any compensation for the loss of beauty in our cities which it has involved. William Clarke first saw the light on November 22, 1852, a date which meant that he was essentially of the second half of the nine- teenth century. The complacent rule of the Whig aristocracy was coming to an end ; to the middle and working classes politics were to mean something real, interest in them was possible ; the age of leisure was gone by, that of ever-increasing work and struggle for all who wished to win was inaugurated ; above all, it was a productive age in thought and literature, and any boy with an inclination for reading had masterpieces to hand from men actually living and breathing the same air that he did. Carlyle in prose, Browning and Tennyson in poetry, Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer in science, were all at work and a force in William Clarke's boyhood ; Kingsley and Maurice were in different ways striving to make the Kingdom of Heaven more of a reality on earth. And what a history-lesson was being acted before the boy's eyes in the rise of the pretentious Third Empire, and its sudden fall before the unsuspected strength of Prussia as inspired by Bismarck. Truly " there were giants in the land in those days." His BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xiii sisters have heard their brother say how slightly younger fellow journalists have envied him for having heard John Bright in his prime, " Bobbie " Lowe, Disraeli in his great verbal duels with Gladstone, and the late Duke of Argyll, whom he regarded as perhaps the greatest of all the parliamentary oi^ators he had ever heard. Another experience which a younger generation has missed was as a boy to have heard Dickens read " The Trial Scene in ' Pickwick ' " : this particular boy, with his keen sense of humour, had been seen positively rolling on the floor shaken with laughter at only reading '' Pickwick " to himself, so that his enjoyment must indeed have been huge at the novelist's own rendering of the immortal Weller. His own gifts in recitation wex-e considerable, probably owing to early development. Xorwich was a delightful city for children's parties, which adults also frequented, and when so young as to have to be set up on a table the usually retiring child was not nervous at reciting some Ann and Jane Taylor, so thoroughly did he enjoy the humour and bright conversation in such pieces as — Here stands the shrewd barber with razor and pen. His memory was exceedingly good : few men could quote the Bible, as a whole, more accurately than he, and most of that verbal knowledge was acquired before he had entered his teens. His old copy of Milton has whole books of "Paradise Lost" scored as having been committed to memory. Yet the memory, even when a child, went hand in hand with reasoning power, and he would argue about everything. His little head evidently puzzled itself over theological difficulties, for he one day confronted his mother with the question, " Mother, you say Jesus died to save everybody : then why aren't all men good ? " As all his friends know, he had no recreations in after life that were not in some sense intellectual : walks were all opportunities for intel- lectual talk, holidays occasions for acquiring more information. " Games ! " he would exclaim ; " games are for children. I, like St. Paul, have put away childish things " — this in reply to the query why he not did play golf or tennis. Bowing he did love, not for the exercise, but for the soothing sound of the lapping of the oars, and for the views of the shores to be obtained from lake or river itself. But even when a child he did not care particularly for games ; books were much more to him ; he went through one phase of bird's-nesting, not in any ruthless spirit, but simply, as a young would-be naturalist, to have one specimen of each egg — to add, indeed, to his stock of information. His school-days ! To many men they are a time to linger over, since the whole manhood is the inevitable outcome of them. Not at all so in this case. Literature had a fascination for William Clarke, but the dry bones of accidence he abhorred, and mathematics were nearly as uninteresting to him. If his master at the King Edward VI. Commercial School, Norwich, had ever seen his Euclid, and his French and Latin grammars, he would have discoveied wherein his young pupil's interest lay, for he would have found every available space scored over with finely drawn illusti-ations of J^oric and ionic columns or tracery of Gothic windows. No class-singing was then taught in xiv WILLIAM CLARKE boys' schools, and so what might have been a fine singing voice and what was undoubtedly a marvellously keen ear for music were undeveloped, and in after years the man who longed to be a performer had to satisfy his musical cravings with silently listening. And what a listener he was ! The only incident of these Norwich school-days worth recording is that the boy was such a shocking writer that his father sent him to a special writing master to improve his style. Those who remember his dainty, flowing, almost elegant writing — so clear as to be a joy to the compositors, and to make correction of proofs hardly necessary — will be amused to know of this early defect. Still these school-days were a happy memory, for by them chiefly was formed a friendship, that with G. Alfred King, of the great Norwich firm of stained glass window colourers, that sufl:ered the test of long years of separation and very infrequent cori-espondence, but the renewal of which by personal inter- course from time to time was always possible, and was one of the delights of the last year of his life. Had the family remained in Norwich, and William Clarke proceeded to the grammar school under Dr. Jessop, perhaps his school-days would have counted us a more powerful factor in his life. As it was, two or three years in a private school at Cambridge, after a family removal in 18GG,so bored him that he was quite willing to leave and acquiesce in his father's determina- tion to put him to business. Little did the boy know, however, how loathsome he would find an ofirce desk, and thovigh he endured it till past the age when he ought to have been entering the University, yet at length he told his father that he could not and would not follow a tradesman's career. His father was exceedingly unwilling that he should enter the University without a definite idea of what he was going to do after having taken his degree, and suggested the third course of a solicitor's ofiice ; but '• legal quibble," to use William Clarke's own favourite phrase, was quite as uncongenial as finance, and young Clarke, who had already been secretly beginning Greek with a view to his "Little-go," entered in 1872 the LTniversity of Cambridge as a non-collegiate student. It was just three years after the University had been so thrown open to students, to some of whom the system appealed, because, as they were past the usual undergraduate age, they preferred not to be bound down by college rules, to others — the majority — because their purses were not long enough to pay college bills. William Clarke was among the latter, but though at the time of entrance it was a blow to him not to belong to a college, long before his University career was ended he had de- liberately preferred the non-collegiate system, a college seeming to him to savour of a glorified public school, whereas his ideal of a uni- versity was that of an institution for learning and research, not one for disciplining youth, still less one for giving a young fellow just quitting his teens " a ripping time." J. E. C. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xv HIS LATER YEARS My first acquaintance with William Clai-ke arose at our non-collegiate debating society. It was in the early seventies, when Joseph Arch was stirring the nation with his agricultural labourers' revolt. Our first debate was on that agitation. Mr. Clarke and I both spoke, of course on the side of the labourers, and I was immensely struck with his lucidity of thought, flow of language, power of expression, and sound democracy. He was immediately invited to open the next debate on Chuich Disestablishment, and from that time onward he was practically the master of the society. He did not speak much at the Union, but as the years went on his oratorical power increased, and it is not too much to say that at one period of his life he was certainly one of the best impromptu speakers of the day. Old members of the debating society which was founded by Mr. Stopford Brooke at Dr. Williams's library will remember the charm of Mr. Clarke's eloquence. In the seventies we were enthusiastic at Cambridge, and William Clarke threw himself ardently into the various reform movements. He was then a strong temperance man, and he gained a prize from the Alliance Xevjs for a temperance essay. He helped to found the Cambridge University Religious Equality Society for the removal of the last vestige of tests, and became a leader writer for the Cambridge Independent Press. From 1874 to 1880 Benjamin Disraeli was our old man of the sea, and our opposition to Toryism brought us into contact with the National Reform Union and its capable and energetic secretary, Mr. Arthur G. Symonds, who at once formed a very high opinion of Mr. Clarke's powers, and constantly employed him as a lecturer and writer. In this capacity he was an undoubted factor in the change of political opinion which restored Mr. Gladstone to power, and one lecture of his on Mr. Gladstone's career, which he delivered in many parts of England, still lingers in the memory of those who had the good foitune to hear it. For three or four years after Mr. Clarke took his degree he still lived in Cambridge, and earned his living, somewhat precariously at times, by lecturing and writing. He did work for an Ipswich Libei-al paper and other provincial journals, lectured for the National Reform Union and the Liberation Society, and wrote occasional magazine articles. He had made a speciality of American history, literature, and politics, and in ]>s7() wrote his first weighty article for the British QvAxrterly lieviev}. It was on tlie American Centennial, and was a tine appreciation of the true American spirit. Ho had now begun to feel his journalistic feet, and after much thought and deliberation he decided to remove to London and seek his daily bread on the troubled sea of literature. Dr. AUon, editor of the British Quarterly, was very kind to him, and accepted several of his articles, notably one on Richard Cobden and one on the Colonies. He gradually became known to the London journalistic and literary world, and made the acquaintance of a con- l xvi WILLIAM CLAKKE siderable number of well-known men and women. He used to go often to Mr. Frederic Harrison's house, and there became acquainted with most of the Positivist leaders, including Dr. Oongreve. But the man of letters who had most attraction for him was Mr. Stopford Brooke. Next to Emerson, it is probable that Mr. Clarke was more influenced by Mr. Brooke than by any other man. In after years it was through Mr. Brooke that he became a member of the staff of the Spectator. A series of articles that Mr. Clarke wrote for the Echo, on "Our True Nobility," sketches of eminent statesmen, &c., brought him into prominent notice, and he was soon filling a considerable niche in the journalistic world. His mind, however, was always turning to America. At Cambridge we had the good fortune of having for a fellow under- graduate Mr. Edwizi D. Mead, now one of America's foremost men. Mr. Mead advised Mr. Clarke to try his fortune in America as a lecturer, and accordingly in 1881 he turned his face westward, and realised what had been one of the dreams of his life, to visit the Great Republic. He had previously saturated himself with America, the real America, as it seemed to him — the land of Emerson, of Channing, Garrison, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln. The old and best side of Puritan life had not yet died out from New England, and that life was peculiarly attractive to Mr. Clarke, with his strain of Scotch Covenanting blood. He was more than fortunate in possessing the warm friendship of Edwin Mead, who in Boston was in close touch with most of the men of light and leading in literature and public life. Mr. Mead arranged much of Mr. Clarke's £rst lecturing tour, a tour which brought him into close contact and friendship with many of America's thinkers, writers, and statesmen. The tour was a great success so far as regards appreciation of Mr. Clarke's ability and oratory, although sometimes financially it fell rather short. Once in Chicago he was in rather low water, reduced almost to his last dollar, when by a fortunate chance he was brought into touch with the silver-tongued orator, Wendell Phillips. Mr. Phillips took an instant liking to him, procured him lecturing engage- ments which set him on his feet, and genei-ally proved himself one of the kindest mentors and friends. This was really the turning-point in Mr. Clarke's first Amei^can career. He journeyed through all the Eastern States, always drawing large audiences, and tasting that which his soul loved, the literary and philosophical wine poured forth by America's foremost men. In his letters home to his parents and his sisters this is continually apparent, and there is often a quite natural elation at his success. The crowning-point of his tour was his meeting with Emerson. On December 11, 1881, he writes to his eldest sister; " I went to Concord to lecture, staying there with Mr. Harris * at his quaint old house, next to that which used to be Hawthorne's. When I got to the Lyceum Hall, who should I find among my auditoi-s but — think of it ! — Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. I felt quite * Dr. W. T. Harris, editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and founder of the Concord School of Philosophy, now United States Federal Commisbioner of Education. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xvii agitated, but got on all right. After the lecture Mr. Harris brought up Emerson to see me. We shook hands, he being so kindly and placid ; but his memory all but gone, so that he scarce knew what to say to me, except that he Avas much pleased with my lecture. He then invited me to dine at his house the following day. I went at the appointed time with Mr. Harris, and found Emerson smiling and perfectly delightful. At the dinner-table I sat next to Mrs. Emerson and opposite to j\Ir. Alcott. Dr. Emerson (the son) was at one end, and Miss Emerson at the other. Mr. Emerson sat between Alcott and Harris. We talked of many things, but Mr. Emerson could not join in the conversation ; he simply looked smilingly on, occasionally asking a question of his son or Avife. His failing memory was shown very significantly after dinner, when he showed us a portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and could not possibl}' recall his name. Emerson is just gradually and placidly fading out of life. The house is a very pleasant one, in no sense whatever fine, but exceedingly comfortable and tasteful. This was a great honour indeed, for but few persons are now invited to dine with Mr. Emerson." During this visit he formed a connection with two influential American newspapers, the Boston Advertiser and the Sj^rinqfield Republican, to which for some years he continued to act as London correspondent. His lectures were mainly on English literature and politics, and his republican and democratic sympathies won for him the keen apprecia- tion of his American hearers. Altogether this was the happiest time of his life. In 1882 he returned to England, once more to take up his journalistic work, to which, as the years went on, he added magazine writing both for America and England. Mr. Edwin Mead was editing the Nev} England Magazine, and Mr. Clarke became one of its principal contributors. The Political Science Quarterly also opened its pages to him, as did also the Fortnightly and Contemjwrary. At this period he did a considerable amount of lecturing work in the London Radical clubs and working men's societies. The Irish movement was very strenuous, the newer democx^atic and Socialist ideas were forging ahead, and Mr. Clarke's lucid expositions of what he conceived to be true democratic thought and action did much to advance the political education of the time. A remarkable evidence of this is given in a letter to his mother dated March 2, 1889. " I have something very pleasant to tell you Avhich I know you will be very glad to hear. On Thursday I received from Mr. Stopford Brooke a letter enclosing a cheque for £150 for myself. The letter stated that certain people, some of them unknown to me, and some of them holding difierent opinions from mine, had nevertheless noted for some time my work in lecturing at the London clubs and debating societies and my writings in papers and reviews, and had thought that all this work was done in a good spirit and was lilectatoT articles which are reprinted in this volume. I have before me a complete list of all that he wrote for the paper, a list which is really wonderful in its comprehensiveness. Literature, politics, theology, philosophy, science and art, are all included and all most ably dealt with. I asked one of his editors whether it would be advisable to print the list at the end of this book, and he replied, " No, for no one would ever believe that any one man could have more than a super- ficial knowledge of all those subjects." But about them there is no sign of superficiality : they are all touched by what was really a master-hand. And now I approach the saddening end. In 1899 Mr. Clarke, in conjunction with his old friend and colleague Dr. Horowitz, the Vienna correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, arranged a tour in South-Eastern Europe. Mr. G. H. Penis and I accompanied them, and we travelled through Austria, Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. So much did Mr. Clarke enjoy the tour, and so much good did it do him, that in 1901 he decided to repeat the Bosnian part of it. Another party was formed, consisting of him. Dr. Horowitz, Rev. A. L. Lilley, my co-editor, Mr, John A. Hobson, and myself. We started in April, and made our way fi-om Eiume down the Adriatic, touching at Spalato, Ragusa, and other towns. Eor some time Mr. Clarke had been suSering from diabetes, and he knew that it was incurable and that in all probability he had not many more years of life before him. Neither he nor we had, however, the slightest idea that the disease was so far advanced. On our return up the Adriatic he seemed to fail, and became weary and listless. We went on to Herzegovina, to the old town of Mostar, and there the end came, so swiftly that it seemed impossible to realise, even when at the close of day we stood by his bed- side and watched him calmly sink into the arms of death, that our companion and friend Avas gone from us. I cannot omit in this sad narrative to allude to the extraordinary kindness which was shown to us by the whole of the town. Austrians and Bosnians, Mohammedans and Christians vied with each other in delicate sympathy, and those sorrowful days abolished all distinctions of race and creed, and showed us in very deed and very truth what the solidarity of humanity may really mean. It was one of the curious ironies of life, although, of course, a thing which mattered not, that owing to local circumstances, William Clarke was taken to his grave on a gun-carriage and buried in a military cemetery, between a soldier and a Jew. He hated every form of militarism with a deadly hatred, and he equally hated, not the culti- vated cosmopolitan Jew — many of whom were his friends — but the blustering, money giabbing Jewish millionaire, whom he especially blamed for the South African War. Mr. Lilley read a simple service, in a few broken words I gave our thanks to those who had accompanied us to the grave, and then in the ancient Mohammedan city we left our friend and comrade in his last earthly home. An obelisk has been placed over BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxv his grave by his father and sisters containing the following inscription, composed by the Right Hon. James Bryce, and written in Latin, as still the most international of languages : HlC IN CHRISTO SITUS EST LONGE AB OEIS PATRIAE GULIELMYS CLARKE APVD CANTABRIGIENSES IN ANGLIA ARTIUM MAGISTER IVSTITIAE FACTS LIBERTATIS AMATOR ET PROPVGNATOR NATVS IN VRBE NORVICIENSI A.D. X KAL. DEC. A.S. M DCCC LII OBDORMIVIT IN VRBE MOSTARIA A.D. Ytll ID. MAI. A.S. M CM I ANIMAE IN PRIMIS CANDIDAE INGENII MITIS AC PERIUCUNDI DILIGENTIAE IN VERITATE PERSCRVTANDA INDEFESSAE MONVMENTVM HOC PON. CURAVERVNT PATER SORORES BEATI MUNDO CORDE QUONIAM IPSI DEUM VIDEBUNT When we I'eturned to London a committee was formed, with the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney (as he was then) as chairman, to promote a fitting memorial to Mr, Clarke. At a meeting held at the National Liberal Club the following resolution was adopted : " That this meeting of the Memorial Committee desires to place on record its deep sorrow and regret at the sudden and untimely death of Mr. William Clarke, who as writer, thinker, and speaker had gained the e.steem and affection of a large circle of friends in Great Britain, in America, and on the Continent, and the admiration and respect of very many to whom he was personally unknown. Through the whole of his career Mr. Clarke's pen and tongue were ever used, without faltering or swerving, on behalf of truth in thought and justice in action. This meeting desires to convey to his relatives its heartfelt sympathy, and to assure them that in the history of British journalism William Clarke's name will ever take an honoured place." To the meeting Mr. John Morloy, M.P., sent a letter of regret for non-attendance, in which he said : "I will gladly do what 1 can to commemorate a man whom I liked, respected, valued, and honoured, and to whose future work I had looked forward with entire hope." To this we may add the striking tribute to his memory given some time later in a letter to one of his sisteis by his long-time friend Mr. Stopford Brooke : xxvi WILLIAM CLARKE " He lived his life in unsullied honour and with the most steadfast conscientiousness. To do the right and honourable thing was the most natural way for him to act under all circumstances, and when such action was against his material interests he did it with an added fervour. I have never known any one who had a loftier view of truth and of justice, and who dedicated his life with so single an eye, so steady an efibrt, and with so great an intensity to making them prevail. In religion, in politics, in literature, in economics, in daily journalism, and in daily life his one desii'e was to find the true thing among many confusing half-truths and to maintain it. But no less than the truth did he desire and work for justice. It was difficult, he thought, to find the absolute truth in so entangled a world, but it was not difficult to know what was just in a society the main characteristic of Avhich was injustice. He never asked for charity to the poor or the oppi-essed, but he did demand that justice should be done to them ; and in every struggle between the workers and those who used their poverty as a means to increase their own wealth, between the oppressor and the oppressed in the various countries of Europe — for his sympathies went far beyond his owTi country — he, through ail the years he was a journalist, maintained with remarkable ability and with a concentrated but quiet passion the cause of justice. Nothing in the world was dearer to him than civic justice. '• His intellect was clear, quick in grasp, ready in discussion, enamoured of other regions than those of economics, history, and philosophy, to which he chiefly dedicated its powers. It enabled him to speak with ease and conciseness, and I have listened with great pleasure to many speeches which illuminated the subject of the meeting and cleared away its unimportant elements. By continual study he had matured and enriched his intellect, strengthened its powers, and made their exercise quick and ready. His knowledge of the United States, theu' history, constitution, and politics was as practical and full as his knowledge of the history, constitution, and politics of the various States of Europe, especially of their economic conditions, and he proved this in his journalism and his lectures. Nor were his intellectual interests confined to these matters. He eagerly discussed and wrote about the philosophical theories of the day as one by one they emerged, and brought to bear upon them a mass of previous reading and knowledge of philosophy. I remember with much pleasure the various talks we had till late at night concerning literature, and the grave and quiet appre- ciations he made of the poets. He took so vital an interest in Walt "Whitman, chiefly because his poetry bore so strongly on large social and democratic questions, that he wrote a little book on this American poet which is far the best-balanced treatment which exists of Whitman's work. " His religion was the religion of Mazzini, and a better form of i^eligion could not be possessed by one who, like William Clarke, felt that religion must be bound up with the general progress of humanity ; with social duties, civic rights, and with a continuous struggle towards a complete regeneration of society. Mazzini satisfied his soul. That which most troubled me in him was his very despondent view of life and BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxvii of the world. He saw so much of selfish jjreed, of injustice aud dis- honesty in society that it was difficult for him to see the other side ; and the darkness of his view sharpened the fierce hatred he had of those who were guilty of these sins, and the bitterness with which he denounced them. Much of this pessimism was caused by the continual attacks of influenza from which he suflered every year, and which he endui'ed with a singular patience and manliness. Had he had better health he would have seen more of the brighter side of this world, which, like the earth itself, spins round from dark to light and from light to dark. " Finally, of what he was as a friend and comrade many have known to their great delight, and to their progress in usefulness and goodness; nor have they ever ceased to remember him with a strong affection. For my part, I loved him well, and years of loss have not lessened my love." William Clarke was essentially a religious man. In the light of advancing knowledge and of modern views that vexed word religion is often interpreted in two ways. Those who have given up the old rigid anthropomorphic ideas find compensation in the sense of definite conscious communion with what they believe to be the " power not ourselves which makes for righteousness," which more or less means to them a spiritual personality. Others who cannot go even so far as this, see in the underlying unity of Nature with man what Mr. Clarke calls, in the " Charm of Winter Scenery," the " vast spiritual life in which man and Nature are subtly enfolded," a spiritual life which in the ordinary sense is neither atheistic nor pantheistic, which is incapable of expression or definition, but which is to be found and appreciated by man in exact proportion as his inner life is attuned to the highest forces Avhich he can see working for good in the univei-se at large. Like most thinking people, he had passed through many phases of mental and spiritual evolution. Brought up in strict orthodoxy, he was in his early youth a believer in the biblical millennium. When I first knew him his orthodoxy was dropping away from him, and much of our earlier time together was spent in the oft-repeated task of mental reconstruction. Together we helped to found a Unitarian church at Cambridge, and although he never formally joined the Unitarian body, he used occasionally to preach for it at King's Lynn, Norwich, and other places. Together we read Theodore Parker, and found Unitarianism too narrow ; and eventually, while I drifted more and more to Agnosticism, he rooted and grounded himself in Emerson, a position which I did not reach till some time after he had attained it. I think that to say that in his later years his religion was that of Wordsworth, Emerson, and Whitman is fairly and accurately to describe it. In "England's Debt to Wordsworth " he speaks of the sublime idealism which the poet inculcated, and which a " strong and naturally material- istic race most needed," and insists that Wordsworth " saw the unity of the world, the oneness of man with Nature, a unity not to be interpreted in terms of the lowest, but of the highest." In the " Spiritual Movement in the Nineteenth Century " he insists on philoso[»hic unity as against dualism, and declares that the enforcement of the idea of spiritual monism was the principal achievement of that xxviii WILLIAM CLARKE century. In the "Uses of Agnosticism" he gives an impartial judg- ment in these words : " Agnosticism cannot reach any principle of being, any permanent divine power, any heart from which all the streams of life take their source. While fully convinced that Agnosticism harms in the long run the spiritual nature, we pi'efer thinking of it now as intellectual adversity. Agnosticism if erected into a creed of nothingness is contemptible : it deliberately shuts the eyes on entire aspects of life and of the world ; it is spiritual suicide. But Agnosticism may imply merely a disbelief in the existing statements, and in that sense it is rather a cry for more light than a deliberate determination to vegetate in utter darkness." To " vegetate in utter darkness " was entirely foreign to William Clarke's nature. He was essentially positive in character ; if the expression may be legitimately used, he was a positive idealist. This showed itself always in the political side of his life. In " England's Debt to Milton " he praises the " intellectual freedom of that worthy and noble inner life, in the absence of which the outer forms of liberty are worthless," and in his editorial introduction to the ill-fated Pro- gressive Review (which was an outcome of the Rainbow Society, was the only unfortunate literary venture with which Mr. Clarke was con- nected, and which, it is due to him to say, was started in opposition to his better judgment) he says : " Our appeal is to all stout upholders of freethought and of the cause of social justice, to all who believe that the pace and character of popular progress are not set or measured by the blind, unconscious efforts of the past, but that they may be indefinitely quickened and improved by imparting a higher conscious purpose to the operations of the social will. To the great unordered mass of i-ight-feeling and sound-thinking men and women, at present bewildered by the jarring claims of ever-shifting sects, we appeal to unite in bringing the capacities of ' common sense ' and sober judgment to bear upon political and social institutions, intellectual creeds and dogmas, without fear or favour, owning no other authorities than reason and a sense of the common good. Faith in ideas and in the growing capacity of the common people to absorb and to apply ideas in reasonably working out the progress of the commonwealth forms the moral foundation of democracy." That was William Clarke's political i-eligion, and it was based and founded upon his spiritual religion, for it is in direct line with his view of the soul of things. Faith in ideas as the moral foundation of de- mocracy is directly akin to faith in the soul of man as the reflection of the Emersonian Over-Soul. In Mr. Clarke's essay on Emerson in *' Prophets of the Century," a very fine piece of work, he interprets Emerson's thought and religion thus : *' His Soul is the Universal Soul, the Eternal Spirit that men have named God. That Soul stands in living relation to our personality, its life overflows into our own. Or rather, it is our life, and without it we have no real life at all. We are organs of that Soul, and we only live in so far as we are. It is a Power making for righteousness, but it knows if we obey its laws. It works over our heads, indeed, but it BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxix also works in and through us, whether we resist or co-operate. Emerson enjoins sympathetic co-operation with a living, pure, rational purpose, and he may be said to find in that co-operation the Avhole duty of man — no, not duty so much as bent, tendency, inevitable purpose." It is always dangerous to attempt to make the thought of an author the exact thought also of his reviewer, but in the main the thought of Emerson was the thought of William Clarke. So was it with Walt Whitman. Incomparably the best appreciation of Whitman that we have is Mr. Clarke's monograph on the " Good Gray Poet," originally published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein, and now as a remainder by Mr. Fifield. It is Mr. Clarke's only real " book," and it is a worthy monument of him. Written in eleven days, it takes every side of Whitman's life and work, and with subtle discrimination shows the deepest springs of the poet's nature. The last part of the book is concerned with Whitman's spiritual creed, and it is also an ex- position of Mr. Clarke's own faith. With seai'ching analysis it deals with the antitheses of annihilation and individual survival, of the con- tinuance of the " good " which is to persist, " while the will in which alone the ' good ' can be realised is destroyed." This Mr. Clarke declares is absolutely unintelligible, and he further declares, what he most posi- tively thought, that " no agnostic doctrine of ' meliorism,' no positivist phrase-mongering about 'subjective immortality,' will deceive an eager and determined soul." William Clarke's own soul was ever eager and determined, and for him the universe was a vast fount and storehouse of living, conscious will, with which man can co-operate for the uplifting and betterment of humanity, while in so doing he will nnd and realise his own real mental and spiritual life. To emphasise that life, in its highest aspects, was the main purpose of William Clarke's litei'ary work. This volume is a partial record of the earnestness and enthusiasm he brought to that work and of the striking way in which he presented to his generation the message he had to give. HERBERT BURROWS. 99 SoTHEBY Road, Highbury Pakk, London, N. POLITICAL ESSAYS THE INDUSTRIAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM* Had we visited a village or small town in England where industrial operations were going on 150 years ago, what should we have found ? No tall chimney vomiting its clouds of smoke would have been visible ; no huge building with its hundred windows blazing with light would have loomed up before the traveller as he entered the town at dusk ; no din of machinery would have been heard, no noise of steam hammers ; no huge blast furnaces would have met his eye, nor would miles of odours wafted from chemical works have saluted his nostrils. If Lancashire had been the scene of his visit, he would have found a number of narrow red-brick houses with high steps in front, and outside wooden shutters such as one may still see in the old parts of some Lancashire towns to-day. Inside each of these houses was a little family workshop, containing neither master nor servant, in which the family jointly contributed to produce by the labour of their hands a piece of cotton cloth. The father provided his own warp of linen yarn, and his cotton wool for weft. He had purchased the yarn in a prepared state, while the wool for the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. There was a simple division of labour in the tiny cottage factory ; but all the implements necessary to produce the cotton cloth were owned by the producers. There was neither capitalist nor wage- receiver : the weaver controlled his own labour, effected his own exchange, and received himself the equivalent of his own product. Such was the germ of the great English cotton manufacture. Ferdinand Lassalle said : " Society consists • A portion of a paper contributed to " Essays in Fabianism " (1888). 4 WILLIAM CLARKE of ninety-six proletaires and four capitalists. That is your State." But in old Lancashire there was neither capitalist nor proletaire. Or even much later had one visited — Stafford, let us say, one would not have found the large modern shoe factory, with its bewildering variety of machines, each one with a human machine by its side. For shoemaking then was a pure handi- craft, requiring skill, judgment, and some measure of artistic sense. Each shoemaker worked in his own little house, bought his own material from the leather merchant, and fashioned every part of the shoe with his own hand, aided by a few simple and inexpensive tools. He believed there was " nothing like leather," and had not yet learned the art of putting on cheap soles, not made of leather, to cheap boots, which in a month's time will be almost worn out. Very likely the shoe- maker had no vote ; but he was never liable to be locked out by his employer, or to be obliged to go on strike against a reduction of wages, with his boy in prison for satisfying hunger at the expense of the neighbouring baker, or his girl on the streets to pay for her new dress. Such was the simple industrialism of our great-great-grandfathers. But their mode of life was destined to change. . . . The great industry has supplanted the small one ; such great industry involves the aggregation of capital ; con- sequently competition on the part of the small producer is hopeless and impossible. Thus in the proletarian class the intensity of the struggle for existence is increased, keeping down wages and ever widening the margin of the unemployed class. The small producer must become a wage-earner, either as manager, foreman, or workman. As well attempt to meet Gatling guns with bows and arrows, or steel cruisers armed with dynamite bombs with the little cockle-shells in which Henry V.'s army crossed over to win the field of Agincourt, as to set up single shoemakers or cotton-weavers against the vast industrial armies of the world of machinery. The revolution is confined to no one industry, to no one land. Whilst most fully developed in England, it is extending to most industries and to all lands. Prince Kropotkin, it is true, reminds us, in an interesting article in the Nimteenth Century for October 1888, that a number of small industries can still be found in town THE INDUSTRIAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 5 and country. That is so, no doubt ; and it is not unlikely that for a long time to come many small trades may exist, and some may even flourish. But the countries in which small industries flourish most are precisely those in which there is least machine industry, and where consequently capitalism is least developed. In no country, says Kropotkin, are there so many small producers as in Russia. Exactly ; and in no country is there so little machinery or such an ineflScient railway system m proportion to population and resources. On the other hand, in no country is machinery so extensively used as in the United States ; and it is precisely that country which contains the fewest small industries in proportion to population and resources. Many of the small industries, too, as Kropotkin admits, are carried on by persons who have been displaced by machines, and who have thus been thrown unemployed on the labour market ; or who have drifted into large towns, especially into London, because in the country there was no work for them. At best the great majority of these people earn but a scanty and precarious living ; and, judging from the number of hawkers and vendors who wander about suburban streets and roads without selling anything, one would imagine that great numbers can scarcely make any hving at all. Furthermore, when Kropotkin refers to the sweaters' victims, and to the people in country places who make on a small scale clothes or furniture which they dispose of to the dealers in large towns, and so forth, let it be remembered that 60 long as human labour is cheaper than machmery it will be utilised by capitalists in this way. The capitalist uses or does not use machinery according as it pays or does not pay ; and if he can draw to an unlimited extent on the margin of unem- ployed labour, paying a bare subsistence wage, he will do so, as the evidence 'nven before the House of Lords Committee on Sweating shows. While admitting, then, that a good many small industries exist, and that some will continue to exist for an indefinite time, I do not think that such facts make against the general proposition that the tendency is to large production by machinery, involving the grouping of men and the massing of capital, with all the economic and social con- sequences thereby involved. 6 WILLIAM CLARKE Even agriculture, that one occupation in which old- fashioned individualism might be supposed safe, is being subjected to capitalism. The huge farms of Dakota and California, containing single fields of wheat miles long, are largely owned by joint stock corporations and cultivated exclusively by machinery. It was the displacement of human labour by machinery on these farms, as well as the crises in mining operations, which helped to bring about the phenomenon of an unemployed class in the richest region of the world, and led Mr. Henry George to write his " Progress and Poverty." These huge farms, combined with the wheat " corners " in New York and Chicago and the great railway corporations of America, have played havoc with many of the small farmers of the Mississippi Valley, as the statistics respecting mortgaged farms will show. And when it is remembered that the American farmer will be more and more obliged to meet the growing competition of the wheat of India, produced by the cheapest labour in the world, his prospect does not appear to be very bright. ... I now pass on to consider the social problem as it has actually been forced on the attention of the British Government through the new industrial conditions. The unrestrained power of capitalism very speedily reduced a large part of England to a deplorable condition. The Mrs. Jellybys of the philanthropic world were busy ministering to the wants of Borioboola Gha by means of tracts and blankets, neither of which were of the slightest use to those for whom they were intended. But Borioboola Gha was an earthly paradise compared with civilised England. There was not a savage in the islands of the Pacific who was not better fed, happier, healthier, and more contented than the majority of the workers in the industrial parts of England. Children, it was discovered, were transferred in large numbers to the north, Avhere they were housed in pent-up buildings adjoining the factories, and kept to long hours of labour. The work was carried on day and night without intermission, so that the beds were said never to become cold, inasmuch as one batch of children rested while another batch went to the looms, only half the requisite number of beds being provided for all. Epi- demic fevers were rife in consequence. Medical inspectors THE INDUSTRIAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 7 reported the rapid spread of malformation of the bones, curva- ture of the spine, heart diseases, rupture, stunted growth, asthma, and premature old age among children and young persons ; the said children and young persons being worked by manufacturers without any kind of restraint. Manufacturing profits in Lancashire were being at the same time reckoned at hundreds and even thousands per cent. The most terrible condition of things existed in the mines, where children of both sexes worked together, half naked, often for sixteen hours a day. In the fetid passages children of seven, six, and even four years of age were found at work. Women were employed underground, many of them even while pregnant, at the most exhausting labour. After a child was born, its mother was at work again in less than a week, in an atmosphere charged with sulphuric acid. In some places w^omen stood all day knee-deep in water and subject to an intense heat. One woman when examined avowed that she was wet through all day long, and had drawn coal carts till her skin came off. Women and young children of six years old drew coal along the passages of the mines, crawling on all fours with a girdle passing round their waists, harnessed by a chain between their legs to the cart. A sub-commissioner in Scotland reported that he " found a Uttle girl, six years of age, carrying half a cwt., and making regularly fourteen long journeys a day. The height ascended and the distance along the road exceeded in each journey the height of St. Paul's Cathedral." " I have repeatedly worked," said one girl seventeen years of age, " for twenty- four hours." The ferocity of the men was worse than that of wild beasts, and children were often maimed and sometimes killed with impunity. Drunkenness was naturally general. Short lives and brutal ones were the rule. The men, it was said, " die off like rotten sheep, and each generation is commonly extinct soon after fifty." Such was a large part of industrial England under the unrestrained rule of the capitalist. There can be no doubt that far greater misery prevailed than in the Southern States during the era of slavery. The slave was property — • often valuable property — and it did not pay his owner to ill-treat him to such a degree as to render him useless as a wealth- producer. But if the " free " Englishman were injured or killed, thousands could be had to fill his place for nothing. 8 WILLIAM CLARKE Had this state of things continued we should have returned to a state of nature with a vengeance. Of man thus depicted we may say with Tennyson : " Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him." It was evident that capitaHst monopoly must be restrained, reluctant as English statesmen brought up under the com- mercial system were to interfere. The zenith of laisser Jaire was at the close of the last century, but a great fabric often looks most imposing shortly before it begins to collapse. The first piece of labour legislature was the Morals and Health Act of 1802, which interfered with the accommodation provided to children by the employers, to which reference has been made. The Cotton Mills Act was passed in 1819, partly owing to the exertions of Robert Owen. It limited the age at which children might work in factories, and it limited the time of their labour to seventy-two hours per week. Seventy- two hours for a child of nine who ought to have been playing in the green fields ! And even that was a vast improvement on the previous state of things. Saturday labour was next shortened by an Act passed by the Radical politician. Sir John Cam Hobhouse, in 1825. Workmen, Radicals, Tories, and philanthropists then joined in an agitation under Mr. Richard Oastler, a Conservative member of Parliament, to secure a Ten Hours Bill. Hobhouse tried by a Bill introduced in 1831 to reduce the time in textile industries, but he was beaten by the northern manufacturers. However, Althorp the Whig leader, who had helped to defeat Hobhouse, was obliged himself to introduce a measure by which night work was prohibited to young persons, and the hours of work were reduced to sixty-nine a week. Cotton-mill owners were at the same time disqualified for acting as justices in cases of infringe- ment of the law. This measure is regarded by Dr. E. Von Plener in his useful manual as the first real Factory Act. Mr. Thomas Sadler, who had succeeded Oastler as leader in the cause of the factory operatives, brought in a Bill in 1832 limiting the hours of labour for persons under eighteen ; but THE INDUSTRIAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 9 it was met by a storm of opposition from manufacturing members, and withdrawn. To Sadler succeeded that excellent man, who has perhaps done more for the working classes than any other public man of our time, Lord Ashley, better known as Lord Shaftesbury. And here let me pause to point out that it was the Radicals and a large section of the Tories who took the side of the operatives against the Whigs, official Conservatives, and manu- facturino- class. The latter class is sometimes regfarded as Liberal. I think the truth is that it captured and held for some time the Liberal fort, and made Liberalism identical with its policy and interests. If the men of this class had the cynical candour of Mr. Jay Gould, they might have imitated his reply when examined by a legislative committee : " What are your politics, Mr, Gould ? " " Well, in a Republican district I am Republican, in a Democratic district I am a Democrat ; but I am always an Erie Railroad man." One of Lord Ashley's strong opponents was Sir Robert Peel, the son of a Lancashire capitalist, but the most bitter and persistent Avas Mr. John Bright. Lord Ashley introduced a Ten Hours Bill which included adults. Lord Althorp refused to legislate for adults, but himself passed an Act in 1833 prohibiting night work to those under eighteen ; fixing forty-eight hours per week as the maximum for children, and sixty-nine for young persons ; also providing for daily attendance at school and certain holidays in the year. As this Act repealed that of 1831, manufacturers were again eligible to sit as justices in factory cases ; and although numerous infractions were reported by inspectors, the offenders in many cases got off scot free. In 1840 Lord Ashley brought to the notice of Parliament the condition of young people employed in mines, and through his activity was passed the first Mining Act, prohibiting underground work by women and by boys under ten. Peel then passed a consoli- dating Factory Act in 1844. Lord Ashley proposed to restrict to ten per day the working hours for young persons, but Peel defeated the proposal by threatening to resign if it were carried. By the Act of 1 844 the labour of children was limited to six and a half hours per day, and they had to attend school three hours daily during the first five days of the week. The next year, 1845, Lord Ashley secured the passage of a Bill 10 WILLIAM CLARKE forbidding night work to women. In 1847 Mr. Fielden intro- duced a Bill limiting the time of labour for all women and young persons to eleven hours per day, and after May 1848 to ten hours. Peel and the factory owners opposed, but the Bill was carried. The Act of 1850 further reduced the legal working day for women and young persons ; and an Act of 1853 prohibited the employment of children before 6 a.m. or after 6 p.m. In 1860 bleaching and dyeing works were subjected to the factory laws. Further legislation on this branch of industry took place in 1870. A Mines Act was passed in 1860, and made more stringent in 1862 with reference to safety and ventilation. Acts with reference to the lace industry were passed in the years 1861-64, to bake- houses in 1863, chimney-sweeping and pottery works in 1864. The Workshops Regulation Act, relating to small trades and handicrafts, was passed in 1867, and a consolidating Factory and Workshops Act in 1871. The Act now in force is the Factory and Workshops Act, 1878, modified in respect of certain industries by the Act of 1883. Further Acts relative to the regulation of mines were passed in 1872 and 1887. This brief and imperfect survey of the legislation which has destroyed the rigime of laisser /aire is sufficient for my purpose to prove: (1) That with private property in the necessarj^ instruments of production, individual liberty as understood by the eighteenth century reformers must be more and more restricted, i.e., that in our existing economic condition indivi- dualism is impossible and absurd. (2) That even hostile or indifferent politicians have been compelled to recognise this. (3) That unrestrained capitalism tends as surely to cruelty and oppression as did feudalism or chattel slavery. (4) That the remedy has been, as a matter of fact, of a Socialistic character, involving collective checking of individual greed and the paring of slices off the profits of capital in the interests of the working community. These four propositions can scarcely be contested. The immense development of English industry under the conditions previously set forth was due in great degree to the fact that England had secured an immense foreign market in which she had for a long time no formidable rival. Most of the wars in which England was engaged during the THE INDUSTRIAL BASIS OF SOCIALISM 11 eighteenth century are quite unintelligible until it is under- stood that they were commercial wars intended to secure commercial supremacy for England. The overthrow of the Stuart monarchy was directly associated with the rise to supreme power of the rich middle class, especially the London merchants. The revolution of 1688 marks the definite advent to political power of this class, which found the Whig party the great instrument for effecting its designs. The contrast between the old Tory squire, who stood for Church and King, and the new commercial magnate, who stood by the Whigs and the House of Hanover, is well drawn by Sir Walter Scott m " Rob Roy." The Banks of England and Scotland and the National Debt are among the blessings conferred on their descendants by the new mercantile rulers. They also began the era of corruption in politics which is always con- nected closely with predominance of capitalists in the State, as we see in France, the United States, and the British Colonies. " The desire of the moneyed classes," says Mr. Lecky, " to acquire political power at the expense of the country gentlemen was the first and one of the chief causes of that political corruption which soon overspread the whole system of parliamentary government." What remained of the old aristocracy often found it convenient to form alliances with the new plutocracy ; and it was this combination which governed England during the eighteenth century, and Avhich specially determined her foreign policy. That policy was directed towards the securins: of fbrei