\H& 1 I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 W.N.PITCMERJK 
 
 4. Croc* street 
 
 M *NCHt6TII
 
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 // /pi /ffL 
 
 LITERARY FRAGMENTS
 
 ,./ 
 
 LITEEAEY FEAGMENTS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 HON. GEOEGE C. BEODEICK 
 
 WARDEN OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW- STREET SQUARE, LONDON 
 
 1891
 
 AC or 
 
 5V$t 
 
 PEEEATOEY NOTE 
 
 2The present volume mainly consists of articles contributed 
 
 c/sto periodicals, and other papers separately printed, since the 
 
 k publication of my ' Political Studies,' in 1879. It contains, 
 
 Jg however, four articles on educational subjects of an earlier 
 
 "'date, and three Lectures on ' The Place Of Oxford University 
 
 in English History,' delivered at the Eoyal Institution on 
 
 April 15, 22, and 29, 1890, but hitherto unpublished. I have 
 
 added a very few published letters ; three Election Addresses 
 
 issued in 1868, 1874, and 1880, respectively ; and a little 
 
 selection of Speeches, imperfectly reported, yet retaining sum- 
 
 ^ cient trace of preparation to claim a place among ' Literary 
 
 co Fragments.' 
 
 ^ These scattered materials have been roughly grouped under 
 c=the following heads : 
 
 I. Education (1866-79). 
 II. English and Irish Land Systems (1881-2). 
 III. Economical Politics (1884-6). 
 IV. Irish Policy (1886-8). 
 V. Historical Subjects (1856-90). 
 VI. Election Addresses (1868-80). 
 VII. Speeches and Letters, Political and Occasional 
 C3 (1868-90). 
 
 5 In some of my Essays and Speeches, especially those on 
 
 ^the Irish Question, I have freely borrowed arguments, and 
 
 even passages, from other compositions of my own. Several
 
 vi LTTERABY FRAGMENTS 
 
 instances of such repetition will be found in the present 
 volume ; for I have not thought it well to sacrifice literary 
 unity or symmetry by striking out these innocent plagiarisms. 
 Nor have I revised any of the articles here collected, with a 
 view to remedy defects of thought or style, preferring that 
 each should be left, in its original form, to the judgment of 
 friendly eyes. I could have wished to include among them a 
 fow specimens of my anonymous contributions to the daily 
 press, between 1860 and 1878, which I have always regarded 
 as the chief political and literary work of my life. But the 
 honourable traditions of journalism, now too seldom observed, 
 preclude me from identifying any ' leading-articles ' as my 
 own ; and three-fourths of my productions will thus remain 
 buried, with so many others of higher merit, in the catacombs 
 reserved for old newspaper-files. 
 
 These Literary Fragments are printed, not with the vain 
 hope of rescuing them from the oblivion to which they are 
 destined, but in the belief that a rapidly-narrowing circle of 
 relations and friends may kindly accept them, as a simple 
 memento of their author. They are not published, because 
 I have no wish to challenge public criticism, and because no 
 miscellaneous assortment of ' Remains ' can win public favour, 
 unless recommended by the intrinsic value of its contents, by 
 the arts of skilful advertisement, or by the attraction of a 
 popular name. 
 
 GEORGE C. BRODRICK. 
 Ajiril, 1891.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. EDUCATION (1866-79) 
 
 University Tests 2 
 
 The Universities and the Nation 15 
 
 The Influence of the Older English Universities on National 
 
 Education 30 
 
 Address on Education 50 
 
 II. ENGLISH AND IEISH LAND SYSTEMS (1881-2) 
 
 The Last Chapter of Irish History 
 
 The Land Systems of England and of Ireland . 
 
 The Irish Land Act of 1881 : Its Origin and its Consequences 
 
 The Claim of Tenant-right for British Farmers 
 
 State and Prospects of British Agriculture in 1882 
 
 73 
 
 98 
 119 
 137 
 149 
 
 III. ECONOMICAL POLITICS (1884-6) 
 
 The Progress of Democracy in England 159 
 
 Democracy and Socialism 185 
 
 Socialistic Tendencies of Modern Democracy . , . . 212 
 
 IV. IRISH POLICY (1886-8) 
 
 Home Rule and Justice to Ireland 235 
 
 The Government of Ireland under the Union . . . . 243 
 
 The ' Classes ' and the ' Masses ' 256 
 
 Plain Facts about Ireland 263 
 
 V. HISTORICAL SUBJECTS (1856-90) 
 
 The Age of Alexander the Great 287 
 
 Count Cavour 307 
 
 The Evangelical Revival of the Eighteenth Century . .317 
 
 Oxford in the Middle Ages 333 
 
 The Place of Oxford University in English History. (In 
 
 three parts) .......... 352
 
 viii LITERARY FRAGMENTS 
 
 PA01 
 
 VI. ELECTION ADDRESSES (1868-80) 
 
 Addrkks at Woodstock, 1868 411 
 
 Address at Woodstock, 1874 416 
 
 Address in Monmouthshire, 1880 420 
 
 VII. SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 (1868-90) 
 Letter on Dr. Pusey and Professor Jowett . . . . 425 
 Speech in the Town Hall, Woodstock, October 8, 1868 429 
 
 Letter to the Rev. G. J. B. 439 
 
 Speech on the Hustings at Woodstock, Nov. 16, 1868 . . 446 
 Speech in the Town Hall, Woodstock, Jan. 28, 1874 . . 452 
 
 Speech at Southsea, March 7, 1877 462 
 
 Address at Guildford on Imperialism and Liberal Policy, 
 
 Dec. 28, 1878 476 
 
 Speech at Oxford on Household Suffrage in Counties, May 
 
 31, 1884 493 
 
 Address at Oxford on the Duty of Moderate Liberals at the 
 
 Coming Election, Nov. 19, 1885 500 
 
 Speech from the Chair at Woodstock, Feb. 3, 1886 . . 517 
 Speech at Oxford on the Jurilee, Feb. 26, 1887 . . . 524 
 Speech at Bath on ' The Real Meaning of " Home Rule " and 
 
 " Coercion," ' Nov. 4, 1887 529 
 
 Speech at an Oxford Dinner on ' The Liberal Unionist 
 
 Cause,' Jan. 25, 1888 634 
 
 Letter on ' Ireland a Nation,' April 14, 1888 . . . 538 
 
 Letter on ' The Treatment of Political Prisoners,' Sept. 28, 
 
 1888 540 
 
 Address at Oxford on ' Unionism the Basis of a National 
 
 Party,' Dec. 1, 1888 544 
 
 speech from the cliair at tne liberal union club, london, 
 
 May 8, 1889 551 
 
 Speech at an Oxford Dinner on ' The Unionist Cause,' Nov. 
 
 19, 1889 555 
 
 Speech from the Chair, introducing the Right. Hon. JosF.ru 
 
 Chamberlain to a Meeting in TnE Oxford Corn Exchange, 
 
 May 7, 1890 559 
 
 Spkf.ch on ' Literature ' at a Geooraphical Dinner to Mr. 
 
 II. M. Stanley, July 3, 1890 562 
 
 Stef.ch at an Oxford Dinner on ' The Bishop and Cleroy of 
 
 the Diocese,' Oct. 15, 1890 564 
 
 Address at tiik Oxford High School, Nov. 26, 1890 . . r 07
 
 I 
 
 EDUCATION
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 1 
 
 The subject of University Tests is essentially and intimately 
 connected with the still larger subject of University Extension 
 a subject which is gradually assuming the proportions of a 
 national question. Upon this ground alone it would merit 
 the special attention of this Association, but it is not upon 
 this ground alone that I have ventured to introduce it. For 
 several years past, the anomalous nature of the subscriptions 
 required at our two older Universities upon admission to their 
 higher degrees or to their governing bodies, to many Acade- 
 mical offices, and to College Fellowships, has been recognised 
 by the public and by the Legislature. Bills designed to 
 remedy one or other of these anomalies were submitted to 
 the House of Commons, with more or less success, in the two 
 last Sessions. There is reason to believe that Bills will be 
 again brought forward with the same object during the 
 Session of this year. The discussion of to-night, therefore, 
 possesses an interest more than speculative, and may possibly 
 have a practical influence on future legislation. 
 
 Here follows a full description of the University and College 
 Tests then in force at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, all of 
 which have since been abolished. 
 
 Such, then, is the measure of the Academical privileges 
 and College emoluments conceded to Dissenters at Oxford 
 and Cambridge respectively. At the former, the University 
 Statutes, unrepealed by the Act of 1854, preclude their 
 
 1 A paper read to a meeting of the Social Science Association on January 
 26, 18GG. 
 
 b 2
 
 4 CNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 obtaining an M.A. degree or taking any part in the government 
 of the University ; at the latter, they may, indeed, take the 
 M.A. degree, but they cannot, without making a declaration 
 of bond fide Church Membership, belong to the governing 
 body. At both, they are disqualified for becoming candidates 
 for College Fellowships, unless willing to make the declaration 
 of conformity, after which (at Oxford, at least) they must, in 
 most instances, proceed to the M.A. degree, and then sign 
 the Thirty-nine Articles on pain of forfeiting their Fellowship. 
 To remove these two kinds of disability, two measures 
 have been proposed, the one applying to Oxford only, the 
 other to both Universities. By the Oxford Tests Bill, intro- 
 duced by Mr. Dodson in 1864, and again by Mr. Goschen in 
 1865, it was proposed to throw open the M.A. degree, with 
 the vote in Convocation attached to it, to all persons, irre- 
 spective of their religious faith. Inasmuch, however, as such 
 an enactment, unless qualified, would have incidentally thrown 
 open all offices, both Academical and extra-Academical, for 
 which that degree may be the only theological qualification 
 a proviso was appended to it, obliging those who should be 
 appointed to such offices to sign, not the Articles, but a 
 declaration of bond fide Church Membership. The policy of 
 this proviso was much questioned at the time, on the ground 
 that it involved the enactment of a new, though, as many 
 thought, a less burdensome test, and gratuitously limited the 
 operation of a great principle. It was retained, however, and 
 the Bill having been lost by two votes only in 1864, was 
 carried by a considerable majority on the second reading in 
 1865. It was afterwards withdrawn by the mover, on finding 
 that it could not pass into law before the dissolution of Parlia- 
 ment. The other Bill, simply repealing so much of the Act 
 of Uniformity as relates to College Fellowships and Tutor- 
 ships, was introduced in 1864 by Mr. Bouverie, and has met 
 with a similar fate. Both originated in petitions signed by 
 some of the most eminent members of the two Universities, 
 resident as well as non-resident, and received the hearty 
 support of the Nonconformist body.
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 5 
 
 The limits of this paper do not permit me to discuss that 
 which is, to many, the most interesting aspect of the Tests 
 question. Whether it be consistent with the progress of theo- 
 logical science, that dogmatic formularies, drawn up at the 
 Keformation in terms which bear the stamp of a compromise, 
 should be imposed upon any Churchman in our own genera- 
 tion ; whether, even if imposed on the clergy, they need also 
 be imposed on the laity ; whether it can be right or reason- 
 able to make freedom of inquiry equally impossible for or- 
 dained clergymen and for persons who contemplate taking 
 orders ; whether the effect of subscription upon young men 
 entering or leaving the University be to secure the purity of 
 their faith, or to weaken their sense of moral obligation ; 
 whether, in short, these tests be at once futile in restraining 
 thought, and mischievous in blunting conscience, within our 
 own Church I shall here forbear to consider. It is with 
 their operation in excluding from the University those who 
 are outside the Church that I have now to deal. 
 
 From this point of view, the principle of the Oxford 
 Tests Bill in other words, the principle of a free University 
 seems to rest on deep and firm grounds of justice and ex- 
 pediency. Historically, our Universities are national, and not 
 Anglican, institutions ; legally, they are lay, and not spiritual, 
 corporations. These propositions are not only laid down in 
 our text-books of law, they are not only confirmed by the fact 
 that both Universities were founded long before the Church 
 of England had any existence, and that at both the lay 
 members have long outnumbered the clerical members, but 
 they constitute the only valid justification for the unique 
 privileges of these two educational bodies. The very idea of 
 an University, in the present day, supersedes and excludes 
 that of a clerical Seminary, and even that of an Academy 
 open to students of all religious communions, but reserving 
 its highest degrees, its tutorships, and its professorships for 
 one communion only. Such an idea may, indeed, have been 
 natural in that age when the University, like the State itself, 
 recognised the moral supremacy of the Church, when the
 
 6 UNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 Church was Catholic in reality as well as in name, when 
 the clergy enjoyed a monopoly of learning, and when secular 
 knowledge was the handmaid of theology. It might be 
 plausibly entertained in the age of Leicester or the age of 
 Laud, when statesmen as well as ecclesiastics still indulged in 
 the hope of making the Church of England coextensive with 
 the English people. Those ages have passed away, never to 
 return, and with them the only presumptive reasons in favour 
 of such a connection between the Church and the University 
 as would justify the refusal of lay-degrees to Dissenters. 
 That refusal has already been condemned by the Legislature, 
 so far as regards the bachelor's degree in the four lay-faculties, 
 and at Cambridge even the M.A. degree has been thrown 
 open, though without the rights belonging to it. In short, 
 the presumption is now entirely in favour of educational 
 liberty at the Universities, and it remains to examine the 
 arguments, of very unequal weight, that have been urged to 
 rebut this presumption. 
 
 It is said, in the first place, that although our Universities 
 are national institutions, they are national only in the same 
 sense in which the Church is national, and not in that of 
 being properly accessible to all, without distinction of creed. 
 This objection refutes itself, the truth being that our Church, 
 though not such as Laud would have had it, is far more com- 
 prehensive and less exacting than our Universities. Granting 
 that a State Church is for the public good, and that our own 
 is the most potent engine of enlightenment in this country, 
 it does, in theory, embrace all without exception, and it does, 
 in fact, tender all its ministrations and ordinances to the 
 laity without requiring any test of orthodoxy whatever. So 
 long as there is a national Church, a national University 
 ought, at least, to be coextensive with it, welcoming every 
 subject of the realm who is willing to come, and admitting 
 him, as of right, to its privileges. This is exactly what the 
 University of Oxford, thanks to the profligate nobleman who, 
 as Chancellor, introduced subscription to the Articles, lias 
 hitherto failed to do. ' It certainly is singular,' as the Oxford
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 7 
 
 Commissioners remark, ' that a lay corporation should require 
 from laymen, simply as a condition of membership, that 
 which the Church of England does not require for participa- 
 tion in its most sacred ordinance.' It is surely more singular 
 still that, after the clergy themselves have been relieved of 
 subscription to the three Articles of the Thirty-sixth Canon, 
 and the ratification thereof, containing the preposterous 
 assertion that Queen Elizabeth was Queen of France, a lay 
 member of Oxford should still be compelled to sign them on 
 taking his M.A. degree. 
 
 But other and more practical objections are entertained 
 by many who freely acknowledge the educational claims of 
 Dissenters, and the absolute right of Parliament to deal with 
 the constitution and endowments of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 as it did, in effect, at the Reformation. They allege that, 
 whether these two Universities be the property of the Church 
 or the property of the nation, it is for the public interest to 
 maintain in its integrity their peculiar connection with the 
 national Church. This connection they consider to be the 
 sole guarantee for definite religious teaching, and the one safe- 
 guard against a purely secular system of education. Hence, 
 while they are prepared to admit Dissenters as students, 
 they shrink from giving them any share of governing 
 power, if not from allowing them to obtain those higher 
 degrees which are the symbol of complete academical citizen- 
 ship. They would, therefore, prefer the endowment, however 
 costly, of new Dissenting Universities, to the admission of 
 Dissenters on equal terms at Oxford and Cambridge. Some 
 who thus think deny the existence of any considerable demand 
 for University education, as it is there understood, among 
 the leading bodies of Dissenters. Others apprehend an over- 
 whelming influx of persons hostile to the Church. Both, 
 however, agree that, if Dissenters should once gain a footing 
 in the Oxford Convocation or the Cambridge Senate still 
 more, if they should become fellows or tutors of colleges the 
 cause of ' religion and learning ' would be seriously preju- 
 diced. Rather than risk such a consequence they would
 
 8 UNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 retain subscriptions which they know and admit to press 
 heavily on the consciences of some good Churchmen, and 
 lightly enough on the consciences of some who have ceased 
 to believe in Christianity. 
 
 This class of objections owes its force, in a great degree, 
 to a confusion between the idea of a free University and the 
 idea of free Colleges. Now, the University might be perfectly 
 free to members of all denominations, or of no denomination, 
 and yet might contain within itself any number of denomi- 
 national Colleges. Were all University tests abolished, except 
 for theological degrees, and the privilege of opening private 
 halls or founding Colleges granted to Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters alike, it is not only possible, but highly probable, that 
 each religious body would have an establishment of its own. 
 Those Wesley an or Baptist parents who might object to their 
 children being educated by tutors, and mixing with com- 
 panions, of a different communion, would naturally prefer a 
 Wesleyan or Baptist Hall to a College imbued with Anglican 
 traditions, or to a lodging-house under no spiritual or moral 
 superintendence. The prevalence of the latter system, how- 
 ever, at Edinburgh and Glasgow not to speak of the London 
 or the Continental Universities proves at least that, in the 
 opinion of a highly scrupulous people, it is not so perilous to 
 the morality of students as its English opponents represent. 
 But this is not the present question. The question is whether 
 any just rights of the Church of England, or the interests of 
 religion, are endangered by offering the full benefit of educa- 
 tion at Oxford and Cambridge, without any vexatious or 
 humiliating reserve, to all who may choose to avail themselves 
 of it. The answer is self-evident. The Church has no more 
 right, as we have seen, to a monopoly of the Universities 
 than she has to a monopoly of Parliament. Her great su- 
 periority in wealth and learning will secure to her, so long as 
 it lasts, a legitimate ascendancy in both, and her best friends 
 will ask no more. No one acquainted with Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge society can seriously believe that young men frequent- 
 ing the same professors' lectures, but not even residing in the
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 9 
 
 same College, would devote themselves to proselytising each 
 other. Such a danger, however, were it real, must inevitably 
 redound to the advantage of the Church, which for many 
 years to come must be far more than a match for Dissent in 
 an arena long occupied by herself, and possesses an exclusive 
 command of the faculty of theology and the University pulpit. 
 But the danger is wholly unreal, and there is really something 
 absurd in an University which puts the works of Grote and 
 Mill into the hands of young Churchmen trembling at the 
 prospect of their coming into contact with the followers of 
 Wesley or Eobert Hall. It is far more likely that an infusion 
 of Dissenting undergraduates would tend to subordinate theo- 
 logical disputes to the great work of education. It is pre- 
 cisely because Oxford is so thoroughly clerical that questions 
 which belong specially to the province of divines have there 
 become topics of general discussion, propagating the odium 
 theologicum among future lawyers, scholars, and men of 
 science, and clouding with the darkness of scepticism the 
 minds of youths still fresh from school. Most true it is, as 
 Mr. Goschen pointed out in his masterly speech on the Oxford 
 Tests Bill, that free inquiry and the pursuit of truth are no 
 less the functions of an University than mere instruction. 
 That inquiry, however, should at least be spontaneous. It 
 is most profitably carried on by mature intellects, and espe- 
 cially by those who, filling professorial chairs, are entrusted 
 with the duty of guiding the progress of thought in the 
 various branches of knowledge which they represent. It is 
 the same predominance of the clerical element, acting at once 
 in two opposite directions, which dwarfs the learning of our 
 professors, and stimulates into morbid activity the speculative 
 tendencies of our students. 
 
 The admission of Dissenters to existing Colleges involves, 
 it must be confessed, greater difficulties ; and these difficulties 
 are not ignored by those who, nevertheless, desire to remove 
 restrictions imposed by the Act of Uniformity upon the tenure 
 of College Fellowships. The fear of secularising University 
 education is almost unmeaning, for, with the exception of a
 
 10 UNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 few simple questions on Scripture and the Articles, an Oxford 
 education, as represented by the University examinations, is 
 already purely secular. Colleges, on the other hand, do 
 profess, by means of divinity-lectures, chapel-services, and 
 the personal intercourse of tutors with pupils, to give a 
 religious character to education. It would be possible to 
 exaggerate the effect of such influences, but it would also be 
 possible to depreciate it unduly, and it may well be conceded 
 that if the Nonconformists could not be admitted to collegiate 
 emoluments without banishing religion from the College 
 system, it would be a very strong argument against admitting 
 them. Happily, no such dilemma is presented to us. The 
 principle of Mr. Bouverie's Bill is, as it ought to be, per- 
 missive. It would not compel the governing body of a College 
 to elect a Dissenter as Fellow, but would only enable them to 
 do so, if they thought it for the interest of the foundation as 
 a place of religion and learning. To suppose that a Dissenter, 
 being elected, would endeavour to substitute the form of 
 worship to which he had been accustomed for that of the 
 Church of England, or to propagate heterodox views among 
 the undergraduates, is to suppose that which is contrary to 
 all experience. It is, indeed, notorious that differences of 
 religious opinion prevail within the pale of the Church, com- 
 pared to which those which divide Churchmen from the great 
 majority of Dissenters are as nothing. Scotch Presbyterians 
 have already found their way into Oxford common-rooms, 
 without disturbing their harmony or plotting treason against 
 the doctrine and ritual of the Church. The truth is, that a 
 high and liberal education, such as can alone enable a man 
 to compete with success for an open Fellowship, is all but a 
 sovereign antidote against sectarian prejudices. There is not 
 a more enlightened and conscientious body of men than the 
 younger tutors of Colleges at both Universities, nor would 
 they be less enlightened and conscientious if they represented 
 the elite of English graduates instead of representing only the 
 elite of Anglican graduates. Such men know the difference 
 between dogmatic theology and practical religion. They can
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 11 
 
 and do agree to differ upon many points of opinion, but they 
 do not hold the creed of secularism, and may well be trusted 
 to make such arrangements for religious teaching and public 
 worship as would be satisfactory to the parents of their pupils. 
 Not that religious influences can only be exercised by tutors. 
 At this very moment the most powerful religious influences 
 at Oxford are neither University influences, nor yet College 
 influences ; they are the influences of earnest men, belonging 
 to various schools of theology, and owing their authority en- 
 tirely to their own personal qualities. 
 
 Hitherto we have proceeded on the assumption that a real 
 and considerable demand for University education, as it is 
 understood at Oxford and Cambridge, does exist among the 
 Nonconformists of England. But is this assumption true ? 
 Is it not the fact that social as well as theological barriers 
 divide the great mass of Dissenters from Churchmen ? Would 
 not the unprofessional character of Oxford studies, and the 
 age to which they are prolonged, as well as the strict con- 
 ditions of residence, deter many, even of the wealthier Dis- 
 senters, from sending their sons thither ? Does not the 
 formidable rivalry of ' business ' deprive more young men, 
 especially in Lancashire, of an University education, than 
 any impatience of religious tests? Does not the expense, 
 or supposed expense, of such an education, keep away still 
 more, whose parents might otherwise get over their religious 
 scruples ? Have not the more superficial of these scruples 
 reference to the Anglican tone of Oxford and Cambridge 
 rather than to any practical disabilities of Dissenters, and 
 is not the aversion to this tone nearly connected with an 
 aversion to the aristocratic prestige and mediaeval associations 
 of these ancient seats of learning ? Have not the deeper of 
 them reference, not to the dominant Anglicanism of either 
 University, but to the sceptical spirit which is known to be 
 abroad in them, and especially in Oxford ? Do not many 
 of the most religious and respectable Dissenters look upon 
 Oxford with horror, not only as a nursery of vice and extrava- 
 gance, but as a hotbed of infidelity ? Do not some even of
 
 12 UNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 the more liberal Dissenters, and most of the Roman Catholics, 
 dread the idea of unsectarian education, as if it involved that 
 of exclusively secular, or still worse of irreligious education ? 
 Do not persons of this class, like the hierarchy of Rome, 
 esteem independence of thought a more deadly enemy than 
 dogmatic heresy, and tremble to send forth their children, 
 as lambs among wolves, into the wilderness of Oxford philo- 
 sophy ? 
 
 Let all these questions be answered in the affirmative, 
 yet the duty and policy of abandoning the tests in question 
 remain the same as before. Oxford and Cambridge are no 
 longer what they were, however unlike what they might and 
 will be. Side by side with the movement for the abolition 
 of tests is a movement of which the object is to make the 
 Universities national in every sense of the term. Much has 
 already been done at Oxford, and much more is likely to be 
 done, in this direction. As Oxford education becomes, as it 
 does every day, less scholastic and more truly liberal, it must 
 be and is more and more highly prized by those commercial 
 classes to whom England was but lately a country without 
 Universities. There are no classes who more specially need, 
 did they but know it, that moral and intellectual discipline 
 which Oxford can supply, for it is these which command the 
 great centres of population, and are themselves the great 
 employers of industry. There may be other obstacles and 
 prejudices which repel them, but the existence of tests is 
 assuredly a chief stumbling-block. Tests are to them a badge 
 of Anglican ascendancy, an indication that Oxford postpones 
 the interests of education to the interests of the Church the 
 Church of the aristocracy and the idle classes. Break down 
 this barrier of suspicion by an unreserved invitation to share 
 the benefits of the University remove the source of this 
 mistrust and prejudice by a signal public act of conciliation 
 enable the Universities to come forward and undertake the 
 guidance of national education and the Dissenters of the 
 money-making classes will, for the first time, have the choice 
 fairly presented to them between an early apprenticeship to
 
 UNIVERSITY TESTS 18 
 
 commercial pursuits and that higher culture which Oxford 
 professes to give. Their present indifference to this culture 
 is not wholly unreasonable. Looking at Oxford from outside, 
 they see that she is not, in the same sense or degree with 
 the German Universities, the centre of intellectual life to the 
 mind of the nation. The great luminaries of modern science, 
 the great inventors and engineers whose names are known 
 throughout the civilised world, the most original philosophers, 
 are not, for the most part, University men. With some 
 brilliant exceptions, our University professors do not enjoy an 
 European, or even a national, reputation, nor are there many 
 persons at either University devoting their lives to the prose- 
 cution of any one study. The wealthier and more intelligent 
 Dissenters perceive all this, and observe too, that, at Oxford, 
 the sincere friends of education are constantly outvoted, even 
 on educational questions, by a majority who do not conceal 
 their hostility to whatever favours intellectual progress. Fail- 
 ing to see the amount and quality of the educational work 
 done, in spite of all this, and not appreciating the subtler 
 influences brought to bear in such a society on the least 
 worthy of its members, they draw the erroneous, but not 
 groundless, inference that Oxford is not in earnest about 
 education, but is thoroughly in earnest about the interests of 
 theological parties within the State Church. 
 
 If this be so, and if our two ancient Universities be worth 
 maintaining as national institutions, it is surely an object of 
 statesmanship to encourage the popular demand for University 
 education, and to place University education under the 
 searching eye of public opinion. By this single measure 
 both these objects will be promoted, to the benefit, as I have 
 striven to show, of the nation at large and of the Church 
 herself. It is not, indeed, probable, nor is it desirable, that 
 hereditary antipathies and conscientious objections on the 
 part of Dissenting parents should be overcome at once. It is 
 far better that a change involving so much should be wrought 
 out by an extremely gradual process, and that our own 
 generation should not anticipate the problems reserved for
 
 14 UNIVERSITY TESTS 
 
 its successor. For years to come, were the Universities and 
 the Colleges ever so free to them, Dissenters must form a 
 very small minority in either. Should they hereafter hecome 
 more numerous and influential than we can at present ven- 
 ture to anticipate, it will be a proof not that they ought 
 never to have been admitted, but rather that a larger class 
 than we now suppose has been hitherto excluded by Tests 
 from all that is implied in University education ; an educa- 
 tion, with all its faults, the highest in this country, and 
 capable of a development to which no limit can be assigned. 
 
 For our Universities, let us remember, have a mission of 
 their own, and it is a mission as sacred and as responsible as 
 any that can be confided by society to an independent body. 
 To form directly the mental habits of the governing class, 
 to regulate indirectly the educational standard throughout 
 England, to preside with authority over the advancement of 
 learning, to assign their relative value to different sciences, 
 exalting some to honour and consigning others to neglect, 
 to correct by a sound philosophy the intellectual vices of an 
 utilitarian age, to bear an undying witness to the supreme 
 value of truth these are amongst the higher functions which 
 legitimately belong to our Universities, yet cannot be- perfectly 
 discharged, till the last vestige of ecclesiastical monopoly has 
 disappeared from their constitution.
 
 15 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 Contemporary Review, June 1875 
 
 The Keport of the late Universities Commission, though 
 published last autumn, has attracted less attention than 
 it deserves, and the vague assurances given by the Prime 
 Minister, at the opening of the Session, have not as yet been 
 redeemed by any Parliamentary action. No such action, 
 indeed, could be desired in the interest of the Universities or 
 the Nation, unless preceded by a free discussion on the ques- 
 tion of Academical Endowments. Yet no such discussion can 
 be conducted intelligently or profitably without an adequate 
 consideration of facts equally beyond the scope of the Com- 
 missioners' inquiry and the cognisance of the general public. 
 So limited is the range of political memory in these days, 
 that of the few who have scrutinised the gross totals of 
 University and College revenues, now ascertained for the 
 first time, not one in ten has studied, or would care to study, 
 the far more comprehensive Eeports of the Commissions 
 issued by Lord J. Russell's Government in 1850. Neverthe- 
 less, some knowledge of the results then obtained, and of the 
 changes since effected at Oxford and Cambridge, is absolutely 
 necessary in defining the course of future legislation. Before 
 proceeding to regulate the distribution of Academical Endow- 
 ments, the country ought to realise distinctly the extent to 
 which the Universities at present discharge their responsi- 
 bilities to learning and education, as well as the advances 
 which they have made during the last twenty-five years. It 
 is one thing to force reforms on reactionary, obstructive, 
 and self-seeking corporations ; it is another thing to aid the
 
 16 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 spontaneous efforts of corporations on the whole liberal, 
 public-spirited, and progressive. If it should appear that few, 
 if any, public institutions in England can exhibit so good an 
 account of their stewardship as the Universities and Colleges 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, it will assuredly be no reason for 
 withholding any measures which may enable them to realise 
 a still higher ideal of efficiency ; but it will be an excellent 
 reason for not dissipating, in the attempt to utilise, resources 
 already so well employed. 
 
 In comparing the present with the past application of 
 Academical Endowments, it will be convenient to fix our 
 attention specially on one University that is, upon Oxford. 
 So far as concerns the main features of their internal economy, 
 what is true of Oxford is, for the most part, true of Cambridge, 
 and little would be gained by dwelling on minute differences 
 of system, which have no bearing on the relation between 
 the Universities and the Nation. There are, however, certain 
 broad distinctions between Oxford and Cambridge, which it 
 may be well for the non-academical reader to bear in mind. 
 Both are essentially collegiate Universities, since the constitu- 
 tion of both alike secures valuable privileges to Colleges, 
 since the vast majority of their students continue to be 
 members of Colleges, and since the aggregate revenues of 
 Colleges are in either case nearly tenfold greater than the 
 revenues of the University itself. Still, the predominance of 
 collegiate influence and the collegiate spirit has always been 
 greater and more exclusive at Cambridge, owing to a variety 
 of causes, the most obvious of which is the great superiority 
 of Trinity and St. John's, both in numbers and in prestige, 
 over the smaller Colleges. On the other hand, the dispropor- 
 tionate encouragement so long given to mathematical attain- 
 ments at Cambridge, and the unique importance traditionally 
 attached by its College authorities to the results of the final 
 University examination, have not failed to affect the character 
 of Cambridge as a place of national education. Mathematics 
 are not cultivated at the great public schools with as much 
 zeal or success as classical literature and other cognate studies,
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 17 
 
 which are more liberally rewarded at Oxford. The conse- 
 quence is, that it is no rare occurrence at Cambridge for the 
 first place in the Mathematical Tripos, carrying with it the 
 certainty of a College Fellowship, to be won by a young man 
 of humble birth from a cheap grammar school in the north 
 of England, who never even held a scholarship or exhibition 
 till he reached the University. At Oxford, on the contrary, 
 though competition is equally free, and though almost every 
 College throws open its Scholarships and Fellowships to 
 members of other Colleges, fewer young men of this class 
 practically succeed in obtaining the highest honours and 
 prizes. Such diversities as these, it is true, are too slight to 
 impair the marked family likeness which distinguishes Oxford 
 and Cambridge from Scotch and Continental Universities, 
 but they may help to explain some divergent tendencies, 
 which might, otherwise, be somewhat perplexing. 
 
 When the Oxford University Commission of 1850 was 
 appointed, the University and Colleges were governed respec- 
 tively by antiquated codes of statutes, which it would have 
 been no less disastrous than impossible to enforce, but which, 
 in the opinion of eminent authorities, they had no power to 
 alter. Their practical management, as it existed but five- 
 and-twenty years ago, would hardly be credited by reformers 
 of a younger generation. The sole initiative power in Uni- 
 versity legislation, and by far the largest share of University 
 administration, was vested in the Hebdomadal Board, con- 
 sisting solely of Heads of Colleges with the two Proctors, and 
 well described by Mr. Goldwin Smith as ' an organised torpor.' 
 There was an assembly of residents, known as the House of 
 Congregation, but its business had dwindled to mere formali- 
 ties, such as receiving propositions which it was not permitted 
 to discuss, conferring degrees in the name of the University, 
 and granting dispensations, as a matter of course. The 
 University Convocation included, as now, all full (or ' Eegent ') 
 Masters of Arts, and had the right of debating, but this right 
 was virtually annulled by the necessity of speaking in Latin, 
 and Convocation could only accept or reject without amend- 
 
 Y
 
 18 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 ment measures proposed by the Hebdomadal Board. At this 
 period, no student could be a member of the University with- 
 out belonging to a College, while every member of a College 
 was compelled to sleep within its walls, until after his third 
 year of residence, instead of being allowed, as at Cambridge, 
 to live in lodgings. Persons unable to sign the Thirty-nine 
 Articles were absolutely excluded, not merely from degrees, 
 but from all access to the University, inasmuch as the test of 
 subscription was enforced at matriculation. It is needless to 
 add that, being unable to enter the University, they could 
 not obtain College Fellowships, which, however, were further 
 protected against the intrusion of Dissenters by the declara- 
 tion of Churchmanship required to be made under the Act of 
 Uniformity. If Professorial lectures were not at so low an 
 ebb as in the days of Gibbon, when the greater part of the 
 Professors had ' given up even the pretence of teaching,' they 
 were lamentably scarce and ineffective. The educational 
 function of the University had, in fact, been almost wholly 
 merged in College tuition, but the Scholarships, as well as 
 the Fellowships, of the Colleges were fettered by all manner 
 of restrictions, which marred their value as incentives to 
 industry. Some were confined to natives of particular 
 counties, others were attached to particular schools, in some 
 cases ' Founder's Kin ' had a statutable preference, and, in 
 too many, favouritism was checked by no rule of law or prac- 
 tice. The great majority of Fellows were bound to take Holy 
 Orders, and the whole University was dominated by a clerical 
 spirit which directly tended to make it, as it has so long been, 
 a focus of theological controversy. 
 
 It is to be regretted that many of the wise and liberal 
 alterations recommended by the Commission of 1850 were 
 not at once adopted by the Legislature. No steps, for 
 instance, were taken for abolishing the invidious privileges 
 of Noblemen and Gentlemen Commoners, students were not 
 relieved from the obligation of belonging to a College and 
 residing within its walls, no University matriculation-exam- 
 ination was established, no order of sub-professors or lecturers
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 19 
 
 was instituted, the Long Vacation continued unre formed and 
 the University examinations continued to be conducted in 
 Term-time, clerical Fellowships were maintained, though on 
 a reduced scale, and the practice of applying College funds to 
 the purchase of advowsons for the clerical Fellows was not 
 suppressed. On the other hand, no one who knows what 
 Oxford was in 1850 can doubt that by the Oxford Eeform 
 Act of 1854, and the College Ordinances framed by the 
 Executive Commission under its provisions, a profound and 
 most beneficial change was wrought in the whole spirit and 
 working of the University system. The Hebdomadal Board 
 was replaced by a representative Council, and Congregation 
 was remodelled into a vigorous deliberative assembly, with 
 the right of speaking in English. The monopoly of Colleges 
 was broken down, and an opening made for ulterior exten- 
 sion, by the revival of Private Halls. The Professoriate was 
 considerably increased, reorganised, and re-endowed, by means 
 of contributions from Colleges. The Colleges were emanci- 
 pated from their mediaeval statutes, were invested with new 
 constitutions, and acquired new legislative powers. The 
 Fellowships were almost universally thrown open to merit, 
 and the effect of this revolution was not merely to create 
 ample rewards for the highest academical attainments, but 
 to place the governing power within Colleges in the hands 
 of able men likely to promote further improvements. The 
 number and value of Scholarships were largely augmented, 
 and many, though not all, of the restrictions upon them were 
 abolished. The great mass of vexatious and obsolete Oaths 
 was swept away, and, though candidates for the M.A. degree 
 and persons elected to Fellowships were still required to make 
 the old subscriptions and declarations, it was enacted that no 
 religious test should be imposed at matriculation, or on taking 
 a Bachelor's degree. The University itself had anticipated 
 the results of the Commission by liberal changes in its curri- 
 culum and examinations, of which the most important was 
 the assignment of independent ' schools ' to Law and Modern 
 History and to Natural Science respectively, simultaneously 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 with the foundation of a new Museum. The permanence of 
 these changes was, however, additionally secured by the 
 clause introduced into the College Ordinances, whereby it 
 was directed that Fellowships should be appropriated from 
 time to time for the encouragement of all the studies recog- 
 nised by the University. 
 
 Here followed a description of the educational progress made by 
 the University of Oxford between 1850 and 1874, the institution of 
 Local Examinations, the organisation of Academical Lectures in 
 provincial towns, and the Examination of Public Schools by a 
 Joint-Board representing Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 In considering the services rendered by the Universities 
 to the Nation since they recovered their liberty of action, it 
 is impossible to pass over the abolition of University Tests. 
 This great reform was notoriously brought about, not so much 
 by the pressure of external opinion, either popular or Parlia- 
 mentary, as by the persistent and disinterested agitation 
 carried on by reformers, mostly Fellows of Colleges, within 
 the Universities themselves. In the year 18G2, a petition 
 was presented from seventy- four resident Fellows of Colleges 
 at Cambridge, praying for the repeal of the clause applicable 
 to Fellowships in the Act of Uniformity. In the year 1863, 
 a petition was presented from 106 Heads, Professors, Fellows 
 and ex-Fellows, and College Tutors at Oxford, praying for the 
 removal of theological restrictions on degrees. In the year 
 1868, a petition against all religious tests, except for degrees 
 in theology, was signed by eighty Heads, Professors, Lecturers, 
 and resident Fellows at Oxford, while a similar petition was 
 signed by 123 non-resident Fellows and ex-Fellows. In the 
 same year, a petition to the same effect was signed by 227 
 Heads and present or former Office-holders and Fellows of 
 Cambridge. Separate petitions, specially directed against 
 the declaration of Conformity, were signed by thirty-two out 
 of sixty Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and by the 
 Master and all the Fellows, except one, of Christ's College, 
 Cambridge. Assuredly these efforts were ably supported by 
 he Liberal party in Parliament, and by the Nonconformist
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 21 
 
 body in the country ; but the motive power which ultimately 
 proved irresistible came from within, and not from without, 
 the Universities. It was Fellows of Colleges, who resolutely 
 insisted on vindicating the national character of the Univer- 
 sities, and not the nation at large which forced upon them an 
 unwelcome obligation. 
 
 The University Tests Abolition Act was carried in 1871, 
 and in the following October Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter 
 to the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, asking 
 whether the Government could rely on the co-operation of 
 the Universities and Colleges, in the event of a Eoyal Com- 
 mission being appointed to inquire into academical property 
 and revenues. The reply was favourable, and the Commis- 
 sion was issued in January, 1872. Its functions were strictly 
 limited to investigation, and to matters of finance, no power 
 being entrusted to it either of passing judgment on the pre- 
 sent application of University and College endowments, or of 
 suggesting a redistribution of them much less of entering 
 on general questions of University reform. Many such ques- 
 tions had inevitably arisen at both Universities in the period 
 of rapid growth succeeding the Acts of 1854 and 1856. At 
 Oxford, the anomalies chiefly felt were the defective constitu- 
 tion of Congregation, whereby the Professors and working 
 Tutors were liable to be swamped by a mixed multitude of 
 chaplains and other resident Masters, the want of larger 
 resources for Professorial teaching as well as for the mainte- 
 nance of University establishments, the reservation of nearly 
 half the Fellowships to persons in or about to enter Holy 
 Orders, and the rule of tenure under which the most useless 
 Fellow of a College may retain his position for life by virtue 
 of celibacy, while the most useful must resign it on marriage, 
 even though engaged in College tuition. At Cambridge this 
 last grievance was further , aggravated in several Colleges, by 
 the preposterous condition that every Fellow must take orders 
 within a certain term of years, or forfeit his Fellowship. 
 Some of the disabilities which pressed most heavily on par- 
 ticular Colleges had been partially removed by new statutes,
 
 22 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 \rith the sanction of the Privy Council, but the Privy Council 
 became reasonably unwilling to legislate piecemeal, at the 
 instance of fluctuating bodies of Fellows, and a demand for 
 a supplementary Reform Act was gaining strength at both 
 Universities, when Mr. Gladstone consented to appoint a 
 purely financial Commission, as a preliminary step to further 
 legislation. How far this was a politic act may perhaps be 
 doubted, and it is certain that it would never have been 
 taken, had it been foreseen that it would rest with a new 
 Administration to propose or to resist a redistribution of 
 Academical revenues. However, the statistical facts have 
 now been placed before the public, in a somewhat misleading 
 form it may be, but still with a completeness never before 
 attained. It is these facts which it now remains for us to 
 examine and to interpret. 
 
 Here followed an analysis of University and College revenues, 
 gross and net, as ascertained by the Commissioners' Report, of the 
 preliminary outgoings, and expenditure under trust deeds, and of 
 the application of the residue in payments to Heads of Colleges, 
 College Officers, and Scholars or Exhibitioners. 
 
 We now approach that which has been denounced, in no 
 measured language, as a ruinous waste of academical resources 
 the appropriation of some 205,00(H. (including a very 
 small contribution from trust-property) to College Fellow- 
 ships. Here, if anywhere, we find a large fund on which 
 Parliament may draw, if it thinks proper, for purposes of 
 University reform or extension. We have seen how very 
 little reduction can be effected elsewhere in University or 
 College expenditure, and even if it were possible to realise a 
 large surplus by trenchant economy, there would be para- 
 mount claims upon it for the better endowment of existing 
 Professorships, and the sustentation of existing institutions. 
 It is upon the endowments now applied to Fellowships that 
 academical reformers of every class rely for the means of 
 carrying out their various schemes ; and as the case is often 
 argued upon a very imperfect knowledge of the essential facts, 
 it may be well to state these in a succinct form.
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 23 
 
 There are, in round numbers, 360 Fellowships at Oxford 
 and somewhat more at Cambridge, so that, allowing for 
 vacancies and temporary suspensions, we may probably take 
 700 as the extreme number of existing Fellows, and 3001. a 
 year as the extreme average value of a Fellowship. The 
 general mode of election, and conditions of tenure, are clearly 
 explained in an able paper read before the last Social Science 
 Congress by Mr. Charles Stuart Parker, formerly a Fellow 
 and senior Tutor of University College, Oxford. ' According 
 to the present practice, the new Fellows are elected by the 
 existing Fellows of a College, after open competitive examina- 
 tion, in Oxford conducted always by the College, with the aid 
 of assessors, if necessary, in special subjects. In Cambridge 
 the smaller Colleges elect upon the results of the University 
 examinations. At Oxford a candidate is elected by any other 
 College as freely as by his own ; at Cambridge he must be 
 already a member of the College electing. With this excep- 
 tion as regards Cambridge, the Fellows are supposed to be, 
 and speaking broadly they are, the ablest and most distin- 
 guished students, selected with great impartiality soon after 
 taking their Bachelor's degree, in general before the age of 
 twenty-five. Once elected, for the most part they have no 
 special duties, but are bound in conscience to the best of their 
 ability and judgment to promote the interests of their College 
 and of their University as a place of religion, learning" and 
 education. Most Fellowships are tenable for life, being 
 vacated only on marriage, or on obtaining a fixed income 
 from other sources of 500Z. or 600Z. a year.' 
 
 It appears, however, from a return furnished to a Com- 
 mittee of the House of Lords in 1870, that half of all the 
 Fellows at Cambridge, and nearly half of those at Oxford, 
 were then in Holy Orders, or under the obligation of proceed- 
 ing to Holy Orders, subject only, in three cases, to an excep- 
 tion in favour of those holding College offices. A larger 
 proportion of clerical than of lay Fellows reside in College 
 and take part in tuition, because they have a more or less 
 remote prospect of settling on a College living, and for the
 
 2-1 THE UNIVERSITIES AM) THE NATION 
 
 same reason the succession of clerical Fellows is somewhat 
 more rapid. Mr. Parker calculates the average time for 
 which Fellowships are held at ahout ten years, from which 
 it follows that above thirty are filled up annually at each 
 University. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands that Fellowships are now 
 awarded, with the rarest exceptions, upon the strictest con- 
 siderations of academical merit ; and it may be confidently 
 asserted that no other public appointments are It ss tainted 
 if, indeed, there be any so little tainted with the suspicion 
 of favouritism. Still, there is a vague impression abroad 
 that many of them are carried off by young men of rich 
 parentage, and that, instead of stimulating their possessors 
 to further exertion, they are apt to deter them from embark- 
 ing on active careers, and to encourage cultured indolence. 
 These are impressions which can only be dispelled effectually 
 by evidence of a kind which it is very difficult to procure. 
 Some light, however, may be thrown upon the matter by the 
 examination of a typical sample ; and a careful analysis of 
 a body of forty-nine Fellows belonging to three Colleges, 
 differing from each other in size and character, leads to 
 results which are not devoid of interest. It appears that no 
 less than sixteen of the whole number are sons of clergymen, 
 and two of Dissenting ministers, eight of men engaged in 
 trade or commercial business, five of solicitors, four of landed 
 proprietors, four of yeomen and tenant farmers, three of 
 employes in the Civil Service, two of medical men, one of a 
 member of Parliament, one of a schoolmaster, one of a Scotch 
 factor, one of a military officer, and one of a clerk or ac- 
 countant. In short, all but a trifling percentage are drawn 
 from the hard-working professional class ; and it may be 
 stated with some confidence that not one is in possession of 
 or heir to a considerable fortune. A similar inquiry into the 
 present occupation of the same forty-nine Fellows shows that 
 seventeen are engaged in College tuition, five hold other 
 College offices, three are University professors, two are pre- 
 paring themselves for College tuition, two are masters of
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 25 
 
 schools, two are parochial clergymen, four are barristers, four 
 are engaged in literary work, one is a physician, and one a 
 medical student, one is in the Civil Service, and one is an 
 artist ; while of the six who have no regular occupation, one 
 is travelling for his health, and three at least are emeriti, 
 having given their best years to the service of their Colleges 
 and the University. 
 
 These facts speak for themselves, and the inference which 
 they suggest is, in the main, a true one. So far as can be 
 ascertained, fully half the Fellows of Oxford Colleges are 
 resident, and nearly all the resident Fellows are engaged in 
 public or private tuition. Even of the non-resident Fellows, 
 very few fail to attend College meetings, many perform useful 
 work for their Colleges, and the vast majority are earnestly 
 and honourably employed, being very often indebted to their 
 Fellowships alone for the means of subsistence during the 
 earlier stages of their professional careers. The class of 
 promising graduates converted into dilettanti loungers by the 
 enervating influence of Fellowships has scarcely any existence, 
 except among the delusions of the non-academical mind. Not 
 only so, but it is capable of proof that College Fellowships, 
 instead of enervating those who obtain them, have produced 
 a larger proportion of men eminent in Church and State than 
 most of their defenders would venture to claim for them. 
 In order to become satisfied of this, we have only to inspect 
 the catalogue of Fellows elected during the present century 
 at Oriel College, where open competition was first established 
 at Oxford, and at Trinity College, which is not only the largest 
 College at Cambridge, but virtually the only one which con- 
 ducts an effective Fellowship examination. The list of Oriel 
 Fellows, dating from 1800 downwards, exhibits but ninety- 
 two names ; yet a full third of these are the names of men 
 who have made themselves known in the world, and among 
 them are the names of Davison, Whately, Keble, Hampden, 
 Thomas Arnold, Hartley Coleridge, J. H. Newman, Pusey, 
 Bishop Fraser, and Matthew Arnold, besides others which 
 may yet become famous. The list of Trinity Fellows for the
 
 2G THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 same period, though four times as long, contains a smaller 
 proportion of eminent names, like those of Sedgwick, Whewell, 
 Thirlwall, Macaulay, and Airy, but is still richer in the names 
 of men who have vindicated Fellowships against the reproach 
 of enfeebling moral or intellectual vigour by rising to high 
 stations in various practical callings. It would be easy to 
 multiply similar arguments, as, for instance, by citing the 
 present bench of English archbishops and bishops, twenty- 
 two of whom were educated at Oxford or Cambridge, and 
 fifteen of whom were Fellows of Colleges. If it were possible 
 to lay before the public a list of Oxford and Cambridge 
 Fellows who have attained leading positions in the great 
 educational profession, in the Law, in the various Govern- 
 ment offices, and even in the commercial world, little more 
 would be heard of the notion that Fellowships quench ambi- 
 tion, or bar the road to success ; and we might, perhaps, have 
 to combat the counter-objection that Fellows of Colleges start 
 with an unfair advantage in the race of life. 
 
 But no plea for the utility of collegiate endowments would 
 be complete without a reference to one example, at once the 
 most illustrious in the history of science, and the most repre- 
 sentative in the history of the Fellowship system. If ever 
 there was a genuine product of that system, it was Sir Isaac 
 Newton. His biographer tells us that on matriculating at 
 Cambridge in his nineteenth year, as a subsizar of Trinity, 
 he manifested no presage of future greatness, and his tran- 
 scendent superiority to his University contemporaries was 
 probably unknown even to himself. 
 
 ' No friendly counsel had regulated his youthful studies, 
 and no work of a scientific character had guided him in his 
 course. In yielding to the impulse of his mechanical genius, 
 his mind obeyed the laws of its own natural expansion, and 
 following in the line of least resistance, it was thus drawn 
 aside from the precipitous paths which it was fitted to climb, 
 and the unbarred strongholds which it was destined to ex- 
 plore. When Newton, therefore, entered Trinity College, he 
 brought with him a more slender portion of science than at
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 27 
 
 his age falls to the lot of ordinary scholars. . . . Cambridge 
 was consequently the real birthplace of Newton's genius her 
 institutions sustained his mightiest efforts, and within her 
 precincts were all his discoveries made and perfected.' 
 
 He was admitted to a Fellowship at the age of nearly 
 twenty-five, an industrious but obscure mathematician, who 
 must otherwise have sought a livelihood in some profession 
 or trade. He resigned it at the age of fifty-nine, having 
 ennobled his College, his University, and his country, by 
 those immortal discoveries which, viewed across the interval 
 of two centuries, still rank foremost and highest among the 
 achievements of human intellect. To assume that Newton 
 would have become the first of natural philosophers without 
 the aid of a Trinity Fellowship, is as chimerical as to assume 
 that Thomas Aquinas would have become the first of mediaeval 
 theologians without having entered a Dominican convent, or 
 Eaffaelle the first of modern painters without having resided 
 at Florence and Eome. Yet the contributions of Newton 
 alone to science assuredly outweigh in mere pecuniary value 
 all that has been spent on Trinity Fellowships from his day 
 to our own. 
 
 It is true that Newton was a resident Fellow, but it is also 
 true that his Fellowship was a pure sinecure, and subject to 
 no conditions of residence : and this was the footing upon 
 which the Oxford Commissioners of 1850 deliberately recom- 
 mended that all Fellowships should be placed. ' We are by 
 no means disposed,' they say, ' to impair the value of Fellow- 
 ships as rewards by annexing to them the statutable condition 
 of residence. . . . When the University shall have been put 
 in a condition to offer sufficient inducements to enable it to 
 retain the best men in its service, it may with safety leave 
 them to follow their inclinations. Fellows thus elected may 
 safely be allowed to pursue the career which they deem best 
 for themselves. They will serve the University in their 
 several professions more effectually than they could serve it 
 by residence within its walls.' If this judgment is to be 
 reversed, the reversal should at least be founded on a serious
 
 28 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 
 
 consideration of its probable effect on English society. In 
 Germany, we are told, Fellowships are not found necessary ; 
 but in Germany the want of Fellowships is partly supplied by 
 a far more complete organisation of Professorial teaching and 
 a far more effective recognition of literary merit by the State. 
 In the United States that want is keenly felt, and the ' waste 
 of resources ' deplored by the most cultivated Americans is 
 the waste caused by the attraction of money-making on the 
 minds of the ablest students, and their premature withdrawal 
 from the University. This is precisely the evil to which the 
 English Fellowship system provides a counterpoise, and it is 
 not too much to say that Oxford and Cambridge endowments 
 operate as incentives to advanced study at the Scotch and 
 London Universities. If a return could be procured of the 
 Scotchmen holding Fellowships at Oxford, and of the graduates 
 of the London University holding Fellowships at Cambridge, 
 it would be seen how much these ill-endowed Universities owe 
 to their wealthier sisters. Even if the Fellowship system 
 were less fruitful in visible results than it can be shown to 
 be even if the modest competence which it offers to young 
 men of literary and scientific capacity were more frequently 
 thrown away even if it were not one of the few avenues by 
 which humble merit can attain promotion its unseen in- 
 fluence in raising the standard of culture throughout all the 
 learned professions, in Parliament, in official life, and, above 
 all, in the Press, would still remain to be estimated. Perhaps, 
 upon taking stock of these and many other collateral benefits 
 which it derives from the Fellowship system, the Nation may 
 arrive at the conclusion that, after all, no other 205,000J. of 
 public money is more profitably spent, and that, regarded 
 simply as an experiment, that system does not compare un- 
 favourably with far more costly experiments in gunnery and 
 naval architecture. 
 
 Here followed suggestions for a reform of the Fellowship system, 
 for a moderate increase of the Professoriate, for the creation of a 
 Common University Fund, and for the affiliation of Local Colleges. 
 
 The main results of our inquiry may be summed up in a
 
 TILE UNIVERSITIES AND THE NATION 29 
 
 very few sentences. Though it is possible to alter the present 
 application of Academical Endowments for the better, it 
 would be far easier to alter it for the worse ; and a recognition 
 of the great services actually rendered by the Universities to 
 the Nation, is the only sound basis for a new measure of 
 University reform. The leading object of such a measure 
 should be to strengthen the Universities, as fountains of 
 educational and intellectual life, by increasing the Profes- 
 sorial staff ; by extending the University libraries, museums, 
 galleries, and lecture rooms ; by fostering unremunerative 
 study, as well as scientific training for professions, within 
 College walls ; by treating both Scholarships and Fellowships 
 as designed to raise up an aristocracy of education ; by 
 relieving Colleges of all ecclesiastical trammels ; and by 
 making them living parts of the Universities, without de- 
 stroying their corporate individuality. The secondary object, 
 in order of importance but not of time, should be to bring 
 the Universities into organic connection with local ' faculties,' 
 or rather with collegiate institutions, in great cities, by means 
 of affiliation or otherwise. To effect these objects the aid of 
 Parliament will be necessary, inasmuch as even if it were 
 legally possible for the Universities and Colleges to legislate 
 on so large a scale, with the approval of the Crown, it would 
 be morally impossible for so many independent societies to 
 legislate in perfect unison with each other. The recent 
 failure of an attempt to establish a system of self-taxation 
 among Oxford Colleges was not required to prove how vain it 
 is to expect that a complete and harmonious scheme for their 
 own reorganisation will be initiated by the Universities them- 
 selves. The official responsibility of framing the scheme 
 must be undertaken by a body representing either the Crown 
 or the Legislature, but its details will have to be wrought 
 out, as its principles have already been thought out, by Oxford 
 and Cambridge men of a like spirit with those who for twenty- 
 five years have so earnestly and so unselfishly laboured to 
 nationalise both the endowments and the culture of the old 
 English Universities.
 
 80 the influence of the older 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER ENGLISH 
 UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 
 
 A paper read at the Social Science Congress, Brighton, in October, 1875. 
 
 I 
 
 The influence actually exercised by the English Universities 
 on National Education is far more considerable than is com- 
 monly supposed. In the year 1868, it was alleged by so high 
 an authority as Mr. Matthew Arnold, that in this country 
 there was then but one matriculated student for every 5,800 
 of population ; whereas in the whole of Germany there was 
 one matriculated student for every 2, GOO of population, and 
 Prussia alone numbered 6,362 students in its eight Univer- 
 sities. Now, without stopping to inquire whether Mr. Arnold's 
 estimate of matriculated students in England was correct for 
 the year 1868, we may satisfy ourselves by a simple reference 
 to University Calendars that it is not even approximately 
 correct for the year 1875. At the beginning of this j T ear, 
 there were 2,440 undergraduates at Oxford, either on the 
 books of the various colleges and halls, or enrolled as unat- 
 tached students. A certain deduction, it is true, must be 
 made for non-resident undergraduates, but these cannot 
 exceed one-sixth of the whole, and the number of resident 
 students at Oxford may safely be stated at about 2,000. The 
 number of resident students at Cambridge, after making a 
 similar allowance, will be found to exceed 1,800,' and those at 
 Durham amount to 68, besides 61 in the College of Medicine, 
 and 62 in the College of Physical Science, at Newcastle. The 
 University of London outnumbers either Oxford or Cambridge 
 in the nominal aggregate of its matriculated students. Even 
 if we reject a large proportion of these as non-effectives, and 
 
 1 This number must have been greatly understated.
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 31 
 
 recognise none but those who actually pass the matriculation 
 examination, or actually present themselves for some inter- 
 mediate examination in a single year, we cannot reckon the 
 effective strength of the London University at less than 1,200 
 undergraduates. They are not bound to residence, as in the 
 older Universities, but many of them are not only residing 
 but receiving a regular academical education in such collegiate 
 institutions as University College, King's College, and Owens 
 College at Manchester. 
 
 We are not informed whether the Prussian muster-roll of 
 6,362 students includes all those on the books, or only those 
 in actual attendance on academical lectures. However this 
 may be, it is clear that England and Wales contain a gross 
 total of more than 6,000 matriculated University students, 
 and a net total of more than 5,000 students, or about one to 
 every 4,500 of population ; in addition to all the students of 
 academical age in Colleges specially connected with religious 
 denominations, Theological Colleges, Naval and Military 
 Colleges, Engineering Colleges, and so forth, not to speak of 
 all those preparing under private tuition ' for the Home or 
 Indian Civil Service. It may well be doubted whether the 
 University system could not be so developed as to embrace 
 a great many of these supernumeraries ; and, still more, 
 whether a much larger proportion of the mercantile classes 
 ought not to be drawn within it ; still, in the meantime, it is 
 satisfactory to know that we are not so far behind Germany 
 as we are sometimes told in the mere number of our Univer- 
 sity students. 
 
 But the practical influence of the older Universities on 
 National Education is no more to be measured by the mere 
 number of their students than the influence of Parliament on 
 national policy is to be measured by the number of its mem- 
 bers. Even when the number of students at Oxford and 
 Cambridge was much smaller than it is at present, Oxford 
 and Cambridge virtually governed the whole course of higher 
 education throughout England. College Scholarships, with 
 the prospect of succession to College Fellowships, were the
 
 82 THE INFLUENCE OV THE OLDER 
 
 most substantial rewards open to aspiring schoolboys ; and 
 since these, as well as University degrees and honours, were 
 to be won by proficiency in classics and mathematics alone, 
 classics and mathematics were the staple, if not the exclusive, 
 subject of teaching in public schools and grammar schools. 
 Every school of reputation professed, above all, to prepare 
 boys for the Universities, and notwithstanding that only a 
 small minority of boys actually proceeded thither, the in- 
 struction of all the rest was limited and fettered by University 
 requirements. It has at last become an acknowledged duty 
 of public schools to educate boys for other careers besides the 
 learned professions, and to qualify them, if possible, for pass- 
 ing non-academical examinations, such as those for the Army 
 and Civil Service. On the other hand, the Universities, by 
 wisely extending their own narrow curriculum, are rapidly 
 bringing the new studies within the range of their control, 
 and, by undertaking the office of Examining Boards on a 
 very large scale, they have strengthened to an extraordinary 
 degree their former hold on secondary education. It had 
 long been the habit of the more eminent public schools and 
 grammar schools to invite the aid of University examiners in 
 awarding exhibitions, or testing the results of school-work in 
 the higher forms. But the indirect and irregular influence 
 thus exercised by the Universities through irresponsible 
 examiners was as nothing compared with the influence now 
 acquired by means of the examinations conducted under the 
 Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board, of the 
 Local Middle-class Examinations organised independently by 
 Oxford and Cambridge, of the Cambridge examinations for 
 women, and of the examinations which form a part of the 
 so-called Cambridge Lecture-system established in a large 
 number of populous centres. It is not too much to say, that 
 by forming this widespread network of examinations and 
 occupying the centre of it, the Universities of Oxford and 
 Cambridge have virtually made themselves arbiters of learn- 
 ing over the great mass of schools above the elementary 
 grade, and assumed some of the most important functions
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 33 
 
 exercised by the Ministry of Education in other countries. 
 If their governing bodies should deliberately resolve on sub- 
 stituting natural science for literature as the groundwork of 
 liberal education in England, or relegating Greek to the 
 limbo of oblivion whence it was rescued by the pioneers of 
 the Eenaissance, it is more than doubtful whether there is 
 any authority capable of resisting them, unless it be that of 
 the scholastic profession itself, trained in the classical and 
 mathematical lore of which Oxford and Cambridge have been 
 hitherto the strongholds. 
 
 We here light on a second cause of the vast educational 
 power wielded by the older Universities. This is the fact that 
 so many of those who are destined to guide the educational 
 movement, directly or indirectly, have themselves passed 
 under the discipline and teaching of Oxford or Cambridge. 
 As Professor Seeley remarks in an able Essay on Liberal 
 Education in Universities, ' the Universities are practically 
 our normal schools the places where our schoolmasters are 
 trained.' All the head-masters of the fifteen leading public 
 schools, nearly all the head-masters of 180 metropolitan and 
 provincial grammar schools, and most of the classical assis- 
 tant-masters in these schools, are graduates of Oxford or 
 Cambridge, while the academical element largely preponderates 
 among the masters of private schools and private tutors of 
 the superior class. If an University education is no longer 
 the one avenue of approach to learned professions, still the 
 great body of clergymen, and of barristers, all the bishops, 
 and nearly two-thirds of the judges, are alumni of English or 
 Irish Universities. The Bar, it is true, has no direct relation 
 to National Education, though it regulates the professional 
 studies of all who seek admission to it, and contributes 
 sensibly to fix the general standard of culture in society. 
 But the older Universities, by virtue of their connection with 
 the Church, are responsible for the guidance of National 
 Education to an extent which it is hardly possible to exag- 
 gerate. It is clergymen educated at these Universities who 
 not only are the sole representatives of learning in most
 
 34 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 country parishes, but manage the great majority of parochial 
 schools which are not under School Boards, and, where 
 School Boards have been established, clergymen educated at 
 these Universities have certainly not been the least active or 
 inlluential members of them. The predominance of the older 
 Universities in the direction of National Education is still 
 more conspicuous in the personnel of the Education Office 
 itself. The whole indoor staff of that office, consisting of 
 secretaries and examiners, has been recruited from Oxford 
 and Cambridge, with the exception of two gentlemen trans- 
 ferred from the old Educational Department of the Privy 
 Council. Out of 123 school-inspectors for Great Britain, all 
 but two or three are University men, and . all but six or seven 
 come from Oxford or Cambridge, or from the Scotch Univer- 
 sities. Not less marked is the prevalence of Oxford and 
 Cambridge graduates on the staff of the Civil Service Com- 
 mission, which now superintends the examinations for every 
 branch of the public service. All the commissioners, secre- 
 taries, and examiners, both regular and occasional, have been 
 selected with the rarest exceptions from one or other of the 
 older Universities. It was Oxford and Cambridge men who 
 originated and shaped the open competitions for the Civil 
 Service of India, and the head-masters of the great public 
 schools, all Oxford or Cambridge men, have been consulted at 
 every turn in constructing the scheme of Army examinations. 
 If we could follow the same line of inquiry into the whole 
 administrative and political service of the State, we should 
 find graduates of the older Universities filling high positions 
 in a ratio out of all proportion to their numbers, even as 
 compared with the wealthier classes of the population. The 
 present House of Commons probably contains less than an 
 average share of University culture, as it contains more than 
 an average share of success in business ; yet no less than 
 224 members are known to have been educated at Oxford or 
 Cambridge, besides those educated at Scotch or Irish Univer- 
 sities. In Mr. Gladstone's original Cabinet, ten ministers 
 out of fifteen were Oxford or Cambridge men ; in the present
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 35 
 
 Cabinet, Mr. Disraeli is the only Minister who has not received 
 an University education, ten out of his eleven colleagues being 
 Oxford or Cambridge men, while the Lord Chancellor is a 
 graduate of Dublin. But, perhaps the most potent of all 
 educational agencies in a country like our own is what is 
 known as the Press, with its infinite varieties of daily, weekly, 
 monthly, and quarterly publications. If it could be ascer- 
 tained how largely English journalism and periodical litera- 
 ture are indebted to Oxford and Cambridge men for their 
 present characteristics, and how largely English habits of 
 thought are moulded by English journalism and periodical 
 literature, it would furnish a crowning proof of the unseen 
 but all-pervading influence exercised by those Universities on 
 National Education. 
 
 II 
 
 "We have next to consider what the nature and tendency 
 of this influence is how far it is beneficial, and how far it 
 is injurious to National Education. And, first, it must be 
 admitted that for many centuries the Universities of Oxford 
 and Cambridge were not merely far behind the educational 
 requirements of their time, but had grievously degenerated 
 from their own historical traditions. It is probably true, as 
 Mr. Lyon Playfair contends, that most of the oldest European 
 Universities were evolved from professional schools, and the 
 evidence which he produces of this fact may at least serve to 
 warn us against an undue depreciation of professional studies. 
 But, at all events, it is certain that, in the Middle Ages, Oxford 
 and Cambridge were the great intellectual workshops of the 
 nation, cultivating every art and science then held in esteem. 
 The old trivium and quadrivium, childish as they may now 
 appear, were a more comprehensive system of instruction, 
 relatively to mediaeval ideas and civilisation, than classics and 
 mathematics are relatively to modern ideas and civilisation. 
 A servile devotion to ancient literature and philosophy was 
 not so unreasonable before the birth of modern literature and 
 philosophy, and the neglect of experimental sciences which 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 Bacon condemned in the Universities of his own day was 
 infinitely more venial in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 
 than it was in the reigns of William IV. and Victoria. There 
 can be no doubt to what cause these shortcomings must be 
 mainly referred. Though Adam Smith erred in asserting 
 broadly that most of the European Universities were originally 
 ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of 
 Churchmen, he did not err in regarding ecclesiastical ascend- 
 ancy as the bane of their educational life. So long as 
 Oxford and Cambridge were treated as clerical seminaries, 
 rather than as national seats of learning and education, it 
 was not to be expected that any kind of attainments would 
 be effectively encouraged within them except such as might 
 conduce to success in the clerical profession. All the endow- 
 ments of the Colleges were practically devoted to the same 
 object. The most valuable of them were only tenable by 
 persons in or about to enter Holy Orders, and so far as fel- 
 lowships or scholarships were employed to reward merit at 
 all, they were employed as prizes for proficiency in classical 
 scholarship or pure mathematics. Since the schools, both 
 public and private, followed, as we have seen, the lead of the 
 Universities, the whole educational growth of the country was 
 dwarfed and stunted by the dogmatic immobility of institu- 
 tions which ought to have been foremost in every advance of 
 knowledge. It is satisfactory to know that, in this respect, 
 greater progress has been made by Oxford and Cambridge 
 within the present generation than had been made within the 
 previous century. Nevertheless, the spell of ecclesiastical 
 ascendancy is not altogether broken, and, if the sciences are 
 no longer regarded as the handmaids of theology, academical 
 interests are even now too often sacrificed to theological 
 interests, either real or imaginary. 
 
 Another tendency which has contributed to cramp the 
 expansive energies of the older English Universities, is the 
 prevalent opinion in favour of establishing a common basis of 
 liberal education for as many as possible of those about to 
 enter learned professions or to fill important social positions
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 37 
 
 in the country. Had this principle been limited to school 
 teaching, its operation might, on the whole, have been salu- 
 tary. There are doubtless certain elements of education, 
 both literary and scientific, which all gentlemen ought to 
 possess, and the nation may derive a real advantage from a 
 community of early impressions among its governing classes. 
 This advantage would have been effectually secured, had the 
 older Universities seen fit to enforce such an entrance-exam- 
 ination as might compel schools to send up boys thoroughly 
 instructed in certain prescribed subjects. Unfortunately, the 
 self-interest of inferior Colleges has prevented the adoption 
 of any such measure. Hundreds of young men are yearly 
 matriculated at the age of 18 or 19, with less knowledge of 
 classics and mathematics than might fairly be expected from 
 a boy of 15, and with no more than a smattering of any 
 other subject. To employ three or four years of manhood in 
 attempts to reach a minimum boyish standard in Latin, 
 Greek, Euclid, and Algebra, is a miserable degradation of 
 University studies, and in proposing to give an uniform 
 ' general education,' wholly unworthy of the name, to a mixed 
 multitude of pass-men, Oxford and Cambridge have grievously 
 failed to appreciate their own proper responsibilities. Granted 
 that something is gained by a system under which so many 
 University students are engaged in the same intellectual 
 pursuits, and have a large stock of ideas in common, the loss 
 in variety, independence, and vigour of thought, is more than 
 equivalent. If the older English Universities compare un- 
 favourably in any respect with the Universities of Germany, 
 and exert a less stimulating influence on the national mind, 
 it is for want of what the Germans call freedom in learning 
 and freedom in teaching. This freedom is perfectly con- 
 sistent with the really valuable distinctive features of English 
 University education, the domestic life within colleges, and 
 the relation between tutor and pupil. Students might be 
 left at liberty to pursue a special line of study from their 
 first entrance to the University, and yet be subjected to as 
 much control, both intellectual and moral, as may be thought 

 
 38 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 desirable, without forcing their various tastes and abilities 
 into conformity with any Procrustean model. In a word, there 
 may be a common basis of University training with an inex- 
 haustible variety of University teaching ; a certain family 
 likeness and freemasonry among University men, with the 
 greatest possible individuality of thought and multiplicity of 
 accomplishments. 
 
 The cardinal virtues and the cardinal vices of scholasticism 
 have been imported, through Academical intluence, into every 
 department of English education. If it be this influence 
 which has kept alive a belief in the necessity of sound, ac- 
 curate, and methodical teaching, it is this also which has 
 converted into a dunce many a boy of fresh and vigorous 
 intelligence. It was mainly this which, in former times, 
 countenanced the notion that abstract forms of language and 
 thought possess a higher educative value than concrete 
 realities. It was mainly this which encouraged masters to 
 neglect the perceptive faculties, and to overtax the conceptive 
 faculties of young scholars. It was mainly this which favoured 
 the old-fashioned prejudice against useful acquirements as 
 beneath the dignity of the higher culture. It was mainly 
 this which, by consecrating a few select fields of literature, 
 branches of science, and systems of philosophy, clipped the 
 wings of original speculation, and so far impoverished the 
 intellectual resources of the nation. 
 
 Whatever services may be rendered by the Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge in steadying and moderating the 
 current of English ideas, they are certainly responsible, to 
 some extent, for the inferiority of England to Germany in 
 the spirit of special research. In Germany there are many 
 teaching Universities, and the utmost liberty of study has 
 long prevailed within each ; in England there are but two 
 important teaching Universities, and in both there used to 
 be a prescribed curriculum to be passed through with little 
 variation by every student. Were there no other difference 
 between the two nations, this difference would go far to ex- 
 plain the comparative educational conservatism of England,
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 39 
 
 and we have already seen how easily this conservatism, 
 filtering downwards from the Universities into the schools, 
 would leaven the entire mass of English society, lowering the 
 national conception of what is due to learning and science, as 
 well as of what may be acquired by ordinary minds, without 
 undue effort, during twelve or fourteen years of education. 
 Having enjoyed for so long the exclusive privilege of marking 
 a certain order of attainment with the official stamp of a 
 degree, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been 
 placed, to some extent, in the position of a national mint for 
 regulating the educational currency. If this currency is 
 somewhat depreciated in the eyes of foreigners, if we are 
 indebted to Germany for the most scholar-like works on almost 
 every subject, if an European reputation counts for too little 
 beside rank and wealth in the estimation of Englishmen, and 
 if Englishmen of European reputation are too often destitute 
 of Academical culture, if England is far behind the Continent 
 in technical education, if the Education Office dare not en- 
 force in the elementary schools of England standards which 
 hardly require to be enforced in Saxony or Switzerland, on 
 whom does the chief blame rest, if not on those institutions 
 whose immense resources and unique prestige would have 
 enabled them to support with irresistible power the upward 
 struggle of intellectual progress against a combination of social 
 forces seldom more adverse than at present ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 But a new spirit has come over the older Universities with 
 the great reforms of the last twenty years, and the Academical 
 mind is now more than abreast of public opinion in the ap- 
 preciation of their capacity for still further development. 
 Let us, then, inquire by what means this vast and increasing 
 influence on National Education may be rendered more 
 powerful for good. This question admits of a general answer 
 which few will be found to dispute. The most important, if 
 not the first, step to be taken, is to make Oxford and Cam-
 
 40 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 bridge all that they ought to be, and are capable of becom- 
 ing, within themselves. While we are seeking to propagate 
 Academical culture abroad, let us make these Universities 
 more fruitful nurseries of thought at home, and perfect, as 
 nearly as may be, their machinery of teaching. There is no 
 difficulty in indicating the principal reforms which are needed 
 for this purpose. In order to place the control of studies and 
 examinations in competent hands, the existing constitution 
 of both Universities must be so far altered as to exclude 
 chaplains, parochial clergymen, and other residents not 
 engaged in education, from the right of voting on educational 
 matters. In order to emancipate colleges from clerical 
 interests, all fellowships must be thrown open to laymen, and 
 no Archbishop or Bishop should be allowed to be Visitor ex- 
 officio, with the power of subordinating educational to eccle- 
 siastical policy. These and some other preliminary changes 
 having been accomplished by legislative enactment, the Uni- 
 versities and Colleges may safely be left free "to work out 
 their own reorganisation under the superintendence of a 
 Commission. Great as the differences between University 
 reformers may appear to be, there is a very general agree- 
 ment as to the principles upon which the University system 
 ought to be reconstructed. What is wanted is not so much 
 external guidance as external pressure, capable of overbearing 
 selfish resistance, and compelling a number of independent 
 corporations to act together for ends which most of them 
 acknowledge to be desirable. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands, for instance, that without an 
 effective entrance examination, to exclude those who have not 
 mastered even the rudiments of a liberal education, and to 
 defeat the conspiracy of bad schoolmasters with bad college 
 tutors, neither University can discharge its proper functions. 
 In the Middle Ages, when schools hardly existed, and Uni- 
 versity students entered as boys, grammar and arithmetic 
 might be a necessary part of University instruction ; in these 
 days, a student ignorant of grammar and arithmetic should 
 be sent back to learn them at school. Let the Universities,
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 41 
 
 after due consideration, agree to require of all candidates for 
 matriculation a minimum of general culture, and thenceforth 
 abandon any attempt to impress a single type of general 
 culture on all their students, by exacting from them a pre- 
 liminary qualification in Arts. It will then become possible 
 so to co-ordinate the Academical curriculum under various 
 ' Schools ' or ' Faculties ' as to embrace both those studies 
 which have a purely educational value, and those which serve 
 as an useful preparation for professions. The studies repre- 
 sented by the Faculty of Arts, classics and mathematics, 
 logic and philosophy, will continue to be cultivated mainly 
 for their own sake ; law and medicine will be cultivated 
 mainly for the sake of their professional utility ; and the 
 Universities will gain quite as much as the professions by 
 placing the latter studies on an equal footing with the former. 
 It signifies little whether professional schools were the 
 historical germ of Universities or Universities the historical 
 cradle of professional learning, if by thus contributing to 
 liberalise the professions the Universities may derive a new 
 spring of educational life. Now, it is certain that young men 
 will devote themselves far more earnestly to studies which 
 have a visible bearing on their future professional success, 
 and there is not the smallest reason to suppose that studies 
 which conduce to professional success are, for that reason, 
 less useful as instruments of mental gymnastics. The assumed 
 antagonism between utilitarian and non-utilitarian education 
 rests, in truth, on a confusion of thought. What is really 
 enervating to a student's mind, and unworthy of Academical 
 education, is not useful knowledge, but any kind of knowledge, 
 and especially useless knowledge, taught in a perfunctory or 
 slovenly way. To an University, nothing in human science 
 or art should be common or unclean, and the golden saying 
 of Cicero Omnes artes qucs ad humanitatem pertinent liabent 
 quoddam inter se commune vinculum might well be inscribed 
 over the portals of every Academical lecture-room. Surely, 
 it would be a very perverse mode of correcting utilitarian 
 propensities to establish a permanent divorce between com-
 
 42 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 merce or engineering and University culture. Surely, the 
 more excellent way is, on the contrary, to fortify young 
 merchants or engineers against the narrowing effects of 
 technical routine by a thorough training in principles to 
 adopt every study, however utilitarian its objects, but to lift 
 it above empiricism by scientific teaching, and thus to pene- 
 trate society as deeply as possible with the true spirit of the 
 scholar. As for degree examinations, against which so much 
 has lately been written, it remains to be proved that ordinary 
 students can dispense with such potent incentives to industry 
 and such admirable methods of testing the quality of work. 
 So far as sound and solid teaching has been disparaged by 
 subservience to degree examinations, or independent thought 
 stifled by mechanical cramming, a serious evil has doubtless 
 been done. But this evil is neither inevitable nor by any 
 means uncompensate:! by countervailing benefits. The remedy 
 for it, where it exists, is to be sought in the better regulation, 
 and not in the abolition, of degree examinations ; but, after 
 all, for one student whose genius has been cramped by read- 
 ing for his degree, we might certainly find several whose 
 desultory ideas have been fixed by the same process and 
 directed into a profitable channel. 
 
 Another point admitted on all hands is, that no compre- 
 hensive development of the University can take place without 
 drawing largely upon College endowments. But it does not 
 follow that it is necessary to impair, in any essential respect, 
 the integrity of the College system. The majority of fellow- 
 ships might still be retained as rewards for Academical 
 industry, but they should be allotted far more liberally to 
 special proficiency in studies hitherto neglected ; they should 
 be tenable only for a limited period, and they should be sub- 
 ject to no condition of celibacy. The residue would be avail- 
 able for the more direct advancement, not of self-culture, but 
 of Academical education in all its branches, and especially for 
 a gradual and well-considered increase of the Professoriate. 
 No jealousy of such an increase need be felt by the warmest 
 admirer of collegiate life and discipline, for it is not only
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 43 
 
 compatible with the maintenance of these advantages, but 
 would greatly enhance the value of them. If all Professorial 
 chairs were attached to Colleges, not without regard to ancient 
 ties and associations, each Professor would gain an Academical 
 home, while each College would gain the nucleus of a learned 
 society. It would follow, as a natural consequence, that 
 Colleges would no longer be mainly distinguished from each 
 other by political, ecclesiastical, or social characteristics, but 
 rather by the prevailing tone of their educational interest. 
 Instead of being known as ritualistic or rationalistic, conser- 
 vative or liberal, aristocratic or plebeian, fast or slow, Colleges 
 might come to be renowned, and to feel a pride in being 
 renowned, as schools of Philology or of Philosophy, of History 
 or of Law, of Mathematics or of Natural Science. 
 
 Professor-fellows, in short, constitute the missing link 
 between University and College administration, as Professor- 
 tutors are the missing link between University and College 
 teaching. Though it would be requisite to found and endow 
 many new professorships for which a present demand exists, 
 and a few new professorships the demand for which must be 
 preceded and created by the supply, most of the materials 
 needed are actually at hand. The voluntary combination of 
 Colleges for purposes of lecturing, and the consequent division 
 of labour among College tutors, has been carried so far at 
 Oxford as to reduce appreciably both the attendance at pro- 
 fessorial classes and the profits of private tuition. In other 
 words, it has been found that College lectures were ineffective 
 chiefly because the students were ill-assorted, and because 
 the lecturers had neither time nor adequate motive for con- 
 tinuing to be learners. Let the inter-collegiate arrangements 
 which have already so greatly improved the quality of College 
 lectures, be placed under University that is, under profes- 
 sorial superintendence, and the abler College tutors would 
 be transformed, in effect if not in name, into sub-professors 
 or prelectors, without forfeiting their former position. 
 
 While the purely educational function of the Universities 
 could not fail to be invigorated by this change, post-graduate
 
 4"4 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 study and independent research would equally receive a fresh 
 impulse. If a German professor were to visit the University 
 of Oxford or Cambridge, with their splendid endowments and 
 sumptuous buildings, their noble libraries and museums, 
 their short terms and their long vacations, it is assuredly not 
 the want of facilities or leisure for profound investigations 
 that would strike him with amazement. On the contrary, 
 remembering the meagre appliances by the aid of which so 
 many of his countrymen have produced masterpieces of 
 learning or scientific analysis, during intervals snatched from 
 assiduous teaching, he would justly regard the lot of an 
 English professor as singularly favourable to an earnest and 
 lifelong pursuit of philosophical truth. If the spirit of original 
 speculation is ever to be kindled into greater activity at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, it will not be through a diminution 
 in the average number of lectures required of each professor, 
 still less through a lavish creation of Academical sinecures, 
 but through a judicious increase in the number of professors 
 and a proper redistribution of subjects among them, with due 
 provision for enlisting and rewarding the services of men who 
 may be engaged in the real advancement of knowledge outside 
 the Universities. It has lately been proposed, with this 
 object, by an influential Committee of the Oxford Council, that 
 the University should be empowered to appoint extraordinary 
 professors, ' of eminent qualifications,' as well as occasional 
 readers, nor is there any good reason why such auxiliaries 
 should not sometimes be foreigners. It is also proposed that 
 power should be obtained ' to make occasional grants to indi- 
 viduals for the purpose of carrying on special work in con- 
 nection with the studies or institutions of the University.' 
 The funds to be thus dispensed by the University must of 
 course be contributed by the Colleges, which would be further 
 enabled to confer fellowships without examination upon 
 persons of approved distinction who may be willing to reside 
 and prosecute scientific or literary researches, too costly 
 perhaps for their private means, but likely to havD a permanent 
 value. No one who knows the Universities will doubt that
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 45 
 
 Academical opinion is ripe for these and other progressive 
 measures in the same direction. If they have not been 
 already carried out by voluntary legislation, it is partly 
 because Academical action seldom keeps pace with Academical 
 opinion, and partly because they cannot be carried out fully 
 without the assistance of Parliament. Were all statutory 
 obstacles removed, and a Parliamentary Commission armed 
 with authority to issue ordinances having the force of law, in 
 the last resort, most of the difficulties now felt would vanish, 
 and it would probably never be necessary to exercise that 
 authority, except against one or two Colleges notorious for 
 their adherence to abuses. 
 
 The second means of enhancing the beneficial influence of 
 the older Universities on National Education is to extend the 
 sphere of their Academical system, by affiliating existing local 
 institutions, by founding local University Colleges, or by 
 otherwise colonising the provinces from Oxford and Cambridge. 
 The object of such proposals must not be confounded with 
 that of the Cambridge-Lecture system already mentioned. 
 The Cambridge lectures differ from the lectures delivered in 
 ordinary local institutes, only in so far as the University of 
 Cambridge guarantees the competence of the lecturers, and 
 conducts a voluntary examination of the students. However 
 valuable the results of this system may be, it cannot be 
 regarded as a substitute for the University teaching, still less 
 for the collegiate discipline which Oxford and Cambridge, 
 with all their faults, afford to resident students. On the 
 other hand, experience shows that if the present conditions 
 of residence be rigorously exacted, the great majority of 
 Englishmen in the manufacturing and professional classes 
 are likely to remain strangers to real Academical culture. 
 The abolition of Tests has done something, and the expansion 
 of the University curriculum may do more, to popularise 
 Oxford and Cambridge ; but life is too short, and the period 
 required for apprenticeship to business is too long, to admit 
 of most young men destined for unlearned professions residing 
 in an University town up to the age of two or three and
 
 46 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 twenty. Nor is this want to be met by the institution of 
 local Universities. If the example of Germany may be 
 pleaded in favour of multiplying Universities, that of the 
 United States may be pleaded against it, and Great Britain 
 resembles the United States far more closely than it resembles 
 Germany in the character and circumstances of its middle 
 classes. Where the State controls every department of civil 
 life, and takes the Universities under its patronage, there 
 will naturally be a more general demand, for high University 
 education in all classes of the community, and in all parts of 
 the country. Where the commercial spirit rules supreme, 
 where professions are open, and where no premium on high 
 University education is offered by the State, local Universities 
 will be apt to degenerate, as they have degenerated in America, 
 into little more than high schools. The failure of Durham as 
 a classical University proves almost conclusively that, in this 
 age of railways, those who desire to obtain University edu- 
 cation of the Oxford and Cambridge type prefer to seek it 
 at Oxford or Cambridge. Since these Universities actually 
 exist, since they differ from each other quite widely enough 
 to secure a wholesome competition, since they possess in a 
 remarkable degree the respect of the nation, in spite of their 
 many shortcomings, and since they are admirably supple- 
 mented by the London University, what reason can there be 
 for instituting new degree-giving bodies ? There is literally 
 nothing which a local University could do which could not be 
 done far better by an affiliated local College, acting as a living 
 offshoot or branch of Oxford or Cambridge. Let us suppose 
 that such an affiliated College were established at Liverpool 
 or Birmingham, with a staff of professors and lecturers ap- 
 pointed or accredited by the parent University two things 
 would remain to be settled, the conditions upon which its 
 students should be accepted as members of the University, 
 and the Academical status of its teaching body. It has been 
 proposed, and it appears to be a reasonable proposal, that 
 regular attendance upon lectures at an affiliated local College 
 for two years should be allowed to count as one year's resi-
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 47 
 
 dence at the University, whether at the beginning or at the 
 end of the Academical course. On similar grounds, it would 
 appear to be reasonable that professorial or tutorial service 
 in an affiliated local College should count as service within 
 the University itself, at least for the purpose of enabling the 
 professor or lecturer to hold a fellowship longer than might 
 otherwise be permissible. The students of a College estab- 
 lished on such a basis would consist of three elements, those 
 attending lectures with a view to subsequent residence and 
 graduation at Oxford or Cambridge, those attending lectures 
 after residence but prior to graduation at Oxford or Cambridge, 
 and those attending lectures without aspiring to an University 
 degree. 
 
 It would be among the main objects of an affiliated local 
 College to supply an organic connection between secondary, if 
 not also primary, schools and the older Universities. This is 
 not the place to consider in detail the means whereby such a 
 connection may be wrought out and fitted into our national 
 system of education, but it is evident that University and 
 College exhibitions, tenable for a limited period at affiliated 
 local Colleges, might form an invaluable part of it. In this 
 way, and to this extent, affiliated local Colleges might derive 
 benefit from Academical endowments, but it would be a waste 
 of Academical endowments to employ them in localising Uni- 
 versity education, instead of in attracting students to Oxford 
 and Cambridge, where the same resources can be employed 
 to much better profit. So far, therefore, as these Colleges 
 were not self-supporting, they would depend, and ought to 
 depend, on local guarantees ; and in any great town where 
 no sufficient local guarantees would be forthcoming, the proof 
 would be decisive that no sufficient demand existed to justify 
 the foundation of a local affiliated College. 
 
 IV 
 
 To elevate and to extend the influence of the older Uni- 
 versities on National Education such, in a word, are the 
 ends to be steadily kept in view by University reformers,
 
 48 THE INFLUENCE OF THE OLDER 
 
 Happily, these ends, though distinct, are by no means con- 
 flicting, but, on the contrary, are only to be attained by 
 simultaneous and harmonious efforts. The more exalted the 
 standard of literary and scientific culture reached at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, the more worthily the dignity of learning is 
 there maintained, and the more boldly every inferior ambition 
 is there rejected, the stronger the hold that Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge will acquire on the confidence of the people. On the 
 other hand, the more closely they are brought into contact 
 with the great industrial movement of the age, the less 
 amateur, so to speak, will become the spirit of study within 
 the Universities themselves, the more eager their pursuit of 
 knowledge, and the more earnest their recognition of their 
 noble mission a mission which embraces not merely the 
 broader and deeper cultivation of the national intellect, but 
 the revival, it may be, of a taste for plain living and high 
 thinking in English society. If the measures here suggested 
 appear at first sight too modest to be very efficacious for such 
 a purpose, let it be remembered how much can be effected by 
 simple reforms, where they are founded on a self-acting 
 principle. The present generation fully realises that know- 
 ledge that is, practical knowledge is power ; the fact of 
 which it needs to be convinced is that knowledge of this kind 
 is to be acquired most effectually by passing through an 
 University education. Let the older Universities once become 
 the highest national school of Arts and Sciences as well as of 
 Letters, and the love of wealth, now the arch-enemy of Aca- 
 demical culture, will be enlisted as its ally. Let the mercantile 
 and professional classes once learn to regard the older 
 Universities as their own, and the influx of new students, 
 crowding the lecture-rooms of Professors, will give a life to 
 professorial teaching which it can derive from no other source. 
 In the meantime, one thing is certain, and ought to be 
 laid to heart. If the older Universities fail to render the 
 nation this inestimable service of representing and guiding 
 its highest intellectual aspirations, there is no other power in 
 the realm capable of supplying their place. The State may
 
 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES ON NATIONAL EDUCATION 49 
 
 aid and regulate elementary education, but elementary State 
 education naturally gravitates towards a minimum standard, 
 and neither State patronage nor State control will ever hasten 
 the advent of a second Newton. The Church may do much 
 to vindicate spiritual against material interests, but if the 
 Church were thrice as enlightened and truly national as it is, 
 it could not be trusted or suffered to lead the nation in the 
 pursuit of truth for its own sake. A multitude of petty local 
 Universities, if they could be founded, might temper the 
 vulgarity of purely mercantile communities, but they could 
 not be expected to attract eminent men as teachers, or to 
 command due respect as fountains of literary and scientific 
 honour. This can be done by the older Universities, and by 
 them alone, among existing English institutions. They and 
 they alone can reconcile democracy with aristocracy, in the 
 best sense of those much perverted words, through a graduated 
 system of promotion by intellectual merit. They and they 
 alone can oppose a corporate spirit and a venerable authority 
 the massive growth of ages to plutocratic tendencies, 
 which in this country, no less than in America, have deeply 
 infected the springs of public virtue. They and they alone, 
 by extending their empire ever more and more over the lead- 
 ing minds of the nation, can so influence National Education, 
 as gradually but surely to ennoble national character.
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION - 
 
 Delivered at the Social Science Congress, Cheltenham, October 1879. 
 
 The progress of National Education in this country during 
 the last thirty years, though recognised by all, is practically 
 realised by very few even of those who, like ourselves, are 
 specially concerned with it. No public documents, however 
 comprehensive, would enable us to measure it, but, unhappily, 
 no comprehensive report on National Education in all its 
 branches is ever laid before Parliament. The Education 
 Department, indeed, publishes annual returns which may be 
 accepted as an authoritative and tolerably complete account 
 of the advance made by Primary Education in England and 
 Wales, and those for last year were carefully analysed in a 
 paper read at Aberdeen by our Hon. Secretary, Mr. Rowland 
 Hamilton. The facts relating to workhouse schools may be 
 gleaned from the Reports of the Local Government Board ; 
 the Charity Commissioners, now invested with the powers of 
 the Endowed Schools Commission, annually record the result 
 of their proceedings ; and these sources of information are 
 occasionally supplemented by papers compiled, under the 
 order of Parliament, at the instance of some individual 
 member. But there is certainly no compendious statement 
 which could be placed in the hands of a foreigner as exhibit- 
 ing the actual condition and growth of English education, 
 Primary, Secondary, and Academical, for any single year ; 
 much less are there well-digested official materials for a com- 
 parison of its condition in 1878 with its condition in 1848. 
 Believing that such a retrospect may be encouraging to faint- 
 hearted advocates of National Education, and may also serve 
 to indicate the direction in which further reforms are needed,
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 51 
 
 I will endeavour to review, within the smallest possible com- 
 pass, what has been effected in the course of the last thirty 
 years a period covering but one human generation, and 
 crowded with events which have too often diverted the public 
 mind from any steadfast purpose of self-improvement. If we 
 shall find reason to conclude that during this period National 
 Education in England has made greater strides than during 
 the previous century we shall not be the more justified in 
 shutting our eyes to its many shortcomings, or the less free 
 to grapple with the open questions to be discussed in this 
 department. However interesting it may be to compare the 
 educational statistics of this country with those of continental 
 nations or of the United States, it is far more profitable to 
 ascertain the rate, and study the course, of educational pro- 
 gress at home. Comparative statistics of education in various 
 countries are misleading, because they cannot be reduced to 
 a common standard. The nominal proportion of scholars 
 to population may be large, and yet the educational results 
 may be meagre, if the average attendance be low or the 
 average teaching inefficient. The proportion of illiterate 
 soldiers depends in a great degree on the number of men 
 annually enlisted and the mode of their enlistment, since 
 recruits are most easily obtained from the lower strata of 
 society. The proportion of men and women signing the 
 marriage register with marks is a rough test of the depth to 
 which p3pular education had penetrated ten or fifteen years 
 earlier, but not of the depth to which it now penetrates. 
 Moreover, though we have much to learn from the experience 
 of foreign nations, we must not imagine that any system of 
 National Education can be worked out in strict conformity 
 with a foreign model, or otherwise than in harmony with the 
 spirit and institutions of the people to be educated. 
 
 I. Here followed a review of the progress made by Primary 
 Education in England between 1848 and 1878, as tested by the 
 Reports of the Education Department on school- attendance and 
 examinations. 
 
 But the Reports of the Education Department are not the 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 only evidence of the extent to which the spread of Primary 
 Education has leavened the population within the past thirty 
 years. We see its direct effects in the decreasing number of 
 persons signing the marriage register with marks, of recruits 
 unable to read or write, 1 of illiterate voters, and of labourers 
 who, being ' no scholars,' can undertake no duties above those 
 which a clever savage might perform. We see its indirect 
 effect in the ever-increasing circulation of penny newspapers 
 and other cheap literature, in the constant multiplication of 
 popular reading rooms, in the overwhelming number of appli- 
 cations for clerks' places, and we may reasonably believe 
 in the steady decline of pauperism and crime. The extra- 
 ordinary diminution of juvenile offenders in the Metropolis, 
 attested by the Commissioners of Police and by the Governors 
 of Prisons, has exactly coincided with the enforcement of 
 school attendance by the School Board officers, and as old 
 criminals are usually developed out of young criminals, we 
 may fairly expect the number of convictions to be still further 
 reduced in future. Upon the whole, then, we have reason to 
 congratulate ourselves on the progress of Primary Education 
 during the short period under review. We may still have 
 ' much leeway to make up,' but we have done the work of far 
 more than one generation in the past thirty years, and our 
 educational position, relatively to other countries, is far less 
 humiliating than it was in 1848, when very few Englishmen 
 were ashamed of it. 
 
 II. The history of Secondary Education in England during 
 the last thirty years has not been less eventful, though it 
 has been less directly shaped by legislative action. It is not 
 too much to say that, in 1848, the ancient Public Schools, 
 mostly founded in the 15th and 16th centuries, were still 
 essentially Elizabethan in their curriculum of studies, in 
 
 1 The last Triennial Report by the Diroctor-General of Military Education, 
 dated July 1877, shows that, whereas in 1873 the percentage of soldiers who 
 could neither read nor write was 6-01, in 1870 it was 4-'J5 ; and that, whereas 
 in 1873 the percentage of those in the first or ' better educated ' class was 
 3201, in 187fi it was 44*95.
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 53 
 
 their methods of teaching, and in the characteristic features 
 of their internal government, no less than in their architecture 
 and system of discipline. Of the great proprietary schools 
 included in the Public Schools Calendar, some were then in 
 their infancy, like Cheltenham and Marlborough ; all the 
 rest, including Wellington College, Haileybury, and Clifton, 
 have sprung up since that date. The majority of them pro- 
 bably owe their origin to a spontaneous demand for a cheaper 
 and somewhat less antiquated form of Public School Educa- 
 tion than could then be obtained at Eton or Winchester, 
 Rugby or Harrow. But there can be no doubt that all of 
 them have largely profited by the discussion which preceded 
 the appointment of the Public Schools Commission in 1861, 
 by the Eeport of the Commissioners on nine of the ancient 
 Public Schools, and by the influence of reforms subsequently 
 carried out there in pursuance of the Public Schools Act. 
 Very few of the Endowed Grammar Schools then reached 
 even the low standard of the ancient Public Schools, in the 
 range or efficiency of their instruction, and if a Grammar 
 School won a high reputation at the Universities, it was 
 usually by virtue of exceptional energy in its head-master, and 
 not of any perfection in its organisation. As for the whole 
 class of genteel Commercial Academies, they were already 
 proverbial for pretentious inefficiency, and private schools for 
 boys of the upper and middle classes were naturally content 
 to follow the lead of Public Schools and Grammar Schools. 
 Considered from a purely intellectual point of view, and 
 relatively to its cost, the Secondary Education of England, 
 thirty years ago, was in a still more backward state than its 
 Primary Education, and even after the shortcomings of our 
 Primary Education were freely acknowledged, the short- 
 comings of our Secondary Education were regarded by the 
 national mind with indifference or self-complacency. Indeed, 
 the first vigorous impetus given to Secondary Education 
 must be dated after the Crimean War, and whatever has been 
 done to bring it under the effective control of public opinion 
 has been done, for the most part, within the last twenty years..
 
 54 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Here followed a review of the progress made by Secondary 
 Education in England between 1848 and 1878, illustrated by the 
 example of Eton, by the Reports of the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Boards on Public Schools and Local Examinations, by the Report 
 of the Charity Commission on Educational Endowments, by the 
 rise of Public Day Schools for Girls, and by the growth of profes- 
 sional Colleges. 
 
 Nor must we forget either the stimulus imparted to 
 secondary education by the new system of competitive exam- 
 ination for the public services, or the great, if not disinter- 
 ested, assistance rendered to it by the much-abused class of 
 ' crammers.' It was stated by Mr. C. S. Parker, in an able 
 Paper read before the Aberdeen Congress, that in the year 
 1875 the Civil Service Commissioners examined nearly 4,000 
 candidates for over 1,000 appointments of the higher order, 
 including first commissions in the Army, Woolwich Cadetships, 
 Marine Cadetships, and various posts in the Civil Service of 
 this country and of India. The great majority of these 
 candidates were doubtless prepared, wholly or partially, by 
 crammers. Now, so far as the art of a crammer is directed 
 to arming his pupils with answers to probable questions, by 
 memoria technica, or some equally mechanical process, it 
 cannot be regarded with much respect from an educational 
 point of view ; though it may well be doubted whether it is 
 not better for a human mind to be unscientifically overcropped 
 than to be left absolutely fallow and overgrown with noisome 
 weeds. So far, however, as crammers are successful in help- 
 ing their pupils to master a modern language, a few books of 
 Euclid, a period of history, or the geography of a country, in 
 the shortest possible time, they must have practised effective 
 methods of teaching not unworthy of imitation, and there is 
 no want of charity in suspecting that a certain professional 
 jealousy is mingled with the moral indignation of which they 
 are so often the objects. After all, knowledge is valuable for 
 its own sake, however it may have been acquired ; and before 
 we lavish contemptuous pity on a youth for having got up a 
 useful subject too hastily, with the aid of a crammer, let us
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 55 
 
 be quite sure that, without the aid of a crammer, he would 
 have got it up at all. It must at least be owned that the 
 necessity of studying for competitive examinations under 
 skilful guidance, rudely disturbing the reign of well-bred 
 ignorance in high places, has operated as a powerful agent in 
 the progress of Secondary Education. 
 
 III. The change that has passed over the older English 
 Universities during the same period is not less remarkable or 
 encouraging. Let us glance rapidly at the state of Oxford 
 thirty years ago, bearing in mind that what applies to Oxford 
 applies also in the main to Cambridge, where the academical 
 system, though somewhat more liberal in a social and theolo- 
 gical sense, was in some other respects even narrower and 
 less elastic than at Oxford. 
 
 Here followed a description of the Oxford system before 1854, 
 founded on that in ' The Universities and the Nation.' 
 
 The entire number of Oxford students, resident and non- 
 resident, amounted in 1848 to less than 1,500, the number 
 of Cambridge students being then somewhat greater. Of 
 these, the great majority at both Universities were content 
 with a mere ' pass,' and spent two or three years between 
 their ' little-go ' and ' great-go ' examinations in acquiring a 
 minimum of classical knowledge at the one, or of mathematical 
 knowledge at the other, so meagre and elementary that it 
 might well have been exacted at matriculation. ' Classics 
 and Mathematics ' were, indeed, the only subjects in which 
 honours could be taken at either University, though ' Classics ' 
 at Oxford included Ancient History, Moral Philosophy, and 
 Logic, while ' Mathematics ' at Cambridge encroached on the 
 domain of Physical Science. Notwithstanding the ease with 
 which a pass-degree could be obtained in those days, the 
 number of students graduating at Oxford in a single year 
 rarely exceeded 300 ; the average yearly number of first-class 
 men in the school of ' Literal Humaniores ' was 10 or 12, and 
 of first-class men in the school of Mathematics, perhaps 5 or 
 6. Modern History, Law, Physical Science in all its branches,
 
 56 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 except those strictly allied to Mathematics, and even Theology 
 itself, were equally ignored in the honour-examinations of 
 both Universities. Yet these examinations were all-powerful 
 in governing the intellectual aspirations of students, and the 
 earnest prosecution of literary culture or scientific research 
 for its own sake, though not absolutely unknown, was certainly 
 very rare. As for the extension of University influence to 
 Secondary Education, or to semi-academical education outside 
 Oxford and Cambridge, such an idea may have occurred to a 
 few enlightened minds, but had never found expression in 
 any practical scheme. 
 
 The reforms adopted by the Universities in anticipation of 
 legislative interference, the reforms introduced by the Com- 
 missions appointed under Lord Aberdeen's Administration, 
 the supplementary reforms by which the work of those Com- 
 missions has been followed up, and the operation of the 
 University Tests Act, have transformed at once the constitu- 
 tion, the curriculum, and the educational character of both 
 Universities. At Oxford there are now upwards of 2,500 
 matriculated undergraduates, including some 140 members 
 of the new Keble College, and including also some 300 or 400 
 ' unattached students,' belonging to no College, but with full 
 Academical rights, and under the superintendence of special 
 officers. University administration is now in the hands of a 
 Council fairly representing the various classes of Academical 
 society, checked by a vigorous little Parliament composed of 
 resident masters and doctors. College administration is in 
 the hands of Fellows, selected entirely by merit, and largely 
 imbued with the spirit of reform. Though candidates for 
 degrees are still required to qualify themselves in Latin and 
 Greek, the study of ancient languages may be dismissed after 
 passing the intermediate examination called Moderations, 
 which also serves the useful purpose of breaking the time- 
 honoured continuity of idleness between the ' little-go ' and 
 the ' great-go.' The honour-lists in the old school of ' Litene 
 Humaniores ' are now much larger than in 1848, but new 
 schools of Law, of History, of Natural Science, and of Theology,
 
 ADDKESS ON EDUCATION 57 
 
 have established themselves, on all but equal terms, side by 
 side with the old schools of Classics or Mathematics, and 
 those who take honours of the first, second, or third class in 
 any non-classical school, are relieved from the somewhat 
 humiliating necessity of 'passing' in Classics. Both Scholar- 
 ships and Fellowships are freely offered for proficiency in 
 these studies, and if they are not so often awarded to scientific 
 candidates as to scholars, it is because Oxford still attracts 
 a much larger proportion of advanced scholarship than of 
 scientific ability. The list of Professors is now almost twice 
 as long as it was in 1848, and the number of lectures given 
 by Professors is many times as great, notwithstanding that 
 College tuition has been largely improved and developed 
 through inter-collegiate arrangements known at Oxford as 
 ' the Combined Lecture System.' Natural Science, for special 
 and obvious reasons, is almost exclusively taught by Professors 
 and their assistants, for the most part at the University 
 Museum an institution also founded within the last 30 
 years. Nor has this vast increase of educational activity in 
 Oxford been purchased by a diminution of literary or scientific 
 results ; on the contrary, learning and research have kept 
 pace, as might be expected, with the greater energy of teach- 
 ing. Though Oxford would not presume, and does not 
 aspire, to compete with her German rivals in the multiplica- 
 tion of monographs edifying only to a select circle of savants, 
 a collection of the independent works, and still more of the 
 valuable articles in literary and scientific periodicals (not to 
 speak of journals), written by Oxford Professors and Tutors 
 in the course of a single year, would effectually silence those 
 who affect to deplore the intellectual sterility of our older 
 Universities. The impression that Oxford is mainly a clerical 
 and aristocratic seminary would prove, on inquiry, to be 
 equally obsolete. By means of open Scholarships and Exhi- 
 bitions, as well as by the admission of 'unattached students,' 
 belonging to no College, a very large infusion of plebeian and 
 even of democratic elements has been imported into it, all 
 religions are there mingled harmoniously, nor is it uncommon
 
 58 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 to meet in the streets young men of Oriental race and com- 
 plexion, wearing Academical costume. One or two Colleges 
 may have succeeded in keeping themselves exclusive, but the 
 University has become thoroughly cosmopolitan. Nearly the 
 same may be said of Cambridge, which has always drawn 
 mathematical aspirants from the humbler ranks in the North 
 of England ; and it is gratifying that such collegiate institu- 
 tions as Girton College for the higher education of young 
 women, and Cavendish College for that of youths chiefly 
 destined to be farmers, have grown up under the shadow of 
 that ancient University, and not without the support of its 
 authorities. 
 
 Here followed a review of the University-extension movement, 
 and of the work done by the University of London. 
 
 IV. It is now time for us to consider briefly certain weak 
 points which remain to be strengthened, and certain open 
 questions which remain to be settled, in the future develop- 
 ment of National Education in England. Three such ques- 
 tions have been selected for special treatment at the present 
 Congress, and I shall not anticipate their discussion. 1 Those 
 to which I shall now refer are not perhaps more important 
 than others which might be suggested, but have been forced 
 upon my own attention in dealing practically with Primary, 
 Secondary, and Academical Education. 
 
 Here followed a paragraph on irregularity of school attendance 
 and ' capricious migration.' 
 
 1. It is on a gradual process of popular enlightenment that 
 we must chiefly rely for any marked improvement in what 
 may be called the social and civilising results of Elementary 
 Schools in this country. Though England may compare 
 
 1 These questions were the following : 
 
 Is it desirable to establish Free Primary Schools throughout the country ? 
 Is it expedient to increase the number of Universities in England ? 
 In what way is it desirable to connect the system of Primary Schools with 
 the Endowed and other Schools that supply Secondary Education ?
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 59 
 
 favourably with France, and not very unfavourably with the 
 United States, in the mere percentage of adults who can read 
 and write, both French and American education are apparently 
 superior to English education in their humanising influence 
 on the people. A French peasant may be quite illiterate, 
 ignorant of newspapers, and the ready dupe of political impo- 
 sition, yet the brightness of his intelligence and the grace of 
 his manners strike every English traveller. But then he is 
 hardly ever stupified by drink, and history tells us that 
 national characters and tastes are moulded by many other 
 agencies besides mere schooling. Where a traditional sense 
 of proprietorship has been fortified by a new sense of social 
 equality, as in France ; where every school imbibes the 
 stimulating and restless atmosphere of commercial enterprise, 
 as in America ; or where every home is penetrated with the 
 democratic spirit of Presbyterian Church-government, as in 
 Scotland ; a given amount of book-knowledge will go much 
 further in sharpening the faculties than in the stagnant 
 climate of an English country-parish. Nevertheless, in spite 
 of express injunctions in the Education Code, it is impossible 
 to be satisfied with the success of English Elementary Schools 
 in civilising their scholars by inculcating ' good manners and 
 language,' ' cleanliness and neatness,' ' consideration and re- 
 spect for others ; ' and in this kind of cultivation the schools 
 of Scotland must rank below those of England. 
 
 Nor can we afford to be content with the average pro- 
 ficiency even of those children who attend regularly enough 
 to earn a grant in English schools. After making due allow- 
 ance for the fact that many children of 9, 10, or 11, now 
 forced into school under compulsory bye-laws, are perfectly 
 raw material and might properly be classed with infants, as 
 well as for the fact that under the present rules many scholars 
 capable of passing their examination are excluded from it by 
 default of attendance, we must still regard it as lamentable 
 that only 270,317 children were presented last year in the 
 three higher standards, and that nearly half failed to pass 
 in three subjects.
 
 GO ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 Here followed remarks on shortcomings in the higher school 
 teaching. 
 
 Happily, it is morally certain that each succeeding year 
 will show a marked improvement. As School Boards multiply, 
 and School Attendance Committees resolve to enforce as well 
 as to frame bye-laws, both the amount and the regularity of 
 attendance will be largely increased. As the schools are less 
 flooded with older scholars ignorant of their letters, more and 
 more will he presented in the higher standards. As methods 
 of teaching become perfected in the hands of trained masters 
 and mistresses, it will become possible to impart more know- 
 ledge in a shorter time. As young people reclaimed by 
 schooling from barbarism and heathenism grow up and 
 become parents, they will be less disposed than parents of 
 the former generation to mar the refining influences of school 
 teaching and school discipline by setting their children the 
 example of bad habits and bad language at home. 
 
 But one thing more is needful. In the choice of subjects, 
 as well as in the methods of teaching, we must strive to make 
 every hour of schooling tell upon the practical w T ants of the 
 scholar's future life. Let us never lose sight of the fact that 
 Primary Education is not the first stage of education for the 
 great mass of the wage-earning classes, but the whole of their 
 education. Every page read should therefore, if possible, be 
 a vehicle of useful knowledge, every sum worked out should 
 call up the idea of concrete realities, every lesson in geography 
 should enable the child to feel at home in thinking of distant 
 localities. It is because it appeals so directly to a child's 
 faculty of observation and sense of utility that Elementary 
 Science deserves the place that Sir John Lubbock claims for 
 it in Primary Education. If it be idle to suppose that young 
 men will study what they believe to be useless as earnestly as 
 what they know to be useful, merely for the sake of mental 
 discipline, still more idle is it to suppose that children will 
 give their minds to dull abstractions as readily as to some- 
 thing tangible and capable of being explained by experiment. 
 Even as a mere instrument of mental discipline, Elementary
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 61 
 
 Science is certainly not inferior to Grammar, and if room 
 could not be found in a school time-table for both these 
 subjects, I should prefer to sacrifice Grammar. Those who 
 contend that an Englishman cannot learn his own mother 
 tongue correctly without the aid of abstruse grammatical 
 formulae are bound to show how it came to pass that all the 
 great masterpieces of classical literature, which serve as 
 'models of style to modern authors, were produced by men 
 who, so far as we know, were utterly ignorant of Grammar, 
 and lived before it was invented. For the purpose of rapidly 
 acquiring a foreign language, Grammar is of great value, and 
 there are a very few broad grammatical rules which it may 
 be well to impress upon children as part of their lessons in 
 reading and writing ; but I venture to express a doubt whether 
 the more formal teaching of Grammar in Elementary Schools 
 is not a waste of time grievously needed for subjects which 
 not only discipline the mind but equip it for the battle of life. 
 
 Here followed a notice of the proposal for grouping children in 
 the higher standards into Central Schools. 
 
 When the extravagance of School Boards is held up to 
 public reprobation, and when it is inferred that, in proportion 
 as Board Schools are substituted for Voluntary Schools, the 
 general public will be heavily taxed, a great many things are 
 forgotten. It is forgotten that School Boards, having to 
 provide immediately for neglected districts without the aid of 
 Government building grants, are compelled to buy sites, often 
 at an exorbitant cost, to build schools of the best construction 
 at the present high rate of building prices, and to pay the 
 interest on sums borrowed for these purposes. It is forgotten 
 that on them falls the whole burden of working the machinery 
 of compulsion, by which Voluntary Schools equally benefit. 
 It is forgotten that having to educate the most intractable 
 class of children, and being expected to serve as a pattern of 
 school organisation, they must needs employ an expensive 
 class of teachers. Above all, it is forgotten that School 
 Boards are doing work imposed upon them by the Legislature,
 
 f2 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 because voluntary effort had failed to do it ; that if it were 
 not done by School Boards it would have to be done by some 
 other agency ; and that, in this case, even if the now agency 
 were voluntary, the money would not come from the clouds, 
 but from one or other of the national pockets. The financial 
 question between Voluntary or Board Schools is not a ques- 
 tion between economy and waste ; it is a question between 
 two modes of raising a given revenue between the eleemosy- 
 nary support of schools by contributions from the clergy or a 
 benevolent section of the upper class, and the public support 
 of schools by contributions from the whole community. No 
 doubt many ratepayers, who disdain to use Board Schools, 
 would gladly send their children to be educated at Voluntary 
 Schools, without paying either subscription or rates. But 
 the poorer and less fastidious ratepayers have little reason to 
 complain of the terms on which they obtain education at 
 Board Schools for their children. Let us take the school- 
 rate for London at 5d. in the pound, and let us suppose a 
 parent, with two children of school-age, occupying a tenement 
 valued at 20Z. a year. He will thus pay 8s. Ad. in rates, and 
 perhaps 15s. a year in school fees 11. 3s. 4d. in all. But 
 the real cost of schooling for two children will amount to 
 about 51. a year, so that he will obtain it for less than a 
 fourth of the cost-price. There are, of course, many advan- 
 tages on the side of the Voluntary system, and it has yet to 
 be proved that public spirit is so effective a motive as Christian 
 zeal for the careful and conscientious management of schools. 
 But the notion that equal results can be procured for less 
 money under the Voluntary than under the Board system is 
 a pure delusion which ought not to be sanctioned by official 
 authority. 
 
 2. Perhaps the reform that is most urgently needed in 
 Secondary Education is a comprehensive revision of the cur- 
 riculum now adopted with too little variation by nearly all 
 Grammar Schools and other schools of the same grade. 
 Until very lately it was thought perfectly natural, and not 
 otherwise than satisfactory, that full twelve years of life,
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION G3 
 
 from 6 or 7 to 18 or 19, should be almost exclusively consumed 
 in acquiring a very imperfect knowledge of two dead languages ; 
 for very few boys succeeded in appropriating the real treasures 
 of Latin and Greek literature. This classical monopoly has 
 at last been invaded, but the masters of Grammar Schools 
 have not yet shaken off the impression that it is their 
 principal duty to prepare a few boys for the Universities, 
 where Classics and Mathematics are still in the ascendant. 
 Now, what is Secondary Education for the vast majority of 
 those who avail themselves of it ? Secondary Education is 
 the education of boys and girls who can afford to cultivate 
 their minds during the whole period of growth, but no longer ; 
 just as Primary Education is the education of children who 
 must earn their livelihood, as boys and girls, before they 
 grow up, while University Education is the education of adults 
 who can spare a few years of manhood to gain a greater 
 maturity of culture. The main business of Elementary 
 Schools is to give the best training for children about to be 
 engaged in manual labour, due provision being also made for 
 the very small minority capable of rising to schools of a 
 higher grade, and the main business of Grammar Schools is 
 to prepare the great mass of their scholars for commercial 
 and professional careers, due provision being also made for 
 the much smaller class destined for the Universities. To 
 frame such a course of studies as shall best prepare youths 
 for the requirements of commercial and professional life in 
 these days is a task worthy of the highest educational states- 
 manship, but it is self-evident that modern requirements are 
 no longer to be satisfied by an education which sufficed in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Latin and Greek constituted 
 the staple of European literature, when Natural Science was 
 barely struggling into existence, and when Englishmen had 
 little occasion to go, or to correspond, beyond their own 
 island. It is probable that Latin, as the key to so many of 
 the modern languages and so much of modern thought, may 
 still hold its own in Secondary Education, but I cannot doubt 
 that Greek notwithstanding that it is the language of the
 
 04 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION* 
 
 New Testament will ere long be classed among the luxuries, 
 and not among the necessaries, of scholarship, even at the 
 ancient Public Schools. 
 
 Here followed reasons against a Government Inspection of 
 Secondary Schools. 
 
 3. It is the less necessary for me to dwell at any length 
 on the vexed questions connected with University Education, 
 because I stated my views on many of them in a paper read 
 before the Brighton Congress, and there are none of those 
 views which I desire to retract. The Legislature has since 
 passed Acts for the further reform of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and Executive Commissions have been appointed to carry out 
 the measures therein contemplated. The chief aim of these 
 measures is to develope the educational resources of the 
 University at the expense of the Colleges, and it is generally 
 agreed that, within certain limits, this redistribution of funds 
 is expedient, if not strictly in accordance with legal doctrines ; 
 but very grave differences of opinion exist as to the ultimate 
 ideal to be kept in view, and I must not shrink from as- 
 serting, plainly and succinctly, my own convictions on this 
 subject. I regard the Universities as essentially places of 
 Academical education, and only incidentally as retreats or 
 places of study for learned men. According to my concep- 
 tion, their primary and noblest function is the instruction 
 and training of youth for the higher walks of professional 
 and public life not monastic self-culture or even the produc- 
 tion of monographs, whether literary or scientific. So long 
 as Classics and Mathematics with the other subjects embraced 
 in the Faculty of Arts were the only subjects which English 
 gentlemen cared to cultivate, the demand for teaching was 
 admirably supplied by the better Colleges, and it would have 
 been a sheer waste of public money to found new Professor- 
 si lips, when the existing Professors either did not lecture at 
 all or lectured to almost empty benches. Now that the range 
 of University studies is so largely and beneficially widened, 
 the College system, invaluable as it is, has become inadequate
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 65 
 
 to provide the variety of teaching required, and, moreover, 
 the peculiar exigencies of teaching in Natural Science point 
 to a concentration of lecture rooms, with laboratories, 
 museums, and other scientific accessories, under University 
 superintendence. Hence the necessity for more Professors,, 
 and an extension of University establishments ; and this 
 necessity is further strengthened by the recent admission and 
 constant accession of students attached to no College. Other 
 contributions from the Colleges may be needed to found Uni- 
 versity, as distinct from College, Scholarships, and to organise 
 University tuition in certain non-scientific subjects hitherto 
 unduly neglected. When, however, it is proposed to go far 
 beyond this, and to divert by wholesale revenues now invested 
 in Fellowships in order to create a Professoriate on the scale of 
 those at the German Universities, together with a number of 
 pensions to reward or stimulate ' mature learning and original 
 research,' I cannot but deprecate so revolutionary a change, 
 in the interest of learning no less than in that of education. 
 
 The analogy between the English and German Universities 
 is radically fallacious, because, in the absence of College 
 tuition and discipline, the German Professor stands in the 
 place both of the English University Professor and of the 
 English College-tutor. As a tutor, he labours under the 
 grievous disadvantage of having no strictly tutorial authority 
 or responsibility ; but at all events, and above all, he is an 
 educator not a sinecurist, despising the duty of imparting 
 knowledge to common minds and wrapped up in his own 
 speciality. The subject which he ' represents ' may attract 
 but a small class, but he teaches it all the more thoroughly ; 
 and the very last privilege which he would think of demand- 
 ing would be the privilege of devoting himself to lifelong 
 study, on full salary, without the obligation of teaching. 
 The German Professors who have done most for the advance- 
 ment of literature and science have been zealous and successful 
 lecturers ; and if the purely ornamental Professor would be 
 out of place at Berlin, still more would he be out of place at 
 Oxford or Cambridge. So long as the older English Univer- 
 
 F
 
 66 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 sities retain that essentially collegiate character which con- 
 stitutes their life, and so long as the intellect of the nation 
 continues to be practical rather than speculative, a moderate 
 number of working Professors, aided by a larger body of 
 Tutors, acting in harmony with them and under their general 
 superintendence, will be amply sufficient for every legitimate 
 requirement of Academical education. Those who are capable 
 of original investigations have six months of leisure in which 
 to pursue them, and there is no reason why special grants 
 should not be made from the University chest for special 
 work of this kind, whether done by Professors or by others, 
 of whom there will always be many, residing at Oxford and 
 Cambridge for the prosecution of advanced study. 
 
 Here followed a quotation from my own letters in the ' Times ' 
 on the Fellowship-system. 
 
 That which is needed at our older Universities is not a 
 root-and-branch destruction of their constitution and spirit, 
 but, simply, a better organisation of their educational power ; 
 and this w r ant of organisation is the grand defect of English 
 National Education in all its branches. We have numerous 
 and excellent Elementary Schools in all the large towns, but 
 their distribution has been mostly governed by parochial and 
 not by public considerations ; many of them are under inde- 
 pendent bodies of managers, and almost every one is managed 
 on thoroughly ' insular ' principles, being connected with no 
 other elementary school by a system of gradation or division 
 of labour, and with no school of a higher class by Scholarships 
 or Exhibitions. School Boards have not been elected even in 
 all the great towns ; in smaller towns and country districts, 
 their place is generally supplied by School-attendance Com- 
 mittees representing the Boards of Guardians. After all, 
 schools for pauper children are outside the School Board 
 system, and inspected under a separate department, while 
 technical schools hardly exist at all. Our secondary Public 
 Schools excel all others in the world as training-grounds for 
 the formation of a manly character, but until very lately they
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION G7 
 
 claimed the right of teaching as little as they pleased, un- 
 molested by any external authority, and even now are not 
 only exempt from official inspection, but subject to no such 
 test of efficiency as a general ' leaving-examination.' As for 
 our Military, Naval, Engineering, Agricultural, Theological, 
 and other professional Colleges, they are scattered about the 
 island, for the most part in healthy situations, but with a 
 sublime disregard for concentration of teaching-power, and 
 without a link to connect them with any other educational 
 institution in England. Even the long-predicted ladder of 
 educational promotion, reaching from the gutter to the Uni- 
 versities, still remains to be constructed, for though a boy of 
 exceptional ability at a Grammar School has a fair chance 
 of gaining a College Scholarship, the percentage of children 
 passing from Elementary Schools to Grammar Schools is 
 extremely small, and will not be materially increased, until 
 Exhibitions of sufficient value to cover both the cost of school- 
 ing and the cost of maintenance shall be provided in sufficient 
 number. Nor can I forbear to notice, among the many signs 
 of defective organisation, the want of authorised text-books 
 for Elementary Schools, and the elaborate but chaotic ob- 
 scurity of the so-called New Code yearly issued by the Educa- 
 tion Department, the result of successive revisions never 
 reduced to order by a capable draftsman, and the cause of 
 infinite perplexity to all concerned with the management of 
 Elementary Schools. 
 
 Here followed a notice of proposals for establishing a general 
 Educational Council. 
 
 I shall not enter here into the comparative merits of these 
 schemes, but I will venture to point out that, while any Edu- 
 cational Council that may be formed must derive its powers 
 from Act of Parliament, no such Council, however ample its 
 powers, could supply the place of an Education Minister. No 
 doubt, the extension of direct State control over the whole 
 system of National Education in England would be equally 
 inconsistent with English notions of liberty and with the 
 
 F 2
 
 G8 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 
 
 highest ideal of educational development. Hitherto Govern- 
 ment has confined its direct action to laying down the con- 
 ditions upon which State aid shall be granted to Elementary 
 Schools, regulating the application of trust funds and creat- 
 ing new governing bodies in Endowed Schools and the Uni- 
 versities, and requiring that every child shall attend school 
 up to a certain age. But in a multitude of indirect ways the 
 province of Government overlaps the province of Education, 
 and it is a grievous national misfortune that no Minister is 
 charged with the duty of overlooking this province in its 
 entirety, with a view to initiate any legislation that may be 
 required, or at least to criticise with some authority the 
 proposals of others. It is possible to be too superstitiously 
 jealous of State interference in this sense, as if Parliament, 
 or a Government responsible to Parliament, were some in- 
 trusive alien power, whereas it is nothing but the highest 
 expression of the national will. On the other hand, it is 
 quite possible to ignore unduly the danger of a narrow edu- 
 cational policy being stereotyped by a Council exclusively 
 composed of Educationists, that is, producers of education, 
 and hardly representing the public at large, that is, consumers 
 of education. Most of the reforms in National Education 
 effected during the last thirty years have, in fact, been 
 originated by public opinion rather than by schoolmasters ; 
 but had public opinion been left to operate locally, instead of 
 through an imperial Legislature, many of them could never 
 have been effected at all. In a word, the reasons for estab- 
 lishing, not a Director-General, but a Minister, of National 
 Education remain equally strong, whether or not an Educa- 
 tional Council be also established, and would become all the 
 stronger, the greater the authority to be vested in such a 
 Council. If there is to be educational centralisation, the 
 ultimate control of it must surely rest with the nation itself. 
 
 But no difference of opinion as to the selection of means 
 or agencies must be allowed to obscure our perception of the 
 great end to be realised. To organise National Education in 
 such a sense that no wheel in its mechanism shall fail to play
 
 ADDRESS ON EDUCATION 69 
 
 freely, and that none shall work to waste, that every endowed 
 or State-aided school and college shall have a definite function 
 assigned to it, that even private teachers shall be encouraged 
 to feel themselves engaged in a public service as trainers of 
 citizens, and that a new sentiment of intellectual sympathy 
 among Englishmen shall call forth a new sentiment of national 
 brotherhood in England, as it did in ancient Greece, and as 
 it has in Germany such appears to be the educational 
 mission of this generation. Three centuries have elapsed 
 since the Eenaissance and the Eeformation gave a more 
 powerful impulse to National Education in this country than 
 any which it has since received. The subsequent growth of 
 the nation in numbers, in resources, in commercial enterprise, 
 and in the range of its political responsibilities, has far out- 
 stripped its educational growth ; and the vast disparity of 
 educational training between class and class has assuredly 
 concurred with other causes to produce the essentially modern 
 separation of English society into 'horizontal layers,' corre- 
 sponding too closely with degrees of wealth. There can be no 
 solid national unity, if there is no community of ideas and 
 culture between various sections of the nation. There can be 
 no approach to social equality, where the difference of tastes, 
 interests, and refinement is so great as it now is between 
 gentlefolks and tradespeople between the employers of labour 
 and the wage-earning multitude. There is no power capable 
 of checking the portentous advance of plutocracy hi this age, 
 except the power of aristocracy, as Plato conceived it the 
 aristocracy, not of parentage, but of education. He who 
 shall have contributed, however feebly, in his day and genera- 
 tion to overcome the disuniting influences of caste and class- 
 distinctions by the cementing influences of National Education, 
 will not have lived or laboured in vain.
 
 n 
 
 ENGLISH AND IEISH 
 LAND-SYSTEMS
 
 73 
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 
 
 The last chapter of Irish History opens with the Irish Church 
 Act of 1869, and the Irish Land Act of 1870. For nearly seventy 
 years after the Union, Ireland had been governed by the 
 Imperial Legislature with a sincere desire to promote the 
 welfare of the people, but upon essentially English principles, 
 and with little respect for Irish sentiment. Select Committees 
 were appointed by the House of Commons in 1819 and in 
 1823, to inquire into the condition of the labouring poor in 
 Ireland ; and in 1825 a similar committee, appointed by the 
 House of Lords, took valuable evidence on the relations be- 
 tween Irish landlords and tenants. Still, nothing practical 
 was done to redress the abuses of Irish land tenure, and wide- 
 spread distress prevailed, when the long period of comparative 
 tranquillity which had succeeded the rebellion of 1798 was 
 broken at last by the Clare election. The immediate conse- 
 quence of this event, demonstrating the wonderful power of 
 O'Connell, was the Emancipation Act of 1829. In the mean- 
 time, however, agrarian disturbances had been constantly rife, 
 and the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended for ten or 
 eleven years out of twenty-nine. Eoman Catholic Emanci- 
 pation failed to produce the remedial effects which had been 
 expected of it ; distress, outrages, and coercion still followed 
 each other in regular succession, and when Mr. Sharman 
 Crawford introduced his first Tenant-right Bill in 1835, the 
 state of the Irish peasantry was as hopeless as ever. It 
 remained equally hopeless when the Eeport of the Devon 
 Commission appeared, ten years later, containing the most 
 
 1 This article was published after the rejection of Mr. Forster's Compensa- 
 tion for Disturbance Bill, and before the Eeport of Lord Bessborough's 
 Commission.
 
 74 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 exhaustive collection of information on the agrarian state of 
 Ireland that has yet been laid before the public. 
 
 It is needless to say that all the Bills founded on this 
 Report proved no less abortive than Mr. Sharman Crawford's 
 original Tenant-right Bill, and that no important reform of 
 the Irish Land System was effected before the year 1870, with 
 the single exception of Lord Cardwell's Act, passed in 1860. 
 That Act has been persistently misrepresented as dictated 
 by an exclusive partiality for the interests of landlords. In 
 reality, while it declared the relation of landlord and tenant to 
 be founded on contract, express or implied, and not on tenure, 
 it contained several provisions in favour of tenants' interests. 
 For instance, it gave every tenant a right to removable fixtures 
 erected by himself, so long as they should not be erected con- 
 trary to any agreement, and disabled landlords from recovering 
 by distress more than the rent of the last preceding year. 
 But it did not grapple, or profess to grapple, with that inse- 
 curity of tenure which all impartial authorities, from Edmund 
 Spenser downwards, had recognised as the master evil of the 
 Irish Land System. Until 1870, it might truly be said that 
 the Imperial Parliament, largely composed of landlords, had re- 
 jected every definite proposal for the abatement of this evil, 
 and had apparently accepted the shallow aphorism attributed 
 to Lord Palmerston, that tenant-right means landlord-wrong. 
 On the other hand, it would be utterly unjust to describe the 
 government of Ireland during the first sixty-eight years of 
 the present century as oppressive, or to ignore the many 
 beneficent and enlightened measures passed by the Imperial 
 Parliament for the good of Ireland. By the National System 
 of Education, the ultimate source of power, both moral and 
 political, was brought within the reach of the people. By 
 the Tithe Commutation Act, the worst grievances arising from 
 the Church Establishment were abated. By the Poor Law, 
 afterwards amended so as to make half the rates payable by 
 landlords, an universal right to indoor relief was established, 
 which saved the lives of myriads during the Great Famine. 
 Had this right been extended to outdoor relief, half the nation
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 75 
 
 would have been on the rates ; but the Evicted Tenantry Act 
 of 1848, still in force, enabled temporary provision to be made 
 for homeless paupers, without bringing them into the work- 
 house. By various Acts, nearly twenty millions sterling was 
 advanced for public works in Ireland, out of the Exchequer, 
 and nearly one-third of this sum was remitted. By the 
 Encumbered Estates Act, millions of acres were rescued from 
 the hands of embarrassed and broken-down proprietors, to 
 be placed in those of purchasers, mostly Irishmen, who, it 
 was hoped, might become resident and improving landlords. 
 There is no reason whatever to suppose that a native Parlia- 
 ment would have done more for the benefit of the country, and 
 much reason to doubt whether it could have maintained 
 the peace of the country. Nor must it be forgotten that for 
 some years remedial legislation was arrested by the Bepeal 
 agitation, and the revolutionary movement of the Young Ire- 
 land party. But for such interruptions, checking the sympathy 
 of Englishmen and Scotchmen with the distress of Irish 
 peasants, the list of Irish reforms would assuredly have been 
 longer, and the great measures of 1869 and 1870 would pro- 
 bably have been carried much earlier. 
 
 These measures have been described by Dr. W. N. Hancock, 
 the eminent Irish statist, as ' surpassing in their benefits what 
 the Roman Catholics would have gained under King William's 
 Treaty of Limerick, if Parliament had carried out that treaty ; 
 or what Pitt would have conferred on Ireland after the Union, 
 if King George III. had allowed him to fulfil his pledges.' 
 The Parliament of 1868 had been elected upon a pledge of 
 * Justice to Ireland,' and manfully addressed itself to fulfil its 
 task not indeed ' according to Irish ideas,' but from an Irish 
 point of view, and with a single-minded regard for Irish in- 
 terests. It is the less necessary to dwell on the Irish Church 
 Act, because it was tacitly accepted by Irish Catholics as a 
 complete legislative surrender of Protestant ascendancy, and 
 because Irish Protestants, while they absolutely condemned 
 that surrender, have never disputed the liberality of the 
 principles upon which the process of disendowment was con-
 
 76 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 ducted. With a few slight exceptions, perfect religious equality 
 may now be said to prevail in Ireland, and, if the Eoman 
 Catholics still labour under the constructive operation of one 
 or two disabling statutes not yet repealed, they enjoy infinitely 
 greater liberty than is allowed them in France or Germany. 
 Upon the whole, the policy of the Church Act has been justi- 
 fied by success. It is true that it called forth quite as little 
 gratitude as the Tithe Commutation Act, and was far less 
 efficacious in securing the loyalty of the Koman Catholic 
 priesthood than 'concurrent endowment,' without disestab- 
 lishment, might probably have been. Still, it levelled the one 
 standing trophy of English supremacy in Ireland, and the one 
 visible apple of sectarian discord. Protestantism has suffered 
 little by the withdrawal of State patronage, Catholicism has 
 become somewhat less aggressive, and the mutual animosities 
 of Irishmen turn somewhat less on religious antipathies than 
 formerly. The results of the Land Act, on the contrary, 
 must be profoundly disappointing to its authors. Neverthe- 
 less, it was prepared with the most elaborate care, after a 
 thorough investigation of the problem to be solved, and a 
 patient comparison of all the schemes that had been pro- 
 pounded for its solution during the twenty-five years since the 
 appearance of the Devon Commission Keport. The publica- 
 tions of Mr. Butt alone on ' Fixity of Tenure ' are far more 
 instructive and suggestive than all the speeches that have yet 
 been made by the leaders of the present Land League, and 
 the literary discussion that preceded the Land Act of 1870 was 
 probably more voluminous, as it was certainly more worthy of 
 preservation, than has been produced by the recent agitation. 
 It may therefore be well to analyse briefly the main provi- 
 sions of that measure, before proceeding to consider its opera- 
 tion, and the contemporary events of Irish history, during 
 the last decade. 
 
 The Irish Land Act of 1870 was founded, in its con- 
 ception, on a sound basis. Its framers clearly perceived that 
 no mere reversal of the legal presumption applicable to im- 
 provements could satisfy either the equity or the exigency of
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 77 
 
 the case, since the mass of Irish tenant-farmers were not the 
 creatures of contract at all, but the survival of an ancient and 
 genuine, though disinherited, peasantry. They recognised 
 the absurdity and the injustice of extending the Ulster custom, 
 on the faith of which existing tenants had paid large sums of 
 money, to provinces or districts in which existing tenants had 
 taken farms without paying a penny. They deliberately re- 
 jected both the fixity of tenure, in the form of sixty-three-year 
 leases, originally advocated by Mr. Butt, and the perpetuity of 
 tenure for which he afterwards pleaded with equal versatility. 
 Their efforts were directed, and wisely directed, to reconcile the 
 rights of landlords with those of tenants, by giving the latter 
 security of tenure without reducing the former to receivers 
 of a fixed ground-rent, and by enabling willing tenants to 
 purchase from willing landlords the fee-simple of their farms, 
 upon favourable terms and reasonable conditions. 
 
 The first part of the Act, dealing with the occupation of 
 agricultural land, recognised the existence of two agrarian con- 
 stitutions in Ireland. It affirmed, for the first time, the valid- 
 ity of the Ulster tenant-right on all estates, whether in or out 
 of Ulster, which could be proved to have been subject to it. 
 The limits of the custom on each estate were left to judicial 
 interpretation, so that ' office rules ' fixing a maximum for the 
 price of tenant-right would come as legitimately within the 
 cognisance of the court as the tenant-right itself. But it per- 
 mitted any tenant, at his own discretion, to forego his privi- 
 leges under Ulster tenant-right and claim the rights granted 
 to all Irish tenants outside its sphere. These rights were 
 never laid down in the Act with logical precision, but were 
 rather left to be inferred from the joint operation of its various 
 clauses. It did not purport to overrule the established doc- 
 trine of English law, that land is the sole property of the 
 landlord, and that no tenant, as distinct from a copyholder, 
 has any proprietary interest in it whatever. Had it done so, it 
 would have directly confiscated a part of the interests recently 
 purchased in the Landed Estates Court, under the solemn 
 guarantee of the State not to speak of interests belonging to
 
 78 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 hereditary owners. At the same time, it directly gave tenants 
 what must be called a beneficial right of occupation, by impos- 
 ing on the rightful owner a penalty for ' disturbance,' varying 
 inversely with the value of the holding, in addition to all 
 claims for improvements. Mr. Richey, in his admirable trea- 
 tise on the Irish Land Laws, describes this provision as ' an 
 enactment whereby the amusement of evicting tenants was 
 made the monopoly of the wealthier proprietors.' It may 
 equally be described as an enactment for encouraging the con- 
 solidation of farms upon the death of small tenants, for it is 
 manifestly the interest of a landlord to escape the liability to 
 compensation on the highest scale. Thus, whereas a tenant 
 holding a farm under 10/. on the Government valuation may 
 obtain a maximum of seven years' rent for disturbance, a 
 tenant whose farm is valued above 100/. can obtain only one 
 year's rent. By converting ten small farms into one large 
 farm, a landlord may therefore reduce a liability of 700/. or 
 upwards to little more than 100/., with the further advantage 
 of collecting his rent more easily. 
 
 It is superfluous to dwell on the minor checks and qualifi- 
 cations by which this part of the Act is fenced and guarded. 
 But it is essential to notice several clauses b} 7 which the con- 
 flicting principle of contract was reimported into the new 
 agrarian code. It was expressly provided that a lease for 
 thirty-one years or upwards should defeat a tenant's claim to 
 compensation for disturbance, though not his presumptive 
 claim to compensation for improvements of a permanent cha- 
 racter. Again, it was provided that any tenant, whose holdings 
 were valued above 50/. a year, might contract himself out of 
 the Act altogether, both as to compensation for disturbance 
 and compensation for improvements. Under the so-called 
 Equities Clause, which applies to Ulster also, the judge was 
 empowered, in all cases, to entertain all considerations which 
 can properly affect the assessment of damages, and especially 
 the conduct of the tenant himself. Under other clauses, which 
 do not apply to Ulster, non-payment of rent, or certain posi- 
 tive breaches of covenant, were made a conclusive liar to any
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 79 
 
 claim for disturbance, with an exception in favour of holdings 
 valued at 15Z. or under, if the court should deem the rent ex- 
 orbitant. The scope of this clause, as originally proposed, 
 was much wider. Even as limited by an amendment carried 
 in the House of Lords, it introduced into the law of Ireland 
 the pregnant idea of fixing rents by a Government valuation, 
 and, so far, countenanced one article of the new charter pro- 
 claimed by the Land League. 
 
 The provisions designed to facilitate the creation of a peasant 
 proprietary, and known generally as the ' Bright clauses ' of 
 the Land Act, embodied two distinct schemes. The one merely 
 enabled the machinery of the Landed Estates Court to be em- 
 ployed by tenants contracting with their landlords for the 
 purchase of the fee simple for their holdings. This scheme 
 proved almost abortive, not only by reason of the difficulties 
 always involved in selling estates under settlement, but also 
 because the court seldom found it possible to sanction these 
 arrangements between landlords and tenants without injury 
 to incumbrancers or reversioners. The other scheme enabled 
 the Board of Works to advance sums, not exceeding two-thirds 
 of the whole purchase-money, to any tenant desiring to pur- 
 chase his own holding on an estate put up for sale in the 
 Landed Estates Court. This advance was to be repaid by an 
 annuity, at the rate of 5 per cent., to continue for thirty-five 
 years. The court was expressly empowered, indeed, to encou- 
 rage such transactions by selling the estate in several lots, or 
 otherwise, so far as might be consistent with the interests of 
 the parties concerned ; but few tenants availed themselves of 
 the privilege. One explanation of this fact is that more liberal 
 terms of pre-emption, in respect both of price and of advance, 
 had already been offered by the Church Act to occupying 
 tenants of glebe lands. But another explanation is assuredly 
 to be found in the greater security of tenure guaranteed to 
 Irish tenants by the Land Act itself, and in the hope of ulte- 
 rior confiscation, sedulously propagated among them by 
 popular agitators and the Nationalist press. 
 
 If we now review the policy and operation of the Irish
 
 80 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 Land Act, calmly and dispassionately, by the light of ten 
 years' experience, we cannot hesitate to pronounce it a failure 
 politically, and a very partial success economically. While 
 some recent writers, including Lord Sherbrooke, ignore it alto- 
 gether, Mr. Barry O'Brien goes out of his way to avow his 
 belief that it was never expected by its framers to be a final 
 settlement of the Irish Land Question. This belief will be 
 shared by no one conversant with the history of the measure ; 
 but all may now discern, what some discerned in 1870, that 
 it contained in itself the seeds of inevitable miscarriage. The 
 one grand rule which should have governed its construction 
 was the necessity of drawing a broad and deep line between 
 past and future claims. Considering the origin and growth 
 of the Irish Land System, the long neglect of their primary 
 duties by too many Irish landlords, the value added to the 
 soil by the labour of Irish tenants, the predominance of cus- 
 tom over contract in the rural economy of Ireland, and the 
 variety of equitable and imperfect rights which had sprung up 
 out of all these circumstances, it was highly expedient, and no 
 more than just, to award a liberal retrospective compensation 
 for past claims of tenant-right. But it was a perilous, and 
 has proved a ruinous, mistake to perpetuate the existence of 
 such claims in the future. Three centuries ago Edmund 
 Spenser recommended that a commission should be issued, 
 1 to inquire throughout all Ireland, beginning with one county 
 first and so resting till the same were settled, by the verdict 
 of a sound and substantial jury, how every man holdeth his 
 land, of whom, and by what tenure ; so that every one should 
 be admitted to show and exhibit what right he hath, or by 
 what services he holdeth his land.' This suggestion, it is 
 true, was not made in the interest of Irish tenants, but it was 
 made with a distinct view to substituting a system of tenure 
 by contract for that of tenure by status, and it would not be 
 unworthy of consideration, even at this eleventh hour, if the 
 object were to close accounts with the past and to make a new 
 departure for the future upon the footing of contract. Un- 
 happily, this object was not kept steadily before themselves by
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 81 
 
 the framers of the Irish Land Act. They desired, it is true, 
 to encourage leases for thirty-one years ; but they did not hold 
 out to landlords or tenants adequate inducements for insisting 
 upon leasehold tenure, or arm the courts with power to exert 
 any effective pressure in this direction. By giving every tenant 
 a claim to compensation for disturbance, they propped up the 
 loose and unstable system of yearly tenancy, and created new 
 facilities of borrowing, which have been grossly abused, and 
 which have largely contributed to bring about the present 
 crisis. By leaving the landlord an indefinite right of raising the 
 rent, and by making non-payment of rent a bar to a tenant's 
 claim (except in the case of very small holdings), they paved 
 the way for an anti-rent crusade, which has already assumed 
 most formidable proportions, and which Lord Beaconsfield de- 
 serves the credit of having very clearly predicted. By placing 
 Ulster customs in a category by themselves, instead of bring- 
 ing them within the control of a comprehensive law, they 
 established a mischievous dualism, which has borne evil fruit, 
 tempting either class of tenants to covet the rights without the 
 correlative duties of the other class. In short, the intended 
 settlement of Irish land tenure by the Act of 1870 has, in 
 effect, left it more unsettled than ever. In spite of the assur- 
 ances freely given by its promoters, it undermined, and could 
 not but undermine, the ideas of property consecrated by the 
 law of England, and theretofore respected, though not without 
 protest, by the Irish peasantry. But it did not satisfy, and 
 could not satisfy, the craving of the Irish peasantry for the 
 undisturbed possession of their holdings, subject to a rent, if 
 possible fixed, but at all events not variable at the discretion 
 of their landlords. No gift of prophecy was needed to foresee 
 that it would be followed by communistic demands for a more 
 wholesale transfer of proprietary rights from Irish landlords 
 to Irish tenants. But the precise form which these demands 
 would take, and the rapid conversion of English minds to wild 
 theories hitherto unknown to jurists or economists, could not 
 have been foreseen, and may well startle foreign students of 
 political life in England. 
 
 G
 
 82 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 At first, however, and up to the early part of 1879, the 
 practical result of the Irish Land Act was not wholly unsatis- 
 factory. In the year 1872 a Select Committee was appointed 
 by the House of Lords to investigate various charges which 
 had been brought against the judicial administration of the 
 new law. The Report of this Committee was, on the whole, 
 favourable, and for a while it appeared that the Act had done 
 little more than compel bad landlords to imitate the practice 
 of good landlords. Under the influence of prosperous seasons 
 rents had an upward tendency, and were regularly paid ; land 
 commanded as high a price in the market as before ; and little 
 was heard of complaints on the part of the tenants, except in 
 Ulster, where the largest concessions to customary tenant-right 
 had been made. Nevertheless, a profound, though unseen, 
 change was really passing over the relations between Irish 
 landlords and tenants, doubtless accelerated by the influence 
 of the Ballot Act. Whatever remained of the old feudal land 
 tenure had been ruthlessly swept away by the Act of 1860, 
 which professed to establish absolute free trade in land, and, 
 in a purely legal sense, the Act of 1870 was a partial relapse 
 towards an older and less perfect type. But the Act of 1870, 
 in a social and political sense, was a far more defeudalising 
 measure than its predecessor. It utterly destroyed all senti- 
 ments of family allegiance or personal loyalty among Irish 
 tenants, and absolved Irish landlords from all claims upon 
 their sympathy and generosity. Though a tenant's position 
 remained ostensibly the same until he was served by his land- 
 lord with a process of ejectment, and though no very great 
 number of processes were actually served, the idea of eject- 
 ment has never thenceforward been absent from the mind of 
 either, and the lawyer has been in constant requisition for 
 private consultation at home as well as in the agent's office. 
 Since their rights have been strictly confined and seriously 
 curtailed by the Legislature, the landlords have not felt bound 
 to abstain from exercising them, and tenants have seldom 
 lost an opportunity of pushing their new powers to extremes, 
 generally falling back on ad misericordiam appeals, when they
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 83 
 
 found the law against them. Money-lenders, of course, have 
 done their best to utilise the qualified security of tenure granted 
 by the Act, and credit has been given by shopkeepers and 
 banks to farmers who, but for this, would have been unable to 
 borrow a shilling. When the bad seasons of 1878 and 1879 
 impoverished the weakest members of this class, all their cre- 
 ditors, except their landlords, pressed for immediate payment, 
 and, however great the forbearance of the landlord, he was de- 
 nounced as a robber if he claimed more than a fraction of his 
 rent. But in the five or six preceding years, the landlord's 
 right to his full rent, which had been as vigorously maintained 
 by Mr. Butt as it was emphatically reserved by the Act, seemed 
 to be freely and honestly respected by the great body of Irish 
 tenants. 
 
 Yet it cannot be said that, even during this comparatively 
 hopeful interval, Ireland had rest from her ancient curse 
 of agrarian and political conspiracy. A rapid glance at the 
 chronicle of the decade, beginning with 1870, will suffice to 
 dispel the illusion that redress of grievances, without coercion, 
 produced contentment and peace among the Irish people. On 
 the contrary, there is too much force in the remark of a con- 
 temporary writer, that ' the first effects of the stirring of the 
 stagnant slough of Irish despond by the dredge of legislation 
 had been to bring all the mud and refuse to the surface at 
 once.' Fenianism had almost died out ; but Lord Cairns, 
 speaking in 1870, proved by statistics that agrarian outrages 
 had suddenly increased to an alarming extent in 1869, the 
 year of the Irish Church Act, including fifty-nine offences of 
 the worst kind, and no less than eighteen assassinations. At 
 the end of that year fresh troops were despatched to Ireland, 
 and in the course of 1870 the country became more settled ; 
 but the improvement was not due to concession. In 1870 it 
 was thought necessary to pass the Peace Preservation Act, 
 and Mr. Fortescue, in proposing it on March 17, declared 
 that agrarian crime had been more rife in Ireland during the 
 preceding fourteen months than at any time since the year 
 1852. In the next year (1871), Parliament not only decided 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 to renew the Act for two years, but, on the recommendation 
 of a very strong Committee, passed the far more stringent 
 Westmeath Act, whereby the Habeas Corpus Act was sus- 
 pended in that county and certain adjoining districts, for the 
 same period of two years. The immediate consequence of 
 this measure was the disappearance of several miscreants 
 who had been the arch-directors of assassination, the sum- 
 mary arrest of a few others, and the collapse of terrorism. 
 In 1872 Ireland was happy in the dulness of its annals, and 
 its peaceable inhabitants breathed freely under the salutary 
 protection of two Coercion Acts. In 1873 the agitation for 
 ' Home Rule,' at first called ' Federalism,' began to grow 
 more active ; and both these Acts were again continued for 
 two more years. As for the rejection of the Irish University 
 Bill, which had so important an effect on English politics in 
 that year, it was probably regarded by the Irish millions with as 
 little concern as the failure of Sir C. O'Loghlen to obtain for 
 Roman Catholics a complete relief from disabilities in respect 
 of endowments, or the constitution of an Irish Local Govern- 
 ment Board. Measures of this kind have a real interest for 
 thoughtful and far-sighted men, and may ultimately come to 
 be appreciated by the Ireland of the future. But no adminis- 
 trative reforms, except those which strengthen the hands of 
 Government, can go far to pacify the Ireland of the present, 
 and the political creed of an Irish peasant begins and ends 
 with a passionate assertion of his agrarian rights. 
 
 After the General Election of 1874, Mr. Butt introduced 
 his resolution in favour of Home Rule, and supported it with 
 a speech in which he bluntly repudiated the obligation of 
 political gratitude, alleging that Irish questions were never 
 taken up by English statesmen except for the sake of party 
 ends. Mr. Butt, however, was too sound a lawyer, and too 
 much a Conservative at heart, to conduct a socialistic revolu- 
 tion. So long as the Home Rule Party remained under his 
 guidance, its avowed aims were kept within safe limits ; and 
 even his Land Bill of 1876, though it reflected the more 
 exorbitant demands of his followers, was not entirely incon-
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 85 
 
 sistent with the principles adopted in 1870. This moderation 
 was fatal to his control over the Home Rule movement, as 
 O'Connell's refusal to defy the law had been fatal to his 
 control over the Young Ireland movement. In 1876 his 
 ascendancy was rudely challenged by Mr. Smyth, an old 
 Eepealer, and two years later, after vain protests against the 
 new tactics of Parliamentary Obstruction, he finally resigned 
 the Home Rule leadership, and shortly afterwards died. 
 Meanwhile events had marched rapidly, and Ireland presented 
 a very different aspect after the General Election of 1880 from 
 that which it had worn six years earlier. 
 
 Perhaps 1875 may be taken as the calmest year in this 
 period, and the ' Times ' correspondent was emboldened to 
 state that never before had Ireland ' appeared more tranquil, 
 more free from crime, more prosperous and contented.' 
 Some naturally welcomed this happy condition as the fruit of 
 remedial legislation ; others surmised that it might be due to 
 a belief that a Tory Government would not trifle with rebel- 
 lion or anarchy. But it is at least significant that in this 
 year the Peace Preservation Act was renewed, with some 
 modifications, for a further term of five years, after a decisive 
 speech from Lord Hartington, in which he pointed out that 
 from two hundred to three hundred agrarian outrages had 
 been perpetrated in each of the three preceding years. The 
 Westmeath Act was renewed at the same time for two years. 
 The experiment of governing Ireland without stringent 
 measures of coercion had not been tried since 1869, and was 
 not to be tried again until 1880. The year 1876 passed off 
 quietly, but it is probable that the summary rejection of two 
 Irish Bills for the reform of the parliamentary and municipal 
 franchise, as well as of the Sunday Closing Bill, may have 
 contributed to strengthen the extreme section of the Home 
 Rule Party. At all events, in 1877, a system of organised 
 obstruction was commenced in the House of Commons, with 
 the acknowledged purpose of rendering the legislative union 
 of Great Britain and Ireland intolerable. It was somewhat 
 mitigated in the next session, until concessions on Inter-
 
 86 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 mediate and University Education could be obtained from the 
 late Government ; but the irreconcilable spirit of which it 
 was the expression broke out fiercely during the debate on 
 Lord Leitrim's murder in 1878, and in 1879 the prevalence 
 of agricultural distress in Mayo and Galway offered the 
 agitators just such an opportunity as they desired. Though 
 a Bill for the relief of distress in _ these and other parts was 
 promptly introduced and passed, a grand anti-rent campaign 
 was opened in the West by Messrs. Parnell and O'Connor 
 Power during the month of June. From that moment 
 appeals to the patriotism of Irish farmers have been almost 
 superseded by undisguised appeals to their cupidity. The 
 contagion of the new propaganda spread like wildfire ; the 
 Irish National Convention formed in the autumn was very 
 s )on forgotten ; but all its most dangerous elements were 
 absorbed into the Land League, and subscriptions were poured 
 in from America to aid in delivering Ireland at once from 
 landlordism and from English rule. The untiring efforts of Mr. 
 Parnell and his colleagues made themselves powerfully felt 
 in the General Election, and if the Home Eule Party here 
 and there lost a seat, it soon appeared that its members were far 
 better disciplined and far more obedient to political dictation. 
 Such was the state of Ireland when Mr. Gladstone assumed 
 office with a majority so overwhelming as to make him inde- 
 pendent of Irish support. He at once resolved to abandon all 
 exceptional safeguards for the maintenance of law and order, 
 to fall back on the common law, and to rely on remedial legis- 
 lation alone for the pacification of the country. The Peace 
 Preservation Act, which the late Government had been in no 
 hurry to renew before the General Election, was allowed to 
 expire, and it was announced on June 15 that a small ltoyal 
 Commission would be appointed to inquire into the working of 
 the Irish Land Act. But Mr. O'Connor Power had already 
 introduced a bill to disable or deter landlords from evicting 
 tenants or exacting exorbitant rents. He was induced to drop 
 tin's bill on Mr. Forster's undertaking to deal with the alleged 
 grievance of small tenants in Mayo, Galway, and elsewhere by
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 87 
 
 a clause to be inserted in a new bill for Eelief of Distress in 
 Ireland. On second thoughts he preferred to develope the 
 promised clause into an independent bill, ' to make a tempo- 
 rary provision with respect to compensation for disturbance 
 in certain cases of ejectment for non-payment of rents in cer- 
 tain parts of Ireland.' 
 
 The history of this ill-starred measure is too fresh in the 
 public memory to need more than a cursory recapitulation. 
 In proposing it, Mr. Forster was careful to assure the House 
 that it was not a concession to the anti-rent agitation, that it 
 would operate only over a certain area, for no more than two 
 seasons, and that it would mainly affect small tenants with no 
 other means of living, of whose necessities, due to bad harvests, 
 an unfair advantage might otherwise be taken. But no such 
 assurances could avail to conceal the fact that it engrafted 
 upon the law the germ of ' fixity of tenure ' and ' fair rents,' 
 and no one even moderately acquainted with Ireland believed 
 for a moment that it would be possible to curtain in its 
 influence within prescribed limits of space or time. The 
 germ of ' free sale ' afterwards found its way into the bill, in 
 the form of an alternative clause, enabling the defaulting 
 tenant to remain in possession, if the court should find that 
 reasonable terms had been refused by the landlord, ' without 
 the offer of any reasonable alternative.' After undergoing 
 infinite modification and amendment in the course of debate, 
 the bill passed the Commons, but was thrown out by a 
 majority of 282 to 51 in the Lords. It is needless to add that 
 much of the disorder that has since prevailed in Ireland has 
 been attributed by the one party to its introduction, and by 
 the other party to its rejection. 
 
 It is here right to notice an argument advanced in support 
 of the bill, which seems to have had considerable weight in 
 the Commons, but which is obviously founded on an unsound 
 analogy. It was confidently asserted that, under the French 
 law, losses arising from a wholesale failure of crops are to be 
 shared between landlord and tenant, the inference being that 
 in Ireland they ought not to fall exclusively on the latter.
 
 88 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 But the fact is that, by the Code Napoleon, this rule is only 
 applicable to yearly tenancies, and only takes effect when the 
 whole, or at least half, of the crop is destroyed by causes 
 beyond the farmer's control. In cases of tenancy for more 
 than one year, it is expressly provided that extraordinary pro- 
 fits shall be set off against extraordinary losses, an account 
 being taken of both at the expiration of the lease. Now, it 
 has been well pointed out by Mr. Richey that the whole French 
 law of landlord and tenant is founded on rigid and consistent 
 principles of contract. ' It is the most complete and equitable 
 application of the rules of free trade to the case of the letting 
 and hiring of land.' Since the Irish Land Act of 1870, the 
 Irish law of landlord and tenant has been founded on very 
 different, if not on opposite, principles, the landlord alone 
 being subjected to contract, while the tenant is given statut- 
 able rights of occupancy and compensation for improvements 
 altogether outside his agreement. It would be a strange 
 piece of legislation to borrow from the French law a provision 
 which implies the absence of any tenant-right, and foist it 
 upon an agrarian system in which tenant-right is fully recog- 
 nised, even if this were done prospectively. But to indemnify 
 against unexpected losses farmers who have obtained their 
 holdings at a rent calculated to cover such risks, without 
 taking account of unexpected gains, and to do this at the 
 landlord's sole expense, would be an act of palpable injustice 
 which no English economist would defend, if its true nature 
 were understood. 1 
 
 Another argument on which much stress was laid, was 
 the general disposition of landlords to screw up rents pro- 
 gressively, for the very purpose of acquiring the right to 
 evict, without compensation, for non-payment. No evidence 
 was considered necessary to support this odious charge, for 
 the verification or refutation of which we must await the 
 Report of the Irish Land Commission. The judicial statistics 
 
 1 Nor is this all. The Frenc law expressly permits the parties to contract 
 themselves out of its provisions, whereas the Irish tenant was to be protected 
 against himself by compulsory legislation.
 
 . THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 89 
 
 of 1879, however, furnish some valuable information on the 
 actual number of ' ejectments served ' and ' ejectments 
 entered ' on the books of the County Courts during that year. 
 Hence it appears that, whereas 6,738 County Court eject- 
 ments were served in 1877 and 8,381 in 1878, 9,703 were 
 served in 1879 ; and that in the ejectments entered there was 
 an increase of 2,110 in 1879, following an increase of 1,559 
 in 1878, and of 320 in 1877. On the other hand, the number 
 of cases actually tried under the Irish Land Act was consider- 
 ably less in 1879 than in 1878, amounting to less than one 
 in every 1,000 holdings on yearly tenancies. Moreover, the 
 County Court ' ejectments executed,' though showing an in- 
 crease of 34 per cent., as compared with those for 1878, did 
 not exceed 2,670, or between one-third and one-fourth of the 
 * ejectments entered.' Almost the whole of the increase was 
 due to ejectments for non-payment of rent, and, since the right 
 to compensation for disturbance is generally forfeitable on 
 non-payment of rent, unless under the Ulster custom, the 
 aggregate amount of compensation awarded to tenants in 
 Munster, Leinster, and Connaught was much smaller in 1879 
 than in the previous year. We also learn from the official 
 returns that ' other creditors were no less importunate than 
 those connected with land ; ' indeed, ' the number of civil bill 
 decrees, or dismisses, unconnected with ejectments, executed 
 by sheriffs or special bailiffs, increased from 21,678 in 1878, 
 to 35,091 in 1879, or by 62 per cent.' This pressure from 
 creditors bore heavily on the cottier-tenants, care-takers, 
 servants, and herdsmen, in the rural districts, but ' there was 
 also great pressure on the labouring-classes in the large and 
 small towns ; the warrants to special bailiffs against weekly 
 tenants in towns having increased from 8,862 to 10,549, or 19 
 per cent.' The fair inference would seem to be that Irish land- 
 lords, who are generally the last creditors to be paid, were 
 quite as forbearing as any other creditors. Some of them may 
 have seized the opportunity, as in 1848, to clear their lands of 
 unprofitable cottier-tenants, but the inquiries of Mr. Tuke 
 and others do not bear out the impression that many were
 
 90 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 guilty of so heartless a policy. There is, indeed, far more 
 reason to believe that many well-to-do tenants accepted large 
 abatements of rent from impoverished landlords, while they 
 were themselves lodging considerable sums of money in the 
 banks. Nevertheless, the Eeport of Dr. Hancock on the 
 statistics of savings in Ireland shows an aggregate diminution 
 of investments in the year ending June 30, 1880, as compared 
 with the year ending June 30, 1879, to the extent of 838,000L 
 This diminution is chiefly due to a falling off of deposits and 
 cash balances at Joint Stock Banks, the decrease of deposits 
 in Trustees' Savings Banks being fully covered by an increase 
 of those in Post Office Savings Banks. 
 
 Nearly five months have now elapsed since the Disturbance 
 Bill was thrown out, and the state of Ireland during the 
 whole of this period has been such as to recall the worst pas- 
 sages of her social history in the present century. No official 
 record of the agrarian outrages committed throughout Ireland 
 in 1880 has yet been published, but the charge of Mr. Justice 
 Fitzgerald to the grand jury for the province of Munster, 
 delivered on December 7, contains a deplorable catalogue of 
 ' extraordinary offences ' committed in that province alone, 
 during the preceding four months. This catalogue does not 
 profess to be exhaustive, and, so far as regards the county of 
 Limerick, it represents only the returns for the preceding six 
 weeks. Nevertheless, it includes two murders, sixty-nine cases 
 of arson, and 287 cases of threatening letters, generally con- 
 taining threats of murder, besides a long array of such cases 
 as cattle-maiming, malicious injuries to property, firing into 
 dwelling-houses, and forcible seizure of premises by armed 
 parties. It is well known that December was the worst month 
 of the whole year, and, when the full statistics are published, 
 it will probably turn out to have produced more agrarian out- 
 rages than any month for at least a quarter of a century. 
 
 It is a very poor consolation to know that atrocities were 
 even more numerous, and marked, if possible, by greater 
 brutality, in the generation before the Great Famine, which 
 is sometimes depicted as a Golden Age ; that an average of
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 91 
 
 about 3,000 ' extraordinary offences ' were committed in all 
 Ireland during a triennial period beginning with 1830, and 
 that about eighty of these were homicides. Not only was 
 Ireland then more populous, and its population far more 
 wretched, but there was no Poor Law, and no popular griev- 
 ance except the political disabilities of Catholics had then been 
 redressed. Moreover, no mere enumeration of outrages can 
 give the faintest conception of the anarchy which has lately 
 ruled in Ireland. After the massacre of prisoners, Paris was 
 tolerably quiet under the Commune, for the simple reason that 
 no man dared to disobey its mandates Ubi solitudinem 
 faciunt, pacem appellant. A similar peace has been established 
 in some parts of Ireland. Suits relating to land have almost 
 ceased in some of the Civil Bill Courts, and the lawyers have 
 actually been engaged in drawing up memorials to the Land 
 League Committees which have usurped their place. Process- 
 servers and bailiffs have been stoned, ' carded,' and otherwise 
 maltreated, until process-serving has ceased ; men, and 
 women too, have been tortured for honestly paying their 
 rents, until rents are paid by stealth, if at all, and sometimes 
 returned by kindly landlords to save the tenant from the 
 risk of further barbarities. Sheriffs have actually declined to 
 execute ejectment writs, because the ejected tenant would at 
 once be reinstated by force. Landlords and agents cannot 
 stir out unless fully armed, and some are virtually captives in 
 their own houses, where they hold themselves constantly ready 
 for a murderous attack. All this is done with almost com- 
 plete impunity. The culprits are seldom arrested and tried ; 
 they are hardly ever convicted. What Mr. Justice Fitzgerald 
 said, ' in calm and measured language,' of Munster, is still 
 more true of Connaught : ' In several districts, embracing a 
 large portion of the province, true liberty has ceased to exist, 
 and intolerable tyranny prevails. Life is not secure, right is 
 disregarded, the process of the law cannot be enforced, and 
 dishonesty and lawlessness disgrace the land.' In short, a 
 perfect Eeign of Terror has been established by the Land 
 League, against which the Queen's Government appears to be
 
 92 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 powerless, and because its laws are, in general, passively 
 obeyed, we are invited, forsooth, to admire its comparative 
 moderation in the distribution of its vengeance. It is essen- 
 tially a revival of Whiteboyism, but with an extended sphere 
 of action ; for the same practices are employed to settle family 
 feuds, disputes between neighbours, and even the claims of 
 importunate creditors. Not that lawful authority is ostensibly 
 in abeyance. The police are hurried from one point to 
 another ; persons demanding protection are not refused it ; 
 and detachments of troops are sometimes employed to escort 
 bodies of police or to patrol the Queen's highway. Magis- 
 trates are reminded by official circulars of all the powers 
 which they possess in law, but are utterly unable to exert for 
 want of evidence. Yet the emergency has not been deemed 
 grave enough to call for exceptional measures of repression ; 
 and though Mr. Parnell and some of his colleagues are now at 
 last on their trial for conspiracy, they have remained on bail 
 for many weeks, out-heroding their former utterances by 
 more and more violent declamations. 
 
 Such is the last page in the last chapter of Irish History, 
 and it is one of which Englishmen, no less than Irishmen, 
 have reason to be heartily ashamed. This is not the place 
 to consider whether this agrarian rebellion might not have 
 been averted by firm and wise counsels a few months ago ; 
 how Pitt, or Peel, or Palmerston would have dealt with it ; 
 or how far the difficulties of Mr. Gladstone in now dealing 
 with it are aggravated by the imaginary necessity of con- 
 ciliating an imaginary section of the Liberal Party, bent on 
 crushing landlordism, as Strafford crushed liberty, in Ireland, 
 the better to prosecute their designs against it in England. 
 Statesmen have not to dispense retributive justice, but to 
 mould national life out of existing facts. However iniquitous 
 the means by which the Irish Land Question has again been 
 forced upon the attention of Parliament, and whether or not 
 the ignorant peasantry of Ireland have been wilfully hounded 
 on to crime for this purpose, the duty of Parliament is 
 simply to study the problem before it, and to devise, if it be
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 98 
 
 possible, a solution which may promote the permanent well- 
 being of the country. To propose such a solution is beyond 
 the scope of our present inquiry, but it may not be useless to 
 indicate certain of the conditions upon the observance of 
 which any scheme for an Irish land settlement must now 
 depend for its success. 
 
 1. The first of these conditions is the prompt and deter- 
 mined restoration of order. It is certain that no other 
 Government in Europe, and least of all that of the United 
 States, would have tolerated for a month the state of things 
 which has lasted and grown worse in Ireland ever since last 
 August. If the Constitution did not give them power enough 
 to put it down, the Executive would have asked the Legis- 
 lature for increased power, or, if that involved too much 
 delay, would have put it down by military force on their own 
 responsibility, and fallen back on an Act of Indemnity. It 
 may be that reasons will be given to justify the marvellous 
 longsuffering of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, and that posterity 
 will hereafter applaud their resolution to weather out the last 
 months of 1880 without resort to a Coercion Act. But these 
 , reasons must be grounded on high State policy, and not on 
 party exigencies ; nor will the phrase ' coercion ' impose on 
 posterity as easily as it does on some living politicians. If 
 the Irish nation were mainly composed of robbers and 
 assassins, it might doubtless be treated as a national wrong, 
 from an Irish point of view, to defend the minority against 
 robbery and assassination. But if the Irish nation is mainly 
 composed of peaceable citizens, without the moral courage to 
 resist or denounce a few handfuls of robbers and assassins, 
 who are thus enabled to intimidate whole counties, the 
 national wrong consists rather in a persistent refusal of 
 ' coercion.' It has never been alleged that a single innocent 
 person was arrested under the Westmeath Act, and the 
 incarceration of fourteen guilty persons for a limited period 
 sufficed to rid the inhabitants of that region from the 
 grinding tyranny of the Riband conspiracy under which they 
 had so long groaned. To coerce the guilty is to protect the
 
 94 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 innocent. It was said of old that Irishmen fear the Govern- 
 ment no longer than they see it. What they now see is, that 
 it is far safer to defy the law than it is to defy the Land 
 League ; and until they are convinced of the contrary, the 
 stronger power will command their allegiance. 
 
 2. Order having been restored, the Irish Land Question 
 must be reopened, but it will be worse than vain to consult 
 Irish ' public opinion ' upon the best method of solving it. 
 It is not too much to say that no public opinion, worthy of 
 the name, exists in Ireland, and that what passes for such is 
 chiefly fabricated by a press which stands alone in Europe for 
 scurrilous mendacity. For a trustworthy statement of the 
 reasons for departing from the settlement of 1870, we must 
 rely almost entirely on the forthcoming Report of the Irish 
 Land Commission. When that Report has been duly 
 weighed, it will soon be perceived that Ireland is no more an 
 agricultural unit than England, and that a different solution 
 of the Irish Land Question is required for different parts of 
 the island. In the west of Connaught, most of the so-called 
 tenants are essentially labourers, cultivating little plots on 
 which they could not maintain families even if they were 
 rent-free, and largely dependent on harvest-wages earned in 
 England. To root these cottiers in the soil would be to 
 prepare the ground for another famine. Though it may 
 possibly be found that some further relaxation of the Poor 
 Law might be safely allowed in their favour, and though 
 room might be provided for some on reclaimable waste lands, 
 common sense points to State-aided emigration as the one 
 boon which Parliament can offer the surplus population. 
 Again, in the rich grazing districts of Meath, in the eastern 
 counties within the bounds of the old English Pale, or along 
 some of the great river basins, little alteration of the present 
 law is even desired by the farmers, as distinct from their self- 
 constituted spokesmen. It is otherwise, no doubt, with the great 
 mass of small tenants holding tillage farms, whether in Ulster 
 or the other provinces, among whom the demand for the three 
 F's is becoming as popular, and for the same reasons, as the
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 95 
 
 demand for partial repudiation would be popular among the 
 needy taxpayers of a State burdened with a heavy national debt. 
 3. The real meaning of the ' three F's ' is not apparent 
 until their cumulative operation has been taken into account. 
 1 Fixity of tenure ' practically exists on thousands of Irish es- 
 tates, and especially on those of great absentee noblemen, even 
 to the extent of farms descending for generations in the same 
 family. ' Fair rents,' as opposed to rack-rents, are not less 
 the rule in Ireland than in England, where the competition 
 among tenants is never so keen, but where no one ever dis- 
 putes the application of supply and demand to agricultural 
 tenancies. Nor is it by any means clear why an Irish farmer 
 who objects to his rent as too high should not obtain compen- 
 sation for his improvements under the Land Act, and take one 
 of the many vacant farms in England, which are now to be 
 had at something far below a ' fair rent.' ' Free sale ' is al- 
 ready recognised in Ulster, subject only to the landlord's veto, 
 and no rational advocate of Ulster tenant-right has seriously 
 proposed to dispense with that veto. But the cumulative 
 operation of the three F*s in the sense now formulated by 
 Irish land-reformers would be flagrant confiscation. Absolute 
 fixity of tenure, combined with absolute freedom of sale, would 
 mean that no landlord could get rid of his tenant, ,but that 
 any tenant could get rid of his landlord, and substitute for 
 himself a man of straw. An official regulation of rents, com- 
 bined with freedom of sale, would mean that a landlord must 
 not get a competition rent for a farm, but that a tenant may 
 sell his interest to the highest bidder, though he may have 
 been admitted the year before without paying a penny, and 
 may pocket in this way all the capital which his successor re- 
 quires to work the land. It is needless to follow out these 
 consequences further, since it must be evident that a landlord 
 whose tenants held under the three F's would cease to be a 
 landlord at all. But an official regulation of rents, taken by 
 itself, is open to no such fatal objections, though its logical 
 corollary would be a State guarantee of the rents thus fixed. 
 It may conflict with economical doctrines generally received
 
 96 THE LAST OHAFrER OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 in England, and would be quite out of place in a more 
 advanced country than Ireland ; but it would probably be 
 welcomed by a majority of Irish landlords, and produce a more 
 stable equilibrium in agrarian relations than has resulted from 
 the natural play of supply and demand. 
 
 4. It must always be remembered that Irish landlords are 
 not only a much smaller body, in proportion to farmers, than 
 English landlords, but are also to a very great extent a non- 
 resident body. Lists of Irish absentees are no longer published, 
 as they sometimes were in the last century, but the small At- 
 tendance of county magistrates at petty sessions is a very 
 strong proof either of their non-residence or of their indiffer- 
 ence to public duty. The judicial statistics for 1879 show 
 that on no less than 2,099 occasions only one local magistrate 
 attended petty sessions ; and that on 768 occasions the petty 
 sessions could not be held for want of even one magistrate. 
 Indeed, the Duke of Marlborough called the special attention 
 of Irish lord-lieutenants to this subject by a circular of last 
 year. Now, the raison d'etre of landlordism is residence. An 
 invisible landlord, who neither improves his own estate, nor 
 shows a personal interest in his tenants and labourers, nor 
 attends to local and county business, is not a landlord who 
 would be greatly missed. Probably it is just such a landlord 
 who, if fair terms were offered, would be most willing to be 
 1 bought out ; ' while the more active members of the landlord 
 class might prefer to retain their properties, subject to an offi- 
 cial regulation of rents. Nor would the process of buying out 
 landlords involve of necessity the substitution of the State in 
 that capacity. It is not impossible to imagine a land-settle- 
 ment more or less resembling that made in Russia, under 
 which counties or baronies should be empowered to replace the 
 expropriated landlords and levy a land-tax in the nature of 
 rent. If a scheme of this kind should take effect, it might 
 perhaps be found that most of the working bees would be re- 
 tained in the hive, and that a gradual migration of the drones 
 would come about without violence or injustice. Such a tran- 
 sition from landlordism to farmer-proprietorship would be far
 
 THE LAST CHAPTER OF IRISH HISTORY 97 
 
 gentler, and attended by much less of social change, in Ireland 
 than in England, for Irish farmers are already their own 
 masters, for all social purposes, and the civilising influence of 
 country gentlemen with their families is little felt in the great 
 majority of Irish parishes. At the same time, if this or any 
 similar principle be adopted for the solution of the Irish Land 
 Question, grave difficulties will inevitably remain the diffi- 
 culty of guarding against the revival of landlordism in a worse 
 form under money-lenders and middlemen, the difficulty of 
 checking subdivision and consequent over-population, the diffi- 
 culty of erecting the existing tenantry into a privileged caste 
 without permanently divorcing the labourers from the soil, and 
 condemning them to hopeless degradation. These difficulties 
 may be ignored by unscrupulous demagogues, but they must 
 be overcome by Parliament, and they cannot be overcome in 
 the spirit of class-legislation. The rules of political economy 
 may be variable, but the laws of justice are eternal. If these 
 laws be not maintained in the coming Land Bill, it will but 
 usher in a new cycle of agrarian discontent and disturbance, 
 instead of enlisting the one great middle class of the Irish 
 people on the side of order, and forming the prelude to a 
 brighter chapter of Irish History.
 
 98 
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND 
 AND OF IRELAND 1 
 
 An Address delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on 
 Friday, May 6, 1881. 
 
 I have undertaken to address you to-night on the land systems 
 of England and of Ireland, that is, on the distinctive and typi- 
 cal features which characterise them among the land systems 
 of the world. Such a study is especially interesting at the 
 present moment, when radical changes in the Irish land sys- 
 tem are actually under the consideration of Parliament, and 
 the English land system itself may be said to be on its trial. 
 But the rules of this Institution do not permit me to discuss 
 English or Irish land questions in the political or controversial 
 sense. We are mainly concerned to-night with the past and 
 present aspects of the English and Irish land systems ; the 
 future development of those land systems rests with the Legis- 
 lature, and the members of this Institution have little reason 
 to envy their responsibility. 
 
 I. The land systems of England and of Ireland have a 
 common historical origin. Modern researches have shown 
 that in both countries the earliest form of agrarian constitu- 
 tion was a tribal settlement, or village community, represent- 
 ing a clan or group of kindred families. It is needless here 
 to dwell upon the peculiar and minute rules which governed 
 the division and cultivation of land in this primitive society, 
 which are still preserved in the so-called Brehon Laws ' of 
 Ireland. What is important to note is that it left no room for 
 that threefold division of burdens and profits between landlords, 
 tenant-farmers, and farm labourers, which is the special mark 
 
 ' Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill of 1881 had been introduced shortly before.
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 99 
 
 of the English rural economy. Every freeman was, in theory, 
 his own landlord, his own farmer, and his own labourer, and, 
 except serfs or slaves, there were very few persons who did not 
 form members of the landed democracy, as it might be properly 
 called. But the landowners of that day were not peasant pro- 
 prietors, for though each was entitled to a lot of his own, he 
 could not be sure of holding the same piece of ground two 
 years together ; and there were few, if any, separate enclosures 
 for cattle. By slow degrees, however, the principle of individual 
 ownership asserted itself. The chief, or strongest member, 
 of a clan would obtain larger allotments than others, and at 
 last get them severed from the common fields ; at the same 
 time he would claim the lion's share of the waste, and at last 
 came to treat it as his own property, only subject to rights of 
 pasturage and turf-cutting. Meanwhile, other causes were at 
 work to undermine the landed democracy, and transform it 
 into a landed aristocracy, under which the village community 
 became the manor, the greater freeholders became tenants, 
 and the lesser freeholders sank into the class of villeins or 
 mere labourers. We must not stop to investigate the steps by 
 which this remarkable transition was effected. Suffice it to 
 say, that it seems to have been completely effected in most 
 parts of England before the Norman Conquest, and had been 
 partially, if not completely, effected in Ireland, when it passed 
 under the rule of Henry II. a century later. 
 
 During the Middle Ages, the land systems of both countries 
 were profoundly modified by the introduction of feudal tenures. 
 Not that feudal tenures, with all their well-known incidents, 
 were substituted all at once for the old national customs by a 
 single act of the sovereign power. Even in England more than 
 a century elapsed before feudalism was fully established, and 
 even then it was subject to important exceptions in Kent and 
 elsewhere. As for Ireland, the greater part of the island re- 
 mained outside the dominion of English law until the reign of 
 Henry VIII. For some little time after the Conquest, an at- 
 tempt was made to extend the new institution of judicial assizes 
 over the whole country, and Magna Charta was proclaimed 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 there as promptly as if Ireland had already formed part of an 
 United Kingdom. But, in fact, both English law and English 
 authority were confined within the boundaries of a few coun- 
 ties, thence called the English Pale. These counties at last 
 dwindled down to four, and even here the old Irish customs of 
 land tenure, as well as the old Irish manners, had encroached 
 more and more upon English customs and land tenures. The 
 King of England was not king, but only ' Lord,' of Ireland ; 
 but one English army (under Eichard II.) crossed the Irish 
 Channel in the course of three or four centuries ; and we know 
 from the works of Edmund Spenser and Sir John Davies, that 
 all the strange anomalies of tribal ownership survived in vast 
 tracts of Ireland up to the end of Elizabeth's reign, and the 
 beginning of James I.'s reign. 
 
 Still, the feudal system is the real basis of the English 
 and Irish land laws, as they exist at this moment. I must 
 assume that my audience is sufficiently acquainted with the 
 broad outlines of that system, which ceased to govern the 
 whole structure of society after the Reformation, but which 
 continued to regulate the land tenures of most European 
 countries until after the French Revolution. In England, it 
 is true, it was otherwise. ' Feudal tenures,' in the strict legal 
 sense, were abolished here in the reign of Charles II., but, 
 perhaps for that very reason, the principles and rules of feu- 
 dal law escaped revision here, when they were swept away 
 elsewhere, and have left an indelible stamp on the distinctive 
 features of the Anglo-Irish land system. 
 
 II. These features are five in number : (1) The law and 
 custom of Primogeniture, governing the descent and owner- 
 ship of land. (2) The peculiar nature of family settlements, 
 which convert the nominal owner of land into a tenant for 
 life, with very limited powers over the estate. (8) The con- 
 sequent distribution of landed property among a comparatively 
 small and constantly decreasing number of families. (4) The 
 direction of cultivation by a class of tenant-farmers, usually 
 holding from year to year without the security of a lease. And 
 (5) the dependent condition of the agricultural labourers, who
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 101 
 
 are mostly hired by the day or the week, and have seldom any 
 interest in the soil. It is the combination of these features 
 which makes the rural economy of England so entirely unique, 
 unlike that of any other European country, and still more un- 
 like that of the United States or our own colonies. They are 
 often represented as the spontaneous growth of our national 
 character and history, coupled with the peculiarities of our 
 soil and climate. I think I shall be able to show that such is 
 not the fact that, in reality, they are mainly the result of 
 artificial causes, and that it is quite within the province and 
 the power of law to remodel of course gradually the land 
 systems of England and of Ireland. 
 
 1. Let us first glance at the institution of Primogeniture. 
 The right of the eldest son to inherit all the land, in case of 
 intestacy, was not recognised by Eoman law, or by any of the 
 primitive codes known to us, such as those of the ancient 
 Hindoos,the ancient Germans, the Irish, or the Anglo-Saxon. 
 The Saxon rule of descent, as is well known, was that of 
 gavelkind, or equal division; nor was it superseded by the 
 Norman rule of Primogeniture until about the year 1200. It 
 has often been observed that under a charter of Henry I., 
 which seems to have continued in force only five years, the 
 eldest son did not succeed to all his father's land, but only to 
 his 'principal fee,' or the chief of several estates. A very 
 similar rule still prevails in the Channel Islands, which are 
 virtually a fragment of that Normandy from which England 
 was conquered. This was, in fact, the old Norman law, and 
 it was only for military reasons that William the Conqueror 
 and his successors adopted the strict and absolute law of 
 Primogeniture which has now been firmly established in 
 England for nearly seven centuries. After a careful study 
 of the subject, I am convinced that it is this law of Primo- 
 geniture which has produced and kept alive the custom, and 
 that it is not the custom which has perpetuated the law. 
 Before the law was introduced in England, there is no reason 
 to believe that any general custom of Primogeniture existed 
 in English families. After the law was swept away in America,
 
 102 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 an equal partition of land became the almost universal custom, 
 although American testators enjoy almost the same liberty of 
 making wills that is allowed in England. Moreover, in the 
 case of personal property, where the law is different in Eng- 
 land, the custom is also different, and hardly anyone thinks 
 of accumulating all his personalty on one son. Nor must we 
 suppose that because the law seldom operates directly, it has 
 not a very wide and powerful operation indirectly. When a 
 man makes a will, or settlement, he knows very well, or, if he 
 does not, his solicitor tells him, that all his land would natu- 
 rally go by law to hia eldest son, and this knowledge, trans- 
 mitted from one generation to another for seven hundred 
 years, creates a sentiment or prejudice in favour of Primo- 
 geniture which nothing but a reversal of the law will effec- 
 tually counteract. No doubt there is much to be said for, 
 as well as against, Primogeniture ; but for our present pur- 
 pose the important fact is that Primogeniture, founded on 
 law and consecrated by custom, is the chief corner-stone of 
 the English land system. 
 
 2. But the custom of Primogeniture is far more stringent 
 than the law. When land descends to an eldest son, on in- 
 testacy, it belongs to him absolutely, and he is free to deal 
 with it as he pleases. On the other hand, when it comes to 
 him under a will or a settlement, it usually comes to him for 
 life only, and must afterwards go to his eldest son, whether 
 he pleases or not. This is the consequence of certain legal 
 refinements devised in the seventeenth century, whereby it 
 is possible for a grandfather to ordain beforehand that his 
 eldest grandson, as yet unborn, and who may turn out the 
 most worthless or the most exemplary of mankind, shall in- 
 herit a particular estate, making his son only a life tenant or 
 ' limited owner.' Under the older entails of the Middle Ages 
 this was impossible, and though similar powers of tying up 
 land were acquired by the landed aristocracy in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries, means were found to defeat 
 them, so that in the sixteenth and first half of the seven- 
 teenth centuries the ownership of land was far more free than
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 103 
 
 it now is. At present, the great mass of land in this country 
 is under settlement, and land under settlement is land which 
 has not, and perhaps never may have, a real owner. The 
 apparent owner of a great family estate is nothing but a 
 trustee, and though of late something has been done to give 
 him more liberty of action, he is hampered at every turn by 
 the necessity of obtaining consents from a number of different 
 parties, or perhaps from the Court of Chancery. Suppose 
 all these consents to be obtained, he may doubtless improve 
 or even sell the property ; but what motive has he to do so, 
 when he cannot reap the fruit of the improvements or become 
 master of the purchase money ? Indeed, the evils of limited 
 ownership are so obvious, especially from an economical point 
 of view, that no one would venture to defend it, but that it 
 is supposed to keep old family properties from being broken 
 up. But then the question arises whether this is altogether 
 an advantage. The character of the English gentry and 
 aristocracy was formed before limited ownership was known, 
 and when estates descended from father to son either in fee 
 simple, or under the old rule of entail, which allowed of their 
 being instantly converted into fee simple estates. In those 
 days, family properties were placed under the guardianship, 
 not of conveyancers, but of the families themselves, and the 
 nation was content that if they came into the possession of 
 degenerate heirs they should be sold and purchased by worthier 
 competitors. Even now such cases occur, where a family 
 property is ruined by one or two spendthrift limited owners 
 in succession. Experience amply shows that, in such cases, 
 it generally changes hands for the better, notwithstanding 
 the loss of ancestral connection. The new purchaser may be 
 comparatively ignorant of country life, but he is not encum- 
 bered by rent-charges of indefinite duration, by mortgages con- 
 tracted to pay off his father's debts, by dynastic traditions 
 of estate-management, by the silly family pride which must 
 needs emulate the state of some richer predecessor, by the 
 passion for political dictation to which the refusal of leases 
 is so frequently due, or by the supposed necessity of satis-
 
 104 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 fying the supposed expectations of the neighbourhood. He 
 can provide for his widow and younger children by selling 
 off portions of the property, if he pleases, instead of charging 
 the estate, and in the meantime he can develope the resources 
 of the property, without feeling that he is either compromising 
 or unjustly enriching an eldest son. These advantages make 
 themselves felt even when the new purchaser is surrounded 
 with great settled estates and influenced by the example of 
 their possessors. But they might be expected to make them- 
 selves far more conspicuously felt if all landowners enjoyed 
 the same freedom of disposition. 
 
 8. The inevitable tendency of a land system thus founded 
 on Primogeniture, and guarded by family settlements, is to 
 prevent the dispersion of land, and to promote its concentra- 
 tion in a few hands. Settled estates seldom come into the 
 market, and, when they do, the money has generally to be 
 reinvested in land ; but there is nothing to prevent a rich 
 life-tenant from increasing the size of his property, and this 
 is constantly happening. A very large number of farmhouses 
 in England are really ancient manor houses, formerly the 
 residence of squires and yeomen, whose little freeholds have 
 been gradually absorbed into the princely territories of the 
 landed aristocracy, and whose descendants are settled in the 
 neighbouring towns. Of course, we must not forget the 
 opposite movement, or counter-migration of retired trades- 
 people into the country ; but they seldom take root there ; 
 they do not look upon their villas as homes, they count for 
 nothing in a county, and their children are usually reabsorbed 
 into the town population. 
 
 Upon the whole, it may be stated with certainty that the 
 number of agricultural landowners in England was never so 
 small, as the population was never so large, as it now is. It 
 would appear from ' Domesday Book ' that in the reign of 
 William the Conqueror the soil of England was divided among 
 about 170,000 landowners, including more than 100,000 vil- 
 leins, as well as above 50,000 freeholders. There is no direct 
 mode of estimating the number of landowners between that
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 105 
 
 age and our own, but there is a vast body of indirect evidence 
 pointing to the conclusion that in the reign of Elizabeth, for 
 instance, petty squires, yeomen, and small freeholders occu- 
 pied a much larger space in the community than they do at 
 present. Even since the compilation of the ' New Domesday 
 Book,' in 1876, there is great difficulty in ascertaining the 
 exact actual number of English landowners ; but, after de- 
 voting much attention to the subject, with the able assist- 
 ance of Mr. John Bateman, I have arrived at an approxi- 
 mate result. I believe that, excluding the holders of less 
 than one acre, there are now about 150,000 landowners in 
 England and Wales, while about 2,250 persons own together 
 nearly half the enclosed land in- England and Wales. Con- 
 sidering that England and Wales now contain a population 
 of more than 20,000,000, and did not contain above 2,000,000 
 in the reign of William the Conqueror, the proportion of land- 
 owners to population is now less than one-tenth of what it 
 then was, and, what is still more striking, nearly half of al 
 the land belongs to a mere fraction about 1^ per cent. of 
 all the existing landowners, even excluding those below one 
 acre. 
 
 It would be superfluous to point out the political danger 
 involved in this distribution of landed property, which con- 
 trasts most strongly with that which exists in foreign coun- 
 tries. For instance, in France, before the loss of Alsace and 
 Lorraine, there were about 5,000,000 proprietors owning 
 about 7^ acres each, on the average ; about 500,000 pro- 
 prietors, owning 75 acres each, on the average; and about 
 50,000 proprietors, owning 750 acres each, on the average. 
 In Wiirtemberg, there are some 280,000 peasant owners, with 
 less than five acres each, and about 160,000 proprietors of 
 estates above five acres. No doubt, this extreme subdivision 
 is, to a great extent, the result of the Code Napoleon, under 
 which at the death of a proprietor all his land is divided 
 equally among his children, except one child's portion, which 
 is left at his own disposal. On the other hand, the extreme 
 aggregation of land in England is no less the result, and the
 
 106 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 foreseen result, of Primogeniture and settlement. It is not 
 merely that, under the law of Primogeniture, a great estate 
 which may have been formed out of many small estates goes 
 to one child, instead of being subdivided among several ; nor 
 is it only that settlements prevent family estates from being 
 diminished, while they do not prevent them being increased. 
 It is also that Primogeniture and family settlements have 
 created a landed aristocracy under the cold shadow of which 
 a true yeomanry, like the old English, cannot flourish. It 
 is too much to say that the old yeomen have been crushed out 
 by powerful neighbours. Many have sold their patrimonies 
 because they were in debt, or because they found that by 
 getting a fancy price from some great nobleman or millionaire 
 they could improve their incomes and the expectations of 
 their families. But it is still more delusive to regard the 
 disappearance of the old English yeomanry as the result of 
 natural causes beyond the control of law. When it is said 
 that land in this country has now become the luxury of the 
 rich, and that a poor man would be very foolish to retain 
 a few hundred acres when he could make a profit by selling 
 them, it is forgotten that in Northern France, Belgium, 
 Holland, and elsewhere, land fetches a higher price than in 
 England, but that small proprietors do not die out ; on the 
 contrary, that they are the highest bidders in the land- 
 market. We must, therefore, look beyond the fancy price 
 of land for the explanation of the fact that in England the 
 body of landowners is getting smaller and smaller. The ex- 
 planation is not far to seek. The vast preponderance of great 
 landowners has left the yeoman class no place in county 
 government or county society. As one yeoman vanishes 
 after another, those who survive, feeling themselves more and 
 more isolated, and missing the neighbourly fellowship of past 
 generations, are drawn insensibly into country towns, until 
 at last the rural population of English counties may be said 
 to consist of three elements, and three only, landlords, tenant- 
 farmers, and labourers. 
 
 4. This leads us to consider the fourth distinctive feature
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 107 
 
 of the English land system the direction of cultivation by a 
 class of tenant-farmers usually holding from year to year, 
 without the security of a lease. For the great bulk of the 
 land in these islands, as is well known, is cultivated, not by 
 the owners, but by this intermediate class, numbering between 
 500,000 and 600,000 farmers in Great Britain, who hold on 
 the average 56 acres each. It is not thus in other countries, 
 especially in the most civilised. There, on the contrary, the 
 great bulk of the land is cultivated by the owners themselves, 
 most of whom may be classed with our agricultural labourers 
 rather than with our tenant-farmers, but form a real peasan- 
 try of a class well nigh extinct in England. For it was not 
 always thus in England itself. Lord Macaulay believes the 
 small freeholders, whom he estimates at 160,000, to have 
 greatly outnumbered the tenant-farmers in the reign of Charles 
 II., and there is good reason to believe that English farms 
 were commonly held under lease until the period of the French 
 war at the end of the last century. The history of yearly ten- 
 ancy is difficult to trace, but it is certain that it was very 
 much encouraged by the long continuance of ' war prices ' 
 which made landlords very unwilling to part with the imme- 
 diate control of their properties, and by their desire to main- 
 tain political influence over their tenants. The late agricul- 
 tural depression has operated in the same direction, inclining 
 landlords to keep farms at their disposal until rents improve, 
 and inclining tenants to rely on the forbearance of landlords 
 under yearly tenancy, rather than ' hang a lease round their 
 necks,' as they say. On the other hand, the want of security 
 incident to a mere yearly tenancy, and especially the want of 
 security for a farmer's improvements, have been very much 
 felt and discussed of late. Unhappily, it has not led to a 
 revival of leases, but to attempts to bolster up the unstable 
 system of yearly tenancy. One of these attempts was embodied 
 in the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875, to extend which is 
 the object of two Bills introduced this year. Such measures 
 may be described as tending to establish a national system of 
 tenant-right, and this would certainly be a great advance on
 
 108 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 mere yearly tenancy, but it would be a very poor substitute 
 for leases, and no substitute at all for ownership. 
 
 5. We now come to the fifth distinctive feature of the 
 English land system the dependent condition of the agricul- 
 tural labourer. During the Middle Ages, English labourers, 
 whether freemen or serfs, had always been essentially peasants, 
 that is, occupiers of land which they cultivated in spare hours 
 for their own benefit, and from which they could not be dis- 
 placed, so long as they rendered certain customary services or 
 paid their rent. With the growth of the commercial spirit, 
 the suppression of monasteries, the general rise of prices, and 
 the progress of enclosure, a new era set in, and the poor-law 
 of Elizabeth finally transformed the old English peasant into 
 the modern English agricultural labourer, who lives on weekly 
 wages, never owns land, and seldom holds any beyond a small 
 garden or allotment, looking upon the workhouse as his 
 natural refuge in old age. Probably he is better housed 
 and clothed than his mediaeval ancestor, though it is doubtful 
 whether he is better fed, if we take into account the exorbi- 
 tant price of meat in these days. But he is certainly less in- 
 dependent, and, notwithstanding the spread of education, he 
 must still be ranked below a great part of the Continental 
 peasantry not to speak of American farmers in the scale of 
 civilisation. 
 
 III. Let us now consider how far these distinctive features 
 of the English land system apply to Ireland. 
 
 1, 2. Of course, the law of succession to land and the prac- 
 tice of family settlements are the same in both countries, 
 though Primogeniture was not established in the Celtic parts 
 of Ireland until after the great confiscations of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries. Even now, it is not so deeply 
 rooted in Irish as in English popular sentiment. The yeomen 
 and small proprietors who still survive in some English coun- 
 ties generally ' make eldest sons,' but Irish tenant-farmers, 
 who have long been wont to deal with their farms as if they 
 were their own, often leave them by will to their widows, and 
 usually make a liberal provision out of them for younger sons 
 and daughters.
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 109 
 
 8. But, however this may be, the landowning class, under 
 the operation of Primogeniture and entail, has become even 
 smaller in Ireland than in England smaller, not only abso- 
 lutely, but relatively. Speaking broadly, we may say that all 
 Ireland is divided among about 20,000 proprietors, and that 
 by far the greater part is owned by about 10,000 proprietors, 
 of whom most are Protestant and of English descent, while 
 many of the largest are absentees. This contrast between 
 20,000 or 10,000 owners and more than half a million occu- 
 piers, must never be forgotten in a survey of Irish rural eco- 
 nomy. It is of course partly the result of conquest and confis- 
 cation great tracts of land having been allotted to any soldier 
 or adventurer willing to settle in the country. It partly arises 
 also from the want of trade and manufactures in Ireland, 
 which reduces the number of people able and willing to pur- 
 chase land, for the purpose of improving their social position. 
 But there can be no doubt that it mainly arises from the 
 operation of Primogeniture and entail, keeping the ownership 
 of Irish land in the hands of men unconnected with Ireland, 
 many of whom, if free trade in land had been established, 
 would have sold their estates long ago to the occupying tenants. 
 This has actually been done under the Irish Church Act, and 
 to a less extent under the Irish Land Act of 1870, which have 
 added about 5,000 to the number of small Irish proprietors. 
 Probably more occupiers would have availed themselves of the 
 facilities granted by these Acts, if they had not been taught 
 by agitators that, by waiting a little while, they would get the 
 land for nothing. 
 
 4. But the greatest distinction between the Irish and 
 English land system is in the relation between landlord and 
 tenant, partly in the laws which regulate it, but mainly in 
 the customs and ideas which influence it. Let us briefly notice 
 some of the circumstances which have brought about this 
 great difference in customs and ideas. 
 
 The greater part of Ireland never adopted feudal institu- 
 tions as a whole, and, where they were adopted, the feudal 
 lord was not the friend and protector of his tenant, as in Eng-
 
 110 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 land, but was constantly regarded as an alien intruder. Again, 
 though the feudal law of landlord and tenant was ultimately 
 established in Ireland, it was more favourable to the landlord 
 and less favourable to the tenant, than in England. Never- 
 theless, for two centuries and a half after the English poor-law 
 was established, there was no poor-law in Ireland, so that 
 small tenants naturally held on to the land for bare life, having 
 no other means of subsistence. 
 
 Meanwhile the respect for property, that is, for the land- 
 lord's rights, as distinct from the tenant's, was very much 
 weakened by the differences of religion, and by the demoralis- 
 ing effect of the penal laws. It was further weakened by the 
 fact that so many Irish landlords entirely neglected then- 
 duties, and left all improvements, including the erection of 
 farm buildings, to be executed by their tenants, while they 
 contented themselves with receiving their rents. Of course, 
 the case was aggravated where the landlord, as often happened, 
 was an absentee. No liberality on the part of an agent can 
 supply the want of that kindly intercourse between the hall 
 and the cottage, which binds classes together in an English 
 village, but of which Irish farmers and labourers have little 
 experience. No wonder that Irish tenants should thus grow 
 up in the belief that the soil was theirs, and the rent only the 
 landlord's. 
 
 We cannot do justice to the agrarian movement in Ireland, 
 or appreciate the deeper causes to which it owes its origin, 
 without placing ourselves in the position of a representative 
 Irish tenant before the Act of 1870, and striving to interpret 
 the feelings which underlay his fierce hatred of landlordism, a 
 hatred which even the remedial legislation of that year has 
 failed to appease. We shall afterwards be far better able to 
 appreciate the still more sweeping reforms which are now in 
 contemplation. 
 
 The representative Irish tenant is not a capitalist farmer 
 at all, in the English sense, but rather a cottager holding 
 some fifteen or twenty acres of land, including several acres of 
 rough pasturage for the cows, of which the poorest Irish family
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 111 
 
 generally manages to keep one or two, with very humble pre- 
 tension to breed, yet frequently yielding a large supply of milk. 
 He was born upon the land which he cultivates, if not in the 
 cabin which he inhabits. Sometimes the little farm lies com- 
 pactly round its steading ; more often it is scattered about in 
 irregular patches, or stretches in a long narrow strip from a 
 hillside down towards a stream or marshy bottom. It is tilled 
 by the farmer himself, with the aid of his sons or nephews, and 
 occasionally of an obliging neighbour, but, in most cases, with- 
 out recourse to hired labour. Perhaps his ancestors, in far-off 
 times, were entered on the sept-roll as possessors of this very 
 plot, which has been tenanted ever since by his family, though 
 repeated confiscations may have effaced the memory of its 
 superior lords before the last century, and its last purchaser 
 may have acquired it under a sale in the Encumbered Estates 
 Court. Perhaps it was painfully won from the adjoining waste 
 by his father or himself, either in the capacity of a mere 
 squatter, or under a verbal arrangement with the agent that 
 no rent should be exacted for a certain number of years. 
 However this may be, and whether its present occupant in- 
 herited it or reclaimed it by his own industry, all that has 
 made it a home for him was created by himself or his kindred, 
 nor is it possible for him to regard it as the sole property of a 
 stranger. Every piece of stonework upon it, from the rude 
 homestead to the meanest shed or byre, was erected by him- 
 self or his forefathers, every fence or enclosure was made by 
 them, every field cleared and roughly drained by them, nor is 
 there any visible sign of proprietorship other than his own, 
 unless it be the occasional presence of an agent who is chiefly 
 known to him as a collector of rent. His rent is not high, it 
 is true, being little above the Government valuation, and far 
 less than some insolvent and reckless neighbour would under- 
 take to pay if the farm were put up for competition. His 
 landlord, too, is a kind-hearted man, in his way, never raising 
 a tenant's rent twice in one lifetime, and willing to make 
 abatements in hard seasons, but seldom resident, and cut off 
 from his sympathy by the iron barriers of race and religion.
 
 112 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 The genial influence of a good English squire, who devotes 
 himself to county business, takes an interest in the parish 
 school, directs his own improvements, and visits his labourers' 
 cottages, is something of which he cannot even conceive. No 
 one ever threatened him with eviction, or informed him di- 
 rectly that in such a case he must not look for compensation. 
 The idea of eviction and its consequences, however, is always 
 present to his mind. He remembers that, after the great 
 famine, scores of little cabins disappeared from the mountain- 
 side opposite, and that nothing was ever heard again of their 
 former inmates. It has been reported to him that in the next 
 county vast grazing-farms have been formed out of holdings 
 like his own, -and that the experiment has been financially suc- 
 cessful. He read only the other day a paragraph in the news- 
 papers advertising for sale just such an estate as his landlord's, 
 and describing it as greatly under-rented and suitable for 
 pasture. He is aware, indeed, that here and there a good 
 landlord, compelled to part with a portion of his property, has 
 granted leases beforehand to old tenants, and thereby pro- 
 tected their equitable rights against the purchaser. But he 
 believes such magnanimity to be very rare, and dares not 
 count upon it himself, especially as he is told that since 
 tenant-right has come to mean downright confiscation, pro- 
 prietors must get their estates so far as possible into their own 
 hands. He lives, therefore, from hand to mouth, as his 
 fathers lived before him, tilling no more land than he can 
 till with one horse and without machinery, never laying out a 
 penny that he can help, studiously keeping up the appearance 
 of poverty, and hoarding the little profits of his scanty crops 
 and butter in an old stocking, till he can lodge them clandes- 
 tinely in a bank, not too near, for the marriage portions of 
 his daughters. It is vain to assure him that he may safely 
 rely on the honour of an individual who may die to-morrow, 
 or sell to a Dublin speculator, or be driven into a system of 
 rack-renting by the pressure of his creditors. Why, he asks, 
 should not the law secure to me an indefeasible right of pos- 
 session, so long as I pay a fair rent, if this is what I may
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 113 
 
 fairly expect from my landlord's sense of justice ? Why 
 should I be left absolutely at his mercy, and my children at 
 the mercy of those who may succeed him, if it be admitted 
 that it would be an abuse of power to confiscate my improve- 
 ments, or even to disturb my occupancy ? l 
 
 Such was the actual position of a representative Irish 
 tenant before the Act of 1870, and such, in spite of the Act, 
 is still the sentiment of a representative Irish tenant. For 
 while the Act placed a heavy penalty on ' disturbance,' it laid 
 no effectual restriction on the increase of rent. Moreover, as 
 we are reminded, in the Eeport of Lord Bessborough's Com- 
 mission, ' what the aggrieved tenant wants, in nearly all cases, 
 is not to be compensated for the loss of his farm, but to be 
 continued in its occupancy at a fair rent.' 
 
 5. The case of the Irish labourer has received less atten- 
 tion than it deserves. He is somewhat roughly defined, in 
 the Eeport of Lord Bessborough's Commission, as ' a farmer 
 who is without a farm.' In other words, there is hardly such 
 a thing in Ireland as an independent class of agricultural 
 labourers. Most of those so described in the Census are small 
 farmers working in spare hours, or sons of tenant-farmers, or 
 perhaps men who have been turned out of farms for non-pay- 
 ment of rent. In the west of Ireland, however, and especially 
 in Connaught, there are thousands of cottier-tenants living on 
 patches of land incapable of supporting a family, even if they 
 were held rent-free, who eke out a livelihood by going over to 
 England or Scotland for harvest, and returning with their 
 wages, on which they mainly subsist during the winter. The 
 misery of these poor creatures who returned empty-handed 
 after the bad harvests of 1878 and 1879, only to find their own 
 potato crops destroyed by the blight, was among the main 
 causes of the late agrarian agitation in Ireland. The leaders 
 of the Land League seized eagerly upon it, and the crusade 
 
 1 This description of the Irish farmer has been extracted, with little varia- 
 tion, from an Essay on the Irish Land Question in 1870, published in Brodrick's 
 Political Studies, 1879.
 
 114 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 against rent, first preached in the wilds of Connemara, rapidly 
 spread over all Ireland. 
 
 In picturing to ourselves the lot of these cottiers, it is ma- 
 terial to observe that, as the poor-law is more strictly admin- 
 istered in Ireland, they do not enjoy the same privilege of 
 receiving outdoor relief as in most English counties. Now, 
 although a ' liberal ' system of outdoor relief is a very doubt- 
 ful boon to labourers, since it tends to pauperise them and 
 reduce the rate of wages, the refusal of outdoor relief is spe- 
 cially hard to bear where regular wages are not always to be 
 procured. The old English poor-law was virtually a compen- 
 sation for those changes which had depressed the English 
 peasant of the Middle Ages into a mere day-labourer. But 
 for the poor-law, socialistic ideas would have propagated them- 
 selves long ago in the rural districts of England ; and in Ire- 
 land, where poor-law relief is only given, to able-bodied men 
 in the workhouse, such ideas have actually propagated them- 
 selves with fearful rapidity. For the evicted cottier in Ireland 
 can seldom find work in towns ; his only resource, except the 
 workhouse, is emigration which he considers banishment 
 to England or the United States. 
 
 IV. We have now passed in review, however briefly, the 
 distinctive and typical features of the English and Irish land 
 systems. I have said that we are not specially concerned 
 with their future development, but I cannot forbear to add a 
 few words on the conditions which must govern it, and the 
 general course which it may be expected to follow. 
 
 Speaking first of England, I desire to express my earnest 
 conviction that no reforms of the English land system are 
 likely to be permanent or beneficial which are not in harmony 
 with the organic and apparently indestructible elements of our 
 national character. The new rural economy of England must, 
 above all, be essentially and thoroughly English. It cannot 
 be modelled upon that of France, or Germany, or Russia, or 
 Switzerland, or Italy, or Belgium, or the United States. On 
 the other hand, we must beware, once more, of imagining that 
 all the distinctive features of the English land system must
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 115 
 
 needs be the spontaneous growth of the national character 
 and history. We know, on the contrary, that in Saxon times 
 the agrarian constitution of England was essentially demo- 
 cratic ; that in Norman times ecclesiastics rather than barons 
 were the pioneers of agricultural improvement, and the models 
 of territorial benevolence ; that in the England of Elizabeth, and 
 for two centuries after the Eeformation, the lesser gentry and 
 yeomanry were the bone and sinew of the landed interest ; 
 that the dependent condition of English labourers dates from 
 the poor-law, and that of English farmers from a far more 
 recent period ; that, in fact, the English land system is not an 
 indigenous product of the soil, but an artificial creation of 
 feudal lawyers, matured by their successors in the evil days 
 after the Eestoration, largely modified by such temporary 
 causes as the high prices current during the Great War, and 
 afterwards strengthened by a constant flow of population to- 
 wards great towns, partly consequent on the operation of the 
 land system itself. 
 
 I will not conceal my belief that, before another genera- 
 tion has elapsed, the law of Primogeniture will have been 
 abolished, that the power of entail will have been largely re- 
 stricted, that by these means and by simpler methods of land 
 transfer land will come to be divided among a larger number 
 of owners, that, by degrees, more landlords will farm their 
 own land, and more farmers will own the land which they 
 cultivate, that leases will more and more be substituted for 
 yearly tenancy, and that labourers, no longer divorced from 
 the soil, but enabled to rise by industry into the class of 
 farmers, will regain the self-respect and providence which are 
 the special virtues of a true peasantry. 
 
 V. Let us lastly turn our eyes, once more, to the Irish 
 land system, if that can be called a land system which is a 
 patchwork of antique customs and modern enactments, plas- 
 tered one upon another, with little regard to consistency or 
 symmetry. It is not my purpose to criticise the policy of the 
 new Irish Land Bill ; it may or may not be a necessary sequel 
 to the Act of 1870 ; it may be framed in a spirit of justice, or
 
 116 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 it may have been dictated by political expediency. With all 
 this we have nothing to do. What mainly concerns us is its 
 self-evident tendency to establish a new form of double owner- 
 ship, or agrarian partnership between landlord and tenant. 
 We sometimes hear the great reforms carried out by Stein 
 and Hardenberg in Prussia cited as a precedent for such 
 legislation. Exactly the reverse is the fact. The reforms of 
 Stein and Hardenberg were directed, and successfully directed, 
 to substitute unity of ownership for double ownership to give 
 the peasant the greater part of his former holding as his own 
 absolute property, relieved of all vexatious services ; and to 
 compensate the landlord for the loss of those services by a 
 fixed allotment of land or by a fixed rent. In other words, 
 these reforms substituted proprietorship for landlordism and 
 tenancy, but left freedom of contract untouched. The reforms 
 now proposed for Ireland assume the maintenance of the rela- 
 tion between landlord and tenant, but place the regulation of 
 it in the hands of a Court, and virtually abolish freedom of 
 contract. There is no rashness in predicting that, under such 
 circumstances, the relation will be found intolerable, and that 
 in the end the same result at which Stein and Hardenberg 
 deliberately aimed will be produced by the very opposite pro- 
 cess. Either by the aid of facilities provided in the Bill itself, 
 or by private agreements, Irish landlords will part with their 
 estates in large numbers, and Irish tenants will be the nomi- 
 nal purchasers. Whether, having purchased, they will culti- 
 vate the land themselves, or convert themselves into squireens, 
 whether they will keep out of the hands of money-lenders, 
 and whether money-lenders may not become the worst of 
 landlords, and whether those who chance to be without land 
 just now will tamely acquiesce in their exclusion from the 
 privileged caste of irremovable tenants these are questions 
 into which I must not wander. What is certain is that, come 
 what may, the experiment of peasant ownership or farmer 
 ownership will be tried in Ireland as it has never been tried 
 l*'forp. 
 
 It may be said, with too much reason, that Irish tenants
 
 THE LAND SYSTEMS OF ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 117 
 
 as a class have never yet exhibited the far-sighted industry 
 which has become traditional and hereditary among French 
 or Belgian peasants, and upon which peasant ownership in 
 France or Belgium depends for its success. It may be said, 
 on the other hand, that Irish tenants are already their own 
 masters for most purposes, and that the civilising influence 
 of country gentlemen with their families is already little felt 
 in the great majority of Irish parishes. The transition from 
 landlordism to farmer proprietorship would, therefore, be far 
 gentler, and attended by much less of social change, in Ireland 
 than in England. Nor must it be forgotten that French 
 peasants, as described by Arthur Young a hundred years ago, 
 did not differ widely from small Irish farmers in the present 
 day. The ' magic of property ' has assuredly worked miracles 
 in making them what they now are, and the magic of property 
 is likely to be more potent in Ireland than in France, because 
 it would place the new proprietor entirely above the influence 
 of those agitators who now trade upon his wrongs, real or 
 imaginary, and would give him a direct interest in the main- 
 tenance of law and order. 
 
 And thus it may come to pass that under the operation of 
 different causes some of them natural and some artificial, 
 some in themselves pernicious, and some beneficent the 
 Irish land system may gravitate in the same direction as the 
 English land system, and assume a more democratic aspect. 
 Considering the history and national character of the Irish 
 people, we are not warranted in forecasting with confidence 
 the result of such a development. The utmost that we can 
 affirm is that it affords a better prospect of a stable equi- 
 librium in Ireland than the modern English form of rural 
 economy. There is a fine passage in Edmund Spenser's ' View 
 of Ireland,' written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, where he 
 supposes one of two friends to suggest various remedies for 
 the improvement of Ireland, and puts into the mouth of the 
 other the following reply : 
 
 ' Marry, so there have been divers good plots devised, and 
 wise counsels cast already about reformation of that realm ;
 
 118 THE LAND SYSTEMS OK ENGLAND AND OF IRELAND 
 
 but they say it is the fatal destiny of that land, that no pur- 
 poses, whatsoever are meant for her good, will prosper or take 
 good effect ; which whether it proceed from the very genius of 
 the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath 
 not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that He 
 reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge 
 which shall by her come into England, it is hard to be known 
 but yet much to be feared.' 
 
 It would be difficult to express in language more pathetic 
 or appropriate the anxieties and misgivings which still oppress 
 the most hopeful minds in legislating for Ireland, after the 
 lapse of three hundred years. But despair can have no place 
 in the counsels of statesmen. It cannot be that Ireland is 
 eternally doomed either by the genius of her soil, or by the 
 influence of the stars, or by the decrees of an inexorable Provi- 
 dence, to brood helplessly over her ancient wrongs, an unpro- 
 fitable and irreconcilable member of the European family. 
 There must surely be a happier and better future reserved for 
 her too in the fulness of time, and this future may be expected 
 to date from the day on which Parliament shall accomplish, 
 not a provisional and one-sided adjustment, but a compre- 
 hensive, just, and permanent settlement, of the Irish land 
 system.
 
 119 
 
 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881: ITS ORIGIN 
 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 1 
 
 Twelve years have now elapsed since a great measure, 
 designed to settle the Irish Land Question for ever, was pre- 
 pared by Mr. Gladstone during his first Administration. 
 The ground had been cleared for it by the most exhaustive 
 inquiries, and the longest series of tentative bills, which had 
 ever formed the basis of agrarian legislation in this country. 
 The report of the Devon Commission, published just before 
 the great Irish famine of 1847, had furnished a most compre- 
 hensive body of evidence on the conditions of Irish land- 
 tenure, which subsequent investigations, official and unofficial, 
 had illustrated rather than superseded. Eight tenant-right 
 bills, founded on this report, or those of Parliamentary Com- 
 mittees, were introduced by Mr. Sharman Crawford alone; 
 six more were introduced by other private members before 
 1858, and several others after that year ; seven more were 
 introduced on behalf of Liberal or Conservative Ministries ; 
 and one bill, which sometimes bears the name of Lord Card- 
 well and sometimes of Lord Justice Deasy, had actually 
 passed into law, in the year 1860. The admitted failure of 
 Lord Card well's Act, which embodied the strict principles of 
 contract, induced the Legislature to import the perilously 
 vague idea of tenure by custom into the Anglo-Irish law of 
 landlord and tenant. Though it is now the fashion to ignore 
 the Irish Land Act of 1870 almost as completely as that of 
 1860, it may not be amiss to remind ourselves of the benefits 
 which it conferred on the Irish tenant, at the expense of the Irish 
 
 1 An Address delivered in the Hall of Merton College, Oxford, on December 
 5, 1881.
 
 120 THE IEISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 landlord benefits which no English tenant enjoys, and for 
 which no parallel can be found in the agrarian codes of Europe. 
 By the Irish Land Act of 1870, Ulster tenant-right, and 
 like customs in other parts of Ireland, obtained legal validity. 
 It was enacted that all improvements should be presumed to 
 have been made by the tenant or his predecessors, and com- 
 pensation was guaranteed to him, not only for buildings or 
 drainage, but for tillages, manures, and crops. Moreover, it 
 was provided that he should not forfeit this right, even when 
 ejected for non-payment of rent. Irish tenants were further 
 endowed, for the first time, not, indeed, with an actual pro- 
 perty in their holdings, but with a beneficial right of occu- 
 pancy, secured by a heavy fine on disturbance, which might 
 amount to seven years' rent. This claim to compensation 
 for disturbance, like the claim to compensation for improve- 
 ments, was made indefeasible in favour of all tenancies under 
 50/. valuation, that is to say, in the vast majority of cases to 
 which the Act applied. It is true that eviction for non-pay- 
 ment of rent was not to be generally construed as ' disturb- 
 ance,' but it was expressly declared that even such eviction 
 was to be so construed in favour of tenantries under 15/. rental, 
 if the Court should certify that the non-payment of rent 
 causing the eviction had arisen from the rent being an 
 exorbitant rent.' Nor was this all. Where no claim should 
 be made for improvements or for disturbance, the tenant was 
 still enabled to obtain such compensation as the Court might 
 think just, if he or his predecessors in title had given money, 
 or money's worth, for the farm, with the landlord's consent, 
 either express or implied. Lastly, under the Equities clause, 
 the Court was invested with the largest possible discretion 
 to review the ' conduct ' of both parties, and to mulct either 
 for ' unreasonable conduct, giving judgment on the case with 
 regard to all its circumstances.' 
 
 Such was the Act which is now described, especially by 
 those who have never studied it, as lamentably deficient in 
 liberality towards Irish tenants. It might be alleged, with 
 far greater reason, that it placed the Irish tenant in a position
 
 . ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 121 
 
 inconsistent with the fundamental idea of tenancy, and thus 
 sowed the seed of further agitation. The course which that 
 agitation would inevitably take was clearly foreseen by many, 
 and among others by the late Lord Beaconsfield. He pointed 
 out that, under the name of compensation for disturbance, 
 a proprietary interest worth several years' purchase was 
 vested in the Irish tenant, and that since he was made liable 
 to forfeit this interest by non-payment of rent, he would not 
 long submit to his rent being raised at the pleasure of his 
 landlord. The claim to ' fair rent,' as well as to ' fixity of 
 tenure,' had been advocated some years earlier, with great 
 ability, by Mr. Isaac Butt. In a pamphlet, first published in 
 November 1866, he proposed that every agricultural tenant 
 in Ireland should be entitled to a lease of his holding for 
 sixty-three years, at a rent to be fixed by valuation, on the 
 principle of deducting one-third from the extreme rack-rent 
 value. But it is not unworthy of notice that Mr. Butt, a 
 sound lawyer and a veteran economist, never contemplated 
 the universal concession of ' Free Sale,' and vigorously main- 
 tained that non-payment of the rent once fixed, as well as 
 failure to cultivate properly and to maintain all improve- 
 ments, should be followed by an absolute forfeiture of the 
 tenant's interest, without power of redemption. Looking back 
 at the agrarian history of Ireland during the last ten years, 
 we may well hold that Mr. Butt's policy was, in the main, 
 wiser than that which dictated the measure of 1870. Had 
 this policy been adopted, the rental of Ireland would probably 
 have been somewhat reduced, on the whole, but it would have 
 been secured by the most stringent conditions, and the rela- 
 tions between landlord and tenant would have been placed on 
 a definite basis for two generations. Moreover, a full share 
 of any accidental increase in the value of the land was care- 
 fully reserved to landlords by special clauses in Mr. Butt's 
 draft bill, which compares most favourably, in respect of 
 simplicity, with the Acts both of 1870 and of 1881. 
 
 For several years, however, the Act of 1870 appeared to 
 be working smoothly, and to have been accepted as a final
 
 122 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 settlement of the Irish Land Question. And such it might, 
 indeed, have proved, with occasional modifications and amend- 
 ments, had not the exigencies of Irish partisanship demanded 
 a fresh agrarian agitation. Doubtless, the rigorous exaction 
 of rents, and eviction of defaulting tenants, by some Irish 
 landlords, after the bad seasons of 1878 and 1879, furnished 
 a convenient starting-point for such agitation, and, in a few 
 cases already tried before the Land Commission, even the 
 agent admitted the rents to be excessive. But it is historically 
 certain that no widespread discontent existed until it was 
 artificially fomented, and that, as the Duke of Argyll stated, 
 for one oppressive landlord it would have been easy to find 
 thousands of tenants holding back their rents, though well 
 able to pay them, and practising on the forbearance of their 
 landlords, before they were taught by the Land League to 
 repudiate their own agreements and defy the law. The 
 formation of this League was notoriously an after-thought of 
 men, with no interest in land, whose primary aim was the 
 separation of Ireland from Great Britain, and to whom the 
 supposed wrongs of the peasantry were a mere instrument 
 for the propagation of Fenian doctrines. The most effectual 
 method of counteracting it would have been to institute an 
 impartial inquiry into the effects of the Land Act of 1870 ; to 
 meet temporary distress by temporary measures of relief at 
 the national cost ; and to declare that no permanent remedial 
 legislation could be attempted until order and tranquillity 
 should have been restored. Unhappily, other counsels pre- 
 vailed. A Commission was appointed, indeed ; but if it did 
 not start with a foregone conclusion in favour of the Three 
 F's, its proceedings gave some colour to such an imputation. 
 Instead of clearing up on official authority such questions as 
 the average proportion between Irish rentals in 1880 and 
 Griffith's valuation, the relative value of improvements exe- 
 cuted by landlords and improvements executed by tenants, 
 the relative numbers of farms held by mere parole agreement 
 and of those held under written contract, the Commissioners 
 amassed, without digesting, a vast body of evidence on the
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 123 
 
 alleged extortions of landlords and land agents. This evidence 
 they published together with their own Eeport, without even 
 waiting for the counter-evidence which they had themselves 
 invited, and which, in the opinion of many, cut the ground 
 from under several of their main conclusions. Meanwhile a 
 bill was introduced, nominally of a provisional nature, but 
 really embodying wholly new principles, from which it thence- 
 forth became impossible for the Government to recede. This 
 bill, called the Disturbance Bill, was rejected by the House of 
 Lords. The natural result was what Mr. Healy calls ' the 
 most determined,' and what assuredly was the most unscru- 
 pulous, agitation ever known in Ireland, for the purpose of 
 forcing the hand of the Government, and intimidating the 
 landowners of Ireland into the acceptance of any measure 
 which should purport to preserve for them a remnant of their 
 former revenues. How far these designs were successful now 
 remains to be explained. 
 
 II 
 
 The Irish Land Act, or, as it is officially entitled, ' The 
 Land Law Act (Ireland),' of 1881, is probably the most com- 
 plicated piece of legal mechanism that has been produced by 
 parliamentary draughtsmen within living memory. This is 
 its most obvious and least venial demerit. The Act of 1870 
 was obscured by a variety of refinements and qualifications 
 which had gone far to obstruct its working and enrich the 
 lawyers. These have been aggravated and multiplied tenfold 
 by the Act of the present year, which does not even repeal 
 the former, but expressly incorporates certain parts of it, and 
 leaves other parts to operate, as best they may, side by side 
 with its own provisions. It would be utterly hopeless to 
 follow the process whereby the original bill was evolved into 
 its existing shape by amendments from both sides and all 
 sections of the House. We can but sketch the leading 
 features of the measure as it now stands in the Statute-book. 
 And here we may derive considerable assistance from an 
 extraordinary document put forth by the Land Commissioners
 
 124 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 appointed under the Act itself. These gentlemen, being 
 invested with essentially judicial functions, might have been 
 expected to adopt a judicial attitude, and to regard themselves 
 as charged to administer a new law, with even hand, between 
 landlord and tenant. They felt it consistent with their duty, 
 however, to issue a statement exclusively addressed to one of 
 these parties, detailing all the ' benefits conferred on Irish 
 tenant-farmers by the Land Act (Ireland), 1881,' and pointing 
 out all the advantages which they may take under the new 
 law. This commentary is but expanded in the valuable 
 ' Tenant's Key to the Land Law Act, 1881,' drawn up by 
 Mr. Healy. Both justly represent the Act to be a legislative 
 embodiment of the Three F's, as recommended by the Bess- 
 borough Commission, and it may be convenient to review its 
 provisions under the heads suggested by the several articles 
 of that famous agrarian charter. 
 
 Here followed a detailed analysis of the main provisions of the 
 Act, showing that 'Free Sale,' as there defined, goes far beyond 
 the Ulster custom ; that Fair Eent ' is left to be ascertained by 
 the arbitrary discretion of the Commissioners, but on principles 
 essentially one-sided ; that ' Fixity of Tenure ' is practically granted, 
 without the equitable conditions proposed by Mr. Butt ; and that, 
 while ' future tenants ' are placed in an inferior position to ' present 
 tenants,' they are invested with privileges enjoyed by no other 
 tenants in Europe. 
 
 It is, therefore, perfectly idle to suggest that, whereas the 
 Act strictly regulates the rights of existing landlords and 
 tenants, it paves the way for a revival of free contract in 
 future. In reality, free contract, in the English, Scotch, 
 American, and Continental sense, is banished for ever from 
 agricultural relations in Ireland. The more carefully we 
 study the incidental and supplementary provisions of the 
 Act, the more clearly shall we realise that it is framed with a 
 single view to stereotype the possession of existing tenant- 
 farmers, with equally little regard for the interests of land- 
 lords, of labourers, or of those who may hereafter wish to 
 become possessors of farms. For example, section 8 contains
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 125 
 
 a peremptory direction against rent being raised in respect of 
 improvements made by tenants or their predecessors in title ; 
 but another clause of the section, exempting from its opera- 
 tion holdings upon which all the improvements have been 
 made by the landlord or his predecessors, is not peremptory, 
 but merely permissive. So, the statutory term introduced 
 for the first time by the Act is practically a lease for fifteen 
 years in favour of the tenant, but not in favour of the land- 
 lord, for a lessee is bound to carry out all the agreements 
 in his lease, but the holder of the statutory term can surrender 
 it, though he cannot be evicted. In like manner, the num- 
 berless limitations of landlord's rights under the Act are 
 compensated by no corresponding facilities for enforcing those 
 rights. Even when a tenant has broken the primary statu- 
 tory condition by non-payment of rent, the landlord has only 
 the ordinary remedy of ejectment. This remedy cannot be 
 employed, even to the extent of instituting proceedings, until 
 one whole year's rent is in arrear. The defaulting tenant 
 can then hold on until execution is imminent with perfect 
 impunity, and even after it has taken place, retains his old 
 right of redeeming within the next six months, when he will 
 recover his statutory tenancy with no penalty except the 
 liability to costs. Or he may prefer to sell his tenancy ; 
 though in this case the landlord will be entitled to arrears of 
 rent and damages for injury actually sustained, out of the 
 purchase money. Mr. Healy reminds him, however, that by 
 selling just before the ejectment is brought, he can dispose of 
 a statutory tenancy subsisting in full vigour, with an unlimited 
 right of renewal. A tenant who breaks any other of the five 
 statutory conditions must get, in addition, a year's notice to 
 quit. But this notice to quit will have no great terrors for 
 him, if he can make a plausible excuse. For it is expressly 
 provided that he may apply to the Court to be relieved from 
 the consequences of any such breach on payment of damages 
 and costs ; or without any payment, if the breach is regarded 
 as harmless by the Court. At the very worst, a tenant 
 evicted for a breach of statutory conditions is entitled to
 
 120 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 compensation for improvements under the Land Act of 1870, 
 and, if holding under the Ulster custom, will forfeit none of 
 its benefits thereby. 
 
 A like protective spirit, the very reverse of equal justice, 
 may be traced in the clauses relating to labourers' cottages, 
 and other improvements usually made by landlords. The 
 landlord may, indeed, resume the whole or part of a holding 
 on satisfying the Court that his object is ' for the good of the 
 holding or the estate,' and these words might certainly be 
 interpreted in a sense to give him some control over his own 
 property. But it is to be feared that they may be construed 
 as limited by those which follow, specifying cottage-building, 
 church-building, and so forth, as the chief purposes for which 
 the power is granted. At all events, the landlord must now 
 buy up the tenant-right in order to build labourers' cottages, 
 notwithstanding a special provision to the contrary in the 
 Act of 1870. But the tenant may let ground for cottages 
 and allotments, with the sanction of the Court, at a profitable 
 rent, without any such outlay ; and, if required by the Court 
 to improve the cottage accommodation of a holding on which 
 he seeks to have the rent lowered, he may borrow money from 
 the State as if he were an owner. So, again, while tenants 
 may improve their holdings for their own benefit, without the 
 landlord's consent, with a legislative guarantee against the 
 rent being raised on that account, no landlord can obtain an 
 increase of rent upon capital laid out in improvement, except 
 by special agreement with his tenant. 
 
 It is to be observed, however, that although very large 
 prospective sacrifices are required of Irish landlords, no claim 
 to rent already due was taken away by the Act. The fourth 
 section plainly declares that ' nothing therein contained shall 
 prejudice or affect any ejectment for non-payment of rent 
 instituted by a landlord, whether before or after the com- 
 mencement of a statutory term, in respect of rent accrued 
 due for a holding before the commencement of such term.' 
 It would be far better, if it had declared broadly that no 
 benefit conferred by it should be open to any tenant who had
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 127 
 
 failed to satisfy his lawful debts to his landlord before apply- 
 ing to the Court. We may pass lightly over the so-called 
 arrears-clause, under which the Land Commission is em- 
 powered to advance the landlord a part of the rent in arrear, 
 because it can only operate where the landlord is willing to 
 accept a composition of so many shillings in the pound. In 
 such a case, if a landlord will take a nominal sum in lieu of 
 the last year's rent, a tenant whose rent is 15L, and is three 
 years in arrear, may have the whole 451. wiped off, on con- 
 dition of paying a rent of little more than 16Z. during the 
 next fifteen years. If the landlord should not be so forbear- 
 ing, the tenant, as we have already seen, retains the right of 
 getting his rent fixed by the Court, and selling his tenancy 
 upon the new rent, however much he may be in arrear with 
 the old rent. While his application is pending, the proceed- 
 ings in ejectment will be stayed, and if the rent ultimately 
 fixed should be a full rent, the purchase money will be all the 
 less, and probably not sufficient to pay off heavy arrears. 
 Still, the Act does not go the length of confiscating arrears, 
 and giving fixity of tenure to a tenant who has lawfully in- 
 curred the penalty of ejectment before it passed. It would 
 be still possible, therefore, for Irish landlords to get rid of 
 defaulting tenants before they can become rooted in the soil 
 under the Land Act ; though self-interest, as well as more 
 generous motives, would usually recommend the alternative 
 of making terms with them. And since the small cottier- 
 tenants of Connaught are incapable of paying any rent in bad 
 years, the one class most deserving of sympathy will hardly 
 share the benefit of the Act. 
 
 But a most violent interference with vested interests is 
 contained in the twenty-first section. One part of this section 
 deprives the landlord of his reversion at the end of an exist- 
 ing lease ; another part enacts that if any lessee can satisfy 
 the Court that his lease was forced upon him by threat of 
 eviction or undue influence, being in itself unreasonable or 
 unfair, the Court may quash the lease, and treat the tenant 
 as the holder of a present yearly tenancy. That is to say,
 
 128 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 the Court is to review the circumstances under which each 
 lease was granted, and determine ' whether it is such as a 
 prudent tenant would have accepted unless under some pres- 
 sure from his landlord.' If not, it is to become void, and the 
 tenant can at once obtain a readjustment of his rent. It is 
 needless to remark that, if it should prove to be such as no 
 prudent landlord would have granted, and however strongly 
 justice may require it to be set aside on his behalf, the Court 
 has no power to award such redress. Its action in this, as 
 in other cases, is to be wholly one-sided. By the next section, 
 no tenant whose holding is valued below 1501. shall be allowed 
 to contract himself out of this Act or the Act of 1870. The 
 right of contract as between landlord and tenant is, there- 
 fore, henceforth at an end in Ireland, except as regards a 
 very small fraction of tenancies. All the apparent exceptions 
 recognised in the Act are perfectly illusory, since they must 
 all come under the control of the Court. 
 
 Hitherto the mode in which the Court has exercised its 
 discretion has not been such as to command the confidence of 
 impartial critics. But however they may have strained the 
 letter, the Commissioners have scarcely gone for indeed 
 they could scarcely go beyond the spirit of the Act. It was 
 certainly a strange proceeding to invite applications by a 
 notice specially addressed to tenants but then the Land Act 
 itself was passed for the sole benefit of tenants. It is a 
 perilous doctrine to lay down that rents should be so adjusted 
 that a tenant may ' live and thrive ' on his farm ; but then 
 why did the Legislature admit such a phrase as ' fair rent ' 
 without definition into a statute? Whether or not it was 
 reasonable that, under section 60 of the Act, applications 
 made on the first occasion when the Land Commission might 
 sit should be treated as made on the day when the Act itself 
 came into force, it seems monstrous that, having opened their 
 sittings on October 20, the Commissioners should have ex- 
 tended their so-called first sitting to October 29, and after- 
 wards to November 12. But then it was the obvious intention 
 of Parliament to stretch every point of equity in favour of the
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 129 
 
 tenant, and perhaps the privilege of post-dating his right of 
 redemption is trifling compared with some other privileges 
 reserved to him. No wonder that if the Commissioners have 
 thus interpreted their duties, the Sub-Commissioners should 
 have justified wholesale, sweeping, and indiscriminate reduc- 
 tions of rent by reasons destructive of each other. Mr. 
 Gladstone and Lord Carlingford expressed their conviction that 
 Irish rents in general would be very slightly reduced ; but the 
 Sub-Commissioners fail to discover this conviction in the Act : 
 ' they cannot find it ; it is not in the bond.' One rent may 
 be reduced because the land has been greatly improved by 
 the tenant, who must be rewarded for his energy ; another, 
 because it has become impoverished by the tenant's neglect. 
 One tenant is entitled to compassion because his family is 
 large ; another, because, having no family, he must pay high 
 wages to labourers. Eents must, of course, be reduced if 
 they have been raised in years of plenty ; but they must also 
 be reduced if they have been lowered in years of scarcity and 
 remained at that level ; for if the agent thought some remis- 
 sion necessary, it must be inferred that humanity required 
 a larger remission. The Court is not to consider what the 
 land would be worth in good hands, but what it is worth in 
 the hands of the actual occupier, perhaps the worst and most 
 thriftless of his class. It is not to consider the agreement 
 made between landlord and tenant, for no landlord can be 
 allowed to profit by superior force or fraud ; still less is it 
 to consider the value of concessions made by the landlord 
 out of kindness ; for no man, or rather no landlord, can be 
 allowed to profit by his own weakness. The owner of 
 hereditary estates must not complain of his rent being 
 lowered ; for, depend upon it, some remote ancestor came by 
 the land unjustly ; and the fact of no increase having been 
 made for the last fifty years is a presumption of rents having 
 been screwed up for the fifty years before. The purchasers 
 of land in the Encumbered Estates Court deserve no con- 
 * sideration ; for tenant-right was ignored in those purchases, 
 and it is now high time to make reprisals on landlord-right. 
 
 K
 
 130 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 Such are no unfair specimens of the reasoning which appears 
 to underlie many of the more important decisions already 
 given by the Sub-Commissioners, and which has occasionally 
 found expression in their statements from the Bench. Of 
 course these decisions may be overruled on appeal, but the 
 Commissioners in Dublin have postponed hearing appeals 
 until after they shall have completed the process of breaking 
 ' unreasonable ' leases. Unhappily, they cannot postpone the 
 influence of such judicial acts and opinions over Irish minds 
 possessed with the creed of the Land League. Nor have we 
 a right to expect that highly popular decisions will be lightly 
 overruled by those who administer an Act so evidently framed 
 to satisfy the requirements not of economical justice, but of 
 political expediency. 
 
 Ill 
 
 1, 2. This is not the place to dwell on the portentous and 
 demoralising effect of the Land Act, as an avowed concession 
 to criminal agitation, directly stimulating the renewal of such 
 agitation. Its next effect will be felt in the legislative extinc- 
 tion of freedom in the conduct of by far the most important 
 industry and social relation in Ireland. Nothing like it has 
 yet been known in Europe. The purport of the agrarian 
 reforms made during the French Revolution is to be read in 
 a few pages of the Code Napoleon, which treat agricultural 
 tenancy as a mere form of hiring, and regulate it by the 
 strictest principles of contract. The reforms of Stein and 
 Hardenberg, so often cited in support of double ownership, 
 were really designed to establish the very contrary, entire 
 unity of ownership ; and, instead of confiscating landlords' 
 property for the benefit of tenants, actually confiscated tenants' 
 property for the benefit of landlords, though a full equivalent 
 was secured for the dispossessed tenants in the exemption 
 from vexatious liabilities. To justify this departure from the 
 practice of civilised nations, it is assumed that Irish tenants, 
 alone among the industrial members of civilised society, are 
 not free agents ; and to justify this assumption, it is further
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 131 
 
 assumed that, unless they accept their landlords' terms, they 
 must needs starve. It is forgotten that, as a matter of fact, 
 millions of them have bettered themselves by emigrating to 
 America, and many hundreds of thousands find employment 
 in the manufacturing towns of Great Britain. It is forgotten 
 that no soil can possibly support a constantly multiplying 
 peasantry, and that English farmers must long ago have 
 devoured each other if they had insisted on keeping their 
 families around them, instead of launching them forth into 
 the world. It is forgotten that many other classes, such as 
 artisans or labourers in the East of London, have quite as 
 strong a claim to be protected against the possible extortion 
 of rapacious landlords, paying high rents, yet getting nothing 
 out of the soil. It is forgotten, moreover, or if not forgotten, 
 it is wilfully ignored, that by erecting the existing tenants of 
 farms into a landholding caste, an irreparable wrong is done, 
 not only to all the existing labourers and landless farmers 
 who happen to be outside that class, but also to all future 
 applicants. Thirteen years ago, Judge Longfield denounced 
 any measure which should enable a man who takes a farm 
 to-day without payment to sell his lease to-morrow for several 
 hundred pounds. ' This,' he says, ' is to give him a property 
 which he did not purchase or earn, merely because he 
 threatens to commit murder if he is kept to his engagements.' 
 But this is precisely what has been done by the Land Act ; 
 and from this moment it is certain that every farm which 
 changes hands in Ireland must needs be practically rack- 
 rented. The lower the landlord's rent, the higher the value 
 of the tenant-right ; and no tenant, squeezed between these 
 upper and nether millstones, can possibly hope to farm at a 
 profit. 
 
 3. This consideration suggests a third and no less dis- 
 astrous effect of the Land Act. It is well known that ever 
 since they acquired a marketable interest in their holdings 
 under the Act of 1870, Irish tenants have been more and 
 more in the hands of money-lenders, against whose exactions 
 Parliamentary intervention has never been invoked. A mass 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 of evidence was laid before the Bessborough Commission, 
 showing that borrowing upon tenant right was the curse of 
 Ulster, and has increased many-fold since the Act of 1870. 
 In the face of these notorious facts and evidence, Irish tenants 
 have now been almost invited to mortgage their holdings. 
 In addition to any charge which the landlord may have upon 
 it for himself or his creditors, the land may now have to bear 
 interest on the sum which the incoming tenant has borrowed 
 for the purchase of tenant-right, interest on any money which 
 he may yet borrow from the Government or ' gombeen -men ' 
 for improvements or labourers' cottages, and interest on what 
 he will probably succeed in raising from the same local usurers 
 for his daughters' marriage portions. It is quite possible 
 that a new Encumbered Estates Court will soon be needed to 
 clear the land from this enormous pressure of debt ; but it is 
 equally possible that, in such an event, the debtors will form 
 a new Land League against the creditors. As for the land- 
 lord's rent, however ruthlessly it may have been pared down, 
 it will assuredly be the last debt to be paid, and either it will 
 vanish altogether, or it will have to be exacted by a constant 
 resort to eviction. The one class in the community which 
 has already gained, and must inevitably gain, more than any 
 other from this revolution in the rural economy of Ireland, is 
 the lower class of legal practitioners. If the money that is 
 now going and about to go in the pockets of Irish lawyers 
 under the incentives to litigation afforded by the Act, could 
 have been applied to indemnifying every Irish tenant who 
 had a real grievance, it would have gone far to allay all well- 
 founded discontent. 
 
 To suppose that such a measure can produce a permanent 
 settlement of agrarian relations in Ireland, is to expect that 
 the laws of human nature, as well as those of political economy, 
 will be reversed in that island. Deprived of all motives for 
 residing in the country, or improving their estates, most 
 Irish landowners above the rank of squireens will either dis- 
 pose of their properties, generally at a ruinous loss, or sink 
 into the position of mere rent-chargers. Thus thrown out of
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 133 
 
 employment, and left more and more at the mercy of tenant- 
 farmers, the class of labourers, which, throughout history,, 
 has furnished the readiest instruments of Irish outrage, will 
 become more dangerous than ever. The one and only hope 
 that remains for the prosperity and peace of Ireland, under 
 the new Land Act, lies in the scheme which it contains for 
 the creation of a peasant proprietary. If a tenant contracts 
 directly with his landlord for the purchase of his farm, the 
 Land Commission is empowered to advance him three-fourths 
 of the price, if he can pay down the other fourth. Again, 
 where three-fourths of the tenants on an estate are willing to 
 purchase their farms, and certain other conditions are satis- 
 fied, the Land Commission may buy up the whole estate, and 
 resell it, advancing three-fourths of the price to each purchaser 
 as before. The advance is to be repaid by annual instalments 
 of 5 per cent, on the sum advanced, extending over thirty- 
 five years ; the effect of which is that a tenant buying his 
 farm will only have to pay a fraction more than his ordinary 
 rent, to become master of it in thirty-five years. This is well 
 explained in the short treatise of Mr. Macdevitt on the Land 
 Act. Suppose a man has a farm at 20/. a year rent. ' Its 
 probable value would be 400/., or twenty years' purchase. 
 The Land Commission will advance him 300/. He will have 
 to provide the remaining 100/. or raise it in some other 
 way ; but if he has the 100/. and pays it, he will have to go 
 into debt to the Commission only, and that for the 300/. 
 For that sum, principal and interest, he will have to pay the 
 Commission 15/. a year for thirty-five years, and then the 
 farm is his own altogether.' 
 
 Though Part V. of the Land Act, which contains these 
 provisions, with those for Keclamation and Emigration, is 
 essentially supplemental in its nature, and though it has 
 scarcely begun to operate, there is no rashness in predicting 
 that it will hereafter prove the most important chapter of the 
 new agrarian code. The authors of the Act never ceased to 
 protest that it could not lead to a wholesale reduction of rents, 
 fully admitting that, if it should do so, aggrieved landlords
 
 134 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 : 
 
 would have a claim to compensation. Unless these public 
 declarations are to be publicly repudiated, the claim to com- 
 pensation will now have to be recognised, and the simplest 
 form of compensation would be the conversion of a judicial 
 rent into a rent-charge on the holding, which the State should 
 buy on fair terms from the landlords. This rent-charge 
 would then become, in effect, a terminable land tax ; and 
 until it was paid off, the State would be the paramount 
 landowner. No doubt there are grave objections to State- 
 ownership ; but these objections have been all but set aside 
 in the scheme for advances to purchasing tenants. No doubt 
 it is a serious question whether small Irish farmers are fitted 
 to be their own landlords, subject only to a land-tax, and 
 whether all the legal safeguards that can be devised will 
 prevent their subletting their lands three deep, or loading 
 them with successive mortgages. But this question has been 
 silenced by the supposed necessity of granting the charter of 
 the Three F's, since the perpetual occupier of a farm at a 
 fixed rent, with an unlimited power of sale, has all the attri- 
 butes of an owner except the full sense of responsibility. 
 
 Upon the development of this sense, with the self-respect 
 and loyalty that naturally spring from it, depends the last 
 chance of political and social regeneration in Ireland. The 
 controlling influence of the Protestant clergy was inevitably 
 weakened by Disestablishment ; that of the priests has been 
 sensibly undermined by the spread of Fenian ideas. The 
 interest of the landlords, the one remaining bulwark of social 
 order in Ireland, and the one security for the expenditure 
 of capital, has been hopelessly shattered by the Land Act. 
 Henceforth the Irish peasant farmers will be masters of the 
 country; for there is no urban middle class to balance them, 
 and no public opinion except that which is fabricated by 
 newspapers to flatter their ignorant passions. Since they 
 must be a landed democracy in fact, let them be elevated into 
 a landed democracy by law, and encouraged, if it may be, to 
 acquire those democratic virtues in which they are so deplor- 
 ably wanting. It is said that in the lawless days which
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 135 
 
 preceded the second conquest of Ireland under the Tudor 
 sovereigns, the Irish Council invoked the intervention of 
 Henry VII. to put down the great Earl of Kildare. 'All 
 Ireland,' they protested, ' cannot govern this man.' * Then,' 
 replied the King, 'this man shall govern all Ireland.' A 
 similar policy seems to have inspired the Irish Land Act of 
 1881 ; let us hope that it will be less ruinous in its results. 
 Despairing at last of appeasing the land-hunger of Irish 
 peasant farmers upon any known principles of justice or 
 political economy, the Legislature has now delivered over the 
 agricultural and social destinies of Ireland into the hands of 
 that ungovernable class, placing the labourers under their 
 guardianship, and reducing the landlords to a position in 
 which they are equally powerless for good or for evil. Having 
 gone so far, let us not shrink from going a step further, 
 abolishing the figment of landlordism, and leaving no sem- 
 blance of paternal authority in the rural districts of Ireland. 
 
 The high authority of Judge Longfield may, it is true, be 
 cited against the creation of a peasant-proprietary in Ireland. 
 He believes that ' if all the land in Ireland were divided in 
 fee-simple among the peasantry, the number of murders 
 would not be diminished ; ' and he reminds us that, ' when 
 the Celt becomes the absolute owner of land, he is just as 
 willing as the Saxon to become a landlord, and to insist upon 
 all a landlord's rights, which he then seems to think very 
 reasonable.' All this is but too evident. It is probable 
 enough that, with the growth of peasant proprietorship, 
 sanguinary domestic feuds may take the place of attacks on 
 land-agents or process-servers, and that Irish agrarian out- 
 rage, instead of being quelled, may simply revert towards its 
 original type. But, while this is probable, the continuance 
 of anarchy, despite the operation of the new Land Act, is 
 an ascertained fact. Under every system of tenancy, Irish 
 character has proved utterly intractable ; the one experiment 
 that remains to be tried is a system of pure ownership. 
 With no one to coax, and no one to intimidate, with the 
 whole burden of local government and taxation cast upon
 
 186 THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1881 
 
 him, with a discontented class of labourers to conciliate, and 
 with State officials instead of land-agents to enforce the 
 payment of his land-tax, the Irish peasant farmer, like the 
 Scotch clansman, may one day perchance be transformed 
 into a peaceable citizen, tenacious of his rights but mindful 
 of his duties; and not only the sinister origin, but the 
 chimerical aims, of the last Irish Land Act may even yet be 
 forgotten in the beneficence of its unforeseen effects.
 
 137 
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR 
 BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 1882 
 
 The influence of the last Irish Land Act could not fail to 
 make itself speedily felt in a novel claim of Tenant-right for 
 British farmers. The phrase ' tenant-right,' it is true, has 
 long been a familiar watchword of agricultural reform. But 
 until lately this phrase has been used in a very limited ac- 
 ceptation. The custom of Lincolnshire Tenant-right, for 
 instance, liberal though it might be, was never understood 
 to extend beyond the establishment of certain equities, chiefly 
 by way of compensation for the unexhausted value of im- 
 provements, as between outgoing tenants and landlords or 
 incoming tenants. 1 Even Ulster Tenant-right, though often 
 very loosely defined and referred to a fanciful origin, was 
 admitted to rest upon this and no other basis. The assump- 
 tion always was that the land had been originally redeemed 
 from its prairie state by the tenant's predecessors in title, 
 and that a second property in it had thus been created, with 
 the landlord's consent, which possessed a marketable value. 
 It is worthy of remark that Irish ' tenants' improvements,' in 
 this sense, were specially mentioned by Sir William Petty 
 more than 200 years ago, and there is reason to believe that 
 some of the customary securities for such improvements still 
 prevailing in certain English counties are of a very ancient 
 date. Estates have been inherited and farms have been 
 taken for generations subject to local customs of this kind, 
 
 1 In Mr. Dixon's Law of the Farm, tenant-right is defined as ' the claim for 
 remuneration which an outgoing agricultural tenant has on his landlord for 
 various operations of husbandry, the ordinary return of which he is precluded 
 from receiving by the termination of his tenancy.'
 
 138 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 which have been imported by law, like the customs of trade, 
 into every contract between landlord and tenant, in the 
 absence of express words to the contrary. The utmost that 
 was claimed for English farmers by the late Mr. Pusey and 
 other reformers of his school was that the best existing 
 customs should be expressly legalised and nationalised. As 
 for Scotch farmers, the great majority of them were perfectly 
 content with the nineteen-year leases so long established in 
 Scotland, and scorned the idea of legal protection except, 
 indeed, against the ravages of hares and rabbits. 
 
 The modern claim of Tenant-right is of an entirely dif- 
 ferent nature, and is advocated on principles of which the 
 first legislative recognition is to be found in the Irish Land 
 Act of 1870. By giving tenants an indefeasible claim to com- 
 pensation for improvements, but, far more, by giving them 
 a beneficial right of possession, guarded and measured bv a 
 heavy penalty on ' disturbance,' that Act crippled the power 
 of landlords either for good or for evil, and threw Ireland 
 back from a system of tenure by contract towards a system 
 of tenure by status. From that moment a new idea of 
 agrarian relations has entered the minds of British farmers. 
 At last, since the Irish Land Act of 1881, it has shaped itself 
 into demands, reasonable, indeed, by comparison with that 
 Act, yet quite irreconcilable with freedom of contract, and 
 put forth under the authority of the Farmers' Alliance in the 
 form of separate bills for England and Scotland respectively. 
 The leading provisions of these Bills are the same, but certain 
 distinctive features in them require separate notice. 
 
 Here followed a detailed analysis of the Bills for England and 
 Scotland promoted by the Farmers' Alliance, showing wherein 
 they differ from the Irish Land Act, and a short account of the Bill 
 adopted by the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture. 
 
 Of course, the most distinctive feature common to all 
 these Bills is the unconditional and undisguised surrender of 
 Contract as the basis of agricultural relations. Sir Henry 
 Maine tells us that in all progressive societies the movement, 
 from a juridical point of view, has been a movement from
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 139 
 
 Status to Contract. We have seen, however, that of late 
 years, and especially since the Irish Land Act of 1870, there 
 has been a growing tendency in this country to demand a 
 reversal of this movement by legislative force. The Irish 
 tenant-right party and their English supporters have openly 
 demanded that all dealings between landlord and tenant 
 should be taken out of the domain of Contract. With strange 
 inconsistency, the very same school of agrarian reformers 
 insist upon the necessity of unrestricted freedom in all other 
 transactions relating to land. They inveigh, with justice, 
 against the legal trammels of Entail and Settlement ; they 
 ask, with some ignorance but with much reason, why the sale 
 of land should not be as simple as that of shares or pictures ; 
 and they apply, without reservation, all the maxims of Free 
 Trade to landownership and land-transfer. Not only so, but 
 they dwell with peculiar emphasis on the right and capacity 
 of tenant-farmers to contract freely with every other class of 
 human beings except their landlords. As has been well said, 
 ' the man who, on account of the severe competition for land, 
 requires to be emancipated from his contract, is the very 
 man who wants to avail himself of that competition to exact 
 the last farthing he can wrench out of a purchaser, when he 
 sells his farm.' His agreements about the course of cultiva- 
 tion or duration of his tenure, made with the fullest knowledge 
 of all the circumstances, are to be set aside like those of a 
 child or a lunatic, and, no matter how low his rent, he is not 
 to have the power of foregoing any one of the privileges 
 offered to him by the statute. But he must be left perfectly 
 free to contract with the manure-merchant, the maker of 
 agricultural implements, the banker, or the local usurer ; in 
 those relations he is to be treated as a shrewd man of business, 
 and the slightest attempt to protect him against their impor- 
 tunities or extortions would be ridiculed as an insult to his 
 intelligence. Surely it is difficult to reconcile these opposite 
 modes of regarding the same class. Surely it is not self- 
 evident that contracts for the hire of land, as the Duke of 
 Argyll calls them, are so radically different from all other
 
 140 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 contracts as to call for the minute regulation which formerly 
 prevailed, under tribal ownership, in the Irish Sept and the 
 Hindoo Village Community. There may be, and there are, 
 good reasons why they should be watched by the State with 
 special care, and even subjected to special rules of law ; but 
 it has yet to be shown why they should be controlled by 
 that system of official tutelage established under the Irish 
 Land Act. 
 
 That Act, if it can be defended at all, must be defended 
 by historical, political, sentimental, or economical reasons 
 which have no application to England or Scotland. Neither 
 English nor Scotch tenants, as a class, have virtually inherited 
 their land, or erected homesteads upon it, or made or main- 
 tained substantial improvements, or been treated by the 
 landlord, the agent, their neighbours, or anyone else, as part- 
 owners. They do not resemble copyholders in the smallest 
 degree, being essentially the creatures of contract, and not of 
 custom ; especially in Scotland, where the contract is usually 
 made afresh every nineteen years, in the most binding and 
 explicit form that of a lease. There is no pretence of an un- 
 healthy competition for agricultural holdings in Great Britain, 
 nor can it be alleged that, for want of manufacturing enter- 
 prise, a farmer's son without a farm has no alternative but 
 emigration or the workhouse. On the contrary, farms have 
 long been more plentiful than good tenants, and the attractions 
 of other pursuits are such, both in Great Britain and in the 
 colonies, that it is now difficult to keep a good tenant, except 
 on very liberal terms. On what ground, then, is compulsory 
 Tenant-right demanded for British farmers, in a form which 
 involves the principle of the Irish three F's, however modified 
 in degree, and which is designed to override existing agree- 
 ments ? 
 
 This question is assuredly not answered in any of the 
 manifestoes hitherto issued by the advocates of compulsory 
 Tenant-right. We must, therefore, endeavour to deal with 
 it for ourselves, not forgetting that in these Bills the protec- 
 tion conceded is not wholly one-sided, but embraces to some
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 141 
 
 extent the landlord's interests, as well as those of the tenant. 
 One thing is clear. The argument for compulsory Tenant- 
 right in Great Britain essentially rests on grounds of ex- 
 pediency, and hardly at all on grounds of justice. Here and 
 there, no doubt, there may be cases of an English or Scotch 
 landlord confiscating his tenant's improvements, or raising 
 the rent unfairly upon him. But the cases are far more 
 numerous in which the tenant, beggaring out the land, con- 
 fiscates his landlord's capital ; and in both classes of cases 
 the parties might have protected themselves by inserting and 
 enforcing proper clauses in their agreements. Even when 
 such clauses are inserted, there is much truth in the saying 
 that they are good against the landlord, but not against the 
 tenant, who is far more likely to incur bankruptcy, and who, 
 if he should fail in asserting the rights of strength, can 
 usually fall back on the privileges of weakness. If, then, we 
 are not only to place agricultural relations in future under a 
 rigid and uniform system, but to interfere directly with vested 
 interests, our action must be justified by some very strong 
 reason of policy, if not of necessity. Such a reason was 
 pleaded in favour of the Ground Game Bill, which, however, 
 was not forcibly applied to existing leases. Although it was 
 obvious that farmers might easily recoup themselves for the 
 ravages of game by stipulating for a ' game rent,' or might 
 decline clauses reserving game to the landlord, and although, 
 in these days of Free Trade, excessive game-preserving has 
 little influence on the national food supplies, it was felt that 
 an extreme exercise of sporting rights by one man over land 
 occupied by another was prejudicial to interests broader and 
 higher than mere agricultural interests. Let us now consider 
 whether equally cogent reasons can be advanced in favour of 
 compulsory Tenant-right, and, if so, how it should be limited. 
 Now, granting, for the sake of argument, that a tenant 
 ought to have an indefeasible right of compensation for all 
 improvements which increase the letting value, why should 
 the amount of this compensation be determined by free sale 
 instead of by public valuation, and why should the landlord
 
 142 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 be deprived of his right to select another tenant ? Of course, 
 the special virtue of Free Sale, in the eyes of its bigoted 
 adherents, is that it implicitly converts a tenant into a part- 
 owner, but it is precisely this double ownership which it is 
 most important to discourage from every economical point of 
 view. Moreover, it is ' easy to show how impossible it would 
 be to separate the value of goodwill from the value of im- 
 provements,, and therefore how unfairly a tenant's right to 
 sell the latter in open market would sometimes operate on 
 the landlord's interest. Suppose that B holds a farm of A, 
 and has made improvements which are worth 200/. at a fair 
 valuation. But C, who may be a railway contractor, or a 
 manufacturer, or a tradesman with large business premises 
 close at hand, is willing to offer 500/. or 1,000/. for the right 
 of occupation, not because the improvements are worth so 
 much, but because the land itself has an exceptional value for 
 him. Is B to pocket the whole price of this latent value, and' 
 may not A, the owner of the soil, make his own terms with 
 the new tenant, after paying B 200/. ? But, again, under 
 the plan of Free Sale formulated in these Bills, the door 
 is opened to unlimited fraud, and there could be no possible 
 security against a fictitious applicant being put forward to 
 offer a fancy price for the improvements. It is hopeless for 
 a Court to ascertain whether a man has ' sufficient means ' 
 of his own to cultivate a farm, or whether the objections of 
 the landlord to him are ' reasonable.' The highest bidder in 
 the Tenant-right market is not unlikely to be the least eligible 
 as a tenant ; and the less eligible he might be as a tenant, 
 the greater would be the necessity for the landlord to buy 
 him off. Hitherto, the stock argument against distress and 
 hypothec has been that landlords are thus encouraged to ac- 
 cept men of straw for tenants. If this clause should become 
 law, they would be often compelled to accept men of straw 
 on pain of a heavy pecuniary fine. 
 
 No doubt 'Free Sale,' once conceded, involves ' Fair 
 Bent,' for no tenant could obtain a full price for his improve- 
 ments from his successor, if the landlord wero able to raise
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 143 
 
 the rent in proportion. It is, in fact, a cardinal objection to 
 Free Sale that, under a specious name, it really puts an end 
 to all freedom in contracts for the hire of land. True, it is 
 not proposed to establish in England a periodical adjudication 
 of rents, such as became a necessity for Ireland when fixity 
 of tenure was there introduced, and such as becomes a neces- 
 sity for Scotland, under the Farmers' Alliance Bill granting 
 a similar fixity of tenure, at the option of Scotch farmers. 
 The Bill for England ostensibly leaves the parties free to 
 decide whether the existing contract of tenancy shall be 
 renewed at all, and it is only where they are willing to renew 
 it that a compulsory jurisdiction over the future rent is vested 
 in the Court. But it will be renewed ipso facto on the old 
 conditions unless two years' notice be given ; and whereas, in 
 prospect of renewal, the tenant will have the right of getting 
 the rent adjusted by the Court, and whereas, if it should not 
 be renewed, he will retain the same right with a view to a 
 sale, the landlord's power of getting the market value for the 
 use of his land will be reduced to an infinitesimal minimum. 
 Probably in England it will be easier to find capable and 
 honest assessors to fix the standard of rent than it is in 
 Ireland, but no official valuation can approach in fairness to 
 an open bargain, where both parties are free. One illustra- 
 tion of the difference may perhaps suffice. Under the Farmers' 
 Alliance Bill the Court is prohibited, and justly prohibited, 
 from considering anything but present value as affected by 
 past acts or circumstances. But the fairness of a rent to be 
 paid in future may depend entirely on future acts or circum- 
 stances, such as the execution of drainage by either party, or 
 the prospective extension of a railway. These all-important 
 elements are excluded from calculation as, indeed, they must 
 be, if the Court is to assess rents and the result may be 
 monstrously unjust either to landlord or tenant. 
 
 We must, therefore, reject the claim of Free Sale and 
 judicial rents, still more that of Fixity of Tenure, for British 
 farmers. Indeed, a disposition has already been shown by 
 influential members of the Farmers' Alliance to recede from
 
 144 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 the demand of Free Sale, the concession of which is the basis 
 of the Irish Land Act. It is demonstrable that all the advan- 
 tages which can possibly be derived from these privileges 
 could be obtained by a liberal system of leases ; and it is not 
 demonstrable, nor is it true in fact, that British farmers are 
 unable to procure such leases from their landlords. The 
 more tenants are assimilated to copyholders, as they are by 
 the three F's, the more is the landlord's interest in the 
 partnership diminished. The present generation of tenants 
 might gain something which they had not earned. But the 
 inevitable, though gradual, withdrawal of landlords' capital, 
 now virtually lent to farmers at a minimum rate of interest, 
 and the gradual and the rapid accumulation of debt on the 
 security of Tenant-right, would surely render farming less 
 profitable for the next generation. Nor has even a prima 
 facie case been shown for this agrarian revolution, especially 
 in the present state of agriculture. The historical conditions, 
 which are supposed to justify the three F's in Ireland, have 
 no place in Great Britain. No Englishman or Scotchman is 
 compelled to hire land at all. There never was a time when 
 those who may wish to do so could procure it on easier terms. 
 Indeed, so far as we can foresee, British farmers rather than 
 landlords are likely in future to be masters of the land market. 
 If there be a class of British tenants which needs legislative 
 protection against the extortion of landlords, it is assuredly 
 not the class of agricultural tenants, but that of small house- 
 holders and lodgers in great towns. A few owners of house 
 property in the artisans' quarter of a manufacturing centre 
 may possess a monopoly infinitely more oppressive than the 
 so-called monopoly of agricultural landlords, and the cottage- 
 tenants of agricultural landlords are far more defenceless 
 than the farm-tenants. It is not surprising that a House- 
 holders' Fair Bent Alliance has already been formed against 
 ground-landlords, and it ought in reason to be followed by 
 the formation of a Lodgers' Fair Rent Alliance against house- 
 holders. It may l>e said, no doubt, that, after all, householders, 
 town lodgers, and cottagers are free to migrate elsewhere.
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 145 
 
 But then may not this argument be applied, and with much 
 greater force, to farm-tenants, for whose exclusive benefit a 
 modified version of the Irish three F's is now demanded as 
 an act of justice ? 
 
 It is an entirely different question whether a statutable 
 Tenant-right, in the sense of a right to compensation for the 
 unexhausted value of improvements, is not defensible on 
 grounds of policy. ' It is quite possible to conceive that, 
 under a land-system so highly artificial as that of England, 
 inveterate customs may have grown up, inconsistent with the 
 real interests of landlords as well as tenants, and only to be 
 counteracted by the superior force of law. . . . Society cannot 
 always afford to wait until economical principles have vindi- 
 cated themselves, perhaps at a ruinous cost to consumers, in 
 the course of generations.' ' From this point of view there 
 are very strong, if not conclusive, arguments in favour of 
 giving tenants an indefeasible right of compensation for im- 
 provements of a certain kind, and landlords a summary 
 remedy, in lieu of distress, against certain defaults on the 
 part of tenants. The precedents for such an interference 
 with contract are too numerous to be cited ; it is enough to 
 point out that if agreements ' in restraint of trade ' may 
 properly be invalidated, so also may agreements ' in restraint 
 of agriculture.' But it does not follow that an indefeasible 
 right of compensation should be extended to ' anything done 
 by the tenant whereby the letting value of the holding is 
 increased.' So long as the agricultural system of Great 
 Britain is one of tenancy, it is by no means expedient to 
 encourage the tenant in undertaking permanent improvements, 
 which ought to be executed, if at all, by the landlord. Tenants 
 have rarely more than enough capital for the proper cultiva- 
 tion of their farms. If they should enter upon large building, 
 drainage, or reclamation works, they would usually do it on 
 borrowed money, and could not be expected to do it with due 
 regard to the general benefit of the estate. The ' value of 
 the holding ' might be increased, but the landlord might have 
 
 1 Brodrick's English Land and English Landlords, part iv. ch. ii. 
 
 L
 
 146 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 good reasons for subdividing the holding or consolidating it 
 with another, in which case the so-called improvement might 
 be actually detrimental. It is only in respect of agricultural 
 tenancies that so unreasonable a pretension would be enter- 
 tained for a moment. If a house and garden were let by the 
 year in the suburbs of a town, no one would dream of claim- 
 ing for the tenant a right to erect villas in the garden at his 
 own pleasure, and to receive compensation if ' the letting 
 value of the holding ' were increased thereby. Such a claim 
 i3, in fact, inconsistent with full proprietorship, and full pro- 
 prietorship was always recognised as the highest ideal of land 
 tenure, until retrograde ideas were propagated by the sup- 
 porters of the Irish Land Act. 
 
 On the other hand, no landlord could suffer any injury, 
 while a new spirit might be infused into British agriculture, 
 if an indefeasible right of compensation were secured to every 
 tenant for outlay essential to good husbandry, under the con- 
 ditions of modern farming. Whether or not the various forms 
 of such outlay are . adequately enumerated under the third- 
 class improvements of the Agricultural Holdings Act, does 
 not affect the fundamental principle. That principle is, 
 that, where it is of paramount importance to establish a 
 general sense of security, and where free contract has failed 
 to do so, the State may legitimately effect it by Act of Parlia- 
 ment, for the benefit of all parties concerned ; since the sense 
 of security may actually add a new value to land, without 
 robbing anyone. To this extent, and to this extent only, the 
 interests of consumers, so freely invoked in support of Tenant- 
 right, are really concerned in its recognition. Nor would it 
 be difficult to devise a mode of limiting indefeasible Tenant- 
 right. The simplest plan would be to frame clauses, defining 
 ordinary acts of good husbandry, giving an outgoing tenant 
 an absolute right to compensation for their unexhausted 
 value, and creating a machinery whereby that right should 
 be enforced. But a gentler and, perhaps, more effective 
 method of securing the same end, would be to make the 
 compulsory enactments operative only where the parties
 
 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 147 
 
 should have failed to embody their agreement in a lease of a 
 certain duration. Had the well-known principle of the leases 
 granted by the Earl of Leicester been generally adopted 
 throughout England, it is probable that no wide-spread 
 demand for indefeasible Tenant-right would have arisen. 
 It is equally probable that if indefeasible Tenant-right were 
 established by law, in default of a lease, the practice of grant- 
 ing leases would again become a national custom, as it was 
 in the last century. 
 
 Doubtless this would not satisfy the latest claim of 
 Tenant-right for British farmers, as embodied in the Bills 
 already discussed. But that claim will not bear a close 
 examination by the light of any economical or moral standard. 
 In its broader features it is copied from the last Irish Land 
 Act, and breathes, like it, the spirit of class-legislation. If 
 the application of the new law were to be prospective only, it 
 would be open to none but economical objections ; but, so far 
 as it is retrospective, it would most unjustly enrich the present 
 race of farmers at the expense of their landlords and their 
 successors not excluding labourers ambitious to become the 
 possessors of farms. For every new tenant would of course 
 have to pay a heavy valuation on entry, and would be all the 
 less able to offer a fair rent. What pretence of justice can 
 there be for thus burdening future occupiers for the exclusive 
 benefit of present occupiers ? How can a man who took a 
 farm last year, at a certain rent, subject to a year's notice to 
 quit, and with a full knowledge that his improvements might 
 then become his landlord's property, honestly call upon the 
 Legislature to convert these into his own property, and to 
 give him the option of selling them or holding on at a judicial 
 rent ? However disguised, and however qualified, this means 
 confiscation, and would soon be acknowledged as confiscation 
 by the very class on whose behalf it is demanded, if it should 
 ever be applied to cottages and gardens held of farmers by 
 farm-labourers. It is the duty of the Legislature to resist 
 such a claim as firmly as it would resist an equally plausible 
 claim, on behalf of consumers, to restrict the price of farm 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE CLAIM OF TENANT-RIGHT FOR BRITISH FARMERS 
 
 produce, or, on behalf of labourers, to fix a minimum rate of 
 farm wages. It is certain that, before 1870, no English 
 statesman or economist of repute would have entertained the 
 idea for a moment. It is equally certain that, with the one 
 ominous exception of the Irish Land Act, no precedent can 
 be cited for so violent a disturbance of agricultural contracts 
 from the legislation of modern Europe or America. In other 
 countries, where the devolution of landed property is strictly 
 prescribed by law, absolute freedom is allowed in agreements 
 of tenancy, and existing contracts are held absolutely sacred. 
 The French Code, which lays down certain rules of compen- 
 sation, expressly authorises the parties to contract themselves 
 out of its provisions, which they usually do. It would be 
 strange indeed if England, the mother of Free Trade, and the 
 stronghold of liberty against Communism, should be the first 
 of civilised nations to adopt an agrarian code manifestly 
 based on a communistic theory.
 
 149 
 
 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF BRITISH 
 AGRICULTURE IN 1882 
 
 ' Fraser's Magazine,' Feb. 1882 
 
 This article was mainly devoted to a detailed review of the Eeport 
 just issued by the Royal Agricultural Commission, especially in 
 regard to the effect on British Agriculture of bad seasons, combined 
 with low prices, of foreign competition, of high rents, of increased 
 rates directly levied from the occupier, of rising wages and less 
 efficient labour, and of compulsory education ; with remarks on 
 suggested legislative reforms, including the prohibition of restrictive 
 covenants in agricultural agreements, and the adoption of statutable 
 Tenant-right. The following extracts may be of somewhat more 
 general interest : 
 
 The Report of the Royal Agricultural Commission must needs 
 disappoint any who may have expected from it a prescription 
 of heroic remedies for agricultural depression. But it must 
 also disappoint those who looked, at least, for an authoritative 
 and decisive verdict on the great open questions affecting the 
 tenure and occupation of land. Yet the Commissioners may, 
 perhaps, be justified in recording their opinion that the con- 
 dition of British agriculture has never been the subject of a 
 ' more comprehensive and laborious inquiry ' than that which 
 they have conducted. They were appointed three years ago 
 to consider and report, ' with all convenient speed, upon the 
 depressed condition of the agricultural interest, and the causes 
 to which it is owing ; whether those causes are of a permanent 
 character, and how far they have been created or can be 
 remedied by legislation.' The Commission was strongly con- 
 stituted, having the Duke of Richmond for its president, and 
 containing able representatives of landowners and farmers, as 
 well as men like Mr. Bonamy Price and Mr. Rodwell. It was
 
 150 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 aided by Reports from Assistant Commissioners, who visited 
 not only every district of Great Britain, but America and 
 Canada, France, Holland, Belgium, and Denmark. The 
 ' notes ' issued as instructions for the guidance of these 
 Assistant Commissioners were of a most elaborate and ex- 
 haustive character. The evidence taken before the Commis- 
 sioners themselves is as voluminous as could be desired. 
 Nevertheless, the ultimate result of their deliberations, pro- 
 longed over three years, is more than unsatisfactory. The 
 Report, in fact, is miserably conceived, miserably arranged, 
 miserably composed, and miserably edited. It ignores alto- 
 gether many important topics directly connected with the 
 subject of inquiry, and presents an extremely meagre review 
 of those which it purports to discuss. It embodies no ade- 
 quate, or even tolerable, digest of the materials so diligently 
 collected, and her Majesty is virtually invited to ransack 
 for herself the vast mass of information accumulated, but 
 not analysed, by the Commissioners. Instead of a digest, we 
 have a series of disjointed paragraphs and quotations, grouped 
 together with little regard to logical sequence or literary 
 symmetry, and often ending with no definite expression of 
 opinion. The general impression left on the mind of the 
 reader is that, after all their labour, the Commissioners felt 
 themselves no wiser than before, and that, in their judgment, 
 little or nothing can be done, by the State or by individuals, 
 either to relieve agricultural depression in the present or to 
 ward it off in the future. 
 
 The predominant influence of bad seasons on the late 
 agricultural crisis being admitted on all sides, it was hardly 
 necessary for the Commissioners to point out so emphatically 
 that it could not have been prevented by legislative changes. 
 ' Owners and occupiers have alike suffered from it. No de- 
 scription of estate or tenure has been exempted. The owner 
 in fee and the life-tenant, the occupier, whether of large or of 
 small holdings, whether under lease, or custom, or agreement, 
 or the provisions of the Agricultural Holdings Act all with- 
 out distinction have been involved in a general calamity.'
 
 BRITISH AGRICULTURE IN 1882 151 
 
 The truth of this is self-evident, and the most strenuous 
 advocate of agrarian reforms would not have expected disen- 
 tailed estates or the plots of peasant-owners to be proof 
 against floods and murrain, like the land of Goshen during 
 the plagues of Egypt. Everyone, no doubt, ' suffered alike,' 
 but it does not follow that everyone suffered equally, and it 
 would have been interesting if the Report had enabled us to 
 judge what classes of owners and occupiers were most suc- 
 cessful in weathering the storm. There is reason to believe, 
 for instance, that it pressed less heavily on farms of moderate 
 size than on those of the largest and those of the smallest 
 class. The explanation is simple and instructive. Farms of 
 the largest class are very apt to be cultivated scientifically 
 with borrowed capital, and though in good years they may 
 yield ample returns, the levelling effect of a bad season tells 
 specially against high farming, and leaves nothing out of 
 which interest can be paid. Farms of the smallest class too 
 often belong to men who, having little capital and no credit, 
 are broken down by the loss on a single harvest. On the 
 other hand, the occupier of a fifty-acre farm is more likely to 
 have adequate capital of his own ; he relies chiefly on his 
 own labour and that of his family, thereby getting the benefit 
 of high wages ; his personal expenditure is on a humble scale ; 
 and, having little taste for scientific experiments, he escapes 
 the ruinous losses, though he also loses the occasional profits, 
 of these hazardous speculations. Had the Commissioners 
 followed up this line of inquiry, they might perhaps have 
 arrived at significant results. It may well be that a policy 
 of agricultural consolidation, supposed to be justified by the 
 analogy of manufactures, has been carried too far in Great 
 Britain, and that it may be found profitable to break up 
 of many of the largest farms into the smaller holdings out 
 which they were but recently formed. At all events, this is 
 a question which eminently deserves consideration, especially 
 as a larger supply of farms requiring but moderate capital 
 might keep in the country a great deal of agricultural skill 
 and energy which now finds its way to America or Australia.
 
 152 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 The proposal of indefeasible Tenant-right in respect of 
 unexhausted improvements, and that of a rate or tax leviable 
 on all classes of property for indoor relief, suffice to redeem 
 this inquiry from the reproach of utter barrenness. But its 
 practical value begins and ends with these proposals, for the 
 suggestion of a limitation in time on the landlord's right of 
 distraint was already familiar to all interested in agricultural 
 politics. Assuredly the public had a right to expect far more 
 helpful counsels from such a Commission after three years of 
 meditation, and we cannot but attribute the reticence and 
 hesitation of their Eeport to a strange dread of uttering 
 home-truths unpalatable either to landlords or tenants. An 
 agricultural treatise might well be written on topics of the 
 first importance entirely omitted by the Commissioners, ap- 
 parently under the influence of this motive. We have already 
 seen how considerately landlords are spared painful allusions 
 to the connection of agricultural distress with incumbrances 
 under entails, with the rise of rent during periods of prosperity, 
 and with defects in estate management. But at least equal 
 tenderness is shown for the feelings of tenants ; and no trust- 
 worthy judgment can be formed on the future of British 
 agriculture without a violation of the reserve which the Com- 
 missioners have imposed upon themselves in regard to the 
 shortcomings, not of labourers, but of farmers. 
 
 The Commissioners speak very lightly of market garden- 
 ing and fruit-growing as auxiliary sources of profit to ordinary 
 farmers ; they are content to say of dairy-farming that it is 
 beginning to be studied ' as possibly a profitable branch of 
 agriculture ; ' and they seem to regard poultry-breeding and 
 the production of eggs as beneath the dignity of agricultural 
 science. Can they have been aware that nine or ten million 
 hundredweights of potatoes alone, and no less than seven or 
 eight hundred millions of eggs, are yearly imported into the 
 United Kingdom ? Had they realised that milk sent up from 
 dairy-farms sixty or seventy miles distant is delivered carriage 
 free at the London terminus for about 9d. a gallon, while it 
 is sold to London consumers at 20^. a gallon, thus leaving a
 
 BRITISH AGRICULTURE IN 1882 153 
 
 profit of more than 100 per cent, on the last process of distri- 
 bution ? Did they ask themselves how skilful poultry-breeding 
 can fail to yield a profit of full 100 per cent., seeing that fowls 
 have at least doubled their retail price within the last forty 
 years, while the cost of feeding them has slightly diminished ? 
 Had they dealt closely with such questions as these, they 
 would soon have detected one main cause of agricultural 
 depression, which, unhappily, bids fair to be ' permanent ' 
 the gradual retirement of the working farmer and the manag- 
 ing farmer's wife before advancing civilisation. 
 
 The portentous growth of what may properly be called 
 agricultural middlemen is at once a consequence and a proof 
 of this marked change in the habits of farmers. The number 
 of tenants may perhaps have been reduced by the consolida- 
 tion of farms and the number of labourers by the substitution 
 of machinery, but the number of persons making a living out 
 of the land is far greater than it was in the olden times. 
 Except the corn-dealer and the butcher, there was then 
 hardly any intermediary between the cultivator and the con- 
 sumer. The egg-dealer, the poultry-dealer, and the whole 
 army of jobbers who now eat up the farmer's profits on milk, 
 butter, and other articles of farm-produce, were then com- 
 paratively unknown. The farmer usually bred and reared, if 
 he did not slaughter, his own cattle ; his wife trudged or 
 jogged to market with her own turkeys, chickens, butter, 
 cheese, and eggs, on which she received the retail as well as 
 the wholesale profit. A toll is now exacted at every stage 
 between production and consumption, and it has even been 
 stated on good authority that butter made in the county of 
 Cork pays six or seven profits before it reaches the London 
 householder's table. Of course, all this represents an im- 
 mense saving of trouble to modern farmers, but it also repre- 
 sents a pecuniary loss, which, in the case of meat, greatly 
 exceeds the effect of American competition. The sacrifice 
 may be inevitable, but it certainly does not appear to be so ; 
 nor is it at all self-evident that, by a simple application of the 
 co-operative principle, the farmers of a neighbourhood might
 
 154 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 not employ a common salesman in London, and thus appro- 
 priate almost the whole benefit of London prices. 
 
 This brings into view another aspect of modern English 
 farming to which equally little attention has been directed. 
 The modern English farmer, occupying some two hundred 
 acres or more, is essentially a superintendent rather than a 
 husbandman, but in how many instances is he a trained and 
 fully qualified superintendent of farm labour ? And, if he be 
 not, is not that a very costly system of agriculture which 
 employs so large a class of overseers with no more than an 
 empirical knowledge of their business ? Let us suppose an 
 area of ten thousand acres in the possession of one, or more 
 than one, landlord ; and let us suppose that a capital of some 
 80,0007. is required to cultivate it properly. That capital is 
 now provided if indeed it be provided by some forty or 
 fifty tenants, most of them with families, and each living at 
 the rate of something like 11. per acre. In other words, 
 besides the 4,000/. a year which must be set aside as interest 
 on capital at 5 per cent., the mere superintendence of this 
 area costs 6,000/. a year. But it is at least worthy of con- 
 sideration whether it might not be more efficiently superin- 
 tended by one highly skilled manager with a salary of 1,000/. 
 a year and ten foremen-labourers or bailiffs receiving less than 
 100/. a year apiece. The result would be that 4,000/. would be 
 saved out of 6,000/., and the land perhaps better cultivated after 
 all. Though it would be very rash to speculate on the future 
 development of our agricultural system, which depends on so 
 many conditions beyond the sphere of economy, it is by no 
 means improbable that arrangements of this kind may, at 
 least, find a place in it. Nor would it be surprising if, sido 
 by side with farms thus managed on a grander scale, cottage 
 farms, of which the Commissioners think so little, should 
 become once more a characteristic feature of British agricul- 
 ture. True it is, as the Report informs us, that petite culture 
 has but slight chances of success except where there is ' facility 
 of railway carriage and proximity to great centres of popula- 
 tion.' But it so happons that most of Great Britain enjoys
 
 BRITISH AGRICULTURE IN 1882 IE 5 
 
 these advantages in a greater degree than any country except 
 Belgium, while the consumers of Great Britain are wealthier 
 and more willing to pay high prices than any other consumers 
 in the world. 
 
 Since this Beport was signed, a more favourable season, 
 and a more bountiful harvest, than we have enjoyed for some 
 years past has once more revived the spirits of farmers. It 
 is to be hoped that it will not obliterate from their minds the 
 lessons taught by the long period of depression, or divert the 
 attention of far-sighted agriculturists from the problems 
 suggested, but not in any way solved, by the Beport. ' The 
 best hope for the prosperity of agriculture lies in the mutual 
 confidence and friendly relations of the three classes directly 
 engaged in it, and in the common conviction that their 
 interests are inseparable.' No sentiment could be more 
 praiseworthy in itself or more suitable for an agricultural 
 dinner ; but it may well excite a smile as the final outcome 
 of a grave inquiry into the State and Prospects of British 
 Agriculture. It would be far more opportune to impress 
 upon farmers that ' the best hope for the prosperity of agri- 
 culture,' as of any other practical art, lies in the clear percep- 
 tion of the ever- changing conditions which must govern its 
 success, and the rapid adaptation of means to ends. If 
 gardeners had been as much creatures of routine as farmers, 
 we should miss all the finest varieties of flowers and fruits 
 which now constitute the glory of British horticulture. That 
 very tripartite system of agriculture, which is tacitly assumed 
 in the Beport to be an immutable ordinance of nature or 
 Providence, is scarcely known in America, is exceptional in 
 many parts of Europe, and must be regarded as on its trial 
 in Great Britain itself. Lord Beaconsfield may have been 
 right in asserting that land worth cultivating at all must 
 needs yield three profits, but it makes a great difference 
 whether these profits are all received by one, two, or three 
 classes ; and if by two or three, in what proportions they are 
 allotted. The great aim of agricultural reformers should be, 
 not to uproot the existing system, which would be quite as
 
 156 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE IN 1882 
 
 unreasonable as to stereotype it, but to secure the utmost 
 possible freedom of expansion for such modifications of owner- 
 ship and tenure as future circumstances may dictate. The 
 hierarchy of landlord, tenant-farmer, and labourer will con- 
 tinue long, and perhaps for ever, to be distinctive of our rural 
 economy. But it is probable that, in the agrarian constitu- 
 tion of the future, peasant-proprietorship, and farmer-pro- 
 prietorship, co-operative farming and cottage-farming, will pre- 
 vail over a far larger area than at present. The English land 
 system, as we see it, is not so much a spontaneous growth as 
 an artificial creation, and it has been moulded not so much 
 by skilful farmers, studying the interests of agriculture, as 
 by skilful lawyers and land-agents studying interests of an 
 entirely different nature. When English landowners, as a body, 
 cease to be almost sleeping partners, and bring to bear on 
 the business of cultivation the same intelligence and energy 
 which are the life of British manufactures, there will be less 
 need for appointing fresh Agricultural Commissions, and, if 
 they should be appointed, their Reports will probably breathe 
 a far less desponding spirit.
 
 Ill 
 
 ECONOMICAL POLITICS
 
 159 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 'The Nineteenth Century,' November 1883 
 
 It is now more than seventeen years since Lord Sherbrooke, 
 then Mr. Lowe, warned his countrymen against the perils 
 of advancing Democracy, in the most remarkable series of 
 parliamentary speeches delivered within living memory. In 
 opposing the very moderate Eeform Bill then under dis- 
 cussion, he assumed that every downward extension of the 
 franchise was ' a step in the direction of Democracy,' and 
 he proceeded to construct a hideous ideal of Democracy, by 
 combining all the worst features of ancient city governments 
 with all the worst features of modern empires, republics, and 
 colonial legislatures in which universal suffrage prevails. He 
 described this imaginary Democracy as tyrannical at home 
 and aggressive abroad, the enemy of all superiority, and the 
 slave of every selfish prejudice. He pictured to himself the 
 so-called ' degradation of the suffrage ' as inevitably involving 
 a degradation of politics, and constantly lowering the standard 
 of political morality. He maintained that if once the ignorant 
 majority should become omnipotent, it would forthwith use 
 its power to crush the educated minority, while it would 
 prostitute itself before the flattery of demagogues and the 
 bribes of millionaires. He foretold that democratic constitu- 
 encies would assuredly return members of inferior character 
 and intellect, little guided by public spirit or fixed principles, 
 intolerant of administrative vigour in the Executive, and even 
 of judicial independence on the Bench, obeying the caprices 
 of popular sentiment, and incapable of appreciating a truly 
 statesmanlike policy. 
 
 The year after these gloomy predictions were uttered, a 
 * degradation ' of the suffrage beyond that which Mr. Lowe had
 
 160 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 denounced was effected by a Conservative Ministry, and votes 
 were given to all ratepaying householders in boroughs, as 
 well as to a limited number of lodgers. We have now had 
 some fifteen years' experience of this democratic franchise, 
 and the sentiments of the new voters have been tested by 
 three general elections. For a while, the apparent results 
 of the change were such as to disappoint both the hopes of 
 its advocates and the fears of its opponents. The Parliament 
 of 18G8 contained a strong Liberal majority, and carried 
 several great measures which Lord Palmerston would pro- 
 bably have never introduced, even if the old constituencies 
 would have backed their members in supporting them. But 
 the reformed House of Commons differed little from its pre- 
 decessors in personal composition, nor could any specially 
 democratic tone be detected in its debates. In 1874 there 
 was a reaction. The Parliament of that year was the most 
 Conservative that had been elected for a whole generation, 
 and the majority, instead of blindly seeking instructions from 
 their constituents, yielded an almost passive obedience to 
 Lord Beaconsfield. Still, the growing desire to conciliate the 
 working classes made itself felt in such enactments as the 
 Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Act, while the action 
 taken by Mr. Gladstone on the Eastern Question gave the 
 first serious impulse to democratic interference with the 
 conduct of foreign affairs. It is true that shopkeepers rather 
 than labouring men crowded the indignation-meetings called 
 to condemn the Bulgarian atrocities ; it is perhaps true, also, 
 that most of those who attended them were as ignorant of 
 the real issues at stake as the working-class deputation which 
 besought Lord Palmerston to espouse the cause of Poland, 
 under the impression that it was a democratic cause. Still, 
 the fact remains that great mass-meetings were then, for the 
 first time, urged by the first of English statesmen to take 
 foreign policy under their own control, to drown the voice 
 of Parliament, and to force the hand of the Government by 
 a virtual plebiscite. The lesson has not been lost on the 
 English, or on the Irish people. Thenceforward, Parliament
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 1G1 
 
 has commanded less reverence in the eyes of the nation, and 
 the same machinery which prevented Lord Beaconsfield from 
 defending the integrity of the Turkish Empire was promptly 
 set in motion to defeat Mr. Gladstone's own convention with 
 M. de Lesseps respecting the Suez Canal. 
 
 The general election of 1880 was the sequel of his bold 
 appeal to democratic sentiment, and a genuine expression of 
 that sentiment. Whatever other influences may have con- 
 tributed to swell the Liberal majority, and whether or not 
 the enthusiasm then kindled has been justified by the event, 
 the verdict returned by the constituencies in 1880 was a 
 thoroughly popular and honest verdict a democratic protest 
 of the national conscience and common-sense against what 
 most of the electors regarded as an immoral and reactionary 
 statecraft. This verdict may possibly be reversed at the next 
 election ; personal and sectional discontents may again dis- 
 solve the cohesive power of Liberal principles and party 
 spirit ; the Irish legislation of 1881 and 1882 may prove to 
 have alienated a considerable body of powerful Whigs ; the 
 Egyptian War and the moderation of the Government on 
 certain domestic questions may have cost the confidence of 
 many extreme Eadicals ; the Affirmation Bill may be remem- 
 bered against it in Scotland ; Mr. Gladstone may retire and 
 leave no successor capable of rallying an united Liberal Party ; 
 the extension of household suffrage to counties may be rele- 
 gated, after all, to a new Parliament. But all this, even if it 
 restore the Conservatives to office, will not arrest the steady 
 progress of Democracy in England ; for that progress is in- 
 dependent of party vicissitudes, and is part of a secular move- 
 ment which no statesmanship can do much to accelerate or 
 to retard. 
 
 I. It is high time, however, to ask ourselves what is 
 meant by that progress of Democracy which all recognise, 
 and which is tacitly assumed in the current language of 
 politics. In what sense, if any, is England becoming every 
 day more democratic? The answer, though simple, cannot 
 be embraced within the limits of a legal definition. ' Demo-
 
 162 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 cracy,' or the rule of the people, is not a name for any 
 particular form of government ; it denotes a political and social 
 force which may underlie almost any form of government. 
 No doubt this force operates most naturally and powerfully 
 through republican institutions ; but there may be republican 
 institutions without Democracy, and Democracy without re- 
 publican institutions. The last French Empire was founded 
 on a ])lcbiscite, and even under the restored monarchy Demo- 
 cracy in France was described by Royer Collard as ' running 
 with a full stream ' ; so profoundly democratic has French 
 public opinion become ever since the Revolution. On the 
 other hand, the ascendancy of privilege and authority the 
 principles of which Democracy is the negation has seldom 
 been more oppressive than under the earlier republic of Rome 
 and the mediaeval republic of Venice. Neither of these 
 Republics could have stood the crucial test of a plebiscite. 
 Cromwell, who could not even keep the peace with a free 
 Parliament, would assuredly never have submitted the fate 
 of his own republican Commonwealth to such a test; and, 
 if anything in history be certain, it is certain that the 
 Restoration of Charles II. was the expression of an essentially 
 popular revolt against the austere and intolerant reign of 
 Puritanism, conducted under republican forms. It is the 
 absolute supremacy of the popular will over all other powers 
 in the State that constitutes a perfectly democratic govern- 
 ment, as it is the abolition of all social distinctions that con- 
 stitutes a perfectly democratic state of society. Where these 
 conditions are more and more nearly realised in any com- 
 munity, that community is growing more democratic, what- 
 ever be its constitutional machinery ; and it is in this sense 
 that we may properly speak of the progress of Democracy in 
 England. 
 
 At first sight, indeed, the contrast between such an in- 
 direct rule of the people as is gaining strength in England and 
 the direct rule of the people which prevailed in the more 
 democratic republics of Greece and Italy, is so violent as almost 
 to repel the idea of analogy. Let us take, for example, the
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 1G3 
 
 graphic picture of Athenian Democracy in its golden age 
 drawn by Mr. Freeman in one of his historical essays. In 
 this typical Greek Democracy, all power, legislative, execu- 
 tive, and judicial, was concentrated in the sovereign assembly 
 of the people, where every citizen had an equal vote. The 
 Senate, and even the Courts of Justice, were mere committees 
 of this assembly, and held to be animated by the same 
 passions ; Archons and Generals were mere executors of its 
 will. No division of powers was attempted. 
 
 * Demos was himself King, Minister, and Parliament. He 
 had his smaller officials to carry out the necessary details of 
 public business, but he was most undoubtedly his own First 
 Lord of the Treasury, his own Foreign Secretary, his own 
 Secretary for the Colonies. He himself kept up a personal 
 correspondence both with foreign potentates and with his 
 own officers on foreign service'; ... he gave personal audi- 
 ence to the ambassadors of other States, and clothed his own 
 with just so great or so small a share as he deemed good 
 of his own boundless authority. ... He was his own Lord 
 High Chancellor, his own Lord Primate, his own Commander- 
 in-Chief. He listened to the arguments of Kleon on behalf 
 of a measure, and to the arguments of Nikias against it, and 
 he ended by bidding Nikias to go and carry out the proposal 
 which he had denounced as extravagant or unjust. Jle lis- 
 tened with approval to his own "explanations"; he passed 
 votes of confidence in his own policy ; he advised himself to 
 give his own royal assent to the Bills which he had himself 
 passed, without the form of a second or third reading, or the 
 vain ceremony of moving that the Prytaneis do leave their 
 chairs.' 
 
 It is self-evident that Democracy of this Athenian type 
 could only be developed in an urban community which also 
 constituted a nation, and which had one and the same word 
 for the ' city ' and the ' State.' A city mob, clothed with 
 executive functions, could not possibly govern the United 
 Kingdom or the British Empire, however gifted the race of 
 which its citizens might have sprung, and there is, happily, 
 
 M 2
 
 1G4 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 less prospect of the experiment being tried, since the institu- 
 tion of representative government the most beneficent of all 
 political discoveries has enabled the many to rule through 
 the agency of the few. The Democracy which is steadily 
 advancing in England, though similar in its real tendency, 
 is entirely different in outward character, and essentially 
 modern in its origin. It may be traced with confidence to a 
 variety of definite general causes, three of which are worthy 
 of special notice. 
 
 1. One of these, clearly indicated by M. de Laveleye, is 
 the effect of mechanical inventions on civilisation. The in- 
 vention of printing alone has done more to break down class- 
 barriers and democratise society than all the efforts of social 
 reformers in ancient and modern times. When books were 
 manuscripts, and each of them cost months or years of labour 
 to produce, the perusal of them was practically the monopoly 
 of priests, monks, and philosophers, from whom the rest of 
 mankind were content to borrow their ideas. Even in the 
 last century, when there were plenty of books, indeed, but 
 hardly any newspapers in England, criticism on the manage- 
 ment of public affairs, and especially of foreign affairs, was 
 practically confined within a narrow circle of readers, scarcely 
 to be numbered by tens of thousands, and mostly concentrated 
 in London. Swift's ' Conduct of the Allies ' and the ' Letters 
 of Junius' had, doubtless, a prodigious coffee-house circulation, 
 and were probably devoured by a few hundred amateur poli- 
 ticians, male and female, in the long and dreary evenings 
 which followed the early dinners in those country-houses 
 which Fielding and others have portrayed so vividly. But for 
 the instruction of the people at large such circulation was as 
 nothing compared with that of any one among the many 
 leading newspapers, metropolitan and provincial, which now 
 collectively number their readers by millions. Whether they 
 be chiefly regarded as forming, or as reflecting, popular 
 opinion, these journals have created a healthy community of 
 political ideas between the people and the so-called governing 
 classes. Instead of looking upon statesmanship as an occult
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 165 
 
 science, the humblest elector or non- elector who can read 
 now feels himself almost taken into the councils of the 
 Cabinet, and, however conscious of ignorance, finds his 
 political judgment treated with respect by Parliament and 
 the Press. 
 
 2. A no less powerful democratic force is the ever-increas- 
 ing facility of locomotion. When labourers in the country 
 lived and died under the shadow of their parish churches, 
 never travelling beyond the nearest market town, and when 
 even artisans seldom migrated from their native cities, being 
 rooted there by custom as well as by the old law of ' settle- 
 ment,' the power of combination remained dormant, and 
 labour never measured its strength against capital except 
 under an extreme sense of oppression. In these days, the 
 labourer changes his residence as freely as the capitalist, no 
 longer tramping on foot, but conveyed by the same train as 
 his employer, while the spirit of Trades-Unionism, aided by 
 this very cause, associates him with all his fellow-labourers 
 throughout Europe and America. The constant tide of emi- 
 gration setting towards the United States and the colonies, 
 where society is equally democratic, reacts upon Great Britain 
 itself, and introduces democratic ideas into families which, 
 in the last generation, accepted without a murmur the paternal 
 despotism of the squire and the parson. In becoming less 
 stationary, the working classes are daily becoming more inde- 
 pendent, and, in becoming more independent, they inevitably 
 become a more important factor in the social and political 
 community. Meanwhile Democracy, under these influences, is 
 gradually assuming a more cosmopolitan character. National 
 costumes have well-nigh disappeared in Europe, national 
 prejudices are sensibly weakened, the dictates of national 
 patriotism are often checked by sympathies of class or creed 
 fostered by special organs of the Press ; and the statesman 
 has sometimes to count, not only with the demands of national, 
 but also with those of international, Democracy. 
 
 3. A third cause of democratic progress, which few can 
 desire to arrest, is the spread of popular education. The
 
 166 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 Reformation, which is the real fountain-head of modern 
 democratic ideas, gave the first impulse to this educational 
 movement, as it also stamped with a religious sanction the 
 aspirations of social equality. The democratic influence of 
 Protestantism is perhaps most clearly marked in Scotland, 
 where Presbyterian church government and the system of 
 parish schools were established together by the authority 
 of John Knox. No doubt, the political effects of that system 
 have been partly intensified and partly tempered by other 
 conditions, such as the survival of the old clan spirit, and 
 the natural energy which has pushed members of the poorest 
 Scotch families into the highest positions in Church or State. 
 Still, it is the general diffusion of education during the last 
 three centuries, and the association of all classes in common 
 schools, which have mainly contributed to develop the sturdy 
 yet sober character of Scotch Democracy. An exact contrast 
 is furnished by the experience of Ireland, where Democracy 
 is travestied by anarchy and terrorism, utterly inconsistent 
 with the manly self-reliance of free citizens, and where the 
 democratic sentiment of social equality is almost entirely 
 wanting. Had wiser counsels prevailed in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, and had national schools been planted all over 
 Ireland as they were in Scotland, it is quite certain that 
 Irishmen, Catholics as they mostly are, would now be far 
 more democratic in temper, and probable that they would be 
 far more loyal subjects. As for England, it is hardly too much 
 to say that democratic tendencies date from the extension of 
 popular education. Such outbreaks as the Lord George 
 Gordon riots in the last century, or the Luddite riots in 
 the early part of this century, were in no sense democratic 
 movements, but mere ebullitions of fanaticism and prejudice. 
 Even the fierce spirit of class-hatred which inspired the 
 Chartists, and survives in the pages of ' Alton Locke,' was 
 not truly democratic, but essentially sectional and sectarian 
 in its nature. This spirit has not been extinguished in 
 England, but it has been sensibly modified by the progressive 
 community of ideas between all classes which it is the special
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 167 
 
 mission of education to propagate, and which is specially 
 characteristic of true Democracy. In an educated population 
 like that of the United States, the conflict of races, of parties, 
 or of commercial interests, may be as bitter as possible, but 
 class-antipathies can never become internecine, because there 
 are no permanent divisions of classes, and because all citizens 
 have a common stock of ideas. 
 
 4. But the operation of these and other general causes 
 in furthering Democracy has been favoured by a negative 
 condition which has not received sufficient attention. This 
 condition is the internal decay of those forces which are 
 essentially antagonistic to Democracy Privilege, Authority, 
 and Individuality. It is not only that Privilege, entrenched 
 behind natural and artificial barriers, has been reduced to 
 impotence by the destruction of these barriers ; or that Au- 
 thority, assuming a divine right to command, has been met 
 by a revolt of human reason ; or that Individuality has been 
 weakened by the gravitation of modern life towards social, if 
 not intellectual, equality. It is, also, that faith in any prin- 
 ciples whatever has been impaired by the influence of that 
 prevailing scepticism which has shaken religious belief, and 
 penetrated into every other department of thought. Not 
 many generations have elapsed since Englishmen were con- 
 tent to brave torture or the stake rather than subscribe to 
 some abstruse formula about the mysteries of religion which 
 modern casuistry would cynically accept as unmeaning and 
 therefore harmless. These men had the courage of their con- 
 victions, but it is vain to expect the courage of their convic- 
 tions from men who have no deep and fixed convictions, such 
 as sustained the martyrs of old. Three centuries ago an 
 Englishman of like passions with ourselves would give his 
 body to be burned rather than affirm or deny transubstantia- 
 tion or the royal supremacy ; it is now considered an almost 
 heroic feat, as it is certainly a very rare feat, of political con- 
 stancy for an English politician to refuse a seat in Parlia- 
 ment, or give up office, rather than assent to measures which 
 he privately condemns. Thus it happens that when once the
 
 168 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 popular will has declared itself, or is supposed to have de- 
 clared itself often on very slight evidence it meets with no 
 resisting power. If any one is found strong enough to stand 
 against the stream, believing some things to be intrinsically 
 right and others intrinsically wrong, he is stigmatised as 
 ' weak-kneed ' by his more pliable fellows, who have no 
 earnest convictions at all, and thenceforth passes for a 
 theorist or crotcheteer. In a word, that which in France 
 is called ' opportunism,' has become the guiding law of 
 modern politics, and opportunism is but another name for 
 subservience to democratic absolutism. 
 
 II. To enumerate all the symptoms of democratic progress 
 in England would be a hopeless task, while some of them 
 might be treated with equal propriety as causes. Of course, 
 the most obvious instance of a change resulting, in part, 
 from democratic pressure and contributing to strengthen that 
 pressure, is the adoption of household suffrage, with the ballot, 
 in borough constituencies. The effect of this change is felt 
 in every borough election and in every parliamentary debate ; 
 it has been the chief motive power in most subsequent re- 
 forms, and the chief agent in the political education of the 
 people. Bearing this in mind, we may, however, find it more 
 instructive to observe those less patent signs of our own 
 times which most clearly indicate the course of the demo- 
 cratic movement in this generation, and its probable direc- 
 tion in the next. 
 
 1. Foremost among these must be mentioned the almost 
 universal recognition of Promotion by Merit as the rule 
 which should govern the whole public service, both civil and 
 military. An exclusive, or at least a preferential claim, to 
 fill the higher offices of the State, is a typical peculiarity of 
 aristocracies. The old Roman patricians bore with tolerable 
 patience other encroachments on their privileges, but they 
 denounced the opening of the great executive magistracies 
 to plebeians as an insult to the gods themselves. The same 
 notion is by no means extinct in Germany, and even in this 
 country, but thirty years ago, the admission of candidates to
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 169 
 
 the Civil Service and (still more) to the Army by competitive 
 examination was justly resented as the thin edge of the 
 democratic wedge. This is not the place to review the 
 gradual triumph of the new system, which has naturally 
 kept pace with the development of education. Much remains 
 to be done before it can truly be said that eminent ability, 
 combined with force of character, will enable its possessor 
 to attain success in England, but enough has been done 
 to give the masses a salutary assurance that no door of 
 preferment is now closed against them. There are probably 
 few villages from which some labourer's son has not been 
 raised to a higher station by his own capacity ; there is 
 certainly no college in the universities where students who 
 have risen from the ranks do not mix with young men of 
 superior birth and wealth ; and within the next thirty years 
 this healthy process of natural selection cannot fail to leaven 
 the whole upper grade of English society. 
 
 2. Another striking evidence as it is also a cause of 
 democratic progress is the rapid multiplication of new elective 
 bodies for purposes of local government since the Keform 
 Act of 1832. The local institutions of our Anglo-Saxon 
 forefathers were democratic enough, and even now there is 
 perhaps less of popular self-government in country districts 
 than there was for centuries before, and for some time after, 
 the Norman conquest. But there is far more than there was 
 in the last century, or even in the early part of the present 
 century, when the whole conduct of county business and 
 parochial affairs was legally or actually in the hands of 
 magistrates nominated by the Crown. The successive crea- 
 tion of elective Town Councils, Boards of Guardians, High- 
 way Boards, Sanitary Boards, and School Boards, represents 
 so many important changes in the reconstruction of popular 
 self-government. Hitherto the working classes have taken 
 much less interest in local than in parliamentary elections, 
 but their interest is yearly increasing, and in the meantime 
 a far more practical concern for their well-being is shown by 
 local governing bodies. A notable feature of this democratic
 
 170 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 revival in local government is the growing popularity of 
 Permissive Bills, to be applied at the discretion of the local 
 authorities. A similar tendency in ecclesiastical politics is 
 shown in the congregationalist movement, which has strangely 
 allied itself with the ritualistic movement within the State 
 Church itself. The very contrary was anticipated by De 
 Tocqueville, who predicted a sacrifice of local, no less than 
 of individual, independence to centralisation in England, 
 as elsewhere, on the ground that all Democracies crave for 
 uniformity in administration, and that central governments 
 are only too ready to grant it because it saves them all the 
 trouble of studying local requirements. He little foresaw the 
 democratic counter-currents which have brought about the 
 demand for Home Eule in Ireland, and for the settlement 
 of great questions, like the liquor traffic, by a local plebiscite. 
 Probably he was misled by a confusion between the love of 
 equality and the love of uniformity, possibly he did not allow 
 enough for the English preference of liberty to equality ; at 
 all events, experience shows that democratic forces in this 
 coimtry do not set entirely in the direction of centralisation. 
 
 8. There is another sense, however, in which the inter- 
 vention of the central government is being more and more 
 involved to compass democratic ends. The mass of the people 
 have discovered that a resort to imperial legislation and the 
 powerful machinery of imperial administration is the shortest 
 and readiest method of getting a public benefit secured or a 
 public abuse redressed. Hence the measures which have 
 placed the Poor Law and National Education and Charitable 
 Endowments under the superintendence of a central board ; 
 which have transferred the management of County Gaols to 
 the Home Office ; which have brought Factories, Mines, 
 Shipping and Emigration, more or less, under the control 
 of Government Departments ; which have established National 
 Savings Banks, and which have charged the State with the 
 duty of guarding the health not only of British citizens, but 
 of British cattle. Democratic centralisation of this kind is 
 sometimes quite legitimate, and implies no vulgar jealousy
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 171 
 
 of local independence. Most of the functions now assigned 
 to central boards can be discharged more efficiently and with 
 less waste of power by such boards than by local authorities, 
 and would long ago have been thus assigned had not the 
 people mistrusted a central executive mainly conducted by 
 the Crown and the aristocracy. Since the central executive 
 has come to reflect the will of the people, there is no longer 
 any motive for this jealousy, and the people find it convenient 
 to superintend many of their own affairs through officials in 
 Downing Street. 
 
 But it is vain to conceal from ourselves that democratic 
 centralisation has another source in the wide diffusion of 
 socialistic ideas. This is the most formidable symptom of 
 democratic progress, as it is also the most novel. No essential 
 connection exists between Socialism and democratic institu- 
 tions. Great inequalities of fortune were tolerated in the 
 Greek and Italian republics, and seem to excite little jealousy 
 in the United States. There vast capitals are often amassed 
 by plundering the public, while the very simplicity of domestic 
 life favours accumulation, yet there is little trace of socialistic 
 legislation. In England, on the contrary, the principle of 
 Socialism was introduced into legislation by the Poor Law 
 long before democratic forces were in the ascendant. Socialism 
 is not a product of Democracy, but modern Socialism and 
 modern Democracy are both fostered, to some extent, by the 
 same industrial conditions. A very lucid explanation of this 
 fact is given by M. de Laveleye in his admirable essay on 
 ' Democracy and Political Economy.' He there shows how 
 the same economical causes which promote social equality 
 also give birth to hostility between masters and workmen. 
 In proportion as machinery facilitates the organisation of 
 industry on the grandest scale, and cheapens necessaries as 
 well as luxuries, it widens and deepens the gulf which sepa- 
 rates capital from labour. The caste-like immobility of classes 
 which prevailed in the Middle Ages has passed away with 
 serfdom, trade privileges, and the regulation of wages by 
 custom or Act of Parliament ; but the unlimited competition
 
 172 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 which has succeeded it has introduced a struggle for existence 
 unknown in the olden times. 
 
 ' This general competition is the cause of all progress, the 
 mainspring of industrial activity, the source of our power ; 
 but it produces, too, an incessant agitation, a permanent 
 restlessness, an universal sense of instability. No one is 
 content with his lot ; no one is sure of to-morrow. The rich 
 man desires to accumulate more riches ; he who lives by 
 labour trembles for his very livelihood. . . . Economical pro- 
 gress has emancipated artisans from all disabilities ; it has 
 rescued them from the bonds of trade-guilds; it has raised 
 their wages and improved their condition ; but, at the same 
 time, it forms them into a class by themselves, massing them 
 in vast bodies into enormous factories and fixed centres ; it 
 has given them new wants, and it has exposed them, without 
 protection or security, to all the fluctuations of business, so 
 often turned upside-down by the revolutions of industry, the 
 crisises of trade, and the stagnation of the markets.' 
 
 Yet the franchise must be extended to all. 
 
 * You give the power of choosing legislators, and so of 
 making laws, to men who have no property, and whose wages 
 are inevitably forced downwards to a minimum representing 
 the bare necessaries of life. You proclaim a legal equality, 
 and the actual inequality which continues to exist causes 
 more suffering, and becomes more irritating than ever.' 
 
 The immense circulation of Mr. Henry George's ' Progress 
 and Poverty ' is an instructive commentary on these words, 
 published five years ago. It is true that Socialism has little 
 hold in the United States, and is directly at variance with 
 the best tendencies of Democracy, but it is zealously advo- 
 cated by the democratic Press in Europe, and is likely to 
 be stimulated by the advance of Democracy in England for 
 many years to came. 
 
 Though Socialistic ideas have taken deeper root on tho 
 Continent than in England, it is to be feared that England 
 has special reason to guard against their propagation. The 
 greatest weakness of party government, as it exists in this
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 173 
 
 country, is the proneness of one party to bid against the 
 other for democratic support, and it would not be difficult to 
 show how many benevolent measures, containing the germ 
 of Socialism, have recently owed their origin to this fatal 
 competition. Of these, by far the most important and dis- 
 astrous is the Irish Land Act of 1881. If the progress of 
 Democracy should involve further and further applications 
 of that evil precedent to agrarian and commercial relations, 
 the national character will assuredly become demoralised ; 
 State protection will usurp the place of self-help, and in the 
 vain attempt to redress inequality by Act of Parliament we 
 may end by quenching that spirit of liberty to which England 
 owes so much, not only of its present greatness, but of its 
 capacity for a truly democratic civilisation. 
 
 4. A fourth and more hopeful symptom of advancing 
 Democracy is the far more active and intelligent part taken 
 in elections by the mass of the people, who in too many 
 boroughs had been passive material in the hands of self-elected 
 committees, or cliques of local busybodies. The so-called 
 Caucus system is rather the expression than the cause of 
 this activity, which is shown in the greater frequency of 
 political meetings, and even in the curious growth of mimic 
 Parliaments on the model of the House of Commons. But 
 the Caucus system has assuredly done much to stimulate and 
 to consolidate democratic organisation, giving a new political 
 life to some of our more sluggish constituencies. In this it 
 has been purely beneficial ; it is mischievous so far as it tends 
 to crush out personal independence and converts the repre- 
 sentative into the mere delegate. It is one thing for the 
 numerical majority of electors to claim the right of choosing 
 a candidate for themselves, and of ascertaining that his 
 general views are in harmony with their own ; it is another 
 to insist on dictating his vote on each particular measure, 
 thereby annulling the grand advantage of representative 
 government. Happily, this abuse of the Caucus system is 
 likely to be checked by the natural good sense and inde- 
 pendence of Englishmen ; meanwhile, the system itself is, at
 
 174 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 least, a proof of a healthy democratic interest in national 
 politics. 
 
 5. But the influence of democratic tendencies is equally 
 manifest within the walls of Parliament itself. Lord Pal- 
 merston was not far wrong in surmising that, if the franchise 
 were lowered, the actors of the political drama would probahly 
 remain much the same as before, but that they would play to 
 the gallery, instead of to the pit and boxes. Several men of 
 rough democratic fibre have forced their way into the House 
 of Commons, but on the whole birth and wealth seem to hold 
 their own in the open market of electioneering. The differ- 
 ence is that every question is discussed with a special regard 
 for the claims and feelings of the million, sometimes verging 
 upon undisguised popularity-hunting. Hence the protectionist 
 spirit which has reappeared in Parliamentary debates. Whether 
 it be the grievances of the Highland crofters, or the extension 
 of polling hours to suit the convenience of labourers, or the 
 abolition of imprisonment for debt, or Sunday closing, or 
 any other subject which touches working-class sympathies, a 
 sensitive anxiety is now shown to propitiate the poorest voters 
 which used to be reserved for the prejudices of territorial 
 aristocracy and commercial plutocracy. The same tender 
 solicitude for the comfort of the many, as against the privi- 
 leges of the few, may be traced even in such comparatively 
 trifling matters as the recent erection of street-refuges for 
 the security of foot-passengers, and recent arrangements for 
 the more popular enjoyment of royal parks. This deference 
 to ' Demos,' as Aristophanes called it, may be carried, as we 
 have seen, to socialistic extremes, but it is often dictated by 
 motives not far removed from that paramount concern for 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number which ought 
 to be the first rule of statesmanship. There is a striking 
 passage in Mr. Trevelyan's 'Early Days of Charles James 
 Fox,' where he shows how intense is the sentiment of oligar- 
 chical freemasonry, and how closely it is brought home to 
 each member of such an exclusive society as then governed 
 England. Sometimes an honest statesman might be sup-
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 175 
 
 ported by this sentiment against the civium ardor prava juben- 
 tium ; but, in the main, it must surely be safer and better for 
 politicians to rely, as they now must, on the good opinion, 
 not of a caste or a class, but of a much larger public, almost 
 co-extensive with the nation. 
 
 6. On the other hand, we cannot expect the same delicacy 
 or sense of honour from those who are studying to please 
 small tradespeople, artisans, and day-labourers, as from those 
 who obey the unwritten code of cultivated and refined circles. 
 The experience of ancient Greece and Eome proves that 
 chivalry may attain perfection under a republican govern- 
 ment, but it certainly does not flourish nowadays in an 
 atmosphere of social equality, or among persons chiefly en- 
 gaged in mercantile competition. Noblesse oblige is a maxim 
 which finds no response in the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. 
 Hence the admitted decline of gentlemanlike feeling and 
 manners in the House of Commons which Mr. Bright has 
 not shrunk from pointing out, and which is most conspicuous 
 in a large section of the Irish members. We are bluntly 
 warned by a Eadical publicist that the House of Commons 
 must 'become the worst club in London, if it is to be a 
 faithful mirror of popular political sentiment,' and the remark 
 is too forcibly confirmed by the example of the American and 
 colonial legislatures. In this country the name of gentleman 
 is still held in honour, but conduct unworthy of a gentleman 
 is no longer condemned as it used to be by the House of 
 Commons itself, and public opinion is not in advance of 
 Parliamentary sentiment. Indeed, it appears that vulgarity 
 of tone is rather aggravated in England by that fierce light 
 of publicity, gathered into a focus by ' society papers,' which 
 now beats, not on thrones only, but on every transaction of 
 private life. This is among the least amiable symptoms of 
 democratic progress, but it is, unhappily, not the least cha- 
 racteristic. 
 
 III. Such being the general causes, and the chief symp- 
 toms, of democratic progress, we have to consider what 
 attitude a far-sighted statesman ought to assume towards
 
 176 THE FROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 it, apart from the view which he may adopt on particular 
 articles of the democratic programme. And, first, let us 
 dismiss once for all the absurd and unworthy notion that 
 Democracy must be welcomed because, forsooth, its progress 
 is decreed by Political Necessity. No illusion has been so 
 potent or so mischievous in its effect on statesmanship as 
 this metaphysical bugbear, peculiar to modern thought, of 
 Political Necessity. The ancients held that man was often 
 the sport of a cruel Destiny, but that Destiny was supposed 
 to be superhuman, and was practically excluded from their 
 calculations. It has been reserved for modern political philo- 
 sophers to cower before a destiny of their own invention an 
 idol which is created by public opinion in its own image, and 
 of which those who bow down to it individually form a part. 
 If people had but the nerve to brave the consequences 
 of defying a destiny of this kind, and acting on the far 
 sounder belief that ' man is man, and master of his fate,' it 
 would often turn out that what had been mistaken for an 
 irresistible stream of Political Necessity was nothing but a 
 movement got up by a small band of doctrinaires, and capable 
 of being stopped by a very moderate display of energy and 
 self-sacrifice. If, then, such were the character of the demo- 
 cratic movement in England, if it depended for its success 
 mainly upon those imaginary laws of Nature which are really 
 within human control, it would be the duty of a true states- 
 man to confront it boldly, and, should it appear mischievous, 
 to oppose it vigorously. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we have rightly interpreted the 
 origin of this movement, we shall be compelled to recognise 
 it as really irresistible in the political sense. It is irresistible 
 in that sense, because it springs inevitably from causes, out- 
 side the sphere of politics, which have broken down the old 
 barriers separating nations and classes, sapped the convic- 
 tions which upheld privilege and authority, revived, though 
 in a worldlier form, the sense of common brotherhood first 
 proclaimed by the Gospel, and opened up the vision of a 
 higher comfort and culture for the toiling and suffering masses
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 177 
 
 of mankind. No one pretends that it is possible to arrest the 
 development of mechanical invention, of locomotion, of trade, 
 or even of education, and, unless the development of these 
 forces can be arrested, the march of Democracy cannot be 
 arrested. The existing Parliament may refuse the franchise 
 to agricultural labourers, but it cannot prevent agricultural 
 labourers becoming more intelligent or more independent ; 
 they must be enfranchised sooner or later, or their discontent 
 will be a serious political danger, and, if they be enfranchised 
 too late, the impulse given to Democracy will be all the 
 greater. It was for this reason that De Tocqueville justly 
 regarded the progress of Democracy as inevitable. He saw 
 in it a political and social tendency inherent in the growth 
 of modern civilisation, and he wisely set himself, not to 
 preach against it, but to study its probable operation. 
 
 It does not follow, however, that because the progress of 
 Democracy may be inevitable, in England as elsewhere, it is 
 therefore an unmixed benefit, still less that nothing can be 
 done to direct it. A true friend of Democracy as it ought to 
 be will not shut his eyes to the vices of Democracy as it is. 
 He will not fail to observe that, in destroying many super- 
 stitions and prejudices, it has put nothing in their place, and 
 has encouraged a contempt for experience which bodes ill for 
 the stability of democratic policy. Whatever his confidence 
 in the people if left to follow their own convictions, he will not 
 ignore the risk of their falling a prey to the arts of politicians 
 trading upon their weaknesses and pandering to their passions. 
 He may see reason to hope that Jack Cade would now fail 
 to impose upon an audience of English working men, but 
 he would not trust every constituency to reject Jack Cade's 
 doctrines clothed in a socialist garb, and he knows that can- 
 didates of infamous character have been the chosen favourites 
 of the populace, not only in America and the colonies, but 
 much nearer home. Whether or not he deplores the visible 
 decay of dogmatic faith among the masses in Great Britain, 
 he cannot but apprehend that a people which no longer feared 
 God might cease to regard man, and that unrestrained self- 
 
 N
 
 178 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 ishness, rather than universal zeal for the public good, might 
 result from a democratic regeneration of English society. 
 
 It is right that all these misgivings should be laid to heart 
 by those who appreciate, and aspire to guide, the progress of 
 Democracy in England. But it would be very wrong to let 
 them obscure our view of those more favourable omens which 
 justify, not political optimism, but a cheerful and courageous 
 acceptance of the inevitable. Let us freely admit the beset- 
 ting dangers and temptations of Democracy, but let us not 
 forget the dangers and temptations which Democracy counter- 
 acts. If we must needs mistrust democratic ideas of economi- 
 cal justice, what shall we say of that system of taxation 
 which, for want of democratic pressure, was the curse of 
 France before the Revolution; and what of the Corn Laws 
 and other commercial abuses which prevailed in this country 
 until they were swept away by democratic pressure ? Sub- 
 servience to mobs tends, no doubt, to lower the standard of 
 political morality, but is subservience to courts less demoral- 
 ising ; and were members of Parliament, after all, more high- 
 minded in the lifetime of Sir Robert Walpole, when there was 
 no Democracy to flatter ? Many small, and some large, con- 
 stituencies are doubtless tainted with corruption, but do not 
 the vast majority of electors vote honestly ; and is not even 
 the servile and venal residuum almost as pure as the select 
 bodies which monopolised borough elections in the olden 
 times? The democratic Press of our own day may not be 
 as moderate or scrupulous as we could desire, but can it be 
 said that modern English journalism, as a whole, compares 
 unfavourably with the coarse pamphleteering literature of 
 which Swift and Junius produced the choicest specimens ; 
 and have not the organs of sound political information been 
 multiplied a hundred- or thousand-fold since the people have 
 begun to read newspapers? These are not irrelevant ques- 
 tions ; they bear directly on the past history of democratic 
 progress, which is the most trustworthy basis for a forecast 
 of its future tendencies. The prospect of liberty so ample as 
 that which Englishmen now enjoy would have alarmed timid
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 179 
 
 reformers of the last century quite as much as the prospect 
 of greater political and social equality alarms those of the 
 present age. Yet England, notwithstanding the much greater 
 scale and complexity of its national life, is practically much 
 easier to govern at this moment than it was in the evil days 
 of court intrigue and parliamentary bribery. It was easier 
 to govern after the Reform Act of 1832 than before it, and 
 it became easier still after the Reform Act of 1867. Why 
 should we doubt that future generations of English statesmen 
 will learn to weather the admitted perils of advancing Demo- 
 cracy as skilfully as their fathers weathered the perils of 
 personal government and oligarchy, or that a new order of 
 political virtues will be developed under new social condi- 
 tions ? 
 
 One thing is certain, that it requires a more thorough 
 political training, and a larger range of political knowledge, 
 to lead a democratic nation and an almost despotic House of 
 Commons, than it did to govern England as Walpole and 
 Pitt governed it. The business then conducted by depart- 
 ments of State was comparatively simple, and a patrician 
 Minister of no extraordinary capacity might well appear to 
 stand a head and shoulders above the people, when so few 
 took an active part in public affairs, and political life was 
 still a close profession. Unless democratic progress is accom- 
 panied by a constant growth in the political education of 
 statesmen, government will assuredly become weaker and 
 weaker to control popular impulses, and popular impulses, 
 however genuine, can never be a safe regulator even of 
 domestic policy, much less of imperial policy, so long as the 
 masses are mainly engrossed by manual labour, and ignorant 
 of nearly all that it concerns a statesman to know. Mr. 
 Bright is fond of telling us that ' the people have no interest 
 in wrong.' This is true, but it is equally true that mankind 
 has no interest in vice or error. If human nature could be 
 trusted to understand and pursue its own highest interests, 
 without instruction or guidance, this world would indeed be 
 a paradise, and we might do well to welcome the substitution 
 
 N 2
 
 180 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 of plebiscites for responsible government. Unhappily, it is 
 far otherwise, and the future of Democracy mainly depends 
 on the willingness of the omnipotent people to be led by 
 highly-trained and conscientious statesmen, on the future 
 supply of such leaders, and on their willingness to serve the 
 people upon such terms as Democracy will accept. 
 
 Now, it may be fairly urged that, in proportion as the 
 suffrage is extended and the governing classes recruited from 
 below, the choice of materials for statesmanship will be in- 
 creased, while the statesman will derive increased assistance 
 from intelligent criticism. The men who now attain Cabinet 
 office cannot be presumed to be the ablest politicians that 
 Great Britain can produce, but only the ablest or most 
 successful of those with leisure enough, fortune enough, and 
 local interest enough to find seats in Parliament and force 
 themselves into the front ranks. The progress of Democracy 
 will open a larger field of selection, but will the multitude of 
 electors avail themselves of it, choose the best candidates, and 
 support the wisest statesmen ? This is a question on which 
 no prudent man will offer a confident opinion, for here the 
 results of English experience materially differ from the lesson 
 taught by the experience of America and the Australian 
 colonies. 
 
 Hitherto, in this country, there have been few signs of a 
 reluctance among men of high culture and social position to 
 venture out on the open sea of politics, and not many signs 
 of a reluctance in great popular constituencies to accept or 
 even to prefer men of this type, when they can be induced 
 to come forward. If such men are sometimes deterred from 
 offering themselves, it is not so much by the display or the 
 fear of democratic jealousy as by the covert opposition of 
 short-sighted and self-seeking wirepullers, who delight to 
 honour the plausible money-maker, perhaps equally destitute 
 of public spirit or political capacity, since they have no other 
 ideal of merit than success, and no other ideal of success than 
 self-aggrandisement. No doubt, rich candidates sometimes 
 buy seats by corrupting poor electors, but they have to con-
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 181 
 
 duct their corrupt practices in secret, and an Act has just 
 been passed, with the hearty approval of the public, which 
 cannot fail to hinder corrupt practices in future. No doubt, 
 great popular audiences will always be prone to follow dema- 
 gogues, and to be unduly swayed by rhetorical ability, but 
 English demagogues seldom venture to court popularity by 
 appeals to base passions or sentiments, and the larger the 
 constituency, the higher, as a rule, is the general tone of 
 electioneering speeches. Moreover, English society is not 
 stratified in horizontal layers ; nor do the working classes 
 form a solid phalanx or mystic brotherhood swayed by one 
 imperious will. The better they are known, the more they 
 are found to comprise an infinite variety of interests, habits, 
 and opinions, among which strong patriotic and Conservative 
 instincts are by no means wanting. If we looked to Great 
 Britain alone, we might be tempted to await the progress of 
 Democracy with little anxiety, and to rely on the extension 
 of national education as an adequate security against any 
 risk involved in a further extension of the suffrage. But at 
 this point we are rudely confronted with the experience of 
 America and our own colonies. There barefaced appeals to 
 selfishness, bordering on dishonesty, constantly win the con- 
 fidence of large constituencies better educated, on the average, 
 than our own ; and even personal integrity is by no means 
 a qualification for political life. Let it be granted that Anglo- 
 Saxon good sense, if not a higher principle, generally prevents 
 these evil influences being carried to the extreme length of 
 spoliation or repudiation ; still, the broad fact remains that, 
 with the progress of Democracy, the standard of electoral 
 purity and of public honour has apparently been lowered in 
 highly-educated communities. Education alone, then, at 
 least in its narrow sense, is no effectual safeguard against 
 the perils of advancing Democracy. Nor have we a right to 
 assume that England will long be protected against them by 
 her precious inheritance of sound traditions, so far as these 
 traditions are mere survivals of institutions which Democracy 
 is breaking down.
 
 162 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 There is, however, another explanation of the contrast 
 between the code of political morality recognised in England 
 and that recognised in the United States or the colonies. 
 These democratic communities have practically no foreign 
 policy or imperial responsibilities, and politics are practically 
 confined to conflicts and regulation of material interests. In 
 this country, on the other hand, even the humblest elector 
 is sometimes made to feel that he is a member of the great 
 European family, and a partner in a world-wide empire, to 
 govern which requires a wisdom beyond the shrewdness of a 
 merchant or railway director. Moreover, new countries are 
 far more emphatically ' nations of shopkeepers ' than England, 
 having comparatively few citizens with leisure, independence, 
 and social prestige enough to rise above mercenary interests, 
 or even to dispense with a salary for serving in Parliament. 
 The advantage which England enjoys, in this respect, may 
 well be weighed by the coming Democracy against the ad- 
 vantage of paying members, and thus opening Parliament to 
 needy adventurers as well as to needy patriots. 
 
 At all events, our best hope for the future lies in cul- 
 tivating and elevating the nobler conception of citizenship 
 and statesmanship hitherto characteristic of England. No- 
 thing but the maintenance of a high national character 
 will avail to render the progress of Democracy conducive to 
 national greatness or to national happiness. The standard 
 of public virtue which may suffice for aristocratic government 
 will not suffice for democratic government. The whole sphere 
 of politics must be moralised, so to speak, and brought under 
 the control of purer motives, if the more direct rule of the 
 people in England is to be as successful as the older form 
 of constitutional monarchy. If Democracy will not endure 
 Privilege and Authority, it must learn to yield ungrudging 
 loyalty to intellectual and moral ascendancy. If it is not to 
 be actuated by a refined sense of honour, it must be actuated 
 by a robust sense of duty. If it will not be controlled by any 
 power independent of itself, it must deliberately erect barriers 
 against its own autocracy, as, for instance, by a thorough recon
 
 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 183 
 
 struction of local government, and the delegation to local bodies 
 of a much larger jurisdiction. The richer classes, on their part, 
 must adopt the advice of M. de Laveleye, and combine plain 
 living with high thinking and earnest work. The spirit of 
 Christianity, democratic as it is, must be carried into political 
 life, and the so-called laws of political economy must be recon- 
 ciled with the dictates of benevolence, not by class legislation, 
 but rather by the voluntary efforts of individuals and societies. 
 Socialism must be combated, not by flinging away the rights 
 of property, as sops to soothe the Socialistic Cerberus, but, on 
 the contrary, by far-sighted measures favouring a more equal 
 distribution of property, and making as many citizens as 
 possible shareholders in the national prosperity. If the House 
 of Lords is to be upheld, it must be reinforced with life-peers, 
 and submit to such other modifications of its constitution as 
 may convert it into an efficient and popular Second Chamber. 
 If the Church is to be upheld, it must be made in fact, and 
 not in name only, the Church of the people. 
 
 Such counsels as these will not prevail, or will be adopted 
 too late, if men fitted by nature and position to lead Demo- 
 cracy cynically persist in holding aloof from politics. Electors 
 cannot be justly blamed for mistaking copper for gold, if the 
 gold is never offered for their acceptance. Nor can it be 
 truly asserted of Democracy that it is the implacable foe of 
 all superiority. It levels social and political inequalities, but 
 it cannot level superiority of birth, of wealth, of intellect, of 
 character, of energy, or of education ; on the contrary, it 
 gives free scope to each of these, and often rewards its for- 
 tunate possessor with unstinted homage. Science and art, 
 literature and commerce, may and do flourish under the 
 shelter of Democracy ; it rests with their leading representa- 
 tives to moderate and ennoble Democracy by heartily asso- 
 ciating themselves with the people. Let it never be forgotten 
 that, come what may, the mighty engines of Education and 
 the Press must always remain in the hands of men far above 
 the multitude in mental culture, if not in social position. 
 The Universities have already done much in England, and
 
 184 THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND 
 
 may yet do far more, to promote the sentiment of fraternity 
 by which equality should be consecrated. The London School 
 Board, a standing example of unselfish public spirit, has 
 appreciably humanised the dangerous classes of the metro- 
 polis, not only by reclaiming the street Arabs, but also by 
 establishing a bond of sympathy, and a common ground of 
 public action, between the higher and lower strata of the vast 
 London population. It is in this direction, and in this spirit, 
 that we must continue to move patiently and fearlessly, if we 
 are to ward off the violent shock of democratic revolution by 
 the gradual process of democratic evolution. For the vices 
 of Democracy are only to be subdued by a vigorous develop- 
 ment of its virtues ; and those only will have strength to 
 control the democratic movement who honestly and heartily 
 embrace the democratic ideal of society.
 
 185 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 The Nineteenth Century,' April 1884 
 
 The progress of Democracy and the progress of Socialism are 
 now habitually coupled with each other, not only in the current 
 language of politics, but in the minds of statesmen and grave 
 political writers. Yet it must not be assumed that both ten- 
 dencies are equally inevitable and equally irresistible. The 
 progress of Democracy, as De Tocqueville said above forty 
 years ago, is ' the most constant, the most ancient, and the 
 most permanent fact of history.' It is inevitable, because 
 European society has long been shaping itself, as American 
 society had shaped itself from the first, into a mould incon- 
 sistent, not, indeed, with any other form, but with any other 
 principle, of government. It is irresistible, because the in- 
 fluences which favour it, such as the spread of education and 
 the extension of locomotion, are perpetually gaining strength ; 
 and because the influences opposed to it, such as the respect 
 for Privilege and for Authority, are ever losing their hold on 
 the reason of mankind. These propositions cannot be affirmed 
 of ' Socialism ' in any among the various senses of which that 
 most flexible term is capable. To analyse those senses would 
 be worse than vain ; for none has yet acquired a fixed mean- 
 ing. When, however, the progress of ' Socialism ' is regarded 
 as inseparable from the progress of Democracy, a tolerably 
 definite idea is usually attached to ' Socialism.' It is not 
 meant that democratic progress involves a communistic parti- 
 tion of wealth, or the abrogation of property as an institution ; 
 nor is it only meant that democratic progress involves a 
 benevolent and active concern for the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number. What is meant is that democratic 
 progress involves a progressive revolution of social conditions,
 
 186 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 whether gradual or violent, towards greater equality in the 
 distribution of wealth ; and that this equality is to be realised 
 by means of State legislation and State control. The bolder 
 apostles of State Socialism, and notably the Executive Com- 
 mittee of the so-called ' Democratic Federation,' do not shrink 
 from specifically formulating their claims. In a manifesto 
 drawn up by their Chairman and Treasurer, and endorsed 
 by the whole Committee, they insist upon the right and duty 
 of the ' people,' whom they identify with the wage-earning 
 class, to obtain control of the means of production, including 
 the land, in every country. The labour of all is to be organ- 
 ised collectively for the benefit of all : the State is to 
 appropriate the land, apparently without compensation ; to 
 take over and work the railways and the shipping ; to own 
 all mines, factories, and workshops, managing them through 
 superintendents chosen by the operatives ; to substitute 
 National Banks for private banks ; and to replace shops 
 by State and Communal Centres of Distribution.' Other 
 advocates of State Socialism are less self-confident or less 
 outspoken ; but it may safely be said that a more equal distri- 
 bution of wealth to be produced by the direct interference 
 of Government with individual action is the popular ideal 
 of that Socialism which is conceived as the twin-sister of 
 Democracy. Let us, then, consider how far the democratic 
 movement, which all must recognise, actually runs in this 
 direction ; how far counter-forces, antagonistic to Socialism, are 
 likely to be strengthened by this very movement ; and how 
 far it may be possible by a wise policy to guide the current 
 of Democracy into a less perilous channel. 
 
 And, first, it is important to distinguish between various 
 classes of measures loosely described as Socialistic by those 
 who detect the cloven foot of Socialism in every legislative 
 restriction of individual liberty. From the point of view 
 adopted by the Liberty and Property Defence League, and 
 more or less sanctioned by Mr. Herbert Spencer's Philosophy, 
 a very large proportion of the Acts passed in recent years 
 must be regarded as Socialistic in their character. Not
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 187 
 
 merely the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the Arrears 
 Act, the Ground Game Act, and the Agricultural Holdings 
 Act, but the Settled Estates Act of 1876, and the Settled 
 Land Act of 1882, must be relegated into this category, since 
 they all limit the freedom of landowners in dealing with their 
 property. The same must be said of the many Acts regu- 
 lating Shipping, Mines, Factories, the Liquor Traffic, and 
 Labourers' Dwellings. In all these cases freedom of contract 
 is invaded, while Education Acts curtail the right of parents 
 to keep their children in ignorance, Adulteration Acts super- 
 sede the old maxim of caveat emptor in the purchase of com- 
 modities, Sanitary Acts override the independence of private 
 households for the sake of the public health, while professions 
 are harassed by such rules as are contained in the Medical 
 Acts, the Dentists' Act, the Solicitors' Eemuneration Act, 
 the Veterinary Surgeons' Act, and the Pedlars' Act, not to 
 speak of the Employers' Liability Act, which covers almost 
 the whole field of manufacturing and mercantile enterprise. 
 Whatever objection may be raised against any one of these 
 measures, it is clear that, if all be condemned as Socialistic, 
 hardly any sphere will be left for the legitimate action of Law 
 and Government. Moreover, a very little reflection will show, 
 not only that some differ very widely, in principle, from 
 others, but that some are, while others are not, in harmony 
 with the prevailing spirit of Democracy. 
 
 Take, for example, the Sanitary Acts, under which it may 
 be said that rates mainly paid by the upper and middle 
 classes are expended upon objects which mainly benefit the 
 poor. There is nothing really Socialistic in the principle of 
 these Acts, the demand for which has been justified by the 
 failure of isolated individual action to provide effectually for 
 drainage and water-supply. In old times, every man was 
 held responsible for nuisances arising from his own neglect, 
 but this liability was found to be wholly inadequate even for 
 the prevention of nuisances, while it left untouched all the 
 positive sanitary requirements of great urban populations 
 massed together under modern conditions. Hence the neces-
 
 188 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 sity of doing by collective municipal action that which must 
 otherwise have remained undone, or been done at a prodigi- 
 ously greater cost ; and if the poor have incidentally reaped 
 greater advantage than the rich, so much the better, for no 
 one is damnified thereby. The principle of the Education 
 Acts is different, but not more essentially Socialistic. It does 
 not rest on the duty of the rich to supply the poor with 
 educational necessaries; but rather on the interest of the 
 State in reducing the sources of pauperism and crime. It 
 has scarcely been contended that the humbler classes have a 
 right to get their children taught at the expense of other 
 classes ; but rather that, if popular education is a State 
 necessity, and if indigent parents are compelled to forego their 
 children's earnings during the school age, at the bidding of 
 the law, schooling must be given free, or at a minimum cost. 
 Thus, both the Sanitary Acts and the Education Acts, what- 
 ever may be said against them, are founded on reasons of 
 public utility, and not on the principle of equalising the lots 
 of the higher and lower classes in the community. The 
 various Acts passed for the protection of women and children 
 against excessive labour, or of grown men against certain 
 forms of oppression and temptation, may or may not be 
 defensible on grounds of policy, and may or may not conduce 
 to manly independence in the national character. But they 
 cannot properly be called Socialistic, inasmuch as they were 
 not dictated by a desire to promote the Socialistic ideal of 
 equality ; but rather, as Mr. Goschen points out, by a revul- 
 sion of the national conscience against the moral results of 
 the laissez-faire system, left to operate uncontrolled. When 
 the public clamours for legislation to preserve the lives of 
 miners or sailors against preventible accidents, it is not with 
 the idea of disturbing the distribution of profits between 
 labour and capital, but only of putting a stop to a scandalous 
 waste of human life. Even the Irish Land Act, Socialistic 
 as it is both in its principle and in its practical effect, was 
 not openly advocated on Socialistic grounds. The motive 
 power which carried it was, no doubt, Socialistic ; but the
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 189 
 
 majority of its Parliamentary supporters were made to believe 
 that it was necessary in order to rectify the consequences of 
 former injustice. Indeed, however clear the germs of Socialism 
 may be discerned in many recent statutes passed under a 
 democratic impulse, it would be difficult to specify one which 
 is distinctively Socialistic, unless it be the Poor Law itself, 
 or the Act which exempts small incomes from the incidence 
 of the Income Tax. Both these exceptions are defensible, in 
 the opinion of most sound economists ; but they are far more 
 Socialistic in essence than such measures as the Factory 
 Laws or the Merchant Shipping Acts. 
 
 It does not follow, however, that Democracy, even in this 
 country, is not Socialistic in its tendencies and aspirations. 
 In his posthumous chapters on Socialism, written in 1869, 
 Mr. J. S. Mill records a salutary warning against judging of 
 Household Suffrage by the fruits of the first one or two elec- 
 tions after its adoption. Until the new electors learned to 
 realise and to exercise their power, little change was per- 
 ceptible either in the quality of the candidates or in the 
 nature of the pledges demanded of them. In both these 
 respects, the progress of Democracy, aided by that of popular 
 education, has now made itself felt ; it will make itself more 
 powerfully felt when household suffrage is extended to the 
 counties, and the connection between modern Democracy and 
 Socialism is rapidly acquiring an altogether new significance 
 for an English statesman. For it would be very unsafe to 
 imagine that working men, now admitted on equal terms into 
 the governing class, and commanding a numerical majority 
 of votes, will long abstain from using those votes for the 
 purpose of furthering whatever objects they may have at 
 heart. The important question is whether these objects are, 
 after all, Socialistic, or whether English Democracy, unlike 
 that of the Continent, will reject the phantom of communistic 
 equality, and embrace the surer but less seductive hope of 
 social regeneration which is offered alike by Christianity and 
 by Liberalism. 
 
 Looking simply at the external causes which have favoured
 
 190 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 the spread of modern Socialism, we must confess that most 
 of them operate with peculiar intensity in England. Nowhere 
 else is the contrast more appalling between the lot of Dives 
 and the lot of Lazarus, and nowhere else is this contrast so 
 emphasised and stereotyped as it is by the English institution 
 of Primogeniture, with all its far-reaching consequences. In 
 no other country is the gulf between manufacturer and work- 
 man more impassable, or the class-prejudices of workmen 
 more liable to be stimulated by their aggregation into great 
 factories and their visible separation both from the mercantile 
 aristocracy and from the bourgeoisie. In no other country 
 have the small working employers and other intermediate 
 links between capital and labour been more nearly crushed 
 out by the development of industrial organisation. In no 
 other do so few husbandmen own the lands which they culti- 
 vate ; in no other is landed property concentrated in the 
 hands of a territorial aristocracy so small numerically and so 
 constantly decreasing. No other Legislature has adopted and 
 applied Free Trade doctrines so consistently as our own, 
 whereas no other body of workpeople in Europe have carried 
 the system of Trade-Unionism to such perfection as the 
 English. For these and similar reasons, it might have been 
 predicted that Socialistic doctrines were likely to find a con- 
 genial soil in the bosom of the English Democracy, and that 
 Karl Marx and Lassalle, Fourier and Louis Blanc, would 
 number hosts of readers, if not hosts of disciples, among the 
 more thoughtful of English Radicals. 
 
 If such is not the fact if Democracy in England has 
 been hitherto less tinged with Socialism than in any other 
 European country the explanation must be sought, in certain 
 permanent characteristics of English society which afford a 
 solid ground of hope for the future. However unequal the 
 distribution of wealth may have been in England, the national 
 sense of humanity and justice has ever been kept alive and 
 quick to redress every ascertained grievance. When the pro- 
 gress of enclosure and other economical changes reduced the 
 English peasant to a day-labourer, it was at once felt that
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 191 
 
 his maintenance in the last resort must be undertaken by the 
 community. The English Poor Law, to which there is no 
 parallel in foreign legislation, has established a chronic and 
 statutable kind of Socialism in our internal economy which 
 has acted as an almost sovereign antidote to acute and revo- 
 lutionary Socialism. Whenever a grievous case of oppression 
 or hardship has been made out, a special law has been passed 
 to remedy it, with a cynical disregard of symmetry or juri- 
 dical science, but with an earnest desire to give every class a 
 fair chance in the race of life. Again, the glaring disparity of 
 fortune and worldly advantages between rich and poor has 
 never been aggravated by caste-like divisions, while it has 
 been greatly mitigated by kindly intercourse and charitable 
 sympathy. Since the Eeformation, the clergy of the Esta- 
 blished Church have ceased to be a sacerdotal order, and, 
 whatever their shortcomings, have done much to relieve the 
 sufferings and to plead the cause of the poor, herein reflecting 
 the genuine spirit of Christianity itself. Without the Poor 
 Law, without the immense expansion of English charity, both 
 public and private, and without the levelling influences of 
 religion penetrating all classes, it is certain that Socialism 
 would be far more threatening in England than it is at 
 present. 
 
 It would be easy to enumerate other reasons why Socialism 
 has as yet assumed a far less formidable and organised aspect 
 in England than on the Continent. Where the right of 
 public meeting is unlimited, or limited only by the require- 
 ments of public order, conspiracy gives place to open dis- 
 cussion and association. Where the Press is free, wild 
 projects can be propounded without reserve, but are at once 
 subjected to an intelligent criticism, which puts their sup- 
 porters to shame. Where the ambition of rising in social 
 position is general, and the competitive system is firmly 
 established in education as well as in the public service, the 
 solidarity of the so-called proletariat, as well as of the so-called 
 bourgeoisie, is greatly impaired, and the hostility of manual 
 to intellectual labour is sensibly neutralised. Where military
 
 192 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 enlistment is voluntary and conscription unknown, one of the 
 strongest motives for reorganising society in the interest of 
 labour has no existence. Where Provident and Friendly 
 Societies, Building Societies and Trades- Unions, number six 
 millions of members, and own funds amounting to 08,000,000/., 
 the obstacles to a Communistic scheme of plunder become 
 extremely serious, and the most sanguine of its apostles may 
 well shrink from provoking a contest with the possessors of 
 property. Where the privacy and independence of family life 
 are a national tradition, shared even by those whose family 
 domicile is a single room, men do not so readily band them- 
 selves into revolutionary brotherhoods, or submit to such 
 rules as Socialistic organisation would impose. Where country 
 labourers have long been accustomed to see neighbours 
 migrate or emigrate from their native villages, and town opera- 
 tives are constantly shifting their abodes in order to better 
 themselves, the basis of a Socialistic Commune would be 
 liable to constant disturbance. Where joint-stock enterprise 
 and co-operative associations are widely diffused, enabling the 
 smallest capitals to be profitably employed, the chasm between 
 capitalist and labourer is already bridged over, and little is 
 left for Socialism to promise except sheer confiscation. Where 
 the love of games and field-sports creates a friendly tie 
 between young men of all ranks in the country, and the squire 
 has usually a kind word for the ploughman, it is hard to 
 develop that intense hatred of gentlefolk which inspired the 
 great revolts of peasants in the Middle Ages, and which still 
 forms in some parts of Ireland a prime motive of agrarian 
 Socialism. 
 
 But it is needless to multiply instances of the natural 
 forces hostile to Socialism in England. Though English 
 society doubtless appears at first sight to be rigidly stratified 
 1 in horizontal layers,' these layers are crossed by so many 
 vertical sections, and the whole mass is so welded together 
 by the manifold action of a genuine national life, intensified 
 by the labours and struggles of centuries, that attempts to 
 sel class against class never fail to encounter very powerful
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 193 
 
 obstacles. Even the minor contests between masters and 
 men in respect of wages are beginning to be settled by arbi- 
 tration, and not even the most internecine strike or lock-out 
 can long dissolve the many other bonds, apart from trade 
 disputes, which unite fellow-citizens to each other. The 
 leaders of the belligerent forces may be members of the same 
 religious congregation ; they may be of the same political 
 party, and have actively co-operated in the last Parliamentary 
 election ; they may be serving on the same local committee, 
 or equally interested in the same local improvement. On the 
 other hand, the essential differences between the ideas and 
 interests of town and country always a Conservative safe- 
 guard are reinforced in these islands by a singular diversity 
 of race, manners, and character between different parts of 
 the United Kingdom, and even of England itself. If Socialism 
 means uniformity under the guidance of a central power, it 
 is probable that English Democracy will be very slow in 
 moulding itself into such a type. A long process of education 
 must surely be required before it can assimilate the ideas and 
 acquire the habits necessary to unlearn the lesson of self- 
 government. Perhaps in the course of this process it may 
 discover that, after all, the true line of Democratic progress 
 lies in an exactly opposite direction. For the most powerful 
 barrier against Socialism in this country has been the national 
 spirit of personal and constitutional liberty, entrenched behind 
 so many outworks of law and custom. This spirit, inherited 
 from the institutions of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, has been 
 fostered by Protestantism, by commercial and maritime en- 
 terprise, by the tenacity of home-life among rural labourers 
 inhabiting detached cottages, by the immense variety of in- 
 dustries among town-artisans, and by the absence of con- 
 scription or any other form of compulsory service. The 
 typical Englishman, even of the humbler classes, has an in- 
 stinctive sense of personal rights, and an instinctive jealousy 
 of over-regulation. He may become a member of a trades- 
 union, as he may join a political union, for the purpose of 
 obtaining some object which he values ; but he is generally 
 
 o
 
 194 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 reluctant to part with his own freedom of action, and well 
 pleased to resume it. He is ready, of course, to receive bene- 
 fits at the hands of ' Government ' ; but in his inmost heart 
 he distrusts ' Government,' as an engine sure to be worked 
 by officials at headquarters, over whom he can have no prac- 
 tical control. 
 
 This difference in sentiment between foreign and English 
 champions of labour has not failed to display itself at Inter- 
 national Congresses of workmen, and was specially marked 
 at the Congress of last year in Paris. Hitherto, English 
 Democracy, so far as it was represented at these gatherings, 
 has committed itself to no wild schemes of social regeneration 
 by means of State agency. On the contrary, the leading Eng- 
 lish delegates have warmly supported the counter- scheme of 
 so organising the forces of labour throughout Europe that it 
 may be able to make its own terms with capital in the open 
 field of competition. Nor is there any reason to suppose that 
 Socialistic clubs, such as abound in France, Germany, and 
 Switzerland, are either numerous or influential in England. 
 Of course, associations of this kind do not court publicity, 
 but, if they had been important enough to be a power in any 
 constituency, serious attempts would assuredly have been 
 made to force Socialistic pledges on candidates at the last 
 General Election. No doubt London shelters hundreds of 
 Socialistic and even Nihilistic conspirators, but they mostly 
 consist of foreign refugees, and we have as yet no evidence 
 of their doctrines having taken any serious hold on the minds 
 of our own working classes. Though a resolution demanding 
 the so-called Nationalisation of Land was passed by a small 
 meeting at the Trades-Union Congress of 1882, it was virtually 
 rescinded by another meeting at the Trades-Union Congress 
 of last year, in favour of an amendment simply affirming the 
 necessity of radical changes in the land system for the benefit 
 of the people at large. The Democratic Federation goes 
 further, and makes the nationalisation of land an essential 
 part of its programme ; but we have yet to learn the strength 
 of this arrogant body, and it is more than probable that a
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 195 
 
 premature attempt to link Democracy with Socialism in an 
 appeal to English householders would end in a signal defeat 
 at the poll. 
 
 It would be a grave error, however, to measure the ad- 
 vance of Socialistic opinion in England by the feebleness of 
 its public demonstrations. If English working men have 
 only coquetted with the International and other revolutionary 
 leagues which have risen from its ashes, it is to be feared that 
 vast numbers of them have lent a ready ear to Mr. Henry 
 George's project for confiscating the entire soil of the country 
 without compensation. If they have wisely declined to stake 
 the practical interests of industry upon the success of any 
 untried scheme for reconstituting society, they are now being 
 encouraged to regard the State as an instrument for giving 
 them special advantages at the expense of other classes. There 
 can hardly be a better illustration of the crude economical 
 theories now becoming current under the name of State 
 Socialism than the growing demand for State interference, 
 not merely to regulate, but to construct and let out, dwellings 
 for the poor in London and other great towns. In this case, 
 as Mr. Goschen points out, nearly all the reasons which are 
 supposed to justify State Socialism have combined to produce 
 the demand : ' a public sense of moral responsibility, dissatis- 
 faction with the present distribution of wealth, complications 
 arising from the crowded state of society, and the belief that 
 Government is the only deus ex machind to solve an almost 
 insoluble problem.' Mr. Goschen agrees with Lord Salisbury 
 that the principle of laissez-faire cannot be pleaded against 
 the right of the State to abate this evil, and that, considering 
 how many of its causes are artificial, if not State-created, the 
 State may justly deal with the ownership of house property 
 in certain overcrowded districts as ' a virtual monopoly,' and 
 with the rents thereof as ' monopoly rents,' to be valued at 
 less than a market-price in the event of compulsory sale. Mr. 
 Fawcett goes nearly as far in the same direction, but neither 
 he nor Mr. Goschen is prepared to countenance the proposal 
 that improved dwellings for the poor should be erected out 
 
 o 2
 
 196 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 of public funds. This proposal is not in itself Socialistic. If 
 it were shown that house-building on a large scale could be 
 carried out more efficiently by Imperial or municipal autho- 
 rities than by private individuals, and if the rents to be 
 charged were inexorably fixed so as fully to cover the cost 
 of building and maintenance, there would be no more objec- 
 tion in principle to State lodging-houses than to State 
 post-offices and savings-banks. But this is not what is con- 
 templated in the Socialistic claim of Government aid for the 
 accommodation of poor families in great towns. What is 
 contemplated is that either the Imperial or the local Govern- 
 ment should directly or indirectly provide such accommoda- 
 tion at a rent below the sum required to pay interest and 
 replace capital. The deficiency must needs be made good 
 either out of rates or out of taxes ; and both of these are paid 
 in great part by persons with small incomes, little above the 
 struggling class on whose behalf this claim is made. If the 
 State lodging-houses were rate- supported, and were also fully 
 rated, many a poor man would thus lose nearly as much in 
 rates as he would gain in rent ; if they were not fully rated, 
 their occupants would be shifting a portion of their own bur- 
 dens upon the shoulders of their less privileged, and perhaps 
 not richer, neighbours. 
 
 But this is not all. The moment it was known that com- 
 fortable dwellings were being let at a minimum rent in a 
 given district, a fresh tide of immigration would set towards 
 that district, and the most stringent restrictions against the 
 reception of lodgers would be needed to prevent worse over- 
 crowding than before. Even as it is, the population of the 
 East End is swelled and demoralised by the indiscriminate 
 relief dispensed there in response to sensational appeals, and 
 though it is a hard saying the sympathetic public may 
 be as much to blame as extortionate landlords and employers 
 for the misery of dockyard labourers and match-box makers. 
 Such is the inference to be drawn from the statistics of 
 destitution in towns which ai overstocked with charitable 
 endowments, and such is the conclusion to which some of
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 197 
 
 the best friends of the East-End poor have been led by their 
 own experience. But here we are brought face to face with 
 Bastiat's favourite antithesis between ' that which is seen ' 
 and 'that which is not seen.' That which is seen is the 
 heart-breaking distress and widespread immorality prevailing 
 under the present laissez-faire system evils which might be 
 largely reduced by a vigorous enforcement of existing laws 
 based on the sound principle of individual responsibility. 
 That which is not seen is the probable reproduction of these 
 evils, in a more complicated form, if the State should under- 
 take to house some of its poorer citizens at the expense of all 
 the rest thereby weakening the sense of individual respon- 
 sibility among the owners of property, discouraging the spirit 
 of self-help among the industrious poor, and reviving the evil 
 traditions of class-legislation. And all this in order to root 
 in the soil of certain metropolitan districts a favoured group 
 of families much larger than can be decently supported by 
 the ordinary rate of employment in those districts. Here we 
 have Socialism in its least defensible form the claim that 
 1 Society,' which has nothing to do with bringing children 
 into the world, shall guarantee to each and all of those who 
 may choose to live on a given spot a comfortable lodging on 
 that spot, imposing a tax on the more provident and in- 
 dustrious members of the community to save the residuum 
 from the alternative of emigration or the workhouse. 
 
 True it is that no demand so preposterous has yet 
 been embodied in any Democratic programme issued by any 
 respectable body. Still, it is not only 'in the air,' but has 
 been so thoroughly popularised in articles and speeches, that 
 a more robust faith in economical principles than has lately 
 been shown will be needed to prevent its becoming a hustings 
 question. The successful propagation of Mr. George's doc- 
 trines is even more startling. Here is a grave proposal for 
 relieving from taxation all other classes in the community by 
 confiscating, without compensation, the property of one class, 
 either openly or, as Mr. Goldwin Smith describes it, ' under 
 the thin disguise of a predatory use of the taxing power.'
 
 198 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 This sweeping measure is to embrace all kinds of landed 
 property the great hereditary estate and the most recent 
 purchase of the Manchester cotton- spinner the broad acres 
 of millionaires and the little freehold reclaimed from the 
 common, or acquired through a building society by the saving 
 artisan the land which owes its value solely to gifts of 
 Nature, and that which owes its value solely to improvements 
 executed by its possessor. How this is to be effected without 
 civil war, and how so vast a system of land agency is to be 
 carried on honestly by any Government hitherto devised, are 
 questions too practical to occupy the attention of those who 
 discourse glibly on the ' Nationalisation of Land.' It is as- 
 sumed that land, however acquired, differs so essentially from 
 all other kinds of wealth, however acquired, that its possession 
 can justly be treated as robbery. It is assumed that all the 
 millions now received by landowners from agricultural rents, 
 or ground-rents of houses in towns, are absorbed unprofitably, 
 like Cleopatra's pearl, and not expended, to a great extent, in 
 employing productive labour. It is assumed, otherwise, that 
 if the State were to pocket all these incomes, and apply them 
 to a reduction of taxation, it could also, on the principle of 
 eating cake and having it, apply them, as before, to employing 
 the same amount of productive labour for, if it could not, the 
 labourers formerly paid out of the landowner's rent would 
 hardly be the gainers. It is assumed that a Land Depart- 
 ment, with a staff of salaried officials manipulating a colossal 
 revenue, would be proof against temptations of jobbery, and 
 manage its affairs better than individual proprietors. It is 
 assumed that full rents would be exacted for the relief of the 
 general taxpayer, and yet that farm-tenants would somehow 
 obtain benefits involving a remission of rent. Such are 
 specimens of the presumptions and assumptions underlying 
 the popular conception of Mr. George's scheme, if they do not 
 underlie the scheme itself. We have nothing here to do with 
 the various economical paradoxes incidental to it, such as the 
 independent capacity of Labour to maintain itself without the 
 aid of Capital. What is really memorable is the simple fact
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 199 
 
 that an eloquent book, which is understood to justify whole- 
 sale spoliation, and ignores the most patent objections founded 
 on the reason and experience of mankind, should be circulated 
 by myriads of copies, and find respectful hearers, not among 
 the masses only, but among the ostensible leaders of the 
 coming Democracy. Possibly, the grotesque illustrations of 
 his doctrines to which Mr. George has lately committed him- 
 self, and the character of the patronage under which he has 
 been introduced to English audiences, may supply a whole- 
 some corrective to his influence, but the previous spread of 
 that influence is in itself an ominous sign of the times. 
 
 For what is the fundamental assumption on which all 
 this fabric of speculative plunder reposes ? It is the assump- 
 tion that wealth is itself the cause of poverty ; that, as the 
 rich become richer, the poor become poorer. But this as- 
 sumption is in flagrant opposition to facts, as was recently 
 shown by Mr. Robert Giffen in his Address on the progress 
 of the working classes in the last half-century. Mr. Giffen 
 finds, as the result of an exhaustive inquiry, that, one with 
 another, ' the workman of to-day receives from 50 to 100 
 per cent, more money for 20 per cent, less work ; in round 
 figures, he has gained from 70 to 100 per cent, in fifty years 
 in money return.' Meanwhile, the price of nearly all articles 
 consumed by working men has diminished, especially that of 
 bread, the most important of all. The price of meat, it is 
 true, has risen, chiefly because working-class families con- 
 sume far more of it now than fifty years ago ; and though 
 house-rent is much higher, partly because such families are 
 better lodged than in former days, the heavier charge 
 under this head is altogether outweighed by the saving 
 under others. A far larger proportion of the national in- 
 come is now expended on education and otherwise for the 
 benefit of the working classes. The death-rate has been 
 greatly reduced ; pauperism and crime have declined still 
 more remarkably ; savings-bank deposits and the capital of 
 provident societies have enormously increased ; the impor- 
 tation of tea, sugar, and other simple luxuries, mainly
 
 200 DEMORACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 consumed by the working classes, has trebled or quadrupled 
 itself in half a century. An analysis of the income-tax and 
 probate-duty returns shows that, while the growth of capital 
 has been very large, the whole income derived from it has not 
 by any means grown at the same rate as the whole income 
 derived from wages, and moreover that, instead of becom- 
 ing more and more concentrated, the income of capitalists 
 has become more and more diffused, so that each capitalist is, 
 on the average, only 15 per cent, richer than was the case 
 forty years ago, when the income tax was first instituted. In 
 conclusion, Mr. Giffen points out what Mr. J. S. Mill had 
 pointed out long before, that it is the grossest of Socialistic 
 delusions to regard the income of capitalists as so much spoil 
 which might be divided among the masses without any cor- 
 responding loss. So reasoned the simple folk who killed 
 the hen that laid the golden eggs. A very large part of the 
 profits on capital is now saved and re-invested in business. 
 Hence the constant rise of wages concurrently with a constant 
 advance of population. Let these profits be scattered abroad, 
 and spent instead of saved, and a constant advance of popu- 
 lation will mean a constant fall of wages. 
 
 It may be objected to Mr. Giffen's statistics that he dates 
 his inquiry from a period when the labouring classes of this 
 country were in a state of abnormal depression. Such an 
 objection would be material if these statistics were used to 
 justify a self-complacent optimism. But it does not affect 
 their value as showing that, instead of being intensified, 
 poverty is reduced by progress, even with an ever-growing 
 population, and the refutation of that monstrous paradox 
 would have been still more striking had the population been 
 stationary. 
 
 Happily, in this country there is a wide interval between 
 the sentimental acceptance of mischievous paradoxes and 
 their practical adoption. As soon as any Socialistic plan for 
 providing State lodging-houses comes to be embodied in a 
 Hill, and tested by debate, the crushing arguments against 
 it will be recognised by the common sense of the nation. It
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 201 
 
 will then be remembered that a more hopeful and plausible 
 experiment in Socialism that of outdoor relief with a view 
 to preserve the integrity and self-respect of family life ended 
 in disastrous failure, a chronic depression of wages, and wide- 
 spread degradation of the very class which it was designed 
 to benefit. Still more decisive will be the national verdict 
 against the Nationalisation of Land on Mr. George's prin- 
 ciple when the scheme has once taken a tangible shape and 
 emerges from the hands of a draughtsman. It will then 
 appear that, apart from its revolting injustice, it runs counter 
 to a far stronger and sounder Democratic tendency of the 
 age, which aims at largely increasing the number of landed 
 proprietors, and converting occupiers into owners. Other 
 Socialistic projects which depend for their achievement on 
 centralisation will inevitably conflict with anti-centralising 
 influences already existing in English society, and likely to 
 be developed by the onward progress of Democracy. One of 
 these influences is the growing strength of what is called 
 ' Voluntaryism ' in relation to Church affairs and education ; 
 another is the spirit which, operating in the political sphere, 
 has animated the various movements in favour of ' Home 
 Eule ' and ' Local Option.' Both of these principles represent 
 the assertion of communal or congregational liberty against 
 1 Collectivist ' dictation. Of course, the Socialism of Owen, 
 Fourier, and others, who regard communes, great or small, 
 as the constituent and self-governing units of the new social 
 fabric, would be more or less in harmony with either of 
 them. But State Socialism of the Collectivist type, in order 
 to be efficacious, would imperatively require an uniformity 
 of administration equally at variance with individual liberty 
 and with communal independence. A centralised Socialistic 
 government would never tolerate competition in the use of 
 ecclesiastical or educational endowments ; still less would 
 it permit one municipality to shut up all the public-houses, 
 and another, perhaps adjoining it, to establish free trade 
 in drink. The individualism of communities or voluntary 
 associations is as directly antagonistic to Socialism, in this
 
 '10-2 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 paternally despotic form, as the individualism of separate 
 human beings. 
 
 Here, then, let us pause and consider what should be the 
 attitude of a far-sighted Liberal statesman towards Democratic 
 Socialism. He will assuredly not seek to combat Socialism 
 by vain efforts to arrest the march of Democracy, thus for- 
 feiting both the right and the power to guide that march in a 
 salutary direction. He will not shut his eyes to the por- 
 tentous evils caused by the present unequal distribution of 
 wealth, nor will he lightly conclude that such a distribution 
 is dictated by immutable decrees of Nature or of Providence. 
 He will not forget that slavery appeared to our forefathers as 
 natural and as necessary as the abject poverty of millions of 
 our fellow-citizens now appears to a certain school of econo- 
 mists. He will not imagine that the so-called laws of Political 
 Economy have any cogency in themselves, or can be more 
 than careful generalisations from human experience, by which 
 they must be frequently corrected, and to which they must 
 be constantly re-adapted. He will not be deterred by the 
 stigma attaching to Socialism from weighing impartially 
 serious proposals for equalising more nearly the respective 
 lots of the rich and of the poor, even if they appear to imperil 
 the sacred institution of private property. He will, however, 
 bear in mind and duly estimate the fact that communal pro- 
 perty at least in the shape of tribal ownership is not an 
 untried experiment, but an experiment condemned by the 
 judgment of past generations, having been deliberately aban- 
 doned for the system of enclosure, in most parts of Europe, 
 with the advance of civilisation. He will equally lay to heart 
 the lessons of history respecting the abuses of State inter- 
 vention, and the origin of the laissez-faire system, while he 
 will not decline to revise these lessons by the light of new 
 social conditions. He will repudiate the notion that every 
 child born into the world has rights against society, as distinct 
 from its parents, but he will admit that, if the State cannot 
 stop the increase of population, it cannot allow the Darwinian 
 struggle for existence to operate unchecked. Starting from
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 203 
 
 this point of view, he will probably be led to reject most of 
 the drastic remedies offered by Socialism, but to believe that 
 by less direct and violent methods the most legitimate object 
 of Socialism the diminution of social inequality may gra- 
 dually be attained. 
 
 1. The first of these methods is so obvious that it is diffi- 
 cult to understand how it can occupy so little space in the 
 minds of Socialistic writers. It consists in a stricter regula- 
 tion of successions to property, both real and personal. If 
 there be such a thing as a natural right of man, it is the 
 right of each to enjoy during life the entire fruits of his own 
 labour and skill, instead of being mulcted for the benefit of 
 his less skilful and industrious fellows. On the other hand, 
 if there be a right which is a pure creation of law, founded 
 on no instinctive sense of justice, and hardly recognised by 
 primitive societies, it is the right of bequeathing his acquisi- 
 tions to others at his own discretion. Yet, strange to say, 
 it is the first of these rights which is rudely assailed by 
 modern Socialists, while the second is little challenged, except 
 as a corollary of the first. It is Capital as such, and not 
 inherited capital, which is treated as the mortal foe of Labour, 
 alike by the bloodthirsty pioneers of Nihilism and Anarchy, 
 by the respectable followers of Karl Marx or Henry George, 
 and even by the more extreme leaders of English Trades- 
 Unionism. Whereas at the Bale Congress of the famous 
 International Society, in 1869, a resolution in favour of 
 abolishing hereditary succession was negatived, after a lively 
 discussion, by a majority of more than two to one. 
 
 This is not the place to examine minutely the relation of 
 Capital to Labour ; it is enough to realise that no civilised 
 labour can possibly be carried on without it, and that no 
 motive except the expectation of personal gain has ever proved 
 strong enough to encourage the saving which can alone pro- 
 duce capital. This is the all-sufficient defence of individual 
 property, but it is a defence which applies only to wealth 
 earned by a man's own exertions, and not to wealth inherited 
 from others. There is no reason whatever to suppose that
 
 204 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 accumulation would cease, even if there were no right of 
 bequest, while there is the clearest evidence that the passion 
 for accumulation is peculiarly strong where, as in France and 
 other countries under the Code Napoleon, the right of bequest 
 is narrowly limited by law, for the express purpose of pro- 
 moting equality in the succession of children. The law of 
 England, on the contrary, is eminently calculated, and indeed 
 designed, to promote inequality. The right of Primogeniture, 
 operating on landed estates in all cases of intestacy, and the 
 power of settling both land and personalty on an unborn 
 grandchild of unknown character, have produced in territorial 
 families an inveterate custom of beggaring younger children 
 for the aggrandisement of the eldest son, without regard to 
 personal merit, which has consecrated an unequal rule of 
 distribution throughout all the upper classes of English 
 society, and penetrated far below them. To revise the law 
 and curtail the custom of Primogeniture will be among the 
 first tasks of Democratic statesmanship, and by so doing it 
 will erect a breakwater athwart the tide of Socialism. 
 
 Perhaps it may even go further, and restrict the liberty 
 of bequest within a testator's family, as it has already been 
 restricted over most of the Continent, though not in the 
 United States of America. If so, whatever other consequences 
 may ensue, Socialism will not be the gainer, for a larger 
 number of property- holders will be enlisted against Socialistic 
 encroachments on property. A milder, but less practicable, 
 alternative would be the adoption of Mill's suggestion, that 
 no one should be allowed to inherit more than ' a comfortable 
 independence.' The difficulty of carrying out this suggestion 
 literally is self-evident, but a Liberal statesman, in a Demo- 
 cratic age, will not shrink from the idea of progressive suc- 
 cession and legacy duties, which may have much the same 
 effect. The distinction between a progressive succession duty 
 and a progressive income tax is very material. The latter, 
 though worthy of far more consideration than it has received, 
 strikes directly at acquisition, and might very seriously check 
 the accumulation of capital. The former would leave the
 
 DEMOCRACY A1SD SOCIALISM 205 
 
 capitalist full control of his own savings during life, and, if 
 it weakened his incentives to accumulation, so far as these 
 depend on his desire to enrich his children, it would sensibly 
 increase the incentives to accumulation on the part of these 
 very children, who might otherwise lapse into drones. The 
 funds thus obtained by the State might be utilised in relief 
 of other taxes, without robbing any one either the deceased 
 capitalist who, having brought nothing into the world, is 
 entitled to carry nothing out, or his children who, knowing 
 the law beforehand, would have governed their expectations 
 and laid their plans accordingly. The whole amount of 
 capital applicable to reproductive uses would not be dimin- 
 ished, but only redistributed, for whatever the estate of the 
 deceased might lose would go to increase the capital of the 
 general taxpayer. 
 
 2. But a far safer mode of satisfying the reasonable de- 
 mands of modern Socialism consists in the bold and vigorous 
 development of local self-government. Communism and Com- 
 munalism, though often confounded, are naturally opposed 
 to each other, as we may learn from the example of Saxon 
 times, where the communal rights of each township or hun- 
 dred were stoutly maintained by the same local assemblies 
 which jealously guarded individual rights of property. So 
 far as State Socialism has for its end the subordination of 
 private to public interests, an extension of local self-govern- 
 ment will often prove a more potent means of attaining that 
 end than an extension of Imperial control. All departments 
 of State must needs be guided by general rules, and no officers 
 acting under instructions from Downing Street can bring 
 ' the master's eye ' to bear on local affairs with the same 
 vigilance or success as officers employed by a local authority. 
 Had the old County Courts been maintained, they would 
 assuredly have prevented numberless encroachments of 
 modern landowners on common rights by piecemeal enclosure, 
 obstruction or diversion of footpaths, the creation of nuisances 
 injurious to the public health or convenience, and the like. 
 The way to put down such grievances is not to call in State
 
 206 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 aid, but to popularise and invigorate local tribunals, so that 
 each invasion of public franchises may be promptly denounced 
 and checked under the pressure of public opinion. This is 
 the spirit of American Democracy, and the strength which it 
 has infused into the local institutions of the United States is 
 probably the main reason why Socialism has there made so 
 little progress. Even a half- Socialistic measure, like the con- 
 cession of free education to all citizens, will produce a very 
 different effect according as it is carried out by an Imperial 
 or a local authority. If the w 7 hole cost of maintaining ele- 
 mentary schools were thrown on the Consolidated Fund, no 
 matter how lavishly inspectors might be multiplied, school- 
 management would at once flag, healthy rivalry would cease, 
 and the average standard of attainments among the scholars 
 would almost certainly be lowered. It would be far otherwise 
 if, as in America, the same principle were applied by each 
 municipality or parish. It may, perhaps, be doubted whether 
 rural labourers, however eager to obtain improved cottages 
 at the public expense, would not use their votes to abolish 
 compulsory attendance if they could, even though education 
 were free ; but a few years hence Democracy will heartily 
 adopt universal education, at all events if it be free. Those 
 who paid school-rates would then take care to get their 
 money's worth, and a large part of the population might be 
 expected to feel an honourable pride in their school-buildings 
 and staff. In a word, there would be less of Socialism, but 
 more of true Democracy, in the system of popular education. 
 
 3. If we now look at Socialism from its purely industrial 
 side, we may well ask what it has to offer which is not to be 
 obtained with far less disturbance of society under a system 
 of industrial partnership. Let us take an extreme case, and 
 suppose national workshops, such as proved a disastrous 
 failure in Paris, to be established in London for the benefit 
 of distressed operatives. Capital would be required to work 
 them ; let us further suppose this capital to be raised by con- 
 fiscating the property of the rich, or some other Socialistic 
 device. But this capital, however it might be raised, would
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 207 
 
 mainly be withdrawn from some other business, that is, from 
 the employment of labour elsewhere, so that, as a whole, the 
 labouring class might gain little or nothing. But let this 
 pass ; the question remains whether either capital or labour 
 is likely to be so beneficially invested in national workshops 
 as in workshops belonging to industrial partnerships. The 
 marvellous success of two such enterprises in France goes far 
 to justify Mill's belief in their value as an agency for recon- 
 ciling the claims of labour and capital. There are, of course, 
 difficulties in managing them, because workmen are less 
 trustful and amenable to discipline as partners than as factory 
 hands ; and these difficulties have marred the success of 
 similar experiments in England. But the difficulties incident 
 to managing an industrial or co-operative partnership are as 
 nothing compared with those to be surmounted if the State 
 were really to undertake the impossible task of organising 
 labour and apportioning wages on Socialistic principles. ' Can 
 we suppose,' Mr. Mill asks, ' that, with men as they now are, 
 duty and honour are more powerful principles of action than 
 personal interest ? ' Can we doubt that under a Socialistic 
 system of State management the spirit of improvement would 
 be crushed out by the spirit of routine, that discord would 
 take the place of harmonious discipline, and that, however 
 equably the products of labour might be distributed, the 
 quantity, if not the quality, of them would be vastly dimin- 
 ished ? These risks would be avoided, or at least greatly 
 mitigated, under a system of industrial partnership, and the 
 fact of such a system having made so little way in England 
 is a strong proof that industrial Socialism is out of harmony 
 with the national character. At all events, so far as co- 
 operation is a remedy for the evils of competition, it is a 
 remedy which the working classes have in their own hands, 
 and which they are fast learning to apply. 
 
 4. Another tendency which a wise statesman would en- 
 courage as a prophylactic against Socialism is the revival of 
 some intermediate links, now missing, between capitalists or 
 employers and workpeople. In the olden times every country-
 
 208 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 gentleman farmed, every farmer worked, and most labourers 
 owned or rented plots of land. All these classes were thus 
 brought into closer intercourse with each other, and besides 
 these a true peasantry still existed, combining the attributes 
 of all. Almost the same might be said of manufacture, when 
 the mechanic was an apprentice, destined in due course to be 
 a master, and vast numbers of mechanics were at once their 
 own masters and their own workmen. It would be too much to 
 expect that modern trade and rural economy should flow back 
 into the ancient channels of mediaeval guilds and feudal land- 
 tenure. But it is not too much to expect that, under the 
 joint impulse of Democracy and education, the excessive sub- 
 division of labour may be checked ; that petites industries may 
 again spring up and flourish, not only in the country, but in 
 the heart of cities ; that clever artificers may once more 
 aspire to be masters of their whole craft, instead of mere 
 cog-wheels in a complex machinery of production ; that a con- 
 stant ascending movement, such as exists in America, may 
 cause the ranks of capital to be steadily recruited from the 
 ranks of labour ; that, in short, the natural inequalities of 
 physical strength, mental ability, and moral character, may 
 be left to operate freely in each generation with as little dis- 
 turbance as possible from artificial obstacles created, but not 
 justified, by the operation of similar inequalities in bygone 
 ages. 
 
 The secret, then, whereby Socialism may be disarmed 
 consists in satisfying its legitimate demands and nobler aspi- 
 rations by measures founded on a juster and sounder prin- 
 ciple. But, after all, the Socialistic leaven will continue to 
 work in a Democratic community so long as the full virtues 
 of individualism are not called into action. Socialism pre- 
 supposes a far greater equality and uniformity of capacity 
 and merit than actually exists among human beings. Until 
 the laws of Nature can be reversed, and the prodigious differ- 
 ences between man and man can be effaced, it is doomed to 
 inevitable defeat; but if it should ever triumph, it would 
 triumph over the ruins of that individual energy to which
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 209 
 
 civilisation owes its vitality. It was the boast of the Athenian 
 Democracy the political marvel of the ancient world that 
 it gave unbounded play to individual character, and the 
 American Democracy, however it may have since degenerated, 
 originally drew its strength from the same fountain of indi- 
 vidual liberty and independence. The suppression of this 
 spirit, the absence of competition, and the prevalence of an 
 ignorant State Socialism, as it may well be called, are the 
 distinctive features of those Oriental Governments whose 
 dreary and monotonous rule, prolonged over century after 
 century, excluded the very idea of progress, and left no fruits 
 to be reaped by posterity. The advice addressed by M. 
 Edmond Scherer to French Democrats may well be laid to 
 heart by English Democrats allured by the phantom of State 
 Socialism : 
 
 ' Do not imagine that one class is to be enriched by im- 
 poverishing others. Instead of opposing the formation of 
 private fortunes, strive to increase the number of capitalists 
 and proprietors ; in like manner, instead of lowering public 
 functions to bring them within the reach of incapacity, aim 
 at drawing from the bosom of society all its inherent capaci- 
 ties, and at pressing them into the service of the State : in a 
 word, let your establishment of social equality consist, not in 
 forbidding natural superiorities to assert themselves or in 
 forcing them down to the level of the general mediocrity, but, 
 on the contrary, in favouring the manifestation and develop- 
 ment of everything in the masses which is strong enough to 
 rise above this level.' l 
 
 But then, as M. Scherer truly observes, this is not the 
 Socialistic, but the Liberal, and, he might add, the Christian, 
 solution of the social problem. 
 
 Much, indeed, remains for us to learn and to do before 
 tliis solution can be fully verified and practically worked out. 
 The state of the poor in most European countries is still, 
 perhaps, as great a reproach to Christian philanthropy as the 
 constant recurrence of war between Christian nations, but it 
 
 1 La D&mocratie et la France, Edmond Scherer, 1883. 
 
 . P
 
 210 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 
 
 is assuredly not a greater reproach. In both cases the selfish- 
 ness of human nature has as yet proved too strong for 
 Christian principles ; but have we the very smallest reason 
 to believe that, where Christianity has failed, Socialism would 
 succeed ? Can we imagine any ideal of human brotherhood 
 nobler than is set before us by the Gospel, or stronger motives 
 for embracing it than are there impressed upon mankind, or 
 more earnest attempts to realise it than have been actually 
 made, both in Europe and America, in commonwealths organ- 
 ised on a Christian model ? The discouraging issue of 
 such experiments should go far to convince reasonable men 
 that what is wanted to hasten the good time coming is not 
 so much organisation as moral and religious influences, 
 operating more widely than heretofore on individual hearts 
 and minds. Doubtless the new Democracy will strive hard 
 to bridge over by legislation the gulf which now yawns between 
 the rich and the poor, nor is there any cause to despair of its 
 accomplishing much by the steady light of past experience. 
 But there is little hope of its accomplishing anything by the 
 false lights of Socialistic theories, which, so far as they do not 
 elude practical tests, are found to be radically false. If its 
 leaders be wise, they will direct their efforts, not so much to 
 reconstructing ' Society,' which is an abstract conception, as 
 to raising the characters and capacities of men, women and 
 children, who are concrete realities. They will indulge in no 
 querulous invectives against ' capitalism,' which is but a cant 
 word for the power acquired by saving, but rather will exhort 
 the working classes to win a share of this power by the same 
 honourable process. They will see that abuse of competition 
 is hardly more reasonable than abuse of gravitation, and that 
 if capital now wrings an exorbitant return from the produce 
 of labour, the labourer may obtain a like return for himself 
 by means of co-operation. They will beware of ignoring or 
 reviling the inexorable law by virtue of which the ' refuse 
 of human life ' the victims of disease, vice, and crushing 
 misfortune sink downwards and settle at the bottom of every 
 society, except in Utopia, but will rather consider how to
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM 211 
 
 minimise and elevate even this residuum, without sowing the 
 seeds of a fresh crop of misery for the next generation. In- 
 stead of worshipping, and teaching others to worship, a past 
 that was never present, they will study the methods whereby 
 the most provident and self-restrained of the working classes 
 are already enabled to effect their own emancipation, with a 
 view to adopting the same methods for the emancipation of 
 a much larger number, if not of the whole body. Those who 
 believe in Democracy will not regard this as too ambitious 
 an aim for Democratic statesmanship ; but, if this be too 
 ambitious an aim, then how utterly vain is the vision of a 
 Socialistic millennium ! For the Socialistic transformation 
 of a free people, like the English, into a vast Trades-Union 
 composed of a single class, would demand for its achievement 
 a degree of intelligence little short of omniscience, and a 
 revolutionary force little short of omnipotence ; while the 
 maintenance of such a system would require an infinitely 
 higher order of public virtues in the whole community than 
 would suffice, under the present system, to secure the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number in a sense far beyond the 
 shallow counsels of Socialistic perfection. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 
 
 THE SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF 
 MODERN DEMOCRACY 1 
 
 N.B.Some arguments and expressions in this Address are 
 borrowed from the two foregoing Articles. 
 
 I have undertaken to address you to-night on one of the 
 gravest and most practical questions that can engage the 
 attention of such an audience on the opening of a new Par- 
 liament, elected, for the first time, by universal household 
 suffrage. It is the question whether the Socialistic tendencies 
 which all must recognise in modern Democracy are to be 
 accepted as irresistible, or treated as capable of being checked 
 and guided ; how far they are favourable, and how far ad- 
 verse, to social progress, in its highest sense ; and what 
 attitude towards them should be adopted by one who ia 
 neither a theorist nor an agitator, but simply desires to 
 promote the happiness of men, women and children the 
 supreme object of true statesmanship. In approaching this 
 question, I do not propose to occupy your time by labouring 
 to show that we are actually face to face with the perils and 
 the responsibilities, the privileges and the aspirations, of 
 Democratic government. I regard the Reform Act of last 
 year as having crowned and consummated the effect of causes 
 long in operation, and as having converted the British Con- 
 stitution into a Democracy, conducted under monarchical 
 forms and not without aristocratic safeguards, but still a 
 genuine and typical Democracy. Henceforth, the ultimate 
 control of national policy is lodged, if not in the whole people, 
 yet in the heads of households and a very large body of non- 
 
 1 An Addresn delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute on Feb- 
 ruary 8, 1886, and reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine.
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 213 
 
 householders in town and country; while electoral power is 
 so distributed as to leave few, if any, breakwaters of personal 
 influence to stand out athwart the current of the popular 
 will. This is Democracy the government of the people by 
 the people ; and as modern Democracy visibly moves in a 
 Socialistic direction, it is well that we should clearly realise 
 the nature and probable results of that movement at least, 
 so far as concerns this country. 
 
 When I attribute Socialistic tendencies to Democracy, as 
 it is now established in England, I desire to limit the meaning 
 of the word ' Socialism ' for the purpose of our present in- 
 quiry. Let us at once dismiss from consideration the wild 
 and criminal schemes of foreign Nihilists and Anarchists, 
 which are incompatible with the existence of organised society, 
 whether on the basis of Socialism or on that of individual 
 liberty. Such projects have found little acceptance in Eng- 
 land, and are not even countenanced by the Socialistic pro- 
 gramme of the Democratic Federation. 1 The grand object 
 of that programme was described by Mr. Hyndman, in his 
 discussion with Mr. Bradlaugh, as ' an endeavour to substitute 
 for the anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised 
 co-operation for existence.' This is as plausible as it is vague ; 
 but, as Mr. Bradlaugh pointed out, the means proposed for 
 the achievement of this object are the abolition and destruc- 
 tion of individual property ; if possible, by argument ; if not, 
 by force. Not only does the Democratic Federation distinctly 
 advocate the so-called ' nationalisation ' of railways and ship- 
 ping, but it adopts the plan shamelessly expounded in the 
 well-known treatise of Mr. Henry George on ' Progress and 
 Poverty ' for the nationalisation of land without respect for 
 vested interests. * By the apostles of agrarian plunder,' says 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, ' it is proposed to confiscate, either 
 openly, or under the thin disguise of the taxing power, every 
 man's freehold even the farm which the settler has just 
 
 1 A few hours before this Address was delivered the West End of London 
 was the scene of a disgraceful riot, attended by pillage, consequent on a meeting 
 of Social Democrats held in Trafalgar Square.
 
 214 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 reclaimed by the sweat of his own brow from the wilderness. 
 And it is emphatically added, with all the exultation of in- 
 solent injustice, that no compensation is to be allowed. That 
 the State has, by the most solemn and repeated guarantees, 
 ratified private proprietorship and undertaken to protect it, 
 matters nothing ; nor even that it has itself recently sold the 
 land to the proprietor, signed the deed of sale, and received 
 the payment. That such views can be propounded anywhere 
 but in a robber's den or a lunatic asylum, still more, that 
 they can find respectful hearers, is a proof that the econo- 
 mical world is in a state of curious perturbation.' 
 
 Happily, the Socialistic tendencies of English Democracy 
 have not yet been forced into the grooves carved out by 
 Mr. Henry George or the Democratic Federation. Widespread 
 as they are, they have never shaped themselves into a creed, 
 nor is it by any means easy to bring within the compass of 
 any one definite conception the various Socialistic ideas now 
 floating in the Democratic atmosphere. We are bound, how- 
 ever, to make the effort, and perhaps we may best realise the 
 nature of the Socialism which now claims our allegiance in 
 this country by clearly identifying the ideas against which it 
 is a protest. One of these ideas is the so-called laissez-faire 
 principle ; that is, the principle which regards the free play 
 of individual liberty as the best security for the good of 
 society, and State intervention as an evil only to be justified 
 by extreme necessity. Another is the principle of proprietary 
 right, which, in its extreme form, treats property as a creature 
 of Nature or of Providence rather than of human law, and 
 condemns legislative restrictions of it, for the supposed inte- 
 rest of the community, not only as inexpedient, but as unjust. 
 A third is the principle according to which competition, and 
 not co-operation, is the soundest mainspring of human pro- 
 gress, and the best regulator of social life. The popular 
 Socialism of the present day is the negation and antithesis 
 of these ideas. It embraces a great variety of theories, but 
 its aspirations are specially directed towards equalising the 
 distribution of wealth in the community, by means of direct
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 215 
 
 State interference with freedom of contract and individual 
 proprietorship. This is the form of Socialism which I have in 
 view to-night when I proceed to examine the ' Socialistic Ten- 
 dencies of Democracy.' No doubt the phrase has been loosely 
 applied, by friends as well as by foes, to many other Demo- 
 cratic measures, some of which have already been adopted by 
 Parliament. But a little consideration will show that most of 
 these are derived from entirely distinct principles, and that 
 our proposed definition embraces nearly all the claims of 
 legislative reform now current, which directly conflict with 
 the rights of liberty and property, as hitherto understood. 
 
 1. For instance, a whole series of Acts in our Statute- 
 book is directed to check monopolies and privileges of various 
 kinds, commercial and otherwise. Such monopolies and 
 privileges are inconsistent with the industrial equality dear 
 to Socialists, but they are equally inconsistent with the in- 
 dustrial liberty dear to anti- Socialists; and the policy which 
 prohibits them is dictated, not by a desire to increase the 
 protective sphere of State interference, but, on the contrary t 
 by a desire to set free individual competition. These Acts, 
 therefore, are the reverse of Socialistic. Again, the substitu- 
 tion of equal division for the law of Primogeniture, as the 
 rule of descent for landed property on intestacy, would be 
 in no respect a Socialistic reform. It would tend, indeed, so 
 far as it operated, to equalise the possession of landed property 
 in the community which is a quasi- Socialistic object; but it 
 would involve no interference, direct or even indirect, on the 
 part of the State, with freedom of disposition. 
 
 2. These are instances in which the distribution of wealth 
 is more or less affected by legislation, which, however, cannot 
 be truly described as Socialistic, because it does not restrict 
 individual liberty. But there are other instances in which 
 the word ' Socialistic ' is erroneously applied to measures 
 which do, indeed, more or less, restrict individual liberty, but 
 do not affect either the action of competition or the dis- 
 tribution of wealth. Such are the Sanitary Acts and the 
 Education Acts. The principle of these Acts is no more
 
 210 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 Socialistic than the principle of the old Common Law, which 
 is, in fact, the principle of all law. The old Common Law 
 prohibited nuisances, and gave every man a right to prosecute 
 a neighbour who should pollute his well or injure the health 
 of his family by neglect of drainage, though it did not actually 
 legalise drainage-rates and water-rates. On the other hand, 
 at Common Law every able-bodied man was liable to be 
 called out for compulsory military service. In these days 
 military service is voluntary, while taxation for drainage and 
 water-supply is compulsory : but the principle is exactly the 
 same, and the object in both cases is not the equalisation of 
 fortunes, but the good of the community. Still more emphati- 
 cally may this be said of the Education Acts. Assuredly it 
 was not the poorer classes who clamoured for education to 
 be given to them at the expense of the rich. On the con- 
 trary, the movement came from above. It was the State 
 that, for its own purposes, compelled the poorer classes to 
 have their children educated, and to forego their earnings, 
 however unwilling they might be to do so ; and even to pay 
 school-fees, except where extreme destitution could be pleaded. 
 It is a very serious question whether, in enforcing this obliga- 
 tion, the State was not bound to go a step further and to 
 establish free schools ; but, at all events, a system which lays 
 a heavy burden on the poor for a public object which few of 
 them appreciate cannot justly be called Socialistic. No doubt, 
 the larger proportion of sanitary and education rates is paid 
 by those who derive less direct benefit from them ; but this 
 result is accidental; and, if this be Socialism, it must be 
 Socialism to levy taxes for keeping up prisons from honest 
 men who are never likely to be lodged in gaol. 
 
 8. For like reabons, we cannot regard as Socialistic the 
 numerous measures which have been passed of late years for 
 the protection of various classes, whether or not they encroach 
 on freedom of contract, if they do not attempt to enrich one 
 man at the expense of another. If the Factory Laws enacted 
 that women and children should only work half-time, but 
 should be paid for full-time, such an enactment, futile as it
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 217 
 
 might be, would be clearly Socialistic. So, too, would be an 
 Employers' Liability Act declaring that no deduction should 
 be made from the wages of any workman by reason of the 
 new liability thereby imposed upon the employer ; or an 
 Artisans' Dwelling Act forbidding more than a certain low rent 
 to be demanded from each family occupying a tenement. But 
 there are no such provisions in the actual Factory Acts, or 
 the Employers' Liability Act, or the Artisans' Dwelling Act ; 
 and they do not become Socialistic merely because their aim 
 is protective, or their effect levelling. All remedial Acts must 
 needs benefit most those weak and struggling classes for 
 whose relief they are designed ; and all impartial taxation 
 must needs extract a larger contribution per head from the 
 rich than from the poor. But this is not Socialism ; and, if 
 it were, no Christian government would be possible except 
 on a Socialistic basis. It is a fallacy, countenanced alike by 
 cunning advocates of Socialism and by partisans of the 
 Liberty and Property Defence League, that every legislative 
 restraint of individual liberty is, in its essence, Socialistic. 
 From this point of view, we can only escape from Socialism 
 by letting every man do that which is right in his own eyes, 
 regardless of his neighbour ; and not only commercial pro- 
 tection, but all protection, is but a practical application of the 
 Socialistic gospel. No wonder that Socialism, obscured by 
 such a confusion of thought, should appear as the inseparable 
 companion of modern Democracy. For it is now self-evident 
 that, however sound within the sphere of exchange, the free 
 play of individual liberty and interest cannot satisfy all the 
 requirements of humanity and justice recognised by Demo- 
 cracy. We must get beyond it, in various directions, and if 
 getting beyond it in any direction amounts to Socialism, then 
 we must all be Socialists. 
 
 Having thus glanced at some examples of remedial legis- 
 lation miscalled Socialistic, let us consider a single typical 
 example of truly Socialistic legislation, the nature of which 
 is seldom realised I mean the English Poor Law. If society, 
 and not individuals, were responsible for bringing children
 
 218 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 into the world if the State could rigorously limit the number 
 of its citizens and regulate their industry it would naturally 
 undertake the burden of maintaining the sick and decrepit, 
 unless, indeed, it should enforce thrift by a system of com- 
 pulsory national insurance. Inasmuch, however, as marriage 
 is free to all, and no check is or can be placed on the increase 
 of population, a law which guarantees to every newcomer, 
 however unwelcome, a bare subsistence at least, and protects 
 him, at the expense of others, against the proper consequences 
 of his own improvidence, vice, or crime, is pure Socialism and 
 nothing else. To levy rates upon struggling workpeople for 
 the support of worthless idlers and their children, legitimate 
 or illegitimate, is a deliberate interference of the State with 
 the action of natural laws in the lowest stratum of the com- 
 munity, and results in impoverishing the worthier to save 
 from starvation, if not to enrich, the less worthy. Yet this 
 law, dating from an age in which the name of Socialism was 
 unknown, is consecrated by public opinion and the usage of 
 three centuries, nor could it be repealed without shocking our 
 sense of humanity. But if the Poor Law itself be Socialistic 
 in principle, what are we to say of the claims sometimes 
 preferred on behalf of those who happen to inhabit certain 
 overcrowded quarters of London ? It may be well to state 
 these claims nakedly and without disguise. ' Here,' it is 
 urged, ' are so many thousands of us living upon a certain 
 area ; we claim the right to remain there, for we do not 
 mean to migrate, nor yet to emigrate, still less to go into the 
 workhouse. We further claim the right to multiply at our 
 own discretion, and it is possible that we may be reinforced 
 by new settlers pressing in from the country, especially if 
 Government should comply with our demand. That demand 
 is that, however numerous we may become, jostling each 
 other like rabbits in a warren, and however little our labour 
 may be required, a sufficient maintenance and decent homes 
 shall be provided for all of us, at the cost of the community, 
 not elsewhere, but on this very spot, to which by our own 
 free-will we are rooted.' Of course, the bare statement of
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 219 
 
 such a claim is its best refutation, but the fact that some- 
 thing very like this has been seriously advanced is a fact that 
 cannot be ignored in discussing the ' Socialistic Tendencies of 
 Democracy.' It remains to determine the sources of these 
 tendencies as we now see them in operation, to examine 
 some of the legislative proposals to which they have given 
 birth, and to consider how far they ought to be encouraged 
 or resisted by a wise statesman. 
 
 One thing is certain. The Socialism now imported into 
 English politics is essentially English, and of essentially 
 modern origin. It has little in common with the paternal 
 despotism of the State under the ancient republics or feudal 
 monarchies a despotism of which some traditions survive 
 in the combination of Democracy with State-control on the 
 continent of Europe. Though English Democracy is much 
 less Socialistic than French or German Democracy, it must 
 be confessed that most of the external causes which favour 
 the spread of modern Socialism have operated with peculiar 
 intensity in England. 1 . . . But the Socialistic tendencies of 
 our new Democracy are not merely the product of such external 
 causes as these. They also represent a profound reaction 
 against that faith in individual rights and individual freedom 
 which has governed the ideas of most political reformers in 
 England since the days of Adam Smith, and has been re- 
 asserted, in an extreme form, by the Liberty and Property 
 Defence League. It is not so much that men have again 
 begun to idolise, as they once did, the collective wisdom of 
 the State, as such, or to maintain its capacity to preside, like 
 an earthly Providence, over the social life of its citizens. It 
 is, rather, that large classes of individual citizens, and espe- 
 cially those who have most to gain by change, are eager to 
 employ the powerful machinery of Government now placed 
 within their grasp for the redress of their supposed grievances 
 and the attainment of their favourite objects. It is felt, and 
 not without reason, that individuality and free competition, 
 the struggle for existence and the law of supply and demand, 
 1 See the last Article, on ' Democracy and Socialism,' p. 190.
 
 220 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 have now had a full trial, and have failed to produce the 
 happiness or contentment which their earlier advocates ex- 
 pected of them. It is believed that all which could be gained, 
 in the long run, by the action of these principles, at the cost 
 of infinite waste and suffering, may be gained far more 
 speedily and surely by co-operation and organisation, and 
 that without any countervailing loss. It is hoped that, by 
 some fortunate adjustment of providential laws, the harvest 
 of liberty may be reaped without sowing, and the benefits 
 of State protection secured without the sacrifice of personal 
 energy and independence. 
 
 I have endeavoured to show elsewhere how these Socialistic 
 forces, material and moral, have been happily tempered in 
 England by a multitude of modifying influences such as the 
 national sense of humanity and justice, the wide diffusion 
 of charity, both private and public, the right of public meet- 
 ing, the freedom of the Press, the general recognition of pro- 
 motion by merit, the absence of conscription, the infinite 
 development of association on lines ever crossing and inter- 
 secting class-divisions, the kindly intercourse between gentle 
 and simple in country districts, and the sacred traditions of 
 family life in the English home. To these and other like 
 characteristics of English society we probably owe our im- 
 munity from those violent and Communistic forms of Socialism 
 which have occasionally broken out into volcanic eruption on 
 the Continent. For, let it be observed, once for all, that 
 Communistic Socialism is one thing, Constitutional Socialism 
 is another. Communistic Socialism aims at levelling down 
 by confiscating all private fortunes, abolishing the institution 
 of property, and destroying all motive for personal industry ; 
 Constitutional Socialism aims at levelling up, and purports 
 to conserve all the vigour of individual activity, and even to 
 respect legitimate property, while it seeks to cripple the 
 excessive power of wealth by subjecting it to a constant 
 process of depletion. 
 
 In order to estimate the lengths to which Socialistic ideas 
 have been carried in practical schemes for Democratic legis-
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 221 
 
 lation in England, we cannot do better than review briefly 
 some leading articles of the so-called ' Eadical Programme,' 
 a volume which has been widely circulated of late ; not that 
 it possesses the slightest authority, but that it contains a 
 convenient repertory of the demands actually preferred, during 
 the late election, on behalf of the new Democracy. 
 
 We may at once put aside, as foreign to our subject, those 
 demands which relate to the payment of members, the aboli- 
 tion of the Upper House, the destruction of the Established 
 Church, the Democratic reform of Local Government, and 
 the creation of a National Council for Ireland. These de- 
 mands may be reasonable and constitutional, or they may 
 be revolutionary and mischievous ; but there is nothing 
 Socialistic in their principle. Almost the same may be said 
 of the demand for free education ; for though it may be advo- 
 cated in a Socialistic tone, it is capable, as we have seen, of 
 being supported by non- Socialistic arguments. But what are 
 we to say of such proposals as those for confiscating and re- 
 distributing the revenues of the Church ; for reforming the 
 whole English system of land-tenure in the interest of tenants 
 and labourers ; for unsettling the whole basis of taxation in 
 the interest of the proletariat ; for delegating to public bodies 
 with sweeping powers the duty of housing the poor comfort- 
 ably, and providing them with allotments ; for the ' restitu- 
 tion ' of land improperly inclosed, and for nationalising 
 corporate property? Let us look at one or two of these pro- 
 posals more closely, with a view to ascertain how far they are 
 Socialistic in principle ; whether or not they be defensible on 
 independent grounds. 
 
 1. The proposed scheme for disendowing the Church rests 
 on the assumption that Church property is State property, 
 and may be re- appropriated by the State, from time to time, 
 for the benefit of the whole nation. This assumption is not 
 strictly accurate. True it is that the Church, as such, has 
 no personality and no property of its own, though it consists 
 of many thousand corporations, each of which holds property. 
 But the same rule applies equally to endowed charities ; and
 
 222 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 it would be more correct to say that all corporate property, 
 ecclesiastical or otherwise, is held, and always has been 
 held, at the disposal of the State, with exceptions in favour 
 of vested interests and modern endowments. The Church of 
 Christ is a spiritual body, unknown to law ; but the Church 
 of England is a creation of the law, and it is the law alone 
 which secures parochial revenues to clergymen of the Anglican 
 communion, excluding Roman Catholic priests whose tenets 
 are more in harmony with those of the original donors and 
 Nonconformist ministers, who decline episcopal ordination. 
 It would be a Socialistic measure to seize all these revenues, 
 without compensation to living incumbents or patrons, and 
 divide them among the ministers of all denominations, or 
 among the ratepayers of England. It would be a scarcely 
 less Socialistic measure to confiscate endowments bestowed 
 on the National Church by private donors, without also con- 
 fiscating those bestowed under like conditions, and within 
 the same limits of time, on other religious communions. 
 Subject, however, to such reservations, whatever may be said 
 against disendowment on religious or political grounds, there 
 would be no Socialism in applying public Church property, 
 inherited from bygone ages, with due regard for vested inte- 
 rests, to any purpose of national utility. 
 
 2. Several of the popular schemes of agrarian reform are 
 far more distinctively Socialistic, and far less defensible on 
 principles of justice. This Socialistic bias in dealing with 
 questions relating to land is the more remarkable because an 
 exactly opposite bias is characteristic of Continental Socialism. 
 In France, for instance, it is capital invested in trade against 
 which all the attacks of Socialism are directed. In the for- 
 cible language of Mr. Goldwin Smith, ' Capital, spelt with a 
 big initial letter, swells into a malignant giant the personal 
 enemy of Labour ; spelt in the natural way, it is simply that 
 with which Labour starts on any enterprise, and without 
 which no labour can exist at all, unless it be that of the 
 savage grubbing roots with his nails.' On the other hand, 
 among French Socialists, property in land is not only tole-
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 223 
 
 rated, but respected. No one proposes to alter the articles 
 in the Code Napoleon which regulate land-tenure ; and these 
 articles, while they compel subdivision on death, are other- 
 wise founded on the strictest principles of contract. This 
 contrast between the views of French and English Radicals 
 in regard to land is most significant, and admits of a very 
 simple explanation. In France, the landowners are reckoned 
 by millions, and no man dares to propose despoiling them ; 
 in England, they are reckoned by thousands, and many of 
 them are rich enough to offer a tempting bait for Socialistic 
 cupidity. The authors of the ' Eadical Programme ' are 
 shrewd enough to see through the enormous fallacies which 
 underlie Mr. George's scheme for ' nationalising ' land, and 
 point out that it could only be worked by a long series of 
 wholesale confiscations. But they do not see the equally 
 palpable fallacies which underlie their own schemes of philan- 
 thropic robbery, veiled under the specious name of ' restitu- 
 tion.' They tacitly assume that every man has a right to 
 marry when he pleases, whether or not he possesses the 
 means to maintain children ; and that every child so born 
 into the world has a right, not to maintenance and free edu- 
 cation only, but to a slice of his native soil (perhaps ' three 
 acres and a cow') not against his parents, who are respon- 
 sible for his existence, but against society, which, if it could, 
 would have prevented his coming into the world at all. They 
 assume that the present generation of English labourers in- 
 herits the rights and the wrongs of the old English peasantry, 
 and can justly claim the restoration of lands from which their 
 forefathers are supposed to have been ousted as if many of 
 them were not descended from landless serfs, others from 
 town-artisans, others from the very landlords who are held 
 up to obloquy as oppressors ; while, if their hereditary right 
 were admitted, they would have to share their patrimony 
 with millions of cousins who are now peopling the continents 
 of America and Australia. They assume, conversely, that 
 nearly all landowners derive their title from a line of an- 
 cestors, and are rolling in ill-gotten wealth ; whereas a very
 
 224 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 large proportion of them have purchased their estates out 
 of trade earnings, or are the sons of those who so purchased 
 them ; and many thousands of the rest would now be in rags 
 if they were living on their rentals alone, and are actually 
 subsidising their landed property out of other sources of 
 income. They assume as it was assumed by those simple 
 people who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs they 
 assume that, after destroying the security of landed property 
 and the mutual confidence between the classes engaged in 
 agriculture, capital would flow into agriculture more freely 
 than ever, and all the fruits which spring from security and 
 confidence would be enjoyed in still greater abundance. 
 
 To refute such assumptions as these would be to give 
 elementary lessons in moral philosophy and political economy ; 
 yet upon them are based Socialistic doctrines which have 
 been widely accepted. For instance, when it is urged that 
 house property in towns should be taken for purposes of 
 improvement at less than its market value, it is seldom 
 realised how much of this property belongs to struggling men 
 who have invested their savings in it, and might be half 
 ruined by its partial confiscation. When the demolition 
 of illegal enclosures on common-land is loudly demanded, it 
 is forgotten how many of such encroachments have been 
 made by poor squatters, whose children or grandchildren are 
 now living upon them in perfect innocence ; and it is also 
 forgotten how many popular rights stand or fall with these 
 very rules of prescription which are so lightly swept aside. 
 When ' fair rents ' and ' free sale ' are advocated in the same 
 breath as cardinal points of the new agricultural charter, it 
 is not perceived that ' free sale ' must inevitably kill ' fair 
 rent ' that is, that on the next transfer of a tenancy under 
 ' free sale,' the price to be paid by the incoming tenant will 
 be large in proportion as the rent is low, and the interest 
 upon that sum, together with the ' fair rent,' must needs 
 amount to a full rack-rent. When ' fixity of tenure ' is pro- 
 pounded in another clause of the same charter, it is not only 
 overlooked that one-sided fixity of tenure is unjust that a
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 225 
 
 tenant ought not to have a right of remaining on a farm, 
 unless the landlord has a corresponding right of keeping him 
 there ; it is also overlooked that a landlord may happen to 
 be poor, and a tenant may happen to be rich, in which case 
 Dives would be quartered on the homestead of Lazarus, at a 
 minimum rent, and without the possibility of being removed. 
 These are but specimens of the unreasoning injustice into 
 which men who desire to be reasonable and just are hurried 
 by the shallow logic of Socialism, by which the ' Radical Pro- 
 gramme ' is largely tainted. ' The problem,' we are told, ' is 
 how to make life worth living for those to whom it is now a 
 prolonged misery.' The one solution proposed, under various 
 forms, is the impoverishment of those who have for the 
 benefit of those who have not ; and the authors appear blind 
 to all but the momentary relief which might be thus obtained. 
 Perhaps they never heard of Bastiat's famous discourse on 
 4 That which is Seen, and that which is not Seen.' They 
 see, at least in imagination, free schools all over the country 
 supported out of the revenues of a disendowed Church. What 
 they do not see is the gradual extinction of numberless 
 charitable agencies now centred in the parish clergyman and 
 his family, or the diversion of numberless subscriptions from 
 their present objects for the support of the minister deprived 
 of his tithes. They see the immediate advantage to accrue 
 from the expropriation of A. and the taxation of B. for the 
 purpose of erecting C. into a peasant proprietor. What they 
 do not see, is the difficulty of keeping C. a peasant proprietor, 
 of saving him from the hands of the money-lender, and of 
 preventing him from letting his land at an extortionate rent 
 to some more enterprising or industrious neighbour. They 
 see the arguments and they are very strong in favour of a 
 graduated income tax, as encouraging a more equal dis- 
 tribution of wealth in the country. What they do not see, 
 is its tendency to check the accumulation of capital, the sole 
 reservoir of wages, or the utter impossibility of limiting such 
 a principle, if it were once introduced. They see the palpable 
 blessings which might be realised by a liberal expenditure out 
 
 Q
 
 226 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the rates for the benefit of the most destitute class. What 
 they do not see, is the burden thereby imposed on the poorer 
 ratepayers, themselves on the brink of pauperism, or the cer- 
 tainty of improvidence and over-population being stimulated 
 by the diminution of the motives for industry. They see the 
 evils incident to individual ownership of land and unre- 
 stricted competition in trade or manufacture. What they do 
 not see, is the risk of colossal jobbery and mismanagement in 
 the corporate ownership of land, the hardship to consumers 
 involved in restrictions on trade or manufactures, or the 
 paralysis of individual enterprise sure to ensue ; though all 
 of these consequences have been amply demonstrated by past 
 experience. In a word, the views of Socialistic reformers, 
 though honest, are eminently narrow and short-sighted. They 
 are impatient of those slow, but sure, processes which have 
 their counterpart in Nature, and by which economical laws, 
 no less than physical laws, vindicate themselves in ' the long 
 run.' The very idea of ' the long run ' is repulsive to them, 
 since their sole aim is to meet the pressure of present 
 exigencies. As for the future, they are content to leave it 
 to grapple with the ruin which they would bequeath to it; 
 and as for the past, they confidently but ignorantly appeal 
 to it as attesting the failure of the laissez-faire system, of 
 which they speak as if it were an evil power, knowing nothing 
 of the miseries which preceded the development of it. 
 
 But is there really no alternative between this system and 
 the crude Socialistic proposals to which the new Democracy 
 lends so ready an ear ? This is a question which every 
 statesman ought now to ask himself, and which, happily, 
 admits, if not of a conclusive, yet of a definite, answer. 
 Between the principle of absolute non-intervention and the 
 revolutionary principle of meddlesome interference with in- 
 dividual freedom, lies the whole sphere of legislative evolution 
 and constructive reform. A single example, already noticed, 
 will illustrate the direction which such legislation may take. 
 More than forty years ago the national conscience was shocked 
 by revelations of over-work on miserably small wages, espe-
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 227 
 
 cially among women and children, in factories. Had the 
 Legislature adopted short-sighted counsels, it might have 
 attempted to fix a minimum rate of wages, at so much per 
 hour, leaving the workpeople to fix their own number of 
 hours. In this attempt it would assuredly have failed, and 
 might very probably have aggravated the evil to be cured. 
 Instead of this, it left wages to regulate themselves, and 
 limited the hours of work, nominally for women and children, 
 but incidentally for all factory-workers. The result has been, 
 on the whole, economically successful, as well as beneficial to 
 health and morals; actually showing that a greater product, 
 with better profits and higher wages, may be obtained from 
 reduced hours of work. Here the Legislature wisely antici- 
 pated the operation of natural laws, and saved an important 
 class of the population the necessity of working out its own 
 salvation at a great cost of needless suffering. A similar 
 lesson may be learned from the history of the Poor Law. 
 When the Poor-Law relief was so administered as to be 
 practically a rate in aid of wages, and able-bodied men were 
 pensioned off at the expense of their neighbours, the rural 
 labourers were pauperised and demoralised by it ; when the 
 workhouse test was firmly but judiciously enforced, not only 
 was thrift encouraged, but the standard of wages was sensibly 
 raised. What such examples show is that legislation which 
 may be called Socialistic is not always mischievous ; but that 
 it needs a high order of statesmanship to distinguish between 
 the cheap form of State intervention which defeats its own 
 object, and the rarer form which, like the art of the skilful 
 physician, aids and strengthens the remedial forces of Nature. 
 Those who still idolise ' the State ' would do well to ask them- 
 selves what ' the State ' really is ; and how it is possible for 
 it to possess any wisdom beyond that which it derives from 
 the individuals who constitute it. They would then discover 
 that, after all, the object of their worship is not a Supreme, 
 nor even a Superior, being, but only a convenient expression 
 for Ministers, parliamentary representatives and officials, 
 more or less capable and more or less public-spirited, but 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 creatures of like passions with ourselves, quite as fallible, 
 more open to motives of jobbery, and far less competent to 
 manage property than individual owners personally looking 
 after their own affairs on the spot, knowing their own wants 
 and studying their own interests. Having realised this, once 
 for all, they could not fail to see why the presumption should 
 always be in favour of individual liberty ; subject, however, 
 to many necessary exceptions. Of course, no strict rules can 
 be laid down for determining in what cases it may be wise to 
 set aside this presumption, and to substitute legislative com- 
 pulsion for the law of liberty. But there are some principles 
 which may help to guide us, and to save us from delusive 
 projects for regenerating society without regenerating the 
 units of which it is composed. 
 
 Foremost among these principles is a scrupulous regard 
 for justice between man and man. It may possibly be right, 
 for instance, to regulate agricultural tenancies by law ; but 
 it cannot possibly be right to frame a one-sided cOde of regu- 
 lations to enable a tenant to get his rent reduced without 
 his landlord's consent, but to disable the landlord from getting 
 it raised without his tenant's consent. It may be right, be- 
 cause for the public good, to facilitate the hiring, or even the 
 purchase, of small plots by cottagers, through the agency of 
 village corporations ; but it cannot be right to give A.B. the 
 power of claiming ' restitution ' from CD., on the absurd plea 
 that A.B. may be descended from some one who may have 
 been evicted, several generations ago, by some one else who 
 may have been the remote ancestor of CD. It may be right 
 to recognise the fact that, in past ages, the interests of 
 peasants and artisans were too much neglected by a Parlia- 
 ment composed of the landed and commercial aristocracy, not 
 out of ill-will or selfishness, but out of pure ignorance ; and 
 that, in order to make up arrears of reform in a Democratic 
 sense, some knots must be cut which never ought to have 
 been tied. But it cannot be right to redress unconscious 
 class-legislation in the past by wilful and deliberate class- 
 legislation in the present. It may be right to pave the way
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 229 
 
 by well-advised measures for a more equal distribution of 
 fortunes in the near future ; but it cannot be right to rob 
 Peter to pay Paul, to strip men of property honestly acquired 
 under the guarantee of the law, and to consecrate a new era 
 of Equality and Fraternity, without Liberty, by a flagrant 
 breach of public faith. 
 
 Happily, no such violation of morality is involved in the 
 advance of Democracy, if only it be wisely led not in the 
 spirit of Cleon, but in that of Pericles. During the blood- 
 stained rule of the Paris Commune, two ideas, essentially 
 distinct, were persistently confounded the idea of Commun- 
 ism, and the idea of Communalism. The Communal idea, 
 instead of being radically opposed to individuality, is really 
 the extreme assertion of local individuality, and the right 
 of self-government, against the central authority. The Com- 
 munistic idea is, logically, the negation of all individuality, 
 and especially of the individual right to property. Now, it 
 is the former idea, and not the latter, which is in harmony 
 with the best and deepest instincts of modern Democracy. 
 The pride of citizenship, as it was felt in ancient Athens, and 
 as it is now felt in the United States, not only does not foster 
 Communistic sentiment, but is actually an antidote to it. 
 Hence it is that America, though it is the favourite trial- 
 ground of social experiments, is very little affected by the 
 doctrines of Socialism, and still less by those of Communism. 
 In proportion as a true manly self-respect is developed in 
 a nation or in a class, the sense of weakness out of which 
 springs the gregarious craving for State protection will gra- 
 dually die out, and give place to nobler aspirations. True 
 Democracy will not long tolerate false Socialism ; for true 
 Democracy asserts, what false Socialism denies, the supre- 
 macy and independence of the individual soul. Not only in 
 the material universe, but in the realm of social and political 
 speculation, the poet's words are still as true as ever : 
 
 Though world on world in myriad myriads roll, 
 Round us, each with differing powers, 
 A.nd other forms of life than ours, 
 
 What know we greater than the soul ?
 
 230 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 
 
 Democracy in its infancy may trifle with Socialism, and use 
 it, so to speak, as a plaything ; but full-grown Democracy 
 will be far more likely to insist, with John Stuart Mill, on the 
 indefeasible rights of each man's free-will, except where they 
 come into direct collision with the no less sacred rights of 
 other men's free-will. It will submit to limitations imposed 
 by an authority responsible to itself, for the sake of securing 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number ; but it will be 
 very impatient of restrictions imposed by an authority so 
 far removed from its own control as a Central Government 
 or a National Committee of Lands and Public Works. In 
 other words, it will be Communalistic, but it will not be Com- 
 munistic. 
 
 The Socialistic tendencies of Democracy, then, are not to 
 be condemned or resisted as evil in themselves, but only as 
 needing wise and statesmanlike guidance. They are mis- 
 chievous, if they encourage a felonious craving for other 
 men's property ; they are beneficial, if they inspire honest 
 efforts to combine Liberty with Equality and Fraternity. 
 They are delusive, so far as they spring from a superstitious 
 faith in an imaginary State above all the prejudices and 
 weaknesses of human nature, infallible in its judgment, and 
 incorruptible in its action ; they are worse than delusive, so 
 far as they call upon this earthly Providence not to deliver 
 us from, but, on the contrary, to gratify, the passions of 
 envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. But they are 
 sound and healthy, so far as they foster an earnest and robust 
 faith in self-government, as a means of securing higher ends 
 than mere national defence or internal police. The cynical 
 view of human affairs which led Goethe and the First Napoleon 
 to despise all schemes of ' world bettering ' can have, and 
 ought to have, no place in a Democratic age. Political co- 
 operation may effect much good which could never be attained 
 through a mere struggle for existence among individuals ; 
 and the community has the power of largely improving the 
 material and moral condition of its members. Only we must 
 never forget that, after all, civilisation is the creation of in-
 
 SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 231 
 
 dividual energy, and that it is the character of the individual 
 members which must determine the character of the com- 
 munity. No arbitrary transfer of property, no organisation 
 of industry, no artificial creation of social equality, can supply 
 the place of intelligence, of temperance, of integrity, of self- 
 restraint, or of public spirit ; and the Socialistic Utopia 
 demands for its maintenance a diffusion of the Christian 
 virtues such as has never yet been witnessed in the history 
 of mankind. It is vain to expect of Democratic statecraft 
 that which is the proper task of morality and religion ; and 
 if the lessons taught on the hills of Galilee two thousand 
 years ago had been laid to heart by the human race, there 
 would be little need or room for the doctrines of modern 
 Socialistic reformers. For these doctrines, so far as they are 
 true, are little more than an application of Gospel precepts 
 to social politics ; and if Democracy, rising above the selfish 
 counsels of demagogues, should ever seek to realise its own 
 highest ideal, it will do well to seek inspiration, not from the 
 borrowed light of Socialism, but from the original light of 
 Christianity itself.
 
 IV 
 IEISH POLICY
 
 235 
 
 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 
 
 A Letter to the Editor of * The Times,' May 1886 
 
 Sik, There is a question which surely lies at the root of the 
 Home Rule problem, but which seems to have been hitherto 
 strangely neglected. It is the question whether, apart from 
 all Imperial considerations, Ireland is fit to govern herself, and 
 whether the concession of Home Rule would be a real benefit 
 to her people or, on the contrary, the greatest wrong which 
 Great Britain could inflict upon them. In discussing this 
 question, abstract theories are worthless. It is worse than 
 vain to argue with a man who regards all nations as equally 
 capable of self-government, and studiously ignores all the 
 facts which prove that some nations lack the primary con- 
 ditions upon which self-government depends for its success. 
 Those who propose a repeal of the Union, and a reversal 
 of the policy which all parties in the State have maintained 
 since the beginning of this century, are bound to justify their 
 action by reasons derived from experience. What light, then, 
 does experience throw on the capacity of Ireland for Home 
 Rule? 
 
 The failure of ' Grattan's Parliament ' is admitted on all 
 hands ; but it is alleged that no fair inference can be drawn 
 from that experiment, since Grattan's Parliament represented 
 only the Protestant minority, and was largely composed of 
 mere nominees. I allow this allegation, though I wish I 
 could believe that a Parliament mainly returned by the 
 National League would be more honest, enlightened, and 
 public-spirited, than Grattan and his Protestant associates. 
 The utter profligacy of Irish rule in American cities is equally
 
 236 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 
 
 notorious ; but it may perhaps be explained away by refer- 
 ence to some peculiarity in the American atmosphere. Let 
 us, then, resort to other tests, and ask ourselves how far the 
 conduct of popular and elective bodies in Ireland encourages 
 us to entrust an Irish Legislature with an absolute control 
 of Irish affairs. No one disputes the capacity of Irishmen 
 for the discharge of public duties. Mr. Gladstone lays great 
 stress on the loyalty and courage of the Irish constabulary, 
 to whom he might have added the Irish judges and resident 
 magistrates. But it happens that all these officials are non- 
 elective, and, like Irish officers in the Army, hold their com- 
 missions from the Imperial Crown ; for which reason Mr. 
 Gladstone proposes ultimately to dispense with their services. 
 We must look elsewhere for examples of Irish management 
 as it would be under a system of Home Rule. In Ireland, 
 as in England, there are three important administrative 
 areas the County, the Union, and the Municipality. In 
 the County, the chief local authority is the Grand Jury, a 
 very anomalous body, mainly nominated by the High Sheriff, 
 and anything but representative. This body, since it largely 
 consists of more or less independent gentlemen, is admitted 
 to do its work honourably and efficiently, even by those who 
 most violently and not unreasonably condemn its consti- 
 tution. It would, of course, disappear under Home Rule. 
 In the Union, the local authority is the Board of Guardians, 
 partly consisting of magistrates, sitting ex officio, partly of 
 elective members. In the Corporate Towns, the local authority 
 is the Town Council, entirely consisting of elective members. 
 Can any man who knows Ireland point to Irish Boards of 
 Guardians and Town Councils as favourable, or as otherwise 
 than deterrent, examples of Irish self-government ? Are not 
 their proceedings constantly disgraced by rowdyism, jobbery, 
 and sedition ? Do not many of them act shamelessly as 
 committees of the National League, making a predatory use 
 of their rating powers, prostituting their patronage to sub- 
 sidise Nationalist agents, and getting rid of chairmen who 
 object to abuse their functions by putting disloyal resolu-
 
 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 237 
 
 tions? Is there any improvement in these respects, or, 
 rather, has there not been a steady degeneracy in proportion 
 as the Irish gentry have been overborne or driven out by the 
 creatures of the National League? In a word, could any man 
 who has ever filled the office of Irish Secretary contemplate 
 without dismay the creation of an Irish Legislature resem- 
 bling the Irish Boards of Guardians and Town Councils ? 
 
 But it is said that self-government has been hitherto 
 applied on too modest a scale, and it is suggested that what 
 has been so noxious in small doses might prove a sovereign 
 remedy if administered wholesale. I might be content to ask 
 what conceivable reason can be produced in support of so 
 extravagant an assumption. I might dwell on the signal 
 dearth in Ireland of all the social and commercial elements 
 which might prevent Home Rule from lapsing into anarchy ; 
 on the want of any stable or substantial middle class ; on the 
 subservience of the priests to agitators who have the power 
 of cutting off their means of subsistence ; on the ruinous 
 influence of a Press which stands alone in Europe for scur- 
 rilous mendacity, which propagates atrocious doctrines with- 
 out reserve, and which has devoted itself for many years past 
 to educating the people into lawlessness and violence. But 
 all these objections, however powerful, are no more than 
 illustrations of a broader and more fundamental objection to 
 Irish Home Rule that it is hopelessly inconsistent with Irish 
 liberty, in any true sense of the word. For there can be no 
 greater delusion than to confound national emancipation from 
 British control with the enjoyment of individual independence 
 in Ireland, or to imagine that an Irish peasant, relieved from 
 British ' coercion,' would be free to act and vote according 
 to his conscience. Coercion, indeed ! Why, Ireland is now 
 groaning under the most execrable form of coercion recorded 
 in her history, and the despotism of Strafford or of Cromwell, 
 though it may have been more imposing, was not so oppres- 
 sive as the despotism of the National League. We are told, 
 forsooth, that 85 per cent, of the Irish constituencies have 
 declared in favour of National League candidates. Can we
 
 288 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 
 
 doubt that if a plebiscite had been taken in Paris a few weeks 
 before Robespierre's fall, 85 per cent, would have declared in 
 favour of the great dictator and the ' Terror,' or that if a 
 similar plebiscite had been taken a few days after his fall, 
 85 per cent, would have declared in favour of those who had 
 the courage to put him down ? Such is the value of plebi- 
 scites in communities where a tyrannical Convention rules 
 supreme in the outraged name of Liberty. In a country 
 where trial by jury is a farce if the criminal is a favourite of 
 the dominant faction, and where political courage is an almost 
 unknown virtue, what is the moral value of a popular verdict 
 procured through the machinery of household suffrage ? In- 
 deed, household suffrage, like trial by jury itself, is an essen- 
 tially English institution, for which Ireland is at present 
 totally unfit, and which no one would have dreamed of ex- 
 tending to Ireland except upon the ground urged again and 
 again by the very men who are now for repealing the Union 
 that she was an integral and inseparable part of the United 
 Kingdom. Disguise it as we may, there is no such thing as 
 manly and intelligent public opinion in Ireland, and to con- 
 sult the mass of the people on the question of Home Rule is 
 much the same as to consult them on the doctrine of the 
 Immaculate Conception. They are the victims, and a section 
 of the Liberal party is the dupe, of a compact and perfectly 
 unscrupulous conspiracy a conspiracy organised and sup- 
 ported by foreign enemies of Great Britain, which has not 
 shrunk from complicity with deeds of blood that shock 
 humanity, and which has only been too successful in de- 
 moralising, not Irish peasants only, but English statesmen. 
 
 It is difficult to read without shame and indignation the 
 apologies made for handing over the destinies of Ireland to 
 men who have exhibited the worst features of Irish character, 
 and made, too, by those who called Heaven to witness that 
 they were incapable of being parties to a Kilmainham Treaty 
 far less ignoble and disastrous. If we protest against Home 
 Rule, we are challenged to produce an alternative, and re- 
 minded with insolent cynicism that, after the offer has once
 
 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 289 
 
 been made by a leader of the Liberal Party, it will be almost 
 hopeless to govern Ireland on any other terms. This is as 
 if it were proposed to repudiate the National Debt, and those 
 who resisted it were taunted with the question, ' What is your 
 alternative ? Will you repudiate half of it or three-quarters, 
 and do you imagine that taxpayers, after being promised 
 total repudiation, will ever be satisfied with anything less ? ' 
 We are told, again, that if the Home Rule experiment should 
 fail, which is admitted to be very possible, we shall retain 
 all 'the resources of civilisation,' and can reduce Ireland to 
 submission. What does this mean? It means that, being 
 destitute of the courage, statesmanship, and public spirit to 
 undertake a difficult task in government, we are to bequeath 
 to our successors, not the same task, but one infinitely aggra- 
 vated by our cowardice, and requiring a far higher effort of 
 political virtue than we are now declining. We are assured 
 that Home Eule is inevitable. Why 'inevitable,' except that 
 politicians are slavishly bowing down to a political necessity 
 of their own creation, instead of manfully resolving to act 
 upon their real convictions ? We are exhorted to make a 
 final reparation for our cruel misgovernment of Ireland in the 
 past by allowing her to govern to misgovern herself in the 
 future. This appeal, which seems to impose on many persons 
 ignorant of Irish history, bristles with so many fallacies that 
 it deserves a separate examination. 
 
 It is false that all the evils of Ireland and faults of Irish 
 character are the products of English misgovernment. For 
 some three centuries after the so-called conquest of Ireland, 
 that country, outside the English Pale, enjoyed the blessings 
 of Home Eule. After the visit of John, no English king, 
 except Richard II., set foot in Ireland for nearly five cen- 
 turies ; no English army, worthy of the name, except that 
 of Richard II., crossed the Channel between the reign of 
 Henry II. and that of Henry VIII.; while English law was 
 practically confined to four counties. The result was, as it 
 was sure to be, a state of savagery and disorder disgraceful 
 to Christianity. From this state it was partially rescued by
 
 240 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 
 
 the intervention of England, and those who trace all the 
 miseries and vices of the people to confiscations made in the 
 seventeenth century, and penal laws passed in the eighteenth, 
 would do well to study contemporary descriptions of Ireland 
 as it was in the sixteenth. However indefensible may have 
 been the system of English rule in Ireland between the 
 Rebellion of 1641 and the year 1782, it is none the less true 
 that whatever civilisation or political institutions Ireland 
 possesses it owes to England, and that since 1800 English 
 policy towards Ireland, though often unwise, has been guided 
 by the sincerest desire to promote the good of the country. 
 But, even were it otherwise, how could past injustice be re- 
 paired by present injury, and how could Ireland fail to be 
 injured by Home Eule if, as I contend, she is demonstrably 
 unfit for it ? Eepentance is an excellent thing, but that is a 
 cheap and mischievous form of penance which consists in 
 vilifying our fathers and burdening our posterity by forcing 
 a boon known to be fatal upon those to whom atonement is 
 supposed to be due. 
 
 If atonement is really due at all, if Great Britain must 
 needs reproach herself for wrongs done to Ireland, those 
 wrongs have assuredly not been on the side of over-govern- 
 ment, and cannot be redressed by leaving Ireland to anarchy. 
 Having under our charge one of the most backward popula- 
 tions in Europe, richly endowed with intellectual and social 
 virtues, but singularly deficient in the political virtues, we 
 have persisted in dealing with it as if it needed no stronger 
 government than Great Britain. We have declined to pay 
 the priests, we have stickled, with pedantic obstinacy, for a 
 make-believe unsectarian education, we have upheld the free- 
 dom of the Press and the right of public meeting, we have 
 stiffly adhered to the dogmas of laissez-faire as concerns the 
 development of Irish industries, we have established an uni- 
 form franchise throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and all 
 because Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom, 
 and must not be treated exceptionally. On the other hand, 
 with ludicrous inconsistency, we have recognised the excep-
 
 HOME RULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 241 
 
 tional requirements of Ireland by abolishing the Irish branch 
 of the Established Church ; we have given Ireland a land- 
 system, not only exceptional, but unique in its one-sided com- 
 plication among the land-systems of the civilised world ; we 
 have rewarded murder and outrage in Ireland by enriching 
 the class on whose behalf they were practised at the expense 
 of that against which they were practised ; and we listen 
 with respect to demands from Ireland which, if they pro- 
 ceeded from England and Scotland, would be received with 
 derision. It is this pitiful inconsistency it is this imbecility 
 and vacillation in the Imperial government of Ireland which 
 constitutes by far the gravest of all Irish grievances. 'We 
 have tried everything ' - yes, ' everything by turns, and 
 nothing long.' We have never tried a firm, just, and con- 
 sistent policy. We pass Acts necessary for the protection of 
 life and property (miscalled Coercion Acts) for periods skil- 
 fully contrived to elapse when the difficulty of renewing them 
 shall be greatest, instead of fixing no time for their expiration, 
 and leaving them to operate until they can be safely repealed. 
 Our foremost statesman denounces the leaders of the Nation- 
 alist conspiracy as apostles of 'public plunder,' consigning 
 some of them to Kilmainham Gaol, and then professes un- 
 limited confidence in their patriotism and moderation. He 
 invites all classes of Irishmen to co-operate harmoniously for 
 the good of their common country, and in the same breath he 
 invites the most capable and loyal class to expatriate itself on 
 ruinous terms, lest it should be robbed by the majority. No ! 
 we have tried, it is true, every shift of time-serving expedi- 
 ency, but we have not tried far-sighted statesmanship, im- 
 partial justice, and a continuous enforcement of law and 
 order. 
 
 This is the one inestimable benefit which Ireland cannot 
 realise for herself, which Great Britain could bestow upon 
 her, but which party spirit and popularity-hunting have as 
 yet deterred us from granting her. Let men of both parties, 
 not yet pledged to Home Eule, agree to withdraw Ireland, 
 like India, from the ordinary sphere of party warfare ; let the
 
 242 HOME EULE AND JUSTICE TO IRELAND 
 
 aim of Parliament be, not to silence clamour, but to restore 
 a sense of permanent security in Ireland ; let us think more 
 of protecting honest men in their rights than of reconciling 
 irreconcilable enemies of the law ; let us study Irish interests 
 rather than Irish demands ; and let this policy be maintained 
 until the Irish nation shall have unlearned the evil lessons 
 of the last few years. In other words, let us at last give 
 Ireland what has always been the one thing needful for her 
 a strong Executive Government. Under the shelter of such 
 a Government, it would be found possible to allow a much 
 greater elasticity of administration, and even a much larger 
 measure of local autonomy, than would otherwise be com- 
 patible with Imperial rule. But the maintenance of a con- 
 tinuous policy and a strong Government for Ireland certainly 
 involves one serious difficulty, which some regard as insuper- 
 able. It would require a great sacrifice of party spirit to 
 patriotism, and a vigorous display of that capacity for Empire 
 by which England in times past won her place among the 
 nations. This objection must be admitted ; but does it not 
 tell, with still greater force, against Home Rule? Will it 
 require a less sacrifice of party spirit and less capacity for 
 Empire to work a ' dog-collar union ' with Ireland, under 
 Mr. Gladstone's Bill, than to preserve the existing legislative 
 Union and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament ? And, 
 if Home Rule should fail, as fail it must under the control of 
 Irish-American adventurers, will not the hasty concession of 
 it be remembered in history as a consummation of the wrongs 
 endured by Ireland at the hands of Great Britain, and may 
 not the next generation of Irishmen rise up and curse us for 
 it, with far better reason than can be shown by those who 
 have so freely cursed us before ? 
 
 I remain, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Merton College, Oxford, 
 May, 188G.
 
 243 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER 
 THE UNION 
 
 A Letter to the Editor of ' The Times,' October 1880. 
 
 Sir, Those who have earnestly striven to defeat Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Home Eule policy, and are resolved to oppose the 
 revival of it, ought now seriously to consider what principles 
 should guide the Imperial Legislature in the government of 
 Ireland under the Union. Not that any special obligation 
 rests upon the opponents of Home Rule to devise what is 
 called an alternative policy. The only alternative policy 
 which they need propose is that policy to which Mr. Glad- 
 stone, in common with all British statesmen, had adhered 
 during a political lifetime of more than fifty years, though 
 he has at last abandoned it for an alliance with Mr. Parnell. 
 No doubt, the fact of this alliance and the disastrous adoption 
 by Mr. Gladstone's followers of a measure which few of them 
 conscientiously approved, have infinitely increased the diffi- 
 culty of governing Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. 
 But the difficulties of Irish government would not only have 
 been great, they would have been insuperable, under a system 
 of Home Rule which utterly failed to satisfy the Nationalistic 
 demand, which involved incessant friction between the Im- 
 perial and the Irish Executive, which gave over the control 
 of the police to a conspiracy eminently requiring to be kept 
 under police supervision, which could not have been imposed 
 upon Ulster without provoking civil war, and which must in- 
 evitably have led to Separation by a lingering process. No ! 
 the difficulties of Irish government are not the creation of 
 the Unionists ; they are not even the creation of the Home 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 Rulers, greatly as they have been aggravated by that section 
 of the Liberal Party ; they are the growth of centuries, and 
 can only be overcome, if at all, by a remedial policy steadily 
 maintained for more than one generation. The present ques- 
 tion is, what that policy should be always assuming that a 
 decisive majority in the Imperial Parliament is capable of 
 rising above the level of partisanship, and of studying, in the 
 spirit of a single-minded lawgiver, the permanent interests 
 of Ireland. 
 
 In approaching this question, it is of the first importance 
 to grasp facts clearly, and to distinguish them from mere 
 sentiments or aspirations. For instance, Irish nationality is 
 an aspiration, but it has never been embodied in a fact. 
 When Edward I. invaded Scotland, he made war upon a 
 nation which had long been practically united under one 
 king of its own, and when Scotland accepted union with 
 England, it had still an independent national Constitution, 
 though its sovereign also wore the Crown of England. When 
 Henry II. was said to have conquered Ireland which he 
 never did conquer he found no king of Ireland and no sem- 
 blance of an Irish nation, but only a cluster of wild tribes, 
 implacably hostile to each other, and living in a chronic state 
 of anarchy, compared to which the Saxon Heptarchy was a 
 harmonious empire. 
 
 Whatever sense of national unity and community of politi- 
 cal interests may now exist in Ireland is not a survival 
 of the past a past which was never present but the effect 
 of English institutions slowly developed and extended through- 
 out the island by Imperial agency. Having realised this fact, 
 which is not without its bearing on the prospects of Home 
 Piule, we have further to realise a second, and very unwel- 
 come, fact that Irishmen are singularly deficient in those 
 simple political virtues upon which free institutions entirely 
 depend for their success. It is childish to seek in misgovern- 
 tnent the cause of this inveterate deficiency ; we might as 
 well attribute to misgovernment the quick intelligence and 
 native courtesy which make the Irish peasantry so attractive
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 245 
 
 to foreign visitors. What is certain is, that it has been appa- 
 rently inherent in the Irish race ever since it emerged into 
 history, that it was this which enabled a handful of Norman 
 knights to overrun and overawe Ireland, that it was this 
 which kept all Ireland outside the English Pale in a state of 
 political and social barbarism during the three centuries 
 before the Tudor monarchs undertook its pacification, and 
 that this is recognised as a radical weakness of Irish character 
 by every Englishman who has studied it since that epoch 
 by Edmund Spenser, by Sir John Davies, by Sir William 
 Petty, by Swift, by Berkeley, by Arthur Young, and by the 
 most friendly critics of Ireland in our own day. It may be 
 convenient to ignore it for popularity-hunting ends, but the 
 fact is patent that in the Irish national character, as we see 
 it, there is a grievous lack of moral independence, of self- 
 respect, of political courage, and, above all, of truthfulness. 
 There is no such thing as public opinion in Ireland ; what 
 passes for it is manufactured to order by a Press whose most 
 popular organs stand alone in Europe for scurrilous men- 
 dacity, by demagogues in the pay of American revolutionists, 
 and by priests who exhibit sympathy with lawlessness and 
 crime lest they should lose all hold over their flocks. Few 
 of the Irish peasantry have ever heard or read the words of 
 truth and soberness in regard to politics, and the successful 
 policy of outrage-mongers, endorsed by English statesmen, 
 has perverted such conceptions as they had before of public 
 morality. If we look at the conduct of Irish elections, if we 
 look at the gross jobbery which prevails in municipal and 
 Poor-Law administration, if we look at the shameful venality 
 and shameless dishonesty which impose on Irish popular 
 opinion, we may well be tempted to despair of developing a 
 healthy public spirit in a community so demoralised, and the 
 words may perhaps rise before us ' A wonderful and horrible 
 thing is committed in the land ; the prophets prophesy falsely, 
 and the priests bear rule by their means ; and My people love 
 to have it so : and what will ye do in the end thereof ? ' 
 
 But despair should find no place in the counsels of states-
 
 246 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 men ; and, having once realised the facts, we have now to 
 discover how to make the best of them. Let us study dis- 
 passionately, not the demands, but the wants of the Irish 
 people ; not what remedies an Irish Legislature would apply, 
 but what it ought to apply. The so-called demands of Ireland 
 will assuredly never be satisfied, because they are carefully 
 formulated by irreconcilable enemies of Great Britain, who 
 have no desire to see them satisfied, treating each concession 
 as blackmail extorted by fear and as a starting-point for a 
 new agitation. But the real wants of Ireland deserve atten- 
 tive consideration, and the more so, if the illusory demands 
 of Ireland be firmly rejected. Nor must any British prejudice 
 or conventional dogma be allowed to stand in the way of such 
 a consideration. Now, one of these dogmas, repeated glibly on 
 platforms in times past by those who now advocate Home Bule, 
 and still repeated too often by Unionist speakers, is that 
 Ireland is entitled to have all its institutions put on an exact 
 equality with those of Great Britain as if, by the way, there 
 were no difference between English and Scotch institutions. 
 Perhaps it might have been well if this policy of uniformity 
 and complete amalgamation had been initiated at the Union, 
 and gradually carried out by subsequent legislation. But it 
 is needless to point out that a very opposite policy has been 
 adopted for many years under Liberal Governments, and that 
 of late especially the tendency has been to legislate for Ireland 
 according to Irish ideas (as understood by Englishmen), and 
 to make the contrast between English and Irish institutions 
 more striking than ever. The Irish Church has been dis- 
 established, though its establishment was a fundamental 
 article of the Union, because the balance of creeds in Ireland 
 differed so widely from that in Great Britain that its main- 
 tenance was held to be indefensible. The land-system of 
 Ireland has been twice remodelled upon principles for which 
 no precedent is to be found in the agrarian codes of Europe 
 or America, and the last Irish Land Act has created a dual 
 ownership of the very kind which successive law reforms 
 have nearly abolished in England, while in Prussia it was
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 247 
 
 absolutely abolished by Stein and Hardenberg. And the 
 argument which reconciled English politicians to this re- 
 actionary expedient was that Irish tenures were so unique, 
 and Irish tenants so utterly helpless, that it was necessary to 
 override freedom of contract and protect them against them- 
 selves'. The Irish system of public education is not so purely 
 Irish, and the bugbear of ' concurrent endowment ' has pre- 
 vented its being wisely adapted to Irish wants and circum- 
 stances. Still, it is far more denominational than would be 
 tolerated by Liberal sentiment in England or Scotland, and 
 very large sacrifices of this sentiment have been made to 
 satisfy the claims of Irish Catholics in respect of secondary 
 and University education. It is needless to add that Ireland 
 has a police system of its own, and that no English states- 
 man, except those who have gone over to Home Kule, has 
 seriously advocated placing the Irish police under the control 
 of the local authorities in counties and boroughs. It would 
 be easy to multiply these instances of flagrant disparity 
 between Irish and English institutions, and to show that all 
 of them, except the peculiar organisation of the Irish police, 
 have been introduced in deference to the plea that Irishmen 
 must be governed in their own way a plea strenuously urged 
 by the same class of partisans who, in the same breath, 
 clamour for the extension of every English privilege and in- 
 stitution to Ireland. It is too late to adopt this policy of 
 assimilation, however salutary it might have been if adopted 
 earlier. Having subverted the Church system, the land- 
 system, and the educational system of Ireland, and recon- 
 structed them on an Irish pattern, because Irishmen are 
 unfit for the same institutions as Englishmen, we cannot, 
 with a grave face, insist upon an identity of local government 
 between the two countries because, forsooth, Irishmen are 
 perfectly fit for the same institutions as Englishmen. The 
 policy of assimilation and the policy of consulting the special 
 wants of Ireland cannot stand together ; we must definitely 
 choose between them ; and experience, as well as a regard for 
 consistency, warns us that we must now elect the latter.
 
 248 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 The one special want of Ireland which dominates all 
 others is the need of security, and the very highest act of 
 ' justice to Ireland ' which the Imperial Parliament can 
 bestow is the prompt and determined restoration of order. 
 It is certain that no other Government in Europe, and least 
 of all that of the United States, would have tolerated for a 
 month the reign of terror which has paralysed all energy in 
 Ireland, except the energy of crime, for several years past. 
 If the Irish nation were mainly composed of robbers and 
 assassins, it might doubtless be treated as tyrannical ' coer- 
 cion' from an Irish point of view to put down robbery 
 and assassination. But if the Irish nation is mainly com- 
 posed of peaceable citizens, glad enough to live quietly, but 
 without the moral courage to denounce a few handfuls of 
 robbers and assassins, encouraged by the National League, 
 and thus enabled to intimidate whole counties, the national 
 wrong surely consists in the refusal to protect the sheep 
 against the wolves. The victory of the National League over 
 the law illustrates the truth of a remark made by Edmund 
 Spenser 800 years ago : ' The Irishman, I assure you, fears 
 the Government no longer than he is within sight or reach. 
 No doubt strict discipline has been enforced by the League, 
 and their success in criminal organisation has actually been 
 quoted as a proof of Irish capacity for self-government. What 
 it really proves is that Irishmen are best governed with a 
 strong hand. They have been made to learn that it is far 
 safer to defy the law than it is to defy the National League ; 
 and, until they are practically convinced of the contrary, the 
 stronger power will command their allegiance. 
 
 There are those who, fully recognising the duty of re- 
 establishing the security of life, property, and personal inde- 
 pendence throughout Ireland, believe that, if the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenancy were abolished, that paramount object would be pro- 
 moted. I cannot share this opinion, and I have always re- 
 garded it as a redeeming feature of Mr. Gladstone's Home 
 Rule Bill that it preserved the Lord-Lieutenancy, however 
 thankless and unenviable that office would have become.
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 249 
 
 When its abolition was contemplated by Lord Russell and 
 other Liberals of the old school, the measure recommended 
 itself as part and parcel of the policy of assimilation, whereby 
 the Irish Channel was to be gradually bridged over, and all 
 badges of difference obliterated. That policy has now been 
 abandoned for the counter-policy of special legislation for 
 Ireland, and the abolition of the Viceroyalty would destroy, 
 not only a standing monument of Imperial rule, but a valu- 
 able instrument for mediation between Irish and English 
 opinion. Torrents of abuse have been poured upon ' the 
 Castle ' by Irish demagogues, and it is quite possible that 
 some useful reforms might be introduced into Castle bureau- 
 cracy. But the broad fact remains that ' the Castle ' really 
 consists of a few officials, mostly both honest and able, far 
 more accessible to Irish influences than Under-Secretaries 
 or clerks at the Home Office, and traditionally disposed to 
 modify Imperial instructions so as to conciliate Irish pre- 
 judices. The besetting sin of ' the Castle ' is not its despotism, 
 but its weakness, and if the principle of local self-government 
 is to be extended in Ireland, it becomes vitally necessary to 
 strengthen the power of the Central Executive, whether it be 
 lodged in Dublin Castle or elsewhere. How this should be 
 done with the least possible risk of abuse is a problem for 
 those of whom there are, happily, several belonging to both 
 parties who are practically familiar with Irish administra- 
 tion. One very obvious means of increasing the stability of 
 this administration would be to separate the Viceroyalty of 
 Ireland, like that of India, from the Government of the day, 
 and to make it tenable for a certain number of years, which 
 might be extended by re-appointment. Another method of 
 reinforcing the Irish Executive, and at the same time of satis- 
 fying the reasonable demand for a semi-legislative tribunal 
 in Dublin, would be to reconstitute the Irish Privy Council 
 on a more representative basis, and to arm it with authority 
 to deal with much of the Irish local business now transacted 
 at Westminster. Advised by such a body, and under such 
 other constitutional safeguards as may be thought necessary,
 
 250 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 the Lord-Lieutenant might be properly entrusted with very 
 large powers of proclaiming counties or smaller districts in 
 which, after due warning, law and order should continue to 
 be overborne by the rule of lawless violence. Suppose the 
 proclaimed district to be a county, one effect of such a pro- 
 clamation might be that the supreme command of the police 
 force, as well as of Her Majesty's troops, within it, should 
 pass into the hands of a military officer specially appointed 
 for the purpose. Another effect might be that the Parlia- 
 mentary representation of the county or county division 
 should be suspended. Parliamentary representation assumes 
 the existence of conditions under which citizens can act and 
 vote freely. Where these conditions are absent where juries 
 dare not convict, where creditors dare not collect their debts, 
 where farmers dare not take vacant farms or make their own 
 terms with their landlords, where a secret conspiracy tyran- 
 nises over the minds and consciences of the whole community 
 Parliamentary elections are a perfect farce, and the so- 
 called representatives are the delegates of the very body which 
 the law ought to crush. It would be true mercy to suspend 
 also the operation of trial by jury in proclaimed districts, and 
 to substitute for it provisionally the jurisdiction of special 
 commissions ; but, in default of this, it might be sufficient 
 to borrow from the Crimes Act the provisions for change of 
 venue. A few examples of this kind might be expected to 
 work miracles, unless, indeed, the conspirators were encour- 
 aged to believe that at any moment, under some time-serving 
 impulse, the strong hand might be withdrawn. Let it be 
 once understood throughout Ireland that, where the peace of 
 counties cannot be secured by the ordinary processes of law, 
 or by the action of law-abiding citizens, it shall be secured 
 by the Executive power, but at no light sacrifice of civil 
 rights, and the spell of the National League will be thence- 
 forth broken. But this conviction will not be easily impressed 
 on the popular mind after the evil lessons which have lately 
 been tiiuglit it by successive Governments, and the applica- 
 tion of such remedies will require a tenacity of purpose to
 
 THE GOVEKNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 251 
 
 which we have long been strangers. On the other hand, let 
 it never be forgotten that a greater tenacity of purpose and 
 far higher efforts of political courage will be needed to re- 
 conquer Ireland, if Home Eule be granted, and produce its 
 inevitable results in hostile Separation. 
 
 But though restoration of security must be the first 
 object of a true statesman labouring to rescue Ireland from 
 its present hopeless condition, it should not be his only or 
 ultimate object. Given security and a Central Executive 
 strong enough to suppress all rebellion and outrage, it would 
 be safe and wise to govern Ireland more in accordance with 
 Irish ideas than has been attempted since the Union. In 
 the first place, it should be governed, so far as possible, 
 through Irishmen. It is true that, since the most loyal and 
 independent class has been almost driven out of the country, 
 it is very difficult to find Irishmen capable of filling respon- 
 sible positions bravely and impartially. It is true, also, that 
 the one thoroughbred Irishman who has lately held the office 
 of Permanent Secretary was brutally murdered by hired 
 assassins, and that in the face of day. Still, there are Irish 
 gentlemen of high ability and unblemished honour, and the 
 inability to distinguish these from the professional order of 
 Irish patriots has been among the weaknesses of recent Irish 
 policy. If they could feel sure of not being thrown over by 
 the next Cabinet and betrayed into the hands of rebels, men 
 of this type might be induced to do good service in central, 
 and even in local, government. For it is vain to contend 
 against a further extension of self-government in Irish coun- 
 ties ; not that Irishmen are really fit for the civil liberties 
 which they already enjoy, but that in order to make them 
 fit they must be released from leading strings, while they are 
 restrained from acts of injustice by an effective power of veto. 
 There is a process which relieves water of certain mineral 
 elements by overcharging it with similar elements until it 
 precipitates the whole of them. This process is applicable 
 to Irish local government, and it is probable that a recon- 
 struction of the grand jury system on a more popular basis,
 
 252 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 with a right of supervision over smaller local bodies, would 
 tend rather to purify the action of these bodies than to in- 
 tensify the rowdyism and corruption which now disgrace 
 them. Only it is absolutely essential, for the present, that 
 a power of annulling iniquitous resolutions of local bodies, 
 whether municipal corporations, town councils, boards of 
 guardians, or grand juries, should be reserved by the Central 
 Executive. Until Ireland has learned the alphabet of political 
 justice until a predatory or vindictive use of the rating 
 power be as impossible there as in England centralisation 
 is a necessary evil. 
 
 But these gross abuses are largely, though by no means 
 wholly, due to the unsettled state of the land question. Mr. 
 Gladstone's well-meant but most unstatesmanlike reforms have 
 not in the slightest degree advanced the settlement of this 
 question ; on the contrary, they have but whetted the appetites 
 of tenants for their landlords' property, and artificially pro- 
 moted the survival of the unfittest in the favoured class of 
 ' present tenants.' Having gone so far, we must go a step 
 further buy out the landlords on equitable terms, place the 
 State in the position which it occupies in India, and convert 
 rent into a fixed terminable rent-charge or tribute. Of course, 
 there are manifold objections to such a measure, and the 
 benefit of it would be reaped by men who have done nothing 
 to deserve it. We hear much of ' restitution,' but in fact 
 very few Irish tenants represent the original owners, or have 
 any titles whatever beyond those of English tenants, while in 
 many cases the expropriation of landlords would mean the 
 substitution of an owner descended from a Cromwellian trooper 
 for an owner descended from a Cromwellian captain. Nor 
 would the measure do much to transfer Irish soil from aliens 
 to natives. The vast majority of Irish landlords, including 
 all the worst, are already natives, and the few, though large, 
 estates of absentee English noblemen, are for the most part 
 liberally managed. Still, the general creation of a peasant 
 proprietary in Ireland, if it could be accomplished, would cut 
 the ground from under the present agrarian agitation, and
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 253 
 
 rally whatever manhood is still to be found in Irish farmers 
 against the oppression of the National League. That body 
 might continue to foment disloyalty and rebellion, as well as 
 to instigate strikes against the payment of instalments due 
 to the State, but they would find soldiers less easy to scare 
 than bailiffs, and, as there would be no landlords, there would 
 be no hostile class to vilify or to despoil. Probably, for a 
 while, there would be as many agrarian murders and moon- 
 light outrages as ever, for the struggle for land would go on 
 though evictions should cease; but it would relapse into its 
 primitive form of private and domestic blood-feuds, instead 
 of being directed by an organised conspiracy. Whether 
 'present tenants,' even if transformed into landowners, will 
 long be able to retain their ill-earned monopoly against the 
 claim of town-artisans and agricultural labourers to a share 
 of the national soil, is a very different question ; but, at all 
 events, their selfish instincts will be enlisted on the side of 
 the law. A landed Democracy is as conservative by nature 
 as a landed Aristocracy, and it would not be surprising if the 
 new proprietors should form Vigilance Committees to protect 
 themselves against landless assailants. 
 
 If the land question were once settled if this eternal 
 source of disaffection could be eradicated from the minds of 
 the Irish peasantry one main obstacle to a revival of Irish 
 industry and trade would be removed. It is a common 
 delusion to account for the scarcity of manufactures in 
 Ireland by the absence of coal-fields. No doubt, there is 
 little or no coal produced in Ireland ; but it is easily im- 
 ported, and is cheaper at Wexford or Waterford than it is 
 in some manufacturing-towns of England. The reason why 
 the south of Ireland is so destitute of manufactories is 
 that a sense of insecurity has driven away capital from it, 
 and that it is inhabited by a population singularly deficient 
 in enterprise or steadiness. The natural and only remedy is 
 the restoration of security, coupled with the development, by 
 every legitimate means, of proprietorship and industry. No 
 one scruples to invoke State aid for the development of pro-
 
 254 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 
 
 prietorship, but it needs some courage to recommend the 
 same method for the development of industry. Nevertheless, 
 I venture to maintain that if one-tenth of what Ireland has 
 lost through revolutionary experiments on its land-system 
 had been wisely invested on public works, the prospects of 
 Irish finance would be far brighter, and the national character 
 would have been improved instead of being deteriorated. But 
 though political economy was banished to Jupiter or Saturn 
 in deference to agrarian intimidation, we have obstinately 
 stickled for its supposed dogmas against every suggestion of 
 State subventions for other purposes. It is time for us to 
 reconsider this one-sided application of our economical creed 
 to Ireland, and, moreover, to ask ourselves whether it is 
 worth our while to maintain there a system of education 
 theoretically unsectarian, though practically modified to meet 
 sectarian prejudices. Let it be granted that, if Ireland were 
 in an advanced state of civilisation, and if it were not torn 
 asunder by furious religious animosities, such as have broken 
 out into civil war at Belfast, it would be all the better for 
 unsectarian education. Such was the benevolent idea of 
 Whately and his coadjutors, but it has been tried and has 
 failed. Ireland is still a very backward country, and mes- 
 sages of peace have not calmed religious passion. Why 
 not recognise facts, give up the fiction of mixed education in 
 elementary schools, and endow a Catholic University ? It 
 is too late to pay the priests, or to renew the dependence of 
 Maynooth on an annual grant. But it is not too late to 
 place the highest education within the reach of the Roman 
 Catholic laity, on terms which they will accept ; and, whether 
 or not the boon should elicit gratitude, it would be a sub- 
 stantial benefit to Ireland. 
 
 For the present, then, our policy for Ireland should be 
 founded on a vigorous assertion of Imperial authority, com- 
 bined with an unprejudiced and sympathetic regard for Irish 
 interests and feelings. This is a very different thing from 
 the policy of ' delegation ' proposed by Lord Monck as a 
 happy medium l>etween the schemes of Mr. Gladstone and
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND UNDER THE UNION 255 
 
 Mr. Parnell on the one side, and the supposed ideas of Lord 
 Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain on the other. ' Delegation ' 
 of Imperial functions, however strictly limited, to a legislative 
 body in Dublin, would practically mean, as Lord Monck 
 admits, the creation of a ' statutory Parliament,' and a statu- 
 tory Parliament, receiving its instructions from America, 
 would never rest till it had issued a declaration of national 
 independence. Delegation of similar functions to four pro- 
 vincial councils would be open to less objection, but it would 
 also be less effectual for any good purpose, and, like the 
 former plan, it would be damned beforehand as a miserable 
 counterfeit of Home Eule. There is no prospect of peace for 
 Ireland except in the maintenance of the Union in all its 
 essential features ; and the main difficulty of governing Ireland 
 under the Union does not lie in Dublin, but at Westminster. 
 The policy of Home Eule, as advocated by Mr. Gladstone and 
 other recent converts, was essentially a policy of despair. 
 They scarcely affected to believe in its merits or success, and 
 preferred to rely on the hopelessness of inducing the English 
 and Scotch people to support any Government in the measures 
 necessary to keep order in Ireland without Home Eule. It 
 is for the English and Scotch people, who have rejected Home 
 Eule at the poll, to refute this argument in the only con- 
 clusive way, to rescue Ireland from the intrigues of politicians, 
 and to give the Union a fairer chance than it has had since 
 the good of Ireland has been forgotten in party competition 
 for the Irish vote. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Merton College, Oxford. 
 October 2G, 1886.
 
 256 
 
 THE 'CLASSES' AND THE 'MASSES' 1 
 
 The recent presentation of an address to Lord Hartington 
 from Liberal Unionist graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 followed by the Spalding and Coventry elections, has naturally 
 recalled public attention to Mr. Gladstone's favourite anti- 
 thesis of ' the classes ' and ' the masses.' That sinister appeal 
 to the pride and prejudice of ignorance was perhaps his 
 gravest lapse from patriotism and statesmanship, until he 
 was tempted, in an evil moment, to reveal the real spirit of 
 Home llule policy by endeavouring to revive provincial anti- 
 pathies among the Scotch and Welsh branches of the British 
 nation. Still, the distinction between the political judgments 
 of the so-called classes and the so-called masses is by no 
 means unmeaning, and it may be profitable to consider its 
 bearing on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. 
 
 No impartial student of political history, especially if he 
 be a Liberal by conviction, will deny that on many great 
 issues of modern politics the instincts of the poorer and less 
 educated classes have, in the main, been right, while those 
 of the wealthier and more educated classes have, in the main, 
 been wrong. The reason is obvious. On these issues the 
 apparent interests of the Few have been at variance with the 
 apparent interests of the Many, and, inasmuch as Govern- 
 ment exists for the benefit of the Many rather than of the Few, 
 the cause which ultimately prevailed was not only the popular 
 but the better cause. It was not by virtue of superior insight, 
 still less by virtue of unselfish motives, that the people at large 
 were enabled to appreciate the arguments for a cheap loaf, 
 
 1 An Article in the Liberal Unionist, July 20, 1887.
 
 THE ' CLASSES ' AND THE ' MASSES ' 257 
 
 for instance, but simply by virtue of their own self-interest, 
 which it was the duty of the State to recognise as the suprema 
 lex, thereby promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, instead of maintaining Corn Laws for the protection 
 of landlords and farmers. This very simple principle ex- 
 plains the great majority of cases in which popular opinion 
 has proved to be right, and the conservative instincts of 
 ' society ' have been confuted by the result. Nor must we 
 forget that in those cases the general opinion of ' society ' 
 has not been always supported by a preponderance of what 
 Mr. John Morley terms ' cultivated opinion.' On the con- 
 trary, the Corn Laws were denounced by leading economists 
 of the highest culture long before their injurious effect was 
 understood by the people, and it would be easy to cite in- 
 stances, like that of the New Poor Law, in which reforms 
 eminently beneficial to the working classes have been forced 
 upon them by cultivated opinion. In short, ignorance of all 
 that a statesman ought to know is no security for political 
 wisdom, nor is the habit of reading books or newspapers, 
 with occasional foreign travel, a disqualification for dealing 
 with political affairs. Had the privileged classes not been 
 privileged, and thus biassed, their judgments would have 
 compared most favourably, on most questions of domestic 
 policy, with those of the suffering and toiling masses, without 
 leisure to master the necessary facts, often without the ability 
 to read, and almost always without the will or the power to 
 distinguish between specious rhetoric and the words of truth 
 and soberness. As for most questions of foreign policy, it 
 would be absurd to speak of popular verdicts upon them as 
 possessing the slightest value. Had Mr. Gladstone headed 
 an agitation in favour of State-right in America no impos- 
 sible supposition he might well have persuaded vast bodies 
 of electors that Secession was as sacred as Home Eule, and 
 all the hallowed traditions of Liberalism would have been 
 invoked on the side of those who rebelled against the Federal 
 Government at Washington. 
 
 Unhappily, to the great majority of British electors Ire-
 
 258 THE 'CLASSES' AND THE 'MASSES' 
 
 land is as much a foreign country as France, and more so 
 than the United States of America. To consult the agricul- 
 tural labourers of Spalding, as an oracle, on the expediency 
 of dissolving the Union, or the conditions upon which Home 
 Rule might be reconciled with Imperial control, is like con- 
 sulting an infant-school on the highest problems of mathe- 
 matics or theology. They may be richly endowed with 
 honesty and intelligence, but they have not, and they cannot 
 have, the very slightest capacity of examining either the 
 historical fictions, miscalled facts, on which Mr. Gladstone 
 mainly rests his case, or the present circumstances of Ireland, 
 on which the most capable authorities differ so widely. They 
 are, therefore, and they must be, at the mercy of the latest 
 or the most plausible speaker ; and the Home Rule emissaries, 
 who swarmed over the constituency, take credit for having 
 talked them over into a belief in the Nationalist version of 
 the Irish story. Let us accept this boast as authentic, and 
 let us further assume that agrarian discontent, with the ad- 
 vanced bid of six acres and two cows, was not the most 
 potent cause of the Gladstonian victory in Lincolnshire. Let 
 us then consider, by the light of Home Rule articles or pam- 
 phlets, what kind of history is likely to have been instilled 
 into the minds of these docile electors, many of whom must 
 have passed the school-age before the three R's became 
 common accomplishments in country districts, and were 
 probably ignorant of the fact that Ireland is an island 
 adjacent to Great Britain. 
 
 They were told, we may be sure, that Ireland has been 
 shamefully oppressed by England for seven centuries. Did 
 they know what Mr. Gladstone evidently does not know 
 that for some three centuries after the so-called Conquest of 
 Ireland that country, outside the English Pale (consisting 
 of four counties and two or three seaports), enjoyed the 
 blessings of Home Rule ; that, after the visit of John, no 
 English king, except Richard II., set foot in Ireland for 
 nearly five centuries ; that no English army worthy of the 
 name, except that of Richard II., crossed the Channel be-
 
 THE 'CLASSES' AND THE 'MASSES' 259 
 
 tween the reign of Henry II. and that of Henry VIII. ; that 
 no laws were made for the great body of Irishmen by the 
 English Parliament ; and that, left to itself, Ireland relapsed 
 into a state of savagery and anarchy disgraceful to Chris- 
 tianity? They were doubtless taught that the Irish nation 
 was deliberately crushed by its English conquerors. Was 
 there any one to inform them that no Irish nation ever 
 existed within the period of historical memory ; that Ireland, 
 when it was invaded by Strongbow, was a mere ' geographical 
 expression,' inhabited by a cluster of hostile tribes, under 
 different chiefs, and owing allegiance to no single king ; that 
 it owes to England whatever unity or sense of nationality it 
 has since acquired ; and that it has borrowed from England 
 every civil or political institution which it now enjoys, in- 
 cluding some which it is not yet civilised enough to use 
 without abuse ? They were made to believe, on the infallible 
 authority of Mr. Gladstone, that England at the Union 
 feloniously robbed Ireland of its old native Parliament. Did 
 they suspect that Ireland never had a native Parliament ; 
 that the assembly so grossly misdescribed was created by 
 England for its own purposes, and represented only the 
 English colony ; that it was this very ' Irish Parliament ' 
 which passed the atrocious code of penal laws against the 
 Catholics ; and that even in its golden age, under Grattan, 
 it never won the confidence of the Irish people ? They knew 
 that Mr. Gladstone had exhausted the vocabulary of vitupe- 
 ration on the means whereby the Union was carried. Were 
 they aware that his charges have been combated and (as 
 some think) disproved by Dr. Ingram and other historians 
 of the period ; that Grattan's Parliament had always been 
 maintained and managed by the same questionable agencies 
 as were employed to procure its self-extinction ; that the 
 Union was desired by a majority of the Irish Catholics, and 
 that its chief opponents were the very classes who now protest 
 against its Eepeal? They were told that all the vices and 
 miseries of Ireland are the natural products of English mis- 
 rule. Could they divine that, on the contrary, these evils 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE 'CLASSES' AND THE 'MASSES* 
 
 were all rife and rampant long before English rule was esta- 
 blished (except in four counties), and are most graphically 
 described by Spenser nearly a century before the events to 
 which they are traced back ? They were, of course, plied 
 with invectives against the horrors of Irish .landlordism, 
 and persuaded that Irish tenants, unlike the English, are 
 defenceless at law against the exaction of extortionate rents. 
 Might it not have surprised them to discover that, on the 
 contrary, the Irish tenant, by the Act of 1870, was given a 
 security for his improvements unknown to British tenants, 
 as well as a right to compensation for disturbance ; while 
 by the Act of 1881 he acquired privileges almost amounting 
 to joint ownership, and far beyond those enjoyed by tenants 
 in any other country of Europe, or in any State of America? 
 Their minds were harrowed by tales of eviction for non-pay- 
 ment of ' impossible rents.' Did they receive any intimation 
 that Irish rents, already much lower on the average than 
 rents in Great Britain, had been lately reduced by judicial 
 courts ; that large premiums are habitually paid by incoming 
 tenants for the possession of farms alleged to be rack-rented ; 
 that land in Ireland is habitually sublet at a rent far above 
 that demanded by the landlord ; and that multitudes of 
 tenants are not only able and willing to pay, but do clan- 
 destinely pay, rents which the National League declares 
 to be impossible, and commands them to refuse on pain of 
 Moonlight outrage ? They were assured that public opinion 
 throughout Ireland supports the National League. Had 
 they knowledge enough of that unhappy country to realise 
 that it is in the grip of a terrorist conspiracy, under which 
 no such thing as public opinion can exist ; that what passes 
 for it is manufactured to order by the most infamous Press 
 in Europe, by demagogues in the pay of American revolu- 
 tionists, and by priests who affect sympathy with lawlessness 
 and crime in the vain hope of retaining control over the 
 people? They were led to imagine that Unionists upheld 
 the Union solely for the sake of Imperial interests, and that, 
 if Irish interests alone were concerned, it might be safely
 
 THE ' CLASSES ' AND THE ' MASSES ' 261 
 
 and hopefully abandoned. Did they ask themselves whether, 
 apart from all Imperial considerations, Ireland is fit to govern 
 itself, and whether the concession of Home Eule would be a 
 real benefit to it, or, rather, the greatest wrong that Great 
 Britain could inflict upon it ? They may have casually 
 heard of ' The Case of England against Home Eule.' Were 
 they cognisant of the reasons which, to many enlightened 
 minds, render the Case of Ireland against Home Rule tenfold 
 more cogent ? 
 
 These are but specimens of the questions which must be 
 faced and answered by any one, whether he be a member of 
 the classes or the masses, who seeks to form an independent 
 opinion on the policy of Home Eule. How many of the 
 Spalding electors are likely to have entertained them, or to 
 possess the most second-hand and superficial acquaintance 
 with them ? But then we are told by Mr. John Morley 
 in plain, though courteous, language, that ' academic and 
 literary opinion ' is equally ignorant of Irish affairs, and we 
 are advised ' to master three or four Irish Blue Books,' just 
 as Mr. Gladstone is never tired of advising us to study 
 Irish history during the past century. The advice is ex- 
 cellent, but it comes somewhat late ; it scarcely goes far 
 enough, and perhaps it is not more needed by educated 
 Unionists than by educated Home Eulers. Few, indeed, 
 have the profound knowledge of Irish history and Irish 
 character which could alone entitle a statesman to grapple 
 confidently with the present crisis in Ireland. But the 
 Unionist Party contains a large proportion of historians, 
 publicists, and thoughtful students of politics, who had mas- 
 tered far more than three or four Irish Blue Books, and car- 
 ried their researches into Irish history much further back 
 than one century, before Mr. John Morley began the former 
 course of study, or Mr. Gladstone the latter. The judgment 
 of such men is doubtless fallible ; nor must we ignore the 
 ' cultivated opinion ' on the side of Home Eule ; but it cer- 
 tainly outweighs that of foreign theorists, whom Mr. Glad- 
 stone mistakes for 'the civilised world,' and it differs from
 
 262 THE 'CLASSES' AND THE 'MASSES' 
 
 the tumultuous verdicts of the vox populi in the all-important 
 respect that it is founded, not on impulse, but on a process 
 of reasoning. Not that Messrs. Gladstone and John Morley 
 have a right to claim the ' masses ' as their adherents. When 
 the great Liberal army broke up into two sections, they 
 succeeded, it is true, in carrying most of the regimental 
 colours and bands into their new camp. But most of the 
 steadiest officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned, 
 declined to follow them, and the result of the last general 
 election shows that a very large number of the rank-and-file 
 preferred the leadership of Lord Hartington. However this 
 may be, the recent speeches of Mr. John Morley at Man- 
 chester, and of Mr. Bryce in Parliament, amount to an 
 admission that Unionism is the prevailing creed, not only of 
 the classes, but of highly-educated Englishmen. This is a 
 very significant admission, and it was because they were 
 known to represent a large majority of educated Englishmen 
 that the University deputation to Lord Hartington assumed 
 a national importance. The one argument for Irish Home 
 Rule which comes home to English Democracy is the argu- 
 ment that, by conceding it, we should get rid of the Irish 
 difficulty at a stroke, and set Parliament free to legislate 
 for the good of the English masses. The utter hollowness of 
 this argument is apparent only to ' cultivated opinion ' the 
 opinion of men who, if they have not lived in Ireland, have 
 at least taken pains to master the evidence on Irish questions. 
 And perhaps the best service which such men can render to 
 the Union cause, is to convince the masses that Home Rule 
 would bring, not peace, but a sword that it would not close 
 the long account of Irish rebellion, but would open a new 
 chapter of rebellious agitation, organised by the foreign 
 enemies of Great Britain, and ending in armed Secession, 
 only to bo crushed by Civil War.
 
 263 
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 1 
 
 It is often said, and still oftener tacitly assumed, that two 
 years of constant discussion in Parliament and the Press 
 have fairly exhausted the Irish Question, so that nothing 
 remains but to criticise each fresh proposal by the light of 
 facts within the knowledge of all. Probably no similar as- 
 sumption was ever more unfounded. Not one in a thousand 
 among those who talk, or even write, glibly about the merits 
 of Home Eule, has taken the smallest pains to study the 
 history and character of the Irish people, upon which our 
 judgment of that policy ought mainly, if not solely, to depend. 
 As for the less educated portion of the 'masses,' whose 
 imaginary verdict is treated with profound respect, it may 
 be doubted whether some of them have even yet fully realised 
 that Ireland is an island adjacent to Great Britain, or whether 
 the majority of them are aware that, in all essential respects, 
 it is governed under the very same laws as England. Of 
 course, the average intelligence of English or Scotch ' classes ' 
 is above this level, and those of them who read the news- 
 papers cannot fail to have picked up some fragments of in- 
 formation about Ireland. Yet how few could pass the simplest 
 examination in the alphabet of a subject on which their de- 
 cision must affect the destiny of both countries in all future 
 ages. Even in educated society it is common to hear state- 
 ments made which betray utter ignorance, not only of early 
 Irish history, but of recent Irish legislation. Nor is this 
 ignorance confined to Home Eulers. In their eagerness to 
 wash their hands of the past, and to concentrate their attacks 
 
 1 National Review, 1888.
 
 264 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 onMr. Gladstone's Home liule Bill, Unionists are too apt to 
 accept grossly exaggerated versions of the historical wrongs 
 suffered by Ireland, and to practise that cheap but mis- 
 chievous form of penance which consists in vilifying the 
 policy of English statesmen in former generations, as if they 
 were mainly responsible for Irish misery and discontent, and 
 as if these evils could be eradicated by the simple expedient 
 of turning over a new leaf. It may, therefore, be opportune 
 and profitable to recall some ' Plain Facts about Ireland,' 
 which may tend to correct such impressions, which admit 
 of being easily verified, and which have a direct bearing on 
 the issue now before Parliament. 
 
 The enumeration of these facts by no means implies or 
 involves oblivion of other facts, equally well attested, which 
 reflect discredit on English rule in Ireland, before it formed 
 part of the United Kingdom. Whatever explanations or 
 excuses may be offered for them, no one can justify such acts 
 as the arbitrary Establishment of the Reformed Church in 
 Ireland, the wholesale confiscations of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, the Penal Laws against Catholics of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the commercial 
 restrictions, dating from the vice-royalty of Strafford, which 
 crushed the staple branch of Irish industry for the benefit 
 of English trade. It has been sought, indeed, to extenuate 
 this last grievance by the allegation that it was only a part 
 of a benevolent, though unsound, system under which the 
 whole commerce of both realms was regulated at the dis- 
 cretion of the Legislature. No doubt, the famous Address 
 from both Houses of the English Parliament to William III., 
 as well as his reply, contemplated the direct encouragement 
 of the Irish linen trade as a compensation for the destruction 
 of the woollen trade. But though McCulloch credits the 
 English Government with having carried out this promise 
 by means of bounties on Irish linens, these were trifling com- 
 pared with the prohibitory duties, and we must acknowledge, 
 with shame, the selfish protectionist spirit in England which 
 arrested the natural process whereby Ireland might have
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 265 
 
 gradually recovered from the devastation of war. If, how- 
 ever, we must be just in our self-condemnation, let us also 
 be just in our appreciation of the plain facts about to be con- 
 sidered, which show that, after all, Irishmen are mainly to 
 blame for their lamentable failure in civilisation, and that 
 during the present reign, if not since the Union, the Imperial 
 Government and the English people have done their utmost 
 to conciliate Irish sentiment, despite the efforts of a rebel- 
 lious conspiracy to render it permanently irreconcilable. 
 
 1. Let us, first, deal with the allegation so constantly 
 made by Mr. Gladstone and his followers, that ' the Irish 
 nation,' or ' Irish nationality,' has been constantly oppressed 
 by England for seven centuries. At what period did this 
 imaginary Irish nation exist ? When Edward . I. invaded 
 Scotland, he made war upon a country with strong national 
 traditions, which had long been practically united under one 
 king of its own ; and when Scotland accepted union with 
 England, it had still an independent national Constitution, 
 though its sovereign also wore the crown of England. When 
 Henry II. was said to have conquered Ireland which, in 
 fact, he never did conquer he found no king of Ireland, 
 and no semblance of an Irish nation, but only a cluster of 
 wild tribes, implacably hostile to each other, and living in a 
 state of chronic anarchy compared to which the Saxon Hept- 
 archy was a harmonious empire. No other nation had ever 
 thought of recognising the national existence of Ireland ; it 
 had no flag, or army, or fleet of its own ; no embassy from 
 Ireland had ever reached a foreign Court, and, Catholic as 
 it was, it was unknown at Eome, except as a barbarous pro- 
 vince which might be handed over at will by the Pope to an 
 English king. To compare the concession of national inde- 
 pendence to Ireland with the modified revival of the Hun- 
 garian Constitution in 1867, is to confound a process of crea- 
 tion with a process of restoration. There is absolutely no 
 historical basis for Irish nationality, and, if it were now esta- 
 blished, it would be a perfectly new institution of purely 
 English manufacture, as the consolidation of the Irish pro-
 
 266 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 vinces and regions into one realm under a settled government 
 has been exclusively the work of English monarchs and 
 statesmen. 
 
 2. It is no less material to realise that for at least three 
 centuries and a-half after the so-called Conquest a period 
 covering one half of Anglo-Irish history the whole of Ireland, 
 except a very few counties and seaports, was actually self- 
 governed, its dependence on England being merely nominal. 
 As Professor Goldwin Smith well says, 'England was con- 
 quered all at once, and the pang was over. In the case of 
 Ireland, owing to the nature of the country, the unsettled 
 habits of the people, and the distance from the centre of 
 Anglo-Norman power, the process was cruelly protracted, and 
 lingered on to the time of the Tudors, leaving intense bitterness 
 behind it. This was disastrous, but we might as well con- 
 cern ourselves practically at the present day about the un- 
 toward events of the Glacial Era.' Instead of Ireland being 
 cruelly oppressed by England under the Plantagenet and 
 Lancastrian kings, it was scarcely governed at all, and the 
 whole island beyond the English ' Pale ' enjoyed the blessings 
 of Home Rule under its native rulers. After the visit of 
 John, no English king set foot in Ireland for nearly five 
 centuries. The only English armies, worthy of the name, 
 that landed in Ireland between the reign of Henry II. and 
 the accession of Henry VIII., were those brought over by 
 Richard II.; and the formidable invasion of Edward Bruce 
 was finally repulsed at Dundalk by the Anglo-Norman nobles 
 and their retainers, without aid from England. The English 
 Parliament never thought of legislating for Ireland ; the so- 
 called Irish Parliament legislated for the ' Pale,' or Anglo- 
 Irish colony, alone ; while the ' mere Irish ' were equally 
 beyond the reach of either. The barbarism into which Ire- 
 land inevitably sunk under this early experiment of Home 
 Rule may be learned from the pathetic and graphic pages of 
 Edmund Spenser. The vices, miseries, and abuses there 
 depicted are precisely the same in kind with those which 
 still constitute the difficulty of Irish government. But they
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 267 
 
 were far worse in degree, and his evidence furnishes the most 
 conclusive answer to the prevalent delusion that Irish dis- 
 orders are the product of English misrule. 
 
 3. It would be hardly too much to say that the exact 
 contrary is the fact. It is true that England grievously 
 failed in her mission of civilising Ireland. It is true also 
 that, after political and agrarian enmities were aggravated 
 by religious antagonism, the people and especially the 
 Catholics of Ireland were oppressed, not by the English 
 people, who had then little voice in State affairs, but by the 
 English Government. But it is no less true that every civil 
 and political liberty which Ireland enjoys it owes to England, 
 and to England alone. Neither trial by jury, nor Parlia- 
 mentary representation, nor the freedom of the Press, nor 
 the Poor Law, nor popular education, nor any other privilege 
 of citizenship now common to Irishmen with Englishmen, is 
 an institution of Irish origin. They were all imported from 
 England, and there is not one of them which is not grossly 
 abused, at this very moment, by Irishmen who seem to con- 
 sider an incapacity for the honest exercise of civil rights a 
 title and qualification for the duties of national self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 4. Were it not for the persistent assertions of Mr. Glad- 
 stone, it would be needless to point out, what Lord Brabourne 
 has so well illustrated, the fallacy of describing the old Irish 
 Parliament as either indigenous or independent. Not only 
 was it not indigenous, but it was essentially exotic and 
 artificial in its inception, a mere convention of English 
 settlers within the Pale, summoned at irregular intervals, 
 and justly denounced as a ' colonial ' assembly by patriots of 
 Irish race. For two or three generations after the Beforma- 
 tion, Catholics were admitted to it; and after the reign of 
 James I. it purported, in the roughest sense, to represent all 
 Ireland ; but from the year 1692 downwards Catholics were 
 excluded from it, in the year 1727 they were deprived of the 
 franchise, which they only recovered in 1793, and at no period 
 since the Beformation was it even tolerably representative of
 
 268 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 the Irish people. Not only was it not independent, but its 
 dependence was statutably declared in the famous Poyning's 
 Act, passed at Drogheda in 1494, whereby the Parliament of 
 Ireland was disabled from considering any Bill which had not 
 been first approved by the Lord Deputy in Council, and sanc- 
 tioned by the King. Moreover, the English Legislature was 
 then empowered to make laws binding on Ireland, and this 
 power was more emphatically reasserted by a statute of 1719. 
 For eighteen years, indeed from 1782 to 1800 the Irish 
 Parliament, still exclusively composed of Protestants, and 
 mainly composed of placemen and nominees, enjoyed a mete- 
 oric career of legislative independence. It produced some 
 great orators, it is true, and passed more than one remedial 
 measure, together with a series of Draconian ' Coercion Acts,' 
 but it committed as many blunders as could well have been 
 crowded into a similar period. As a patriotic Irish historian 
 remarks, ' The independent Parliament was but the tool of 
 an English statesman ; not one quarter of its members were 
 chosen by the people . . . reform was hopeless, and independ- 
 ence but a name.' 
 
 5. If it is an error to speak of the Irish Parliament as 
 either a native or a free Legislature, still more flagrant is 
 the error of regarding its abolition as a stroke of sinister or 
 despotic policy, designed to quench the (mythical) nationality 
 of Ireland. Without entangling ourselves with the wearisome 
 controversy over the Act of Union, we may clearly distinguish 
 several leading and decisive facts. If anything be certain, 
 it is that Pitt and Cornwallis were actuated by the desire, 
 not to bring Ireland into subjection, but to ensure it against 
 French invasion and to protect the Roman Catholics against 
 the bigotry of Protestant Ascendancy. In these objects they 
 succeeded, and though we may blame Pitt for not combating 
 the opposition of George III. at all hazards, he assuredly 
 intended the Union as a step to Catholic Emancipation and 
 to a full participation of Ireland in the prosperity of Great 
 Britain. This was clearly understood by intelligent Irish 
 Catholics, and the opposition to the Union mainly proceeded,
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 269 
 
 not from these, but from the very professional classes, 
 mostly Protestants, who are now the stoutest opponents of 
 Repeal. No one denies that public money, as well as patron- 
 age, was largely and unscrupulously employed to carry the 
 Union ; but it has been conclusively shown, by Dr. Ingram 
 and others, that by far the greater part of this expenditure 
 was applied in compensation for the loss of valuable interests 
 and expectations, not in buying over honest opponents. What 
 is still more important, and still more apt to be overlooked, 
 is that the Irish Parliament had been kept alive by syste- 
 matic jobbery and corruption, nor were the means by which 
 it was dissolved in any respect more dishonourable than the 
 means by which it was sustained and managed. Had the 
 Union been as unpopular as it is now represented to have 
 been, it is utterly incredible that it should have been followed 
 by a generation of almost unbroken peace ; for Emmett's 
 abortive attempt at rebellion was suppressed in a few hours, 
 and the political tranquillity of Ireland was not seriously dis- 
 turbed until the Catholic Association was formed by O'Connell, 
 and its strength was revealed by the famous Clare election. 
 
 6. When it is said that the Union has proved a failure, 
 it is assumed that a native Parliament would have been more 
 successful in healing the wounds and developing the resources 
 of Ireland. This assumption, being purely speculative, is 
 beyond the sphere of our discussion, but it may be well to 
 review briefly some ' plain facts ' which go far to redeem from 
 reproach the legislative history of Ireland under the Union. 
 And, first, let it be remembered that Catholic Emancipation, 
 refused by the Irish Parliament, was actually carried, though 
 after too long a delay, by the Imperial Legislature. It was 
 followed by a rapid succession of remedial measures, which 
 fill a large space in our statute-book. By the National 
 system of Education, since greatly modified to suit Irish pre- 
 judices, the ultimate source of power, both moral and political, 
 was brought within the reach of people. By the Church 
 Temporalities Act and Tithe Commutation Act, the worst 
 grievances arising from the Church Establishment were
 
 270 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 abated, until the Church itself was disestablished and dis- 
 endowed in 1869. By the Poor Law, carried in spite of 
 O'Connell, and afterwards amended so as to make half the 
 rates payable by landlords, an universal right to indoor relief 
 was instituted, which saved the lives of myriads during the 
 Great Famine ; while by the Evicted Tenantry Act of 1848 
 temporary provision was made for homeless paupers, without 
 bringing them into the workhouse. By the Municipal Reform 
 Act, the democratic principle was introduced into the local 
 government of Irish towns. By various Acts, some twenty 
 millions sterling was advanced for public works in Ireland 
 out of the Imperial Exchequer, and nearly one-third of this 
 sum was remitted. By the Encumbered Estates Act, millions 
 of acres were rescued from the hands of embarrassed and 
 broken-down proprietors, to be placed in those of purchasers, 
 mostly Irishmen, who, it was hoped, might become resident 
 and improving landlords a hope too seldom fulfilled. These 
 and other enactments for the good of Ireland were supple- 
 mented by a long series of solid administrative reforms, and 
 paved the way for the agrarian legislation of the last eighteen 
 years, hereafter to be noticed. Their joint effect may be 
 measured by the undoubted fact that Ireland in 1870 sup- 
 ported a population somewhat larger than it contained at 
 the Union, in far greater comfort, and in a far higher state 
 of civilisation. The Irish labourer of 1870 was far better 
 fed, housed, and clothed than his grandfather, and this im- 
 provement in his lot was not purchased at the expense of 
 other classes. The farmers, in particular, held deposits in 
 the banks which seventy years before would have seemed 
 fabulous, and paid wages twice as high with much less effort, 
 in spite of increased rents. The landlords were not only 
 wealthier, but spent a greater portion of their wealth in 
 Ireland, the causes of absenteeism having been diminished 
 under the Union, though Dublin had ceased to be the seat 
 of Government. If manufacturing enterprise had not been 
 developed proportionably, it had certainly not been the fault 
 of Imperial legislation, nor can it be adequately explained by
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 271 
 
 such physical drawbacks as the dearth of coal, for the eastern 
 coasts of Ireland are at no disadvantage, in this respect, as 
 compared with many thriving parts of England. For a 
 century Irish manufactures have competed on equal terms 
 with those of England or Scotland, and, if they have been less 
 successful, the cause must be mainly sought in that want of 
 energy and steady industry which had been observed from 
 the earliest times as the great obstacle to improvement in 
 Ireland. 
 
 7. It is the commonest of errors to speak of Ireland as 
 still governed by England. Such was actually the fact during 
 the .first eighty years of the last century, nor did it absolutely 
 cease to be the fact when the Irish Parliament obtained a 
 nominal independence. For it is an equally serious, though 
 equally common, error to imagine that Ireland was then 
 united to Great Britain only by ' the golden link of the 
 Crown.' On the contrary, the Executive Government of 
 Ireland was practically responsible, not to the Parliament in 
 Dublin, but to the Parliament at Westminster, and the Great 
 Seal was affixed to Irish Bills on the advice of the British 
 Ministry. With the Union, however, this provincial depend- 
 ence of Ireland on Great Britain came utterly to an end. 
 Thenceforward, Ireland has no more been governed by Eng- 
 land than is Scotland, or Lancashire, or London which now 
 contains a population nearly as great as that of Ireland in 
 respect of numbers, while in respect of intelligence, wealth, 
 and every other qualification for citizenship, its superiority 
 is so transcendent as to defy comparison. Ireland, Scotland, 
 and England itself, are now equally governed by an united 
 Parliament, in which Ireland has rather more than its fair 
 share of representation, with the full right, which its repre- 
 sentatives exercise most unscrupulously, of pressing its special 
 claims on the attention of its partners. As for the Vice- 
 Boyalty, which has sometimes been paraded as an Irish 
 grievance, it has really been retained chiefly in deference to 
 Irish sentiment, and when the House of Commons passed a 
 vote for its abolition by an overwhelming majority, the
 
 272 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 strongest protests against any such measure were received 
 from the citizens of Dublin. Its abolition was then advo- 
 cated by Liberals of the old school, as part and parcel of the 
 policy of assimilation whereby the Irish Channel was gradu- 
 ally to be bridged over, and all badges of difference obliterated. 
 That policy has now been abandoned for the counter-policy 
 of special legislation for Ireland, and the abolition of the 
 Vice-Royalty would now destroy, not a standing monument 
 of British despotism, but a valuable instrument for mediation 
 between Irish and English opinion. Torrents of abuse have 
 been poured upon ' the Castle ' by Irish demagogues, and the 
 English ' masses ' have been taught to believe that in its 
 secret chambers the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, 
 and a Machiavellian Privy Council, are constantly engaged in 
 framing plots and forging chains for the enslavement of the 
 Irish people. The broad facts are that the Chief Secretary, 
 who is really the Lord Lieutenant's Prime Minister, is as 
 responsible to Parliament as the Home Secretary, and is 
 there exposed to far more searching criticism ; that he pos- 
 sesses no power whatever over the administration of justice ; 
 and that ' the Castle ' really consists of a few officials, mostly 
 both honest and able, far more accessible to Irish influences 
 than Under-Secretaries or clerks at the Home Office, and 
 traditionally disposed to modify Imperial instructions so as 
 to conciliate Irish prejudices. The besetting sin of ' the 
 Castle ' is not its tyranny, but its weakness ; its action is 
 strictly limited by Common and Statute law ; and the pre- 
 vailing impression that it is somehow in league with the 
 Judiciary chiefly arises from the untoward accident that the 
 Irish Lord Chancellor and law officers have their official 
 chambers in the same building with the heads of civil de- 
 partments. Instead of its being the fact that Ireland is 
 administered through Englishmen, the fact is that a much 
 larger proportion of Irishmen is to be found in the English 
 Civil Service than of Englishmen in the Irish Civil Service. 
 Every judge on the Irish Bench is of Irish birth ; the official 
 staff of every Irish Board consists almost entirely of Irish-
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 273 
 
 men; and, if the Under-Secretary has sometimes of late been 
 an Englishman or a Scotchman, it is not unworthy of remem- 
 brance that the last Under-Secretary of Irish blood a Roman 
 Catholic of the old stock was murdered in broad daylight 
 by hired Irish assassins in the Phoenix Park. 
 
 8. Another prevalent delusion is the notion that Ireland 
 is almost destitute of local self-government. The fact is that, 
 with one important exception, it possesses a system of local 
 self-government essentially the same as that which exists in 
 England, but has shown a rare incapacity of working it honestly 
 or efficiently. In Ireland, as in England, there are three 
 principal areas of local government the County, the Union, 
 and the Municipality. Of these, by far the most important 
 in Ireland is the Union, in which the local authority is the 
 Board of Guardians, partly consisting of magistrates, sitting 
 ex-ojficio, partly of elective members. Now, the scandals of 
 Union administration in Ireland are notorious, wherever, as 
 is too often the case, the Irish gentry constituting the 
 non-elective element have been overborne or reduced to 
 a hopeless minority. It is not only that many Boards of 
 Guardians act shamelessly as committees of the National 
 League, making a predatory use of their rating powers, 
 prostituting their patronage to subsidise Nationalist agents, 
 and getting rid of chairmen who object to abuse their 
 functions by putting disloyal resolutions : it is also that 
 jobbery and waste are carried to extremes unknown in 
 English Unions. This was abundantly shown by the Poor 
 Relief (Ireland) Enquiry Commission of last year, which in- 
 vestigated the expenditure of grants under the Poor Relief 
 (Ireland) Act of 1886, and disclosed an almost incredibly 
 shameful malversation of public funds. The same holds good, 
 to an almost equal degree, of Irish Town Councils, which 
 are the chief local authority in corporate towns, and consist 
 entirely of elective members, mostly of Nationalist opinions. 
 The one local authority in Ireland which is generally admitted 
 to do its duty honourably and efficiently is that which is 
 least defensible in theory and least representative the Grand 
 
 T
 
 274 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 Jury, which has a very large control over county finance, and 
 is mainly nominated by the High Sheriff. It does not follow 
 that, because the experiment of local self-government has 
 thus broken down in most parts of Ireland, it is doomed to 
 perpetual failure under conditions yet to be devised. But it 
 is material to grasp the fact that local self-government is 
 already widely developed in Ireland, but that hitherto the 
 Irish have shown themselves signally deficient in those simple 
 political virtues upon which free institutions entirely depend 
 for their success. 
 
 9. Still more delusive is the oft-repeated fallacy that 
 ' public opinion ' in Ireland has declared in favour of Home 
 Kule. What is true is, that a large majority of Irish votes 
 have been cast in favour of Home Eule, as they would have 
 been cast in favour of total Separation, or, indeed, of the 
 Union, under the dictation of the same Terrorist conspiracy 
 which has well-nigh stamped out the very idea of 'public 
 opinion ' in three provinces of Ireland. An Irish pWnscite 
 under the rule of the National League is worth neither more 
 nor less than a plebiscite of Paris under the rule of Robespierre 
 and the Jacobins, whose fall was greeted with tumultuous 
 acclamations by the same fickle populace. What passes for 
 * public opinion ' in Ireland is mostly fabricated to order by a 
 Nationalist Press which has no rival for scurrility and men- 
 dacity in Europe or America, but which circulates, to the 
 exclusion of all honest newspapers, among the great mass of 
 Irish peasants. Assuming, however, that Irish public opinion 
 is genuine, and is to be measured by Nationalist utterances 
 for the last twenty years, it has declared, not in favour of 
 Home Rule, in any constitutional sense, but of complete 
 national independence. The continuity of the Irish revolu- 
 tionary movement has been established by the clearest evi- 
 dence, and the ' Irish Felon ' of 1848 is shown to have been 
 the lineal ancestor of ' United Ireland ' in 1888. When Home 
 Rule was originally invented, and most ably formulated by 
 Mr. Butt under the name of ' Federalism,' it utterly failed 
 to evoke any popular enthusiasm, and was abandoned for
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRKLAND 27") 
 
 the Fenian ideal the ideal of an Irish Republic, wire-pulled 
 from America, and existing by virtue of an undying hostility 
 to Great Britain. Mr. Butt's moderation was as fatal to his 
 control over the Home Rule movement as O'Connell's refusal 
 to defy the law had been fatal to his control over the Young 
 Ireland movement. Mr. Parnell, clearly perceiving this, 
 associated his scheme of Home Rule with that which Mr. 
 Gladstone described as the gospel of public plunder, and, while 
 he dropped the avowal of his ulterior aims so far as was neces- 
 sary to satisfy his English allies, he encouraged his Irish 
 associates to proclaim them on the housetops in America, 
 and, on proper occasions, in Ireland. It is historically cer- 
 tain that Fenianism was nothing but a revival of the Young 
 Ireland rebellion in an American garb, while both the Land 
 League and the present Home Rule conspiracy were evolved 
 out of Fenian elements ; and the one grain of solid matter 
 in the so-called ' public opinion ' of Ireland is a belief in the 
 final triumph of the Irish Revolution that is, in the erection 
 of an Irish -American Republic. 
 
 10. The alleged failure of ' coercion ' in Ireland is a 
 favourite argument with Irish Nationalists, but a reference 
 to plain facts tends rather to show the constant failure of 
 conciliation. The concession of Catholic Emancipation was 
 closely followed by the commencement of O'Connell's Repeal 
 campaign, and by an accession of agrarian outrages more 
 atrocious than any recorded in recent Irish history. The 
 chief motive of these outrages was supposed to have been 
 removed by the Irish Tithe Commutation Act, accompanied 
 by the Poor Law, and followed two years later by the Muni- 
 cipal Act. The immediate sequel was the renewal of the 
 Repeal agitation, culminating in the Young Ireland insurrec- 
 tion. The prompt suppression of that insurrection, and not 
 any fresh act of conciliation, secured tolerable peace in Ire- 
 land for some fifteen years, after which Fenianism was openly 
 propagated by Irish-American filibusters, until it was vigor- 
 ously put down. The Irish Church Act was passed in 1869 
 as a ' healing measure,' and in that year the country became 
 
 T 2
 
 276 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 bo unsettled that it was necessary to reinforce the troops in 
 Ireland, and to pass the temporary Peace Preservation Act 
 of 1870, in proposing which Mr. Fortescue declared that 
 agrarian crime had been more rife in Ireland during the pre- 
 ceding fourteen months than at any time since the year 1852. 
 To extirpate the alleged cause of this crime, the sweeping 
 Land Act of 1870 was passed ; but so little did it fulfil its 
 conciliatory purpose that in the very next year Parliament 
 not only found it necessary to renew the Peace Preservation 
 Act for two years, but passed the far more stringent ' West- 
 meath Act,' whereby the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended 
 in that county and certain adjoining districts for the same 
 period of two years. Remedial legislation, however, was con- 
 tinued. Mr. Gladstone came into power in 1880 resolved to 
 govern Ireland - under the ordinary law, and in 1881 the most 
 revolutionary, but not the last, of Irish Land Acts was passed. 
 The prompt reply to it was the No Rent Manifesto, the 
 Phoenix Park murders, and (two or three years later) the 
 Plan of Campaign. 
 
 11. Though it is a radical misconception to imagine that 
 Irish disaffection springs directly from agrarian causes, or 
 could be cured by merely agrarian remedies, it is true that 
 agrarian discontent and agrarian cupidity are the most 
 powerful motives to which the Home Rule conspiracy appeals. 
 It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to understand the main 
 facts of Irish agrarian history, and the more so because no 
 aspect of the Irish Question has been so grossly obscured by 
 ignorance and falsehood. It is too often taken for granted, 
 as if it were a Belf-evident proposition, that all the agrarian 
 troubles of Ireland are due to landlordism and especially to 
 absentee landlordism. The fact is, that Ireland contains vast 
 tracts where neither the soil nor the climate is suited for 
 any form of agriculture, where even a thrifty and industrious 
 population could scarcely exist by tillage, but where from 
 time immemorial the population has been neither thrifty nor 
 industrious, and was even more restless and turbulent under 
 its old tribal chiefs than it is under its modern landlords. It
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 277 
 
 is from these very districts where rents are lowest, and are 
 now seldom paid that a large proportion of outrages are 
 reported, and the inordinate space occupied by these districts 
 in the English mind is one fertile source of erroneous impres- 
 sions. No doubt, absenteeism is an evil, or, rather, it would 
 be an evil, if the alternative were a race of resident landlords 
 animated by the public spirit and generous traditions of 
 English gentlemen. But, again, the fact is that an enormous 
 majority of Irish landlords are both native and resident, that 
 the estates of absentee English noblemen are mostly -con- 
 spicuous for their liberal management, and that Irish pur- 
 chasers under the Encumbered Estates Court notoriously 
 figure among the worst landlords in Ireland. Here, if any- 
 where, oppressive rack r renting is to be found ; but the notion 
 that Ireland generally is rack-rented, as compared with Great 
 Britain, is perhaps the most demonstrably false among the 
 many fallacies now current in regard to it. Long before the 
 recent concession of legal tenant-right, it was conclusively 
 refuted by the enormous deposits of Irish farmers in the 
 banks, by the large portions usually forthcoming on the 
 marriage of even the humbler farmers' daughters, by the 
 handsome compensations constantly awarded to Irish tenants, 
 as distinct from their landlords,_in respect of their interests, 
 under Bills for railways or other public improvements, but, 
 above all, by the extravagant sums habitually given for the 
 good-will of tenancies. Not even an Irishman will deliberately 
 pay a fancy price for the privilege of being cruelly rack- 
 rented ; yet successive Commissions found that, not only in 
 Ulster, but in other provinces, the practice of buying farms 
 from outgoing tenants was far commoner than had been sup- 
 posed. Returns lately obtained from official and private 
 sources clearly show that such purchasers were willing, on 
 the average, to give some ten years' purchase on the old 
 rents for the tenant-right, and, exorbitant as this may seem, 
 they often succeeded in sub-letting at a rent which justified 
 this outlay. Indeed, we have the express testimony of the 
 Bessborough Commission, fully adopted by Mr. Gladstone,
 
 278 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 that in Ireland ' it was unusual for landlords to exact what 
 in England would have been considered a full or fair com- 
 mercial rent.' The reason, of course, was that most, though 
 by no means all, ' improvements ' were executed in Ireland 
 by the tenant, who thus acquired a valuable interest in the 
 property by custom long before it was secured to him by 
 law. 
 
 12. It would be interesting to know how many of those 
 who declaim on the wrongs of Irish tenants have ever studied 
 either the Irish Land Act of 1870 or that of 1881. At all 
 events, a brief summary of their provisions, as affecting Irish 
 tenancies, is assuredly not superfluous. The first of these 
 Acts was founded, in its conception, on a sound basis. Its 
 framers recognised the fact that a typical Irish tenant-farmer 
 was not the creature of contract at all, but the survival of an 
 ancient and genuine, though disinherited, peasantry. Their 
 object, therefore, was to give him a legal security of tenure, 
 and compensation for improvements, which thenceforth were 
 presumed in law to have been made by him or his prede- 
 cessors. On the other hand, they recognised the absurdity 
 and the injustice of extending the Ulster Custom, on the faith 
 of which existing tenants had paid large sums of money, to 
 cases in which existing tenants had taken farms without 
 paying a penny. They deliberately rejected both perpetuity 
 and fixity of tenure, for Mr. Gladstone elaborately pointed 
 out that, by conceding either, the landlord would have been 
 converted into a mere pensioner or owner of a ground-rent, 
 without the duties or obligations of proprietorship, and that 
 a social revolution would be the inevitable result. At the 
 same time, the Act gave tenants what must be called a bene- 
 ficial right of occupation, by imposing on the landlord a 
 penalty for ' disturbance,' varying inversely with the value 
 of the holding, in addition to all tenants' claims for improve- 
 ments. These were now legalised for the first time in the 
 history of English law, and several years before English 
 tenants were admitted to like privileges. The right to com- 
 pensation for improvements was made indefeasible as to all
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 279 
 
 holdings below 501. a year, including an immense majority 
 of Irish tenancies, and held good whether the tenant was 
 turned out or quitted the farm of his own accord. It held 
 good even if he was ejected for non-payment of rent or for 
 the breach of a condition against sub-letting. Not only so, 
 but, although non-payment of rent, and certain breaches of 
 covenant, were made a conclusive bar to claims for ' disturb- 
 ance,' a significant exception was introduced in favour of 
 tenancies valued at 15Z. or under (probably three-fourths of 
 the whole) , in case the Court should deem the rent ' exor- 
 bitant.' In other words, the pregnant idea of fixing rents by 
 a Government valuation was imported into the Irish Land 
 Act of 1870. Nor was this all. Under the Equities Clause, 
 the Court was invested with the largest possible discretion 
 to review the ' conduct ' of both parties, and was specially 
 empowered to give compensation, even where no claim was 
 made for improvements or disturbance, if the tenant or his 
 predecessors in title had given money or money's worth for 
 the farm with the landlord's consent. 
 
 13. Such was the Act afterwards described, especially by 
 those who had never looked into it, as lamentably deficient 
 in liberality towards Irish tenants. It might be alleged, with 
 far greater reason, that it placed the Irish tenant in a posi- 
 tion inconsistent with the fundamental idea of tenancy a 
 position far more favourable than that enjoyed by the British 
 tenant, by tenants holding under the Code Napoleon on the 
 Continent of Europe, or by tenants in the United States of 
 America. All may now see, what some discerned in 1870, 
 that it contained in itself the seeds of inevitable miscarriage. 
 Instead of simply awarding a full retrospective compensation 
 for past claims of tenant-right, and making a new departure 
 for the future on the footing of contract, it perpetuated the 
 loose and indefinite system of tenure by custom, and no gift of 
 prophecy was needed to foresee that it would be followed by com- 
 munistic demands for a more wholesale transfer of proprietary 
 rights from Irish landlords to Irish tenants. Moreover, while 
 it utterly destroyed all sentiments of family allegiance among
 
 280 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 Irish tenants, it absolved Irish landlords from all claims upon 
 their sympathy and generoshty. A few bad seasons increased 
 the difficulty of collecting rents ; it was discovered that Irish 
 tenants had not only a legal right to compensation for im- 
 provements and disturbances on eviction, but a moral right 
 to fixity of tenure at a ' fair rent,' with perfect freedom of 
 sale ; a new agitation for the ' Three F's,' as they were called, 
 was set on foot, and promoted by murderous outrage ; the 
 Government yielded, and the famous agrarian charter of the 
 Three F's was embodied in the Irish Land Act of 1881. 
 
 14. The cumbrous and complicated provisions of this Act 
 defy abridgment, but its general effect may be stated in a 
 few words. It established a perpetual duality of tenure be- 
 tween landlord and tenant, by giving tenants a statutory and 
 saleable lease of fifteen years, renewable every fifteen years 
 until the end of time, at a rent to be fixed judicially. It was 
 a favourite saying amongst its admirers, mostly ignorant of 
 its contents, that it did no more than had been done long 
 ago by the legislation of Stein and Hardenberg in Prussia. 
 Almost the exact reverse was the fact. The legislation of 
 Stein and Hardenberg extinguished double ownership by 
 partitioning the heavily-burdened lands of tenants between 
 them and their landlords, each of whom thenceforth owned 
 his share in fee. The Irish Land Act, on the contrary, 
 extinguished single ownership. It retained the fiction of 
 tenancy with all its irritating incidents, stereotyping the pos- 
 session of existing tenants, regulating their rent through Courts, 
 and enabling them to pocket the difference between the 
 judicial rent and the marketable rent- value of their holdings 
 by selling them to strangers. Nor does the tenant forfeit his 
 right of free sale by a breach of covenant, or any act that 
 mi glit justify eviction. The one-sided policy of this statute 
 is conspicuous throughout. For instance, no tenant can 
 have his rent increased by reason of any improvements made 
 by himself or his predecessors (unless he shall have already 
 received their value), but he may, and often does, have his 
 rent lowered by reason of deterioration in the farm due to his
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 281 
 
 own neglect or wastefulness. So, again, the statutory lease of 
 fifteen years operates exclusively in favour of the tenant, and 
 not of the landlord ; for, while other lessees are bound to 
 carry out all their agreements during the currency of the 
 lease, the Irish holder of a statutory term can surrender it, 
 though he cannot be evicted. Meanwhile, tenants may im- 
 prove their holdings for their own benefit, without the land- 
 lord's consent, with a legislative guarantee against the rent 
 being raised on that account, but no landlord can obtain an 
 increase of rent upon capital laid out by himself in improve- 
 ment, except by special agreement with his tenant. In a 
 word, the whole Act is framed in a protective spirit, alien to 
 that of equal justice, for the purpose of enriching existing 
 tenants at the expense, not only of their landlords, but of 
 all future tenants. Since it passed, every farm which changes 
 hands in Ireland must practically be rack-rented. The lower 
 the rent, the higher the price of the tenant-right ; and no 
 ' future tenant,' squeezed between these upper and nether 
 millstones, can possibly hope to farm at a profit. Of course, 
 this avowed concession to criminal agitation directly stimu- 
 lated the renewal of such agitation, and though judicial rents 
 fixed under the Act were far below the market value of farms, 
 a rapid fall in agricultural prices revealed the fundamental 
 unsoundness of its principle, and favoured a passionate 
 demand for a fresh intervention of the State. To enforce this 
 demand, or, rather, to anticipate State action by a system 
 of criminal intimidation, the Plan of Campaign was devised, 
 and was soon followed by the Land Act of 1887. Under this 
 Act nearly 150,000 leaseholders, whom Mr. Gladstone had 
 declined to place on the same footing as yearly tenants, 
 obtained the privilege of having their rents judicially regu- 
 lated a privilege from which the landlord was deliberately 
 excluded. At the same time, it empowered the Courts to lower 
 rents already fixed, in accordance with the fall in prices, and 
 to stay evictions where the defaulting tenant is the victim 
 of misfortune, and not of his own fault. Nor is this all. 
 Under Lord Ashbourne's Act, passed in 1885, Irish tenants
 
 282 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 
 
 had already been enabled to purchase their farms by agree- 
 ment with their landlords, borrowing the whole purchase- 
 money from the State, and paying thenceforth a lower rent 
 than before (covering both principal and interest), with the 
 prospect of absolute ownership at the end of forty-nine years. 
 It is needless to say that no more effect was produced by 
 these Acts than by their predecessors in relieving Ireland 
 from its ancient curse of agrarian conspiracy. The security 
 promised to Irish landlords as an equivalent for the spolia- 
 tion has proved worse than delusive, and each sacrifice of 
 their rights has but whetted the appetite of those who openly 
 deny their claim to anything above the ' prairie value ' of 
 their land. 
 
 15. It is now time for us to recapitulate briefly the ' Plain 
 Facts about Ireland ' which have come under our review 
 facts which lie on the very threshold of the Irish Question, 
 but which are apparently unknown to, or ignored by, too many 
 of those who profess to expound it. We have seen, in the 
 first place, that Irish nationality is a past that was never 
 present ; that whatever sense of national unity Ireland now 
 possesses, and all its free institutions, it owes to English rule ; 
 that it never had a national Parliament worthy of the name 
 till it was admitted to partnership in the Imperial Parliament ; 
 that its wise surrender of a nominal legislative independence 
 was not the nefarious intrigue conjured up by Mr. Gladstone, 
 and was justified by the results ; that Ireland has made great 
 progress in everything but loyalty under the Union, and is 
 now as truly self-governed as any part of Great Britain ; that 
 the Vice-royalty and the ' Castle system ' are no monuments 
 or instruments of oppression, but rather intermediate links 
 between the Central Executive and the Irish people ; that 
 Ireland actually enjoys and constantly abuses local franchises 
 and institutions nearly the same as those of Great Britain ; 
 that ' public opinion,' in the English sense, does not exist in 
 Inland; and that, if intermittent 'coercion' has failed, the 
 failure of conciliation has been still more signal and signifi- 
 cant. We have, then, rapidly surveyed the essential con-
 
 PLAIN FACTS ABOUT IRELAND 283 
 
 ditions of agrarian disorder in Ireland, and the chief measures 
 whereby it has been sought to remedy it, at the sacrifice of 
 every principle except that of expediency. We have seen 
 that no Irish tenant can now be rack-rented by his landlord, 
 though he may be ground down by the payment of an ex- 
 tortionate tenant-right to his predecessor ; that his judicial 
 rent may be lowered by a Court as prices go down, but can- 
 not be raised as prices go up ; that, however much his rent 
 may be in arrear, he can obtain full compensation for im- 
 provements on quitting his farm, or sell it to the highest 
 bidder ; and that, if he wishes to buy it out-and-out from his 
 landlord, he is enabled to do so by the use of public credit, on 
 such terms that his yearly charge will be less than his old 
 rent ; in short, that he enjoys the protection of a one-sided 
 agrarian code framed expressly for his benefit, and securing 
 to him privileges unknown to his fellows in the rest of the 
 United Kingdom, on the Continent of Europe, in the Colonies, 
 or in the United States of America. 
 
 16. These facts constitute but a part, though a most im- 
 portant part, of the lesson to be studied by all who aspire to 
 form a comprehensive and trustworthy judgment on the Irish 
 Question, as a whole. To complete that lesson, as we have 
 seen, they must be grouped together with facts of a different 
 order, but they must also be reinforced by other facts of the 
 same order, strongly confirming the inference to be drawn 
 from them. In the meantime, they are amply sufficient to 
 demolish the whole fabric of fiction by which a Separatist 
 policy is commonly supported, and to justify the belief that, if 
 Ireland is ever to be regenerated, it must be regenerated, not 
 through Secession and isolation, but through organic ' union 
 with that sister-nation to which Providence has linked her by 
 an immutable decree.'
 
 V 
 HISTOBICAL SUBJECTS
 
 287 
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 A Keview of Grote's ' History of Greece,' vol, xii, (May 1856) 
 
 Me. Grote has been unable to redeem the promise made in the 
 preface to his eleventh volume. Plato and Aristotle are 
 reserved for a separate treatise, ' devoted especially to an 
 account of Greek speculative philosophy in the fourth century 
 B.C.' The twelfth volume is, therefore, the last of this great 
 work ; nor are we disposed to complain that the events from 
 the death of Philip to ' the close of the generation contem- 
 porary with Alexander ' have not been compressed into a 
 smaller compass. 
 
 The historian has exercised a wise discretion in allowing 
 the curtain to fall at this epoch. Even at the commencement 
 of Alexander's reign, 'the Hellenic world has ceased to be 
 autonomous ' ; after a few years of conquest, ' instead of 
 Hellenizing Asia, he was tending to Asiatize Macedonia and 
 Hellas ' ; after the battle of Issus, it may truly be said that 
 ' Greece, as a separate subject of history, no longer exists.' 
 The Government and forces of the ' Diadochi ' were hardly 
 more Hellenic than the army of General Williams was Eng- 
 lish, unless military organisation and official language be the 
 essence of nationality. Nor did the Achaean League satisfy 
 ' the ancient Grecian sentiment of an autonomous Hellenic 
 world as the indispensable condition of a dignified and desir- 
 able existence.' It does but bridge over the chasm between 
 two periods of degradation the period when Athens trembled 
 before the generals of Alexander, and the period when we no 
 longer hear of Greeks north and south of Thermopylae, but of 
 ' Macedonia ' and ' Achaia.' Demosthenes did not add Arbela 
 to the list of Pan-Hellenic victories in his memorable oath,
 
 288 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 nor is the portrait of Aratus placed on a level with the ancient 
 worthies of Greece in the historical gallery of Plutarch. 
 
 We are not surprised to find that Mr. Grote, whose leanings, 
 when he does not ' Atticize,' are decidedly Pan-Hellenic, should 
 describe with little relish the course of ' that non-Hellenic 
 conqueror into whose vast possessions the Greeks are absorbed, 
 with their intellectual brightness dimmed, their spirit broken, 
 and half then* virtues taken away by Zeus.' Not that any of 
 Mr. Grote' s great merits are absent from this volume ; his 
 amazing familiarity with Greek politics finds ample scope 
 in the party contests, not now between the many and the 
 few, but between Philo-Macedonians and Anti-Macedonians, 
 in every independent town of Greece; his sound judgment 
 unravels the intricacies of Alexander's campaigns and esti- 
 mates the results of his conquests ; his patient research 
 digests Arrian, Diodorus, and Curtius, as it formerly digested 
 Herodotus, Thucydides, and Demosthenes. But it is useless to 
 conceal that it is no longer a labour of love. Mr. Grote 
 travels over the last days of Greece like Xerxes's soldiers 
 ' under the lash ' ; he writes with the air of a man who has a 
 sad duty to perform. Yet there is a certain rueful satisfaction 
 (such as Bias might have felt after the reduction of Ionia) in 
 his description of the evils which befel those little States 
 which would not follow the course which he, who loved them 
 better than one of their own citizens, prescribed. The mild- 
 ness and incorruptibility of Phokion fare no better than 
 the respectability and religion of Nikias, for ' in Phokion's 
 patriotism ' no account was taken of Athenian independence 
 of the autonomy or self-management of the Hellenic world.' 
 And so Grecian liberty perished. He stands over the wasted 
 frame declaring that, if his advice had been followed, it would 
 never have happened. But he has not the heart to attend 
 the obsequies, and we sympathise with his feeling. 
 
 But while we do not yield to Mr. Grote in admiration of 
 the Greek republics in general, and Athens in particular, as 
 the birthplaces of a noble type of character, and the conserva- 
 tors of a freedom, disorderly indeed, but sublime in its idea,
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 289 
 
 which they illustrated with an unrivalled literature, we can- 
 not but see their incapacity to exercise direct influence on the 
 destinies of mankind. Perfect as working-models (so to speak) 
 of city government, they were fitted, like some individuals, to 
 instruct rather than to lead the human race. Great instru- 
 ments must be employed to effect great ends, and, to say 
 nothing of the enormous evils which attend such constitu- 
 tions, cities cannot beneficially administer imperial functions, 
 except in that kind of combination which Greece repeatedly 
 and signally failed to realise. It is this fact the intrinsic 
 smallness of Athens, Sparta and Thebes of Greek States, 
 in short, which, by Plato's confession, would cease to be 
 States if they should contain above 100,000 citizens that 
 must qualify our grief at their successive subjugation by the 
 power of Macedonia and Eome, and explain the contempt of 
 Alexander when he characterised the campaign of Agis as a 
 battle of frogs and mice. Mr. Grote's sole idea of Alexander's 
 influence on Greece is ' compression ' ' free development ' 
 being the life of republican institutions ; but we can imagine 
 a point of view in which ' expansion ' would seem the more 
 appropriate term for the change wrought by Alexander on the 
 narrowness of Hellenic policy. 
 
 A similar bias leads Mr. Grote to attribute to peculiar 
 circumstances, and to the perversities of individuals or par- 
 ticular States, what was, in fact, the operation of a general 
 law the ascendancy of Macedonia under Philip and Alex- 
 ander. It was not merely that ' Greek citizens were not like 
 trained Macedonian soldiers ' (just as the feudal contingents 
 could not stand against paid standing-armies), nor that Alex- 
 ander and his father had engrossed to themselves the inex- 
 haustible energy once the characteristic of the Athenians ; the 
 sufficient cause was that of which modern Europe supplies 
 illustrations to superfluity the want of cohesion in the Hel- 
 lenic body, rendering it unable to resist either the arms or 
 the bribes of its stronger neighbour. Like the Scotch clans 
 of a century and a-half since, described by Mr. Macaulay, 
 these self-governed townships could not be united except 
 
 u
 
 2iK) THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 under the command of a foreigner; even common hatred 
 proved too feeble a bond. 
 
 One year made Alexander absolute master of Greece. The 
 prevailing feeling at his accession is registered in Mr. Grote's 
 pithy table of contents as ' Discontent in Greece, but no Posi- 
 tive Movement.' The autumn of the year b.c. 336 witnessed 
 the Convention of Corinth, which ' recognized Hellas as a 
 confederacy under the Macedonian Prince as imperator, 
 president, or executive head and arm.' During the winter, 
 the spirit of the treaty was constantly infringed by the 
 intervention of Macedonian officers in the affairs of the con- 
 tracting States, and certain aggressions at sea, which led to 
 communications between Athens, at least, and Persia. It is 
 rather humiliating to hear that, ' even down to the eve of the 
 battle of Issus, Demosthenes and others were encouraged by 
 their correspondents in Asia to anticipate success for Darius, 
 even in pitched battle.' We have no intention of justifying 
 offensive war, however ultimately conducive to civilisation or 
 supported by the pretext of ancient wrongs. Nor do we deny 
 that Athens might legitimately, however contrary to prudence, 
 invoke the aid of Persia ' against the dominion of another 
 foreigner, at once nearer and more formidable.' But we 
 cannot admit her right to tamper with Persian gold while 
 she knelt in homage before Alexander, and after he had twice 
 been recognised in a Pan-Hellenic Synod as the Generalissimo 
 of Greece. 
 
 It was not the weakness, but the baseness of his subject- 
 allies, that made Alexander treat them, not now only, but 
 in the rescript concerning exiles but a year before his death, 
 with less respect than he had shown to the churlish Diogenes. 
 Mr. Grote evidently approves of the plot hatched at Thebes 
 during Alexander's expeditions against the Thracian Triballi 
 and Illyrians. But when he whom they fondly believed to be 
 dead swooped upon that city the patriotism of which paid 
 the penalty which its treason had often deserved, he found 
 nothing but obsequious and cringing instruments. If the fall 
 of Thebes and the cruel revenge of the conqueror remind us
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 291 
 
 of Frederick Barbarossa at Milan, there were not wanting 
 rival cities to act the part of Pavia and Cremona by insulting 
 her ruins. Sparta alone is exempt from the shame of this 
 deplorable duplicity and vacillation. She had no cause to 
 blush when the 300 panoplies taken at the Granicus were 
 presented to Athens from ' Alexander, son of Philip, and the 
 Greeks, except the Lacedcemonians.' And as Philip acted justly 
 when he spared Athens, but punished Thebes after Chaeronea, 
 no one can fairly complain because Alexander treated his 
 Persian prisoners more leniently than the subjects of those 
 States which had solemnly sanctioned his expedition. 
 
 To that expedition we hasten, the more readily because 
 Mr. Grote does not seem to us to have fully appreciated the 
 prodigious space which it fills in history. Thrice only in 
 historical times has any permanent conquest been made by 
 Europe in Western Asia, and the tide of invasion that sets so 
 steadily from east to west been reversed. The first conquest 
 was due to the individual genius of Alexander, as the second to 
 the national genius of the Roman people ; to ' devour the whole 
 earth' was the one aim and destiny of either, and both left more 
 dVrable monuments of their dominion than the Crusaders who 
 followed in their footsteps above a thousand years later. We 
 have not Mr. Grote's scruples in considering the exploits of 
 Alexander as an essential part of Hellenic history. They were 
 achieved by a prince of Hellenic descent and Hellenic character, 
 the acknowledged general of an Hellenic congress, and to gratify 
 Hellenic antipathies. It was the Greek language and civilisa- 
 tion that were spread by them ; and few can doubt that, while 
 free institutions are the imperishable legacy of Greece to 
 posterity, her actual influence on contemporary history was 
 never so great as under Alexander and his successors. The 
 inner life, and with it the self-consciousness of Greece, is 
 indeed all but extinct all is darkness there from the death 
 of Demosthenes ; but to the surrounding nations the prodi- 
 gious physical energy now concentrated and thrown outward 
 upon Asia must have appeared, more dazzling and command- 
 ing than the moral grandeur of the age of Pericles. The 
 
 c2
 
 )'l THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 philosopher docs not proportion his interest to the magni- 
 tude of phenomena, but it is the towering cliff and the earth- 
 quake-shock that arrest the attention of common observers. 
 
 Those whose political experience is so extended as our 
 own, who have witnessed the rise and fall of empires won by 
 the highest military talents and consolidated with profound 
 sagacity, can ill-imagine the awe with which a Greek regarded 
 the Persian Monarchy. The terror which the ' Great Turk ' 
 inspired in the half- fledged Powers of mediaeval Europe, the 
 tremendous prestige of the ' Grand Monarque' at the end of 
 the seventeenth century, the abject reverence of the native 
 Hindoo for the East India Company, inadequately represent 
 the overwhelming impression produced by the ' Great King.' 
 As the Ionian gazed on that road which led from the prostrate 
 metropolis of the Lydian princes to the royal city of their 
 conquerors, more distant from him than the Pillars of Hercules 
 from Western Peloponnesus as he thought of the mountain - 
 chains and rivers which it traversed, too vast to be contained 
 in Greece, yet serving only as divisions between Persian 
 satrapies as he calculated the treasures of a monarch whose 
 pillow was more valuable than the whole revenue of a Greek 
 republic, and one of whose capitals (Persepolis) was found by 
 Alexander to contain nearly 28,000,000/. sterling he might 
 well feel that, however such a power might fail in its more 
 remote schemes, the seat of empire was inexpugnable. As in 
 Jewish history Egypt and Assyria assume gigantic proportions, 
 whether in their friendship or enmity, so in the family 
 squabbles (such they must have seemed to a Persian satrap) 
 of the Greek Confederation, the dark and colossal form of 
 Persia looms in the background, filling the whole Eastern 
 horizon and the greater part of the known world, no longer 
 dreaded as an aggressor, but all-powerful as an ally or patron. 
 The conversations of Xerxes with Demaratus, of Darius 
 Codomanus with Charidemus, irresistibly recall to our recol- 
 lection those of the King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver. The 
 punishment of the great king is placed by Plato, somewhat as 
 the fall of the Assyrian oppressor is by Isaiah, as the consumma-
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 21)3 
 
 tion of Omnipotent justice ; and iEschines introduces, as the 
 crowning wonder of his age, too great for posterity to believe, 
 the astounding disasters of the successor of Xerxes. 
 
 Such impressions have not been falsified by the results of 
 modern research. The empire of Cyrus, similar in its rise 
 to all Oriental kingdoms to that of Saladin, Genghis Khan, 
 and Timur grew with the rapid growth and wild luxuriance 
 of a nomad government, and absorbed into itself all other 
 Asiatic nationalities. Although, as Heeren has shown, it 
 never progressed beyond supreme nomadic magnificence, with 
 its periodical migrations from Ekbatana to Susa, and from 
 Susa to Babylon, its provincial parks and ' paradises,' its 
 tribute levied in kind from the various satrapies, the Persian 
 Monarchy displayed much of the intelligence of a modern 
 despotism. All the despotic vices, it is true, flourished there 
 the inaccessibility of the ruler, a cumbrous official system, 
 the petty intrigues of the seraglio, the jealousies and frightful 
 vindictiveness of rival favourites, the absence of any control 
 on the Administration save the precarious influence of the 
 priest-caste. Nevertheless, what Philip de Comines mentions 
 as the peculiar happiness of England was in some degree the 
 fortune of this lawless and heterogeneous empire ; the conse- 
 quences of political crimes fell principally on their authors, 
 while the mass of the people enjoyed tranquillity. A rigorous 
 administration of justice, enforced by penalties of such cruelty 
 as ' despotism alone can devise or execute,' the separation of 
 civil and military power in the provinces, the vigorous encour- 
 agement of agriculture by law as well as by the religion of 
 Zoroaster, had produced a state of material prosperity which 
 was incompatible with the incessant political agitation of 
 small communities. We imitate Xenophon and other Greek 
 authors in directing our attention too exclusively to the 
 ' upper crust' of Persian society, to the Pasargadse, neglecting 
 the other tribes to the military rather than to the financial 
 or physical resources to the relations of Persia with Greece, 
 without regard to her dealings with her own subjects or with 
 other nations.
 
 21)1 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 It was against this stupendous Power, the scale and 
 organisation of which present more analogies with the great 
 European monarchies than with Athens at her proudest 
 moment, that Alexander now advanced, after a solemn sacrifice 
 (like that of Hannibal at Gades) to the hero Protesilaus at 
 Elaeus. It was eighty years since an armament scarcely inferior 
 t o his had set sail westward, amid the prayers and cheers of 
 the Athenian people, to conquer an island which might have 
 been assigned as a fief of office (such donations were ordinary 
 in Persia) to a dignitary of Darius's household. With a force 
 of about 35,000, in which the highest posts were held by 
 native Macedonians, and with a scanty military chest, he 
 invaded an empire the wealth of which was inexhaustible, and 
 Avhich numbered in its army, collected from all parts, but 
 officered chiefly by the conquering Persian race, more Greeks 
 than Alexander could muster. Mr. Grote reminds us that 
 the strength and discipline of the Macedonian army, as well 
 as what he calls the ' War-office arrangements,' were due 
 to Philip. So Gibbon disparages Charlemagne because he 
 succeeded to the military system created by a line of heroes. 
 But Mr. Grote himself would admit that the general who 
 ' surpassed his age in provident and even long-sighted com- 
 binations,'' and who handled kingdoms with the ease of 
 Napoleon, would certainly have formed such an army had not 
 his father already done so. 
 
 Military history, to be understood, must l>e studied in 
 detail. Mr. Grote follows the earlier campaigns of Alexander 
 in his own clear and business-like manner, gives fresh interest 
 to the well-known names of Granicus, Issus, and Arbela, and 
 develops the less obvious but no less masterly operations by 
 which Alexander reduced every Power capable of annoying his 
 rear. It is quite refreshing to strengthen our faith in general- 
 ship, shaken by the events of the last three years, with the 
 account of battles in which valour was always supported by 
 skill ; sieges in which the best mechanical resources of that 
 age were employed, not only with rare perseverance, but with 
 unfailing success; marches in which the greatest natural
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDEE THE GREAT 295 
 
 difficulties were overcome with very small loss. Sometimes 
 the Homeric hero, sometimes the scientific strategist, pre- 
 dominates ; but caution or boldness is equally fortunate, 
 because exactly adapted to the emergency. The proverbial 
 good fortune of Alexander is no more than the Jbrtuna Populi 
 Romani, or the constant good luck of Pompey, which Cicero 
 alleges as a substantive reason for appointing him to an 
 important command. The sieges of Halicarnassus, Tyre, and 
 Gaza, were works of immense labour, and the last two would 
 infallibly have miscarried in hands less able and energetic. 
 The battles of Granicus and Issus were carried by a dashing 
 charge, though not till after careful reconnoitring ; but the 
 dispositions before the battle of Arbela are those of a con- 
 summate general. The Cilician and Syrian gates were left, it 
 is true, almost undefended, and the posts at the Uxian and 
 Susian passes were surprised by a neglected mountain-track, 
 like the band of Leonidas at Thermopylae ; but the rock of 
 Chorienes, which Mr. Grote says ' he was also fortunate 
 enough to reduce,' was not taken without a combination of 
 measures which, Bishop Thirlwall justly observes, 'would have 
 appeared to a common eye utterly impracticable.' 
 
 Mr. Grote does not willingly or consciously extenuate the 
 greatness of Alexander. He sees it, bat he does not feel it. 
 He describes effectively his victories and their consequences, 
 he examines original authorities with a fidelity which, so far 
 as we have been able to test it, is unimpeachable. But he 
 does not altogether rise to his subject. His narrative is 
 adequate, but not stirring. We miss, in short, the heartfelt 
 interest which shed lustre on the last great sea-fight of the 
 Athenians in the harbour of Syracuse. We would readily 
 sacrifice the impartiality which we have gained for the enthu- 
 siasm which we have lost. ' Hellenism, properly so called 
 the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence 
 manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy ' 
 is ' stagnant and suspended.' True. It has done its work in 
 the world, and is soon to be superseded by other and ruder 
 agencies. But there is a sublimity in grandeur of effects, as
 
 29G THE AGE OF ALEXANDEB THE (IKI-AT 
 
 well as in nobility of sentiments ; and, in this point of view, 
 all Hellenic contests, and even the exploits of Agesilaus and the 
 Ten Thousand, are mere forays or trials of strength compared 
 with the death-struggle which, as Alexander told Sisygambis, 
 was to decide ' the mastery of Asia.' 
 
 The surrender of Babylon and Susa, with the demolition 
 of Persepolis in the beginning of b.c. 830, forms the natural 
 division in Alexander's career between the conquest of the 
 western and that of the eastern provinces of Persia. The 
 latter is described with less minuteness by Mr.. Grote than by 
 Dr. Thirlwall. According to him, projects which occupied 
 this ' insatiate aggressor ' on the banks of the Jaxartes, the 
 Indus, and the Hyphasis, can hardly be regarded by the 
 historian of Greece as included within the range of his sub- 
 ject, and in this judgment we acquiesce. Suffice it to say 
 that the last seven years of Alexander's life display the same 
 untiring activity and rapidity of thought and action which 
 place him, with Bonaparte and Timur, among the foremost of 
 human conquerors. He pursues Darius till this true type of 
 an Oriental sultan, who owed his crown to the eunuch Bagoas, 
 was murdered by Bessus, follows up Bessus as he had followed 
 Darius, and Spitamenes as he had Bessus. He assaults the 
 hill-forts of Bactria and Afghanistan, and the mountaineers 
 of Mardia and Paraetacene, from a pure intolerance of adver- 
 saries or obstacles. He sacrifices the loveliest districts of 
 Sogdiana to an impulse of passion, and restores the rich 
 territories of Taxilus and Porus from an impulse of generosity. 
 The red line on Mr. Grote's map that begins at Pella ends, 
 where the greatest Asiatic empires have begun, on the banks 
 of the Jaxartes in one direction, while in another it traverses 
 the Punjab, and is only cut short on the Sutlej because the 
 Macedonian soldiers could not keep pace with the restless 
 ambition of their general. Yet they had more than once 
 reposed while he, with a picked corps of 'Companions,' was 
 scouring the surrounding districts. One Alexandria had been 
 founded on the westernmost mouth of the Nile, another com- 
 manded the approach to the Pass of Bamian, between Cabul
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 297 
 
 and Balkh, over which Alexander had passed by a route longer 
 and possibly more hazardous than that of Hannibal over the 
 Western Alps. The descent of the Indus, and the frightful 
 march through the Gedrosian Desert, complete the campaigns 
 but not the toils of Alexander. He had already revisited all 
 his three capitals, punished with pitiless severity offending 
 satraps, reorganised his army and crushed an alarming 
 mutiny, superintended in person great commercial designs on 
 the Tigris and Euphrates, and conceived schemes so vast as 
 to be abandoned in despair by his successors, when death 
 a death which ' affected either the actual condition or the 
 probable future ' of every existing nation overtook him at 
 Babylon. In his dying bequest of the kingdom ' To the ablest ' 
 we read the history of an heroic life. 
 
 Never had thought so wedded fact as in the splendid 
 career of Alexander, and never were human aspirations so 
 signally dashed as by his death. The Asiatic hosts had 
 recoiled before him like the ghosts in Hades before the flashing 
 arms of iEneas, who broke in upon their rest. But it was in 
 Greece that both his victories and his death must have pro- 
 duced the greatest impression. He had carried his arms into 
 all those countries that had dazzled the Greek imagination 
 Persia, the type of earthly magnificence ; Egypt and India, 
 the mythical sources of religion and philosophy. If we con- 
 ceive the effect of his successive despatches, couched in the 
 style of Napoleon's bulletins, recording exploits such as a 
 heathen could only attribute to a god on earth, but followed 
 by the intelligence that Alexander had sickened and died like 
 other men, we can understand the mixture of consternation 
 and incredulity with which this news was received. 
 
 Mr. Grote boldly treats the assumption of Divine parentage 
 as a conviction entertained in sober earnest by Alexander 
 himself and his admirers. Christianity has radically changed 
 the ideal of superhuman greatness. It was not their freedom 
 from, but their participation in, mortal passions that elevated 
 the Olympian gods above the brute forces of primaeval 
 theogony. Power, guided by an inexorable will not goodness,
 
 298 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 but the absence of all weakness seemed to Greeks the 
 character ' likest God's.' The army, which was so indifferent 
 to justice as to acquiesce in the assassination of Parmenio 
 uncondemned, and to vote that the death of Kleitus was 
 deserved, hardly felt the want of the ' quality of mercy ' in 
 the object of their adoration. Even Dr. Thirlwall calls the 
 murder of Amyntas and others on his accession ' acts of 
 justice.' Philotas and the other Macedonian victims of his 
 terrible ferocity were unpopular with the troops ; the barbarous 
 treatment of Bessus and the brave Syrians was agreeable to 
 the regular practice of a Roman triumph, and not much 
 worse than the punishment prepared by the most chivalrous 
 Prince in Christendom for the defenders of Calais. Divine 
 honours became in the last days of Eome the expression of a 
 political civility. In Alexander's soldiers there was a stronger 
 motive than this : a consciousness that the formidable being 
 whose wrath was death, whether to friends or enemies, was 
 indispensable to their existence. 
 
 The idea, no doubt, was of gradual growth. Repeatedly 
 wounded, and sharing the hardships which destroyed a great 
 part of his army south of the Oxus and in Beloochistan, he 
 seemed to possess a charmed life. After his hairbreadth 
 adventure among the Malii, he was hailed by the Phalanx with 
 superstitious devotion, as the one general to whom they could 
 implicitly trust their lives ; the wiser must have seen that his 
 was the one mind that could sustain the magnificent fabric 
 created by his genius. No mortal, none even of the gods, was 
 related to have performed such prodigies. He had surmounted 
 snowy ridges attempted in vain by Hercules ; he had pene- 
 trated beyond the fabulous Hydaspes into regions unconquered 
 by Dionysus ; he had been expressly recognised as the son 
 of Zeus by the oracle of Ammon. The grand old idea of a 
 Divine Nemesis against the greatest of the sons of men who 
 4 give not God the glory ' was well-nigh extinct ; it was now 
 only philosophers like Kallisthenes who could discern ' that 
 the distinction between gods and men was one which could 
 not be confounded without impiety and wrong.' Desperate
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 299 
 
 and Titanic enterprises demand a faith beyond mere animal 
 courage, and the spirit of the ' God-fearing ' soldiers of Crom- 
 well is travestied in various ways by the pure fatalism of the 
 Mussulman, the half-fatalist, half-personal confidence inspired 
 by Napoleon, or the purely personal apotheosis of Alexander. 
 
 It is a Christian, and not a heathen idea ; it is the task of 
 posterity, and not of contemporaries ; to bring the hero to the 
 bar of conscience, and to disallow the most illustrious achieve- 
 ments where they are not directed to an end morally justifi- 
 able. The benefit of mankind, scruples, right motives these 
 are terms of Christian ethics, with little influence on the 
 practice even of Christian conquerors. Egotism the intense 
 and all-absorbing desire to fulfil the promptings of a dominant 
 will has been the principle of most of those designs that 
 have convulsed the world for good or evil. In Alexander, 
 extreme violence of character with ' exorbitant self- estimation ' 
 had ripened into an unique and solitary ambition, to which 
 his matchless conquests did but add fuel, and which no flattery 
 could satisfy. To crush Persia to be master of the world 
 became to him no longer motives, but the law and condition 
 of his being. Guizot warns us that there is such an epoch in 
 the life of the greatest conquerors, and, though Dr. Thirl wall 
 will not admit that Alexander's head was ever turned, the 
 reasonable interpretation of facts is here on the side of 
 Niebuhr and Mr. Grote. He was hard-hearted, as William 
 the Conqueror was hard-hearted, because he was supremely 
 selfish selfish with the selfishness of a god-like isolation. 
 His general benevolence was no more than the Greek ' philan- 
 thropy,' the outward courtesy with which he received the 
 Athenian ambassadors after the destruction of Thebes ; but 
 his emotions of friendship, so inconstant towards the great 
 Aristotle, assumed an uncontrollable intensity towards 
 Hephasstion, a kindred spirit, and, withal, ' phil-Alexander.' 
 
 If we ask what is the secret and measure of Alexander's 
 fame, Mr. Grote answers that he ' overawes the imagination, 
 more than any other personage of antiquity, by the matchless 
 development of all that constitutes effective force, as an indi-
 
 300 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 vidual warrior ' here contrasted with the personal cowardice 
 of Darius ' and as organiser and leader of armed masses j 
 not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, 
 but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing com- 
 pression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great 
 qualities were fit for use only against enemies, in which cate- 
 gory, indeed, were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, 
 except those who chose to submit to him.' Whether Alexander, 
 essentially a man of one idea, would have devoted himself, 
 had his life been prolonged, to consolidating and improving 
 the numerous races whose representatives thronged the streets 
 of the majestic city in which he died, or would have marched 
 on till nothing remained to conquer, none can really decide. 
 Mr. Grote takes the latter view. 
 
 ' Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at 
 the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old, 
 the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into impor- 
 tant commands ; ten years less than the age for a Consul at 
 Rome ; two years younger than the age at which Timur first 
 acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His 
 extraordinary bodily powers were unabated ; he had acquired 
 a large stock of military experience ; and, what was still more 
 important, his appetite for further conquests was as voracious, 
 and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or 
 danger as complete, as it had been when he first crossed the 
 Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future 
 achievements, with such increased means and experience, 
 were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been 
 satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole 
 habitable world as then known ; and, if his life had been pro- 
 longed, he would probably have accomplished it. Nowhere (so 
 far as our knowledge reaches) did there reside any military 
 Power capable of making head against him ; nor were his 
 soldiers, when he commanded them, daunted or baffled by any 
 extremity of cold, heat, or fatigue. The patriotic feelings of 
 Livy disposed him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded 
 Italy and assailed Romans or Samnitcs, would have failed,
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 301 
 
 and perished like his relative, Alexander of Epirus ' a 
 sentiment which originated with the Epirotic prince himself, 
 who complained that he, in his expeditions into Italy, had 
 fallen upon the men's apartments, while his nephew, in 
 invading Asia, had fallen upon the chamber of the women. 
 
 ' But,' continues Mr. Grote, ' this conclusion cannot be 
 accepted. ... I do not think that even the Romans could 
 have resisted Alexander the Great, though it is certain that 
 he never, throughout all his long marches, encountered such 
 enemies as they, nor even such as Samnites and Lucanians 
 combining courage, patriotism, discipline, with effective arms 
 both for defence and for close combat.' 
 
 With the concluding remarks of Mr. Grote we substantially 
 agree. We do not believe that Alexander deliberately intended 
 to infuse an Hellenic spirit into Asia for where could an 
 Hellenic spirit be kept alive, except in small republics ? any 
 more than that his schemes of universal conquest were 
 suggested by scientific curiosity. On the other hand, it is 
 too much to argue from his change of dress and system of 
 administration ' that he desired nothing better than to take 
 up the traditions of the Persian Empire.' If he did not follow 
 the advice of a preceptor of encyclopaedic catholicity in 
 speculation, but Hellenic to bigotry in sympathies, we need 
 not suppose that ' his preferences turned more and more in 
 favour of the servile Asiatic sentiment and customs.' Nor 
 can we found any conclusion on the fact that he did not earn 
 the admiration which Gibbon lavishes on Genghis as a legis- 
 lator, or that he did not resemble Charlemagne in the en- 
 couragement which he extended to men of letters. That 
 Alexander's conduct and ideas were due to no preconcerted 
 scheme, but self-developed, and therefore progressive, we 
 know ; what they would have become, we cannot say. After 
 all, it was before he had passed the ordinary limits of political 
 minority that the grave closed over this finished hero, whose 
 whole character, no less than his actions, was hopelessly 
 unjustifiable according to our present standard, but who is 
 the perfect ideal of antique and classical greatness.
 
 :H)-2 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 Mr. Grote does not follow out the separate histories of the 
 great fragments of Alexander's empire, and dismisses in two 
 chapters what occupies a great part of Dr. ThirlwalTs last 
 two volumes. We think he is right. Though much of Indian 
 history for the last century belongs equally to the annals of 
 England, yet the historian of England is distinct from the 
 historian of British India. But, whereas India is a dependency 
 governed by a merchant-company in Leadenhall Street, 1 Egypt, 
 Syria and Asia Minor were from the first independent king- 
 doms, disconnected as well from the Macedonian Monarchy as 
 from the Greek republics. 
 
 To do justice to the enlightened despotism of these Grseco- 
 Oriental dynasties, we must consider the peculiarity of their 
 foundation. The dismemberment of empires among different 
 branches of a royal family and among powerful satraps or 
 emirs is frequent enough, and the acknowledged tendency of 
 an ill-assorted aggregate of various races to break up and 
 reunite itself into smaller units partly justifies the contempt 
 with which Niebuhr treats Alexander's schemes. But the 
 truth is that, after the partition made at Triparadisus, the fate 
 of the Empire was abandoned to a mere scramble, to the result 
 of which nothing contributed but the personal abilities and 
 mutual self-interest of the conflicting generals. Meanwhile, 
 every member of the royal family had been exterminated : 
 Kynane, Eurydike, and Philip Aridaeus by the bloodthirsty 
 Olympias ; Olympias herself, and soon afterwards Roxana and 
 her son Alexander, by Cassander ; the young prince Herakles 
 (son of Alexander by Barsine) by Polysperchon, and Kleopatra 
 (sister of Alexander) by Antigonus. It was one of those epochs 
 when the checks of authority and public opinion are for a 
 while suspended, and the bad passions of men break forth 
 into shameless extravagance. The exuberant development of 
 military talent cannot redeem the death of all those lofty 
 ideas and political virtues that almost sanctify, in the eyes 
 of some, the perfidy and cruelties of earlier Grecian history. 
 
 1 Tlii^ article appeared two years before the India Act of 1858.
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER TILE GREAT 3(W 
 
 Eumenes might rival Alexander in the skill of his manoeuvres ; 
 Demetrius Poliorketes carried to perfection the use of military 
 engines, first organised hy Philip ; Kraterus applied in iEtolia 
 the experience of mountain-warfare acquired in the Paropa- 
 misus ; Seleukus braved on the Ganges those mighty armies 
 of Northern India the report of which had dismayed the 
 troops of Alexander ; but Ptolemy alone has won from his 
 contemporaries the praise of an ambition unsullied by deeds 
 of blood, and from posterity that of a wise and beneficent 
 administrator. The historian of Greece may well turn with 
 distaste from a period the events of which are military, not 
 civil, the acts of princes, not of nations. 
 
 Mr. Grote is led by his desire to give artistic completeness 
 to his work a merit which ought in fairness to be set against 
 the want of art in his style to devote a chapter to the ' out- 
 lying Hellenic cities ' ; in other words, to the affairs of 
 Marseilles and its colonies, Heraclea in Pontus, and Bosporus 
 (near Kertch) . The former has more than a commercial interest, 
 as an ancient republic which manifested a Venetian sagacity 
 both in its home and foreign policy. The two latter were 
 despotically governed, the one till b.c. 281, the other till it 
 became part of the Eoman Empire ; but, except as outposts 
 of civilisation, they fail to excite the sympathy of a modern 
 reader. Greece, as we conceive it, does not include all the 
 semi-barbarous particles of Hellenism scattered over the face 
 of the earth. To explore these is the task of the antiquarian 
 rather than of the philosopher ; they have, properly speaking, 
 no history, and did but prepare the way for a more enduring 
 empire. 
 
 Hellenic life enters a new phase after the death of Alex- 
 ander. It is no longer Greek communities, but individual 
 Greeks; no longer Greece proper, but colonies planted by 
 Macedonian kings, beginning with Philip, in Europe, Asia, 
 and Africa ; no longer Greek institutions, but the Greek 
 language, character, and manners that perpetuate the sacred 
 fire of Greek civilisation. This, however, while it cuts short 
 the thread of history, is no subject for lamentation, being part
 
 304 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 of an economy too universal to be impugned. It may be true 
 that ' the Greeks of Antioch, or Alexandria, or Seleukeia, were 
 not like citizens of Athens or Thebes, nor even like men of 
 Tarentum or Ephesus.' No doubt the ' Hellenized Asiatic ' 
 would have been considered ' by Sophocles, by Thucydides, by 
 Socrates, as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, 
 and. superficial manifestations.' And so, the American back- 
 woodsman might be regarded by our more delicate nerves as 
 a lawless and unscrupulous ruffian. But as the latter may 
 possibly be the best representative of Anglo-Saxon energy in 
 a new continent, the former may have transfused no mean 
 amount of Hellenic cultivation into those savage regions which 
 the pure Greeks of the fifth century b.c. could never have 
 penetrated. Modern research, aided by an unusual abundance 
 of coins, has proved that it was possible for a Grecian princi- 
 pality, insulated among the mountains of Balkh and Bokhara, 
 and soon detached from the Babylonian Kingdom, not only to 
 retain the characteristic features of Greek nationality, but to 
 colour perceptibly the philosophical system of India, on which 
 it bordered. Mr. Grote characterises the Administration of 
 the Grffico-Asiatic kings as ' not Hellenic, but completely 
 despotic' Nevertheless, not to dwell on the Greek constitu- 
 tions of particular towns, as Alexandria and Ptolemais in 
 Upper Egypt, the spirit of Hellenism was so firmly established 
 in the East as to resist the assimilating power of the Boman 
 Empire, and to survive, long after the Legions had melted 
 away, the contagion of Mahommedanism. 
 
 Meantime, the Western colonies of Greece, which had often 
 outstripped the mother-country in the race of philosophy, 
 carried to an extravagant pitch the anomalies which now 
 beset her policy. The constitution established by Timoleon at 
 Syracuse was superseded by an oligarchy like those created 
 by Antipater in central Greece. This was again overturned, 
 and, in the long struggles between the exiles and the dominant 
 party, Agathocles, a dashing soldier-of-fortune and a profligate 
 politician, found means to compass his own ends. 'He was 
 of the stamp of Gelon and the elder Dionysius,' . . . and in
 
 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 805 
 
 ' the acquisition as well as the maintenance of power displayed 
 an extent of energy, perseverance, and military resource not 
 surpassed by any one, even of the generals formed in Alex- 
 ander's school.' He had just that mixture of cunning and 
 daring suitable to one who would gamble desperately for a 
 throne. He cannot be referred to any of those classes of 
 despots described by Mr. Grote in an earlier volume. To the 
 political character of Ludovico Sforza and a temperament 
 like Caesar Borgia, he added the merciless determination of 
 Alexander and the reckless audacity of a Scandinavian viking. 
 1 Agathokles is a man of force and fraud, consummate in the 
 use of both. His whole life is a series of successful adven- 
 tures and strokes of bold ingenuity to extricate himself from 
 difficulties.' Division of interests has ever been the bane of 
 Sicily ; it was deplored by Hermocrates when the Athenian 
 fleet was off the coast ; it was deplored by Falcandus when 
 Henry VII. with a German army was descending from the 
 Alps. To this discord, over which he gloated like a desperado 
 in a plague-stricken city, Agathokles owed the success of the 
 coups d'etat by which he crushed Sicilian liberty ; the know- 
 ledge of like disaffection in Africa inspired the ruses de guerre 
 by which he nearly made himself master of Carthage. That 
 he died, in the plenitude of power, a victim to private and 
 not to public hatred, is to be attributed to the want of that 
 rare heroism which rushes on a contest in which the foremost 
 is sure to fall. That he failed in his more brilliant projects 
 was due to the unsteadiness of purpose that, happily for man- 
 kind, is characteristic of unprincipled adventurers. 
 
 We do not propose to follow Mr. Grote through the weary 
 record of Grecian dishonour. The whole interest of his 
 ninety-fifth and ninety-sixth chapters is concentrated on 
 Demosthenes and Phokion, the great men who overshadow 
 the ruins of a great people, now bandied to and fro between 
 Macedonian generals. Phokion, says Plutarch, told the 
 Athenians that they must either have power themselves or 
 submit to him who had it. It was the curse of the times 
 that honour and prudence could not be made to consist. The 
 
 X
 
 806 THE AGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 party of movement is, in our days, the party of liberty ; then 
 it was the advocate of submission. When we read of the 
 idolatrous worship of Demetrius Poliorketes, we are inclined, 
 with Phokion, to accept the humiliation of Athens as inevit- 
 able. When we think of the inherent might of a good cause, 
 we side with Demosthenes. A modern statesman might have 
 retired into rural seclusion, and devoted himself to enlightening 
 or satirising his age. So did Cicero. A citizen of Athens 
 was forbidden to stand aloof in a sedition, and Demosthenes 
 grappled with the antagonist whom Phokion caressed. Both 
 were patriots ; each in his way was a political martyr. But 
 Demosthenes wins our hearts, not only as a contributor to 
 the common treasury of noble sentiments, but as the cham- 
 pion of those pure though limited interests out of which 
 general well-being is compounded. 
 
 Mr. Grote pauses on the brink of the ' gulf of Grecian 
 nullity,' which separates classical Greece from what Mr. Grote 
 styles, with unfeigned contempt, ' the Greece of Polybius.' 
 He has added a solid work to English literature, a work 
 which executes all that it professes. He has enabled the most 
 phlegmatic of nations to realise the life of the most volatile. 
 In short, though an Englishman, he has ' written a book.' 
 Mr. Grote knows his subject too well to put forward his his- 
 tory as exhaustive and final ; but we hope the time is distant 
 when such a writer will cease to have interest for English 
 scholars and gentlemen.
 
 307 
 
 COUNT CAVOUR 1 
 
 Before Italy is completely ' made,' or the last sneers of her 
 detractors have died away, the grave will have closed over 
 the master-spirit of her councils the Themistocles of the 
 Italian Revolution. Never since the death of Sir Eobert 
 Peel, in 1850, has any European country had such cause to 
 mourn over an individual statesman ; nor must national 
 partiality deter us from confessing that, of the two, the life 
 of Cavour was incalculably the more important to Europe. 
 From the year 1848 the eyes of the world have been fixed 
 upon Italy, the destinies of Italy have been centred in Sardinia, 
 and Count Cavour has been the presiding genius of Sardinian 
 policy. No wonder that, as his life ebbed away under the 
 subtle assaults of disease and the loss of blood, which is the 
 favourite resource of Italian surgery, great crowds blocked up 
 the avenues leading to his hotel, and manifested the deepest 
 emotion as the last sacraments of the Catholic Church were 
 borne in procession to his bedside. If the French people 
 thronged the street in which Mirabeau lay dying, and millions 
 of English artisans read with tears in their eyes the bulletins 
 recording the death of him who sacrificed power to fill their 
 homes with plenty, the Italians owe a still deeper debt to 
 Cavour. The extent of his services is to be measured by the 
 whole interval between the Italy of 1848 and the Italy of 
 1861 an interval short, indeed, in duration, but charged 
 with events that will occupy a vast space in history. During 
 this period the biography of Cavour is the biography of the 
 leading State of the Italian nation. 
 
 1 This sketch of Cavour's life was written for immediate publication, with 
 very imperfect knowledge, in a few hours, on the evening of June 6, 1861. It 
 is here reprinted without alteration. 
 
 x 2
 
 808 COUNT CAVOUR 
 
 Born at Turin in 1810, Cavour, like his great rival, Gari- 
 baldi, was by extraction a citizen of the county of Nice. 
 Posterity will scarcely care to discuss the question whether or 
 not his father was a parvenu, or to carry the genealogy higher 
 than the great statesman himself, who has left no heir to his 
 illustrious name and princely fortune. His contemporaries, 
 however, ought to know that his family is one of the most 
 ancient in Italy, that his elder brother is the Marquis of 
 Cavour, and that the second of his two names (Camillo Benso) 
 bears witness to a patrician pedigree. It is probable that his 
 powers were slowly matured, although for the first half of the 
 present century Italy offered so narrow a career to ambition 
 that we need seek no other reason for his comparatively late 
 entrance upon public life. Few, however, have enjoyed such 
 varied experiences, or laid the foundations of a political 
 education so deeply, as Cavour. He was trained for the 
 military career in the Royal Military Academy at Turin, and 
 nothing but his own independence of character and aversion 
 to the life of a courtier prevented his being permanently 
 attached to the household of Charles Felix, in which he 
 underwent a short probation. Meanwhile, he was studying 
 with the utmost eagerness what may be called par excellence 
 the political sciences, and in particular those which bear on 
 the wealth of nations. If the great work of Adam Smith was 
 not his first introduction to the English language, it was long 
 his favourite manual, and we have his own authority for 
 asserting that he derived his financial views chiefly from this 
 and other English authors. When, in opposition to the 
 wishes of his family, he resolved on making the British 
 metropolis the chief object of his travels, we have a curious 
 testimony, in the shape of a private despatch, still extant, to 
 the ' advanced ' opinions which he already held. The French, 
 in their anxiety to appropriate all success to themselves, have 
 attributed his subsequent career to his appreciation of the 
 ' principles of 1789,' forgetting that these principles, so far as 
 they are sound or practical at all, had their origin in this 
 country, where Count Cavour had abundant opportunity of
 
 COUNT CAVOUR 309 
 
 studying them at the fountain-head during a residence of 
 several years. It was then that he formed those friendships 
 in England to which' he so often referred with pride, and 
 strengthened, if he did not contract, those habits of thought 
 which, surviving the reproach of Anglomania, have made his 
 statesmanship an unique phenomenon in Italy, in marked 
 contrast with the peculiarities of Italian intellect and cha- 
 racter. 
 
 In 1842, Count Cavour returned to Turin, and patiently 
 watched the signs of the times under the well-meant but 
 capricious regime of Charles Albert. For the next five years 
 we have little trace of the direction of his activity, except in a 
 few literary productions. Soon after his return from Great 
 Britain he published his ' Considerations on the Present 
 State and Future Prospects of Ireland ' in the ' Bibliotheque 
 Universelle ' of Geneva, which were subsequently translated 
 into English ; and we know also that he wrote an article on 
 Piedmontese railways in a French periodical. In the year 
 1847, he established the ' Eisorgimento ' in partnership with 
 Count Balbo, and in concert with three other aristocratic 
 coadjutors Count Santa Bosa, the Chevalier Buoncompagni, 
 and one of the D'Azeglios. In this journal are to be found 
 the ' Cavourian ideas ' in embryo - the theories of political 
 and administrative reform, the sober aspirations after Italian 
 unity, or ' unification,' as it was then called the belief, now 
 obsolete, in the possibility of combining Naples, Borne, and 
 Piedmont in a Liberal crusade and the bold views respecting 
 the temporalities of the Church which have since become 
 identified with his name. 
 
 The turning-point of Count Cavour's life was the fatal 
 campaign that ended with Novara. During this disastrous 
 period of alternate hopes and fears, spasmodic efforts and 
 half-hearted co-operation, he remained in the background. 
 After it, he emerged one of the foremost figures in Italy, 
 taking an intermediate place between the ' Moderates ' and 
 the party of action, and reconciling the practical aims of the 
 one with the comprehensive patriotism of the other. In 1849
 
 310 COUNT CAVOUR 
 
 he entered the Chamber of Deputies, and in the following 
 year succeeded Santa Eosa as Minister of Commerce and 
 Agriculture. From this epoch his political career naturally 
 divides itself into four stages. The earliest represents his 
 Home policy, first as the colleague of D'Azeglio, and after- 
 wards as President of the Council, up to the commencement 
 of the Crimean War. The second includes that war and its 
 immediate consequences to Sardinia. The third extends from 
 1856 to the cession of Savoy and Nice to France. The last, 
 and greatest, is that which nothing but his premature death 
 has cut short. 
 
 The principal measures of the first period were the in- 
 auguration of a Free-Trade policy, the promotion of education, 
 the appropriation of monastic property to State purposes, the 
 development of the material resources of the country by the 
 construction of railways, the improvement of postal communi- 
 cation, the reform of the finances, and the entire re-organi- 
 sation of the army and national fortifications. To appre- 
 ciate the merits of the man who achieved these marvels within 
 the space of three or four years, we must understand the 
 political materials, or, rather, the want of all political materials, 
 with which he had to deal. To explain and illustrate the 
 demoralisation of the nation at this crisis is beyond our 
 present scope, but it has been eloquently sketched by a quar- 
 terly contemporary : 
 
 ' The difficulties which met Cavour on his first accession 
 to power were such as even now it is difficult thoroughly to 
 estimate. The defeat of Novara had left the Piedmontese 
 kingdom humiliated and weakened, and yet fatally implicated 
 in the insurrectionary movement which each succeeding event 
 in Europe contributed to discredit. There the Church and a 
 semi-feudal landed aristocracy possessed a strong traditional 
 power. The whole of the Administration of the little State 
 was singularly backward and imperfect. Its legal and its 
 commercial system, its municipal institutions ; the organisa- 
 tion of its army, of education, of the public service, and of 
 religious bodies ; its tariff, its roads, and system of communi-
 
 COUNT CAVOUR 811 
 
 cation, and, lastly, its own national unity, were below those 
 of nearly every other State in the Peninsula, except the Roman 
 itself. In the other provinces of Italy monarchical sentiments 
 had not yet begun to exist, and national greatness was known 
 only in the language of insurrectionary appeals. All the sad 
 honours of the late campaign had been won by the old muni- 
 cipal spirit, and Manin and Garibaldi had upheld the glory of 
 historic republics. The strength with which, upon the shattered 
 efforts of the national uprising, the old empire of the foreigner 
 had been established, had crushed out all but the hope of feeble 
 palliatives and evasions in the minds of the more cautious, 
 and desperate conspiracies in those of the bolder. Parties 
 were swaying between hopeless submission and hopeless re- 
 bellion, amidst a state of things in Europe which seemed at 
 each step to be extinguishing the last embers of revolution.' 
 
 It was out of this chaos that Count Cavour brought some- 
 thing like a Cosmos, and the success of his financial Ministry, 
 beginning with 1851, and signalised by his masterly speeches 
 on Nigra's financial project and the treaty of commerce with 
 France in 1852, would have sufficed to create an ordinary 
 reputation. In the latter year, however, it became evident to 
 far-sighted men that all these internal reforms were but means 
 to an ulterior end, and that this end was the consolidation of 
 Italian liberty. Nothing less than this could be signified by 
 the separation of Cavour from D'Azeglio and Gavagno, on the 
 avowed ground that they were temporising with interests which 
 admitted of no delay or compromise. When Cavour, after a 
 second visit to France and England, became Premier, in 
 November 1852, the die was fairly cast ; and everything that 
 followed, including the futile attempt to obtain a Liberal con- 
 cordat from Eome, and even the role of Piedmont in the 
 Crimean War, seemed but the legitimate development of a 
 preconceived idea. Henceforth there was no alternative but a 
 Cavourian or an anti-Cavourian policy. 
 
 No one can now be concerned to deny that the second 
 stage of Count Cavour's Administration was less the comple- 
 ment than the consummation of the first. With a rare pene-
 
 312 COUNT CAVOUR 
 
 tration scarcely distinguishable from actual prescience, he 
 saw his opportunity, and resolved to turn the quarrel between 
 Russia and Austria to the account of Italy. It was with this 
 view that he accepted, and perhaps suggested, the invitation 
 of England to join an offensive confederation against Eussia, 
 and penned his famous manifesto of January 12, 1856. The 
 conduct of the Sardinian contingent before Sebastopol is too 
 well known to need any eulogy here. But it should be remem- 
 bered that the credit of retrieving Novara, and organising a 
 Sardinian force that could compete in efficiency with the 
 veterans of England and France, must be shared almost equally 
 by La Marmora with Cavour. Upon the conclusion of peace, 
 many Sardinian patriots, and, perhaps, even Cavour himself, 
 were not a little disappointed. They felt that they could ill 
 afford to make such sacrifices for nothing, and that two or 
 three Duchies of Central Italy would have been no unreason- 
 able reward. Failing this, Count Cavour, in conjunction with 
 the Marquis Villamarina, assumed an energetic attitude in 
 the Congress of Paris, and openly arraigned Austria before 
 the bar of European public opinion. The great speech which 
 he delivered on his return to Turin contains the following 
 memorable words : 
 
 ' The course which we have followed for some years past 
 has placed us several steps in advance. For the first time in 
 our history, the Italian Question has been brought forward 
 and discussed before an European Council, not, as at other 
 times, with the design of aggravating the ills of Italy, but 
 with the object, loudly proclaimed, of applying a remedy to 
 her wrongs and avowing the sympathy which the Great Powers 
 entertain for her cause.' 
 
 The prophecy was verified ; voluntary subscriptions for 
 the fortification of Alessandria followed close on the peace, 
 and in every subsequent conference on European affairs 
 Sardinia took part in her own right, and almost insensibly 
 grew, as if by anticipation of an Italian monarchy, into a 
 sixth Great Power. 
 
 Whether we are to date the Franco- Sardinian allianee
 
 COUNT CAVOUR 313 
 
 against Austria from the interview of Plombieres, or should 
 rather regard it as the tacitly-accepted result of common 
 interests and common antipathies, it is certain that it was the 
 handiwork of Cavour. Nor must we shrink from admitting 
 that the price of French co-operation the cession of Savoy 
 and Nice was contemplated by, him, if it was not expressly 
 stipulated, from the first. We can hardly believe that two 
 men so astute as Cavour and Louis Napoleon would venture 
 to practise dissimulation towards each other, and it is more 
 satisfactory, on the whole, to conclude that the whole cost, of 
 political character as well as of territory, had been counted 
 beforehand, and was included in the same bargain with Prince 
 Napoleon's marriage. If Cavour erred, he erred in common 
 with great and high-minded men, who, driven to elect between 
 expediency of the highest order and a duty vanishing into a 
 sentiment, have given a casting-vote to the former. In this 
 campaign, as in all the other enterprises of Cavour, we trace 
 the same cautious and tentative method of operation which, 
 tempered with a wise audacity, constitutes no mean part of 
 the art of ruling. Fortunately for his designs, the Austrian 
 ultimatum was insulting enough to rally round him the whole 
 country, yet his reply was moderate, though firm ; and it was 
 not till after the battle of Magenta and the evacuation of 
 Milan that he ventured to mention the emancipation of the 
 whole peninsula. Then came the strange and still unaccount- 
 able Peace of Villafranca, and Cavour for the first time seemed 
 disposed to throw up his mighty task in disgust. He had 
 once before withdrawn from office to facilitate the settlement 
 of the great standing dispute about the rights and privileges 
 of the clergy, but his retirement was hardly more than 
 nominal. Now, at length, it appeared possible that the 
 destinies of Italy might be shaped by other hands. This, 
 however, was not to be, In presence of the annexation of 
 Lombardy and the movements in Central Italy, the Eatazzi 
 Ministry broke down, Cavour was recalled, nominally by the 
 King, but really by the Italian people, to the helm of State, 
 and the fourth stage of his political career began.
 
 314 COUNT CAVOUR 
 
 That stage is cut short, but not concluded. His work 
 remains a majestic torso, to be completed by other need we 
 say, inferior ? artists. It is seldom, however, in the affairs of 
 practical life, that the demands of the aesthetic faculty are so 
 fully gratified as they are in the present aspect of this great 
 historical drama. For a while, as Garibaldi overran Sicily 
 and Calabria, flashing upon the effete system and spiritless 
 armies of Neapolitan despotism like jEneas among the 
 Shades, public enthusiasm was concentrated on the hero, to 
 the disparagement of the statesman. It was felt, and truly 
 felt, that Garibaldi could inspire, while Cavour could only 
 control, and that Garibaldi was free from the taint of paltering 
 with the self-interested friends of Italy. Scrupulous minds 
 could not reconcile the professions of the Cabinet of Turin at 
 the outset of the expedition with their ready acquiescence in 
 its results and eagerness to appropriate its triumphs. It is 
 still hard to believe that every act in these great transactions 
 can be squared with the rule of political consistency, or that 
 posterity, which will have so much to admire, will have 
 nothing to forgive. We may, perhaps, rejoice that we had 
 not the keeping of Cavour's conscience during this, the agony 
 of Italian regeneration ; but if the nobleness of the end and 
 the complete success of the means cannot justify everything, 
 let us at least suspend our judgment till the gaps in our 
 knowledge are filled up, and the missing links in the speeches 
 and despatches of the departed statesman can be supplied. 
 We know enough to be sure that there is much that we cannot 
 know, and that the course which seems to us so tortuous 
 may, from a loftier point of view, be straight and direct. If 
 Garibaldi has lived to see that Cavour and himself were fol- 
 lowing the same object by different paths, we may well hope 
 that the details of his policy will be vindicated, as its sagacity 
 has been so triumphantly demonstrated. 
 
 We shall not attempt to recapitulate the events of the 
 past year, by which Cavour will hereafter be chiefly judged. 
 Not that any one epoch of his life displays characteristics 
 essentially different from any other. In the two most remark-
 
 COUNT CAVOl'R 315 
 
 able speeches of the last twelve months that on the con- 
 cession of authority to Government to accept annexations, 
 and that on the Eoman Question may be discerned precisely 
 the same train of thought that animates his earlier speeches 
 and writings. In the latter he appeals, as ever, to the ulti- 
 mate verdict of public opinion, and to the ever-growing testi- 
 mony of facts to the soundness of his policy. 
 
 The influence of Cavour upon Italy was in some respects 
 similar to that of the First Napoleon upon France. As Napo- 
 leon was no genuine Frenchman, so Cavour was no genuine 
 Italian in mind, or temperament, or even in accent ; and he 
 was the stronger for this diversity. Under the shade of that 
 cold and impassable exterior was room for an undergrowth 
 of political virtues hardly known in Italy, and nothing but 
 his solidity and indomitable power of resistance would have 
 stemmed the shocks which even his versatility could not 
 always avoid. In spite of a manner never very conciliatory, 
 and sometimes disdainful, his popularity was almost un- 
 bounded. The confidence reposed in him throughout by a 
 devoted majority, after successive appeals to the country, 
 reminds us of the support given to Sir Robert Peel between 
 1841 and 1845 ; and in one instance a private individual left 
 a considerable fortune at his absolute disposal for the benefit 
 of public education. Perhaps his greatest quality as a speaker 
 was his extraordinary faculty of seizing the salient points of 
 the subject, as his greatest quality as a statesman was pene- 
 tration. His conceptions were not original. Some he bor- 
 rowed from Gioberti, some from Farini, some from Mazzini 
 himself. But he carried them out with a steadiness, and 
 sometimes even with an insouciance, that were all his own. 
 It remained for him to rescue Italy from the reproach which 
 Guizot put upon it that will and intellect are there dissevered, 
 that her men of thought are mere doctrinaires and theorists, 
 and her men of action mere empirics. So well did he under- 
 stand his people and his times, that much ingenuity has been 
 expended in proving that he comprehended in himself all the 
 conflicting elements of the Italian movement, and for this
 
 316 COUNT CAVOUR 
 
 reason was able to forecast long before the horoscope of his 
 country. It is needless to say that this romantic view cannot 
 be sustained. Cavour acted for the present, and in so doing 
 he did much to mould the future. We need not exalt his 
 penetration to satisfy an impossible idea ; it is enough for his 
 fame that he justly interpreted the wants of Italy, and knew 
 how to execute that which he had conceived. He has left 
 none like him ; and many a true-hearted Italian, as he follows 
 his corpse to the tomb, will be tempted to pronounce him 
 felicem opportunitate mortis, as he remembers how few in the 
 long catalogue of Italian liberators have died, like Cavour, 
 before the memory of their achievements has been obliterated 
 by fresh disasters.
 
 817 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1 
 
 The Evangelical Eevival, specially identified with the name 
 of John Wesley, has long since won for itself an important 
 place in the social history of the eighteenth century, and 
 has now been made the subject of an interesting little mono- 
 graph by Canon Overton, in Professor Creighton's series 
 entitled ' Epochs of Church History.' Mr. Overton's volume, 
 however, is not so much an historical narrative as a collection 
 of biographical sketches and essays upon various aspects 
 of the movement. One chapter is devoted to John Wesley 
 himself, another to George Whitefield and others of Wesley's 
 immediate colleagues, a third to a comparison between 
 Methodism and Evangelicalism a term for which the author 
 apologises a fourth to the leading Evangelical clergy of the 
 century, and a fifth to the contemporary Evangelical laity. 
 Then we have separate chapters on the Literature, the 
 Doctrines, and the Eesults, of the Eevival, with a discerning 
 estimate of its weak points and of the opposition which it 
 encountered. All these topics are treated in an independent 
 and charitable spirit ; nor would it be easy to gather from 
 Mr. Overton's temperate criticisms to which school of theo- 
 logical opinion he may profess to belong. But, after all, we 
 miss that which the character of the volume would have led 
 us to expect a consecutive account of the rise and progress 
 of Methodism in this country. For this we must still look 
 to more elaborate biographical works, like Southey's and 
 Tyerman's Lives of Wesley, or learned monographs on the 
 
 1 A Beview of Canon Overton's volume on this subject, reprinted from 
 Macmillan's Magazine. 1886.
 
 318 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 movement, such as that to be found in Sir James Stephen's 
 admirable ' Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography.' 
 
 The part played by the University of Oxford in the early 
 history of Methodism is treated far too lightly by Mr. Overton. 
 During the first half of the eighteenth century, that Uni- 
 versity was ecmally degenerate both as a place of religion and 
 as a place of learning. Too much has been made, it is true, 
 of Gibbon's malicious strictures upon it ; but the evidence 
 is conclusive that, during the two generations when Oxford 
 Jacobitism was at its height, Oxford education was at its 
 lowest ebb. The influence of religion was no less weakened 
 in the University, and had, indeed, been on the decline ever 
 since the Restoration. Notwithstanding their boisterous 
 demonstrations of sympathy with the High Church Party 
 in politics, many of its senior members, both clerical and lay, 
 secretly leaned to Eationalism, and the Deism which came in 
 with the Revolution of 1688 became rife again under the 
 Georges. In the year 1730, three students were expelled for 
 holding Deistical tenets : several Heads of Colleges issued a 
 joint notice censuring the spread of Deism among the stu- 
 dents ; and the Yice-Chancellor, in a programma, solemnly 
 warned tutors and undergraduates against literature calcu- 
 lated to disturb Christian faith. 
 
 It was in this unpromising soil, teeming with High Church 
 prejudices, deeply saturated by worldliness, and now tainted 
 with Deism, that the seeds of Methodism were sown at 
 Oxford. 
 
 John Wesley, its chief founder, was the son of an excel- 
 lent clergyman, Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth, and, 
 after passing through Charterhouse and Christ Church, had 
 been elected Fellow of Lincoln in 1726. Having been 
 ordained in the previous year, he acted for a while as his 
 father's curate, and, on his return to Oxford in 1729, found 
 his younger brother, Charles, then an undergraduate of Christ 
 Church, already a member of a small religious association, 
 which afterwards expanded into the Methodist communion. 
 Of this little band John Wesley at once became the acknow-
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 319 
 
 ledged leader. Their earliest meetings were held for the 
 purpose of reading the Greek Testament, and encouraging 
 one another in study and good works. But within a year 
 their sympathies widened, and they extended their charity to 
 others. William Morgan, one of their number, visiting a 
 condemned prisoner, was struck by the misery which he wit- 
 nessed in the gaol, and persuaded the Wesley s to aid him in 
 what may be called a prison-mission. With the consent of 
 the Bishop of Oxford, and of his chaplain, they undertook 
 the work of visitation, both in Bocardo, the debtors' prison, 
 and in the county gaol. Active benevolence soon claimed 
 even more of their energy than earnest study, which, how- 
 ever, they never abandoned. This handful of friends, them- 
 selves very poor, started a school for poor children, and 
 maintained the mistress at their joint expense ; assisted poor 
 debtors, and kept their families from penury; visited the 
 parish workhouse, relieved the sick, and in all their ministra- 
 tions strove to better the spiritual condition of those whom 
 they befriended. Nor were the undergraduates neglected. 
 Wesley and his associates did their utmost to rescue the 
 weaker of them from vice, and to bring them under the 
 influence of quiet and serious companions. They encouraged 
 them to study earnestly, and to lay out their time carefully, 
 specially insisting on habits of close thinking ; for they were 
 intolerant of indolence, even in thought. In order to gain 
 the confidence of his juniors, John Wesley would invite them 
 to breakfast, and endeavour to interest them in his own 
 efforts. To him and to his fellows, the essence of the move- 
 ment was not devotional, but practical not the propagation 
 of a new creed, but the moral salvation of human souls. 
 
 From the first they adopted a strict code of religious 
 observance, and made a practice of receiving the Holy Com- 
 munion weekly in that age, a rare act of religious devotion. 
 Clayton, one of their first adherents, is said to have induced 
 his colleagues to cultivate the habit of rigorous fasting. It 
 was thoroughly in harmony with the self-denial and abstrac- 
 tion from the world already characteristic of the Society.
 
 320 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 For instance, Wesley and his companions would sometimes 
 break off deliberately in the middle of a sentence, when the 
 chapel bell began to ring, that they might ' beware of the 
 lust of finishing.' It is strange that George Whitefield, 
 another of the early converts, should have almost fallen a 
 victim to his ascetic enthusiasm. He confessed that he at 
 first believed that Christianity had required him to ' go 
 nasty ' ; for which reason he abstained from washing, clothed 
 himself in evil garments, and fasted so continuously during 
 Lent that he became unable to walk upstairs, and was com- 
 pelled to submit to medical treatment. Charles Wesley, too, 
 injured his health by excessive fasting; and John Wesley so 
 exhausted himself, not only by fasting, but by overwork and 
 walks of a length then almost unknown among students, that 
 he broke a blood-vessel and was laid by for a time. The 
 saddest case of all was that of William Morgan, whose fasting 
 laid the foundation of an illness which developed madness, 
 and terminated in his untimely death. This event naturally 
 produced a sensation in the University, and was most unfairly 
 laid at the door of John Wesley ; but Morgan's father, no 
 friend to Methodist practices, entirely exonerated Wesley, and 
 even entrusted to him another son as a pupil. 
 
 This ascetic discipline seems to have been almost the only 
 outward and visible peculiarity of the Society calculated to 
 attract much attention or to provoke hostile criticism. As Mr. 
 Overton remarks, it is ' difficult to realise the fact that, in a 
 place especially devoted to Christian education, the mere sight 
 of a few young men going quietly to receive the Holy Com- 
 munion every Sunday at St. Mary's, their own University 
 Church, should have attracted a crowd of ridiculing spectators,' 
 or that piety and active benevolence should have been ' thought 
 eccentric in a little body of men, the leader of whom was an 
 ordained clergyman, and all of whom were intending to take 
 Holy Orders.' But it is not so astonishing that an unsocial, 
 if not Pharisaical, demeanour, sometimes attended with 
 slovenliness of costume, and even with neglect of personal 
 cleanliness, should have exposed the young reformers to some
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 321 
 
 obloquy among their companions, most of whom, no doubt, 
 would have gained much by cultivating their acquaintance. 
 At all events, they soon incurred a storm of juvenile ridicule. 
 They were nicknamed Bible-moths, Supererogation-men, 
 Sacramentarians, the Holy or the Godly Club. But the 
 name by which they were specially known, and which has 
 acquired a world-wide currency, was that of Methodists. 
 This name was not of modern origin. There was an ancient 
 society of physicians known by it, and, like the kindred name 
 of ' precisians,' it had been applied, as Dr. Calamy informs 
 us, to ' those who stood up for God.' It was now fastened 
 on this little group of Oxford zealots, probably on account of 
 the methodical rules whereby they endeavoured to regulate 
 their behaviour and hours of work. Nor were the under- 
 graduates their only foes. The seniors of Christ Church held 
 a meeting to consider what could be done against them. At 
 Lincoln College, the Bector and Fellows showed determined 
 hostility to them : the Master of Pembroke threatened to 
 expel Whitefield unless he gave up visiting : a brother Fellow 
 would not oblige a Methodist by reading prayers for him in 
 chapel, lest his obnoxious practices should be thus facilitated. 
 Still they persevered, and persecution doubtless contributed 
 to keep their union unbroken. Whitefield, afterwards 
 as great a power in the Bevival as Wesley himself, did 
 not in Oxford assert his independence. As a servitor of 
 Pembroke, he occupied too lowly a position to admit of his 
 taking a lead in a Society which, modest as it was, consisted of 
 Fellows, Tutors, and ordinary students. Moreover, he entered 
 College nearly three years after the movement was initiated, 
 and during the early part of his career knew little of its pro- 
 moters, though ardently desirous of joining them. This was 
 accomplished by an accident. He was called to the bedside 
 of a poor man who had attempted to cut his throat, and, 
 pitying his miserable condition, sent in haste for Charles 
 Wesley, begging the messenger to conceal his own name. 
 The injunction was disobeyed. Charles Wesley sought out 
 Whitefield, asked him to breakfast, and immediately intro- 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 duced him to the Society. So narrow were his means, that 
 during his three years' residence at Oxford he received but 
 24J. from his friends, supporting himself mainly on the emolu- 
 ments of his servitorship and the kind presents of his tutor. 
 There was, indeed, little wealth in the infant Methodist 
 Church, and John Wesley himself, having fallen into debt, 
 had been thankful to find a garret for fifty shillings a year. 
 
 But Methodism in Oxford was short-lived, and its history 
 virtually ends with the ill-advised mission of John and Charles 
 Wesley to Georgia in 1735. Long before this it had been 
 manifest that, without John Wesley's personal influence, the 
 Society must cease to flourish. During his absence in 1733 
 the number of communicants shrank from twenty- seven to 
 five ; and it was because he then appreciated the importance 
 of Oxford as his special field of duty that he declined the 
 living of Epworth. In 1738 there were but three Methodist 
 gentlemen in the University. In the following year none 
 visited the prison or the workhouse, and the little school was 
 on the eve of being given up. The Oxford Methodists could 
 not survive without the presence and example of their leader ; 
 and within three years of his departure they were virtually 
 extinct in the city which had been at once the cradle of the 
 movement and the stronghold of opposition to it. After his 
 return from Georgia, in 1738, John Wesley revisited Oxford 
 at intervals, but found himself unable to resuscitate the 
 Methodist Society during these flying visits. The old pre- 
 judice against it, however, was still alive. In 1740, a student 
 named Graves, being suspected of Methodism, was forced, 
 in order to obtain his testamur, to sign a paper renouncing 
 ' the modern practice and principles of the persons commonly 
 called Methodists.' At Midsummer, 1741, John Wesley spent 
 three weeks in Oxford, in order to inquire about the exercises 
 for his B.D. degree, and preached a sermon, of which it was 
 predicted by Gambold, a former associate, then unfriendly to 
 him, that it was not worth preparing it, as there would be 
 no audience. In 1744 he occupied the University pulpit for 
 the last time, in spite of the authorities, who would gladly
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 323 
 
 have excluded him, if they could, from preaching in his turn. 
 In the course of this sermon he roundly upbraided the gowns- 
 men as a generation of triflers, and reproached the Fellows 
 for their proverbial uselessness, pride, haughtiness of spirit, 
 impatience, peevishness, sloth, gluttony, and sensuality. It 
 was subsequently arranged that in future some other Fellow 
 should preach in Wesley's place. In 1751, according to the 
 Statutes, he resigned his Fellowship on his marriage. Six 
 years later, Eomaine, who as a student had stood aloof from 
 Methodism, was excluded from the University pulpit for 
 insisting upon Justification by Faith, and the imperfection 
 of our best works. Finally, in 1768, the Vice-Chancellor 
 expelled six Methodist students from St. Edmund Hall as 
 disturbers of the peace ; and this high-handed act was actually 
 defended by Dr. Johnson at a time when University discipline 
 was at its lowest gambling, drunkenness, and blasphemy 
 being condoned as venial offences. After this we hear no 
 more of Methodism at Oxford. It is not hard to understand 
 why it failed to command success there after its first con- 
 quests, since it appealed more and more to the religious 
 enthusiasm of the less educated classes, abandoning any 
 attempt to satisfy the speculative reason. 
 
 Thirty years before this official condemnation of Metho- 
 dism at the University, it had begun to spread with mar- 
 vellous rapidity over the country. John Wesley himself 
 dated the beginning of the Eevival from the spring of 1738, 
 when he came under the influence of the Moravian, Peter 
 Bohler, and experienced a sudden ' conversion,' which eh 
 regarded as the birth of his true spiritual life. But the 
 energy of his nature soon caused him to rebel against the 
 mystic ' stillness ' of the Moravians, as well as the quietism 
 of Law, his first spiritual guide, and launched him upon a 
 career of missionary labour, which he carried on without in- 
 termission for more than half a century. The preface to his 
 Journal records that ' he published more books, travelled 
 more miles, and preached more sermons, than any minister 
 of his age.' As Canon Overton tells us, ' the whole length 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 and breadth of England were traversed by him over and over 
 again : he made frequent journeys into Scotland and Ireland ; 
 and at every town and village where he stayed he was ready, 
 in season and out of season, to preach the everlasting Gospel.' 
 He constantly rode on horseback forty, fifty, or sixty miles 
 a day : he found time for reading and writing on his journeys ; 
 and he would often preach three or four times a day. It has 
 even been calculated that, in the course of his working-life, 
 he travelled above two hundred thousand miles, and preached 
 some forty thousand sermons. From the first he was the 
 life and soul of Methodism ; yet Canon Overton, defending 
 him against the charge of despotic self-will, remarks that 
 several of its most distinctive features were not originated by 
 him, but adopted in deference to the opinions of others. One 
 of these was the practice of field-preaching, initiated by 
 Whitefield on February 17, 1739, when he delivered an 
 open-air sermon to the colliers of Kingswood, near Bristol. 
 Wesley felt and confessed a great repugnance to such a 
 deviation from Church order, but soon afterwards followed 
 Whitefield's example, though he never rivalled Whitefield 's 
 power of entrancing vast audiences. In the same year, the 
 first separate meeting-house for Methodists was founded, also 
 in Bristol ; and, perhaps in consequence of this, Wesley and 
 his associates found themselves generally excluded from the 
 pulpits of churches. The next step towards separation was 
 taken in the following autumn, when lay-preaching was sanc- 
 tioned by Wesley, though not without great reluctance. In 
 1743, the Kules of the Society, which still constitute its fun- 
 damental law, were drawn up, and issued with the signatures 
 of John and Charles Wesley. In 1744, the first ' Conference ' 
 was held, and ' class-meetings ' soon became a characteristic 
 feature of Methodism. Mr. Overton, however, is unwilling to 
 suspect the early Methodists of schismatic intentions. Ac- 
 cording to him, the class-meetings ' arose simply from the 
 necessity of finding money to pay for what Wesley himself 
 would have called a "preaching-house" at Bristol.' They 
 were instituted for the purpose of a weekly collection, an d
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 325 
 
 converted incidentally into gatherings for the mutual censor- 
 ship of conduct. With equal charity, he endeavours to show 
 that many other Methodist institutions such as the ' love- 
 feasts,' the 'watch-nights,' the 'quarterly tickets,' the 'band- 
 meetings,' the ' circuits,' the offices of ' superintendents ' and 
 ' circuit-stewards,' and the ' Conference ' grew naturally out 
 of practical exigencies, and were not consciously devised as 
 parts of an elaborate system designed to supplant the National 
 Church. At all events, it is certain that,, notwithstanding 
 his disparagement of parochial discipline, Wesley remained 
 at heart an Anglican, both in doctrine and policy. He was 
 a stout opponent of Calvinism, he condemned the Puritan 
 spirit of the seventeenth century, he avowed his dislike of the 
 Presbyterian services in Scotland and his admiration of the 
 services prescribed by the English liturgy; and, though he 
 was not borne to his grave, like his brother Charles, by clergy- 
 men of the National Church, he always manifested, and espe- 
 cially in his later years, a cordial sympathy and respect for 
 them. 
 
 Canon Overton, like Tyerman, Wesley's latest biographer, 
 passes rapidly over the physical manifestations, or ' outward 
 signs ' of the Methodist propaganda, on which Southey lays 
 so great a stress, and which impressed contemporary observers 
 as the most striking feature of the Kevival. Now, it is 
 important to observe that contagious paroxysms of religious 
 excitement are by no means peculiar to Methodism, or even 
 to Protestantism. On the contrary, Protestantism has never 
 yet rivalled Catholicism in its power of inspiring sudden and 
 wholesale devotion. The sweeping triumphs of Latin Chris- 
 tianity over the barbarian conquerors are still unparalleled, 
 or paralleled only by the success of Xavier and his followers. 
 Pilgrimage was the expression of an intense and universal 
 religious impulse, and it may well be doubted whether the 
 most powerful spiritual leaders of modern times could extort 
 so laborious a pledge of sincerity from their disciples. The 
 audiences of Peter the Hermit and Bernard thrilled with a 
 more overwhelming flood of emotion than John Wesley's
 
 326 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 congregations at the Kingswood collieries. The cry of ' God 
 wills it,' that burst from the great Council at Clermont, spread 
 wider and sank deeper into the heart of Christendom than 
 the groans which filled the early Methodist prayer-meetings. 
 The annals of the Middle Ages are full of passionate ebulli- 
 tions of religious enthusiasm, sometimes coloured by political 
 feelings, but invariably accompanied by the two characteristic 
 symptoms of Methodist Revivalism affections of the nervous 
 system, and a temporary reformation of life and manners. 
 They recurred during the exciting epoch of the Crusades, and 
 the camp of Walter the Penniless was probably fertile in 
 scenes wilder than those which John Wesley complacently 
 recorded in his Diary, and justified in his letters to his 
 brother Samuel. Again, during the memorable years of 
 tribulation which preceded and followed the Black Death, 
 the emotional and spasmodic element became dominant in 
 the religion of the day, and vented itself in three extra- 
 ordinary outbreaks during the fourteenth century. Of the 
 same nature were the panics which led to so many massacres 
 of the Jews, and the strange popular suspicions which proved 
 the ruin of the Templars. The Reformation cleared the 
 atmosphere for a time ; not, however, without leaving the 
 germs of new religious disorders, belonging to a different 
 type, and corresponding to the more spiritual character of 
 the Reformed doctrines. 
 
 The sectarian fanaticism of the seventeenth century, ex- 
 travagant as it was, owed much of its extravagance to politi- 
 cal fanaticism. But we are fortunate in possessing, from 
 the pen of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards, an elaborate 
 ' Narrative of the Revival of Religion in New England ' during 
 the years 1784 and 1735, which shows that Methodist 
 Revivalism, as the systematic propagation of a religious 
 epidemic, had been anticipated in the American colonies. 
 Mr. Edwards's narrative is couched in the language of the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress ' and the Puritan divines, and is highly 
 charged with the quaint technical phraseology of Calvinism. 
 We read of ' legal terrors,' ' legal distresses,' ' legal humilia-
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 827 
 
 tion,' ' legal convictions,' ' legal awakenings,' ' legal hum- 
 blings.' The author writes in the spirit of a physician de- 
 scribing the pathology of a familiar disease to a brother- 
 professor, and displays a candour and good faith which does 
 not shrink from recognising the boasted ' visions ' as figments 
 of the imagination. Nevertheless, his pages are darkened by 
 a mysticism compared to which the fierce penitence of the 
 Flagellants may appear genial and humane. In all the 
 varieties of experience which he enumerates, we do not find 
 that he recognises any exemption from the ' Slough of 
 Despond.' According as they have or have not passed this, 
 he inexorably determines the respective destinies of men. He 
 maintains the doctrine of God's arbitrary will to have been 
 the most salutary medicine for the times. In many of the 
 converted he discerned ' a sort of complacency in the attribute 
 of God's judgment as displayed in His threatenings of eternal 
 damnation to sinners,' and adds, that 'they have sometimes 
 almost called it a willingness to be damned.' Yet this morbid 
 exaltation does not seem to have struck him as any evidence 
 of mental aberration, nor did he suspect that instances of 
 suicide and religious insanity, which he admitted, were re- 
 lated to Eevivalism by any physical connection of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 Probably this New England Eevival is the earliest re- 
 corded precedent, within Protestant memory, for that initiated 
 by. John Wesley. It is remarkable that his sermons were far 
 more productive of convulsions and hysterical fits than those 
 of Whitefield, although, as Canon Overton observes, they 
 were less sensational, and, in their published form, appear 
 little calculated to excite sentimental frenzy. On the other 
 hand, it is certain that, while Charles Wesley mildly con- 
 demned, and Whitefield distrusted, such proofs of instan- 
 taneous conversion, John Wesley accepted and favoured them 
 as witnesses of the Spirit ; at least, until a late period of his 
 life. As his brother frankly said, with a large fund of common 
 sense and administrative ability, he ' seemed born for the 
 benefit of knaves.' He owned that, in some cases, ' nature
 
 928 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 mixed with grace,' and ' Satan mimicked this work of God.' 
 But he did not perceive that indulgence of the religious 
 passions has iu it something of sensuality, and that Pro- 
 testant Revivalism, when it descends to a kind of jugglery 
 in the production of moral renovation, cannot afford to cast 
 reproach on the meretricious arts of Romanism. Wesley even 
 declared, in deprecating the remonstrances of his brother 
 Samuel, that he had known people converted in their sleep ; 
 but most of the instances which he mentions strongly resemble 
 the accounts of demoniacal possession in the Gospels, the evil 
 spirits being exorcised by prayer, and the converts relieved by 
 a sudden access of saving faith. No wonder that Methodism 
 was discredited in the sceptical world by these extravagances, 
 that grave bishops and moderate Churchmen withdrew the 
 qualified countenance which they had first given to it, and 
 that before long the miracles of Methodist Revivalism were 
 out-Heroded by certain foreign enthusiasts called the French 
 Prophets, against whom John Wesley himself warned his fol- 
 lowers. Before his death the fanatical excesses of early 
 Methodism had already spent their strength, and a more 
 rational tone of practical religion had supervened ; but, 
 among the communities which he founded, Revivals on a 
 smaller scale have recurred at irregular periods, both in this 
 country and in America. Among the latter, may be specially 
 mentioned those of 1816, 1843, and 1857-8, when, as we are 
 informed by a sympathetic chronicler, the crews of ships on 
 their homeward voyages were affected by the same wave of 
 religious emotion which was sweeping over their countrymen 
 on shore. Aonther memorable Revival spread itself on both 
 sides of the Atlantic in 1859-60, until its progress was signifi- 
 cantly checked by the outbreak of the great American Civil 
 War. We must not, however, allow these questionable phe- 
 nomena to occupy too large a space in our general conception 
 of Methodism. While many of its first converts insisted upon 
 Bign8 from Heaven, tens of thousands were led to embrace it 
 by the force of moral conviction : its cardinal doctrines left 
 a permanent impression on the religious world, and became
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 329 
 
 the inheritance of the great Evangelical School at the begin- 
 ning of the present century. 
 
 The wonderful expansion of Methodism during the life of 
 its founder is perhaps without precedent in religious history. 
 In 1730, as we have seen, its only adherents were a handful 
 of Oxford students : twelve years later, it numbered eleven 
 hundred members in London : long before the end of the 
 century, all Great Britain and nearly all the American colonies 
 had rung with the eloquence of Whitefield or with the sober 
 but hardly less effective appeals of Wesley himself : meeting- 
 houses had sprung up in every important town, an army of 
 missionaries was engaged in itinerating over the country, and, 
 partly through Lady Huntingdon's influence, Methodism had 
 found a considerable amount of acceptance even in the higher 
 ranks of society. Franklin's testimony to the power of 
 Whitefield's preaching is well known ; but Chesterfield, 
 Bolingbroke, and even Hume, were also among his hearers. 
 At the time of Wesley's death, in 1791, the Methodist Church, 
 or Connexion, as it was called, numbered above three hundred 
 preachers in Great Britain alone, and nearly two hundred 
 in the United States, where the success of the Revolution had 
 made it necessary for Wesley to establish a separate organi- 
 sation, under a ' superintendent,' whom, to the horror of good 
 Churchmen, he consecrated as all but a bishop. The number 
 of members in the United Kingdom already exceeded seventy 
 thousand, and rose to more than one hundred thousand in 
 the course of the next decade. Considering how carefully 
 Wesley had weeded out backsliders and weak-kneed brethren : 
 considering also that schism had broken out at an early stage, 
 and detached a considerable body from the orthodox Connexion, 
 this aggregate may be taken as representing, not merely 
 the nominal, but the effective strength of Methodism. As it 
 had sprung from the bosom of the Established Church, so its 
 converts were chiefly drawn from that communion, or, at 
 least, from a class of persons who belonged to none of the 
 ordinary sects of Nonconformists. That it gave a powerful 
 impulse to Dissent, in spite of Wesley's personal attachment
 
 880 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF 
 
 to the Church, may be inferred from the fact ' that, whereas 
 at George I.'s death the proportion of Dissenters to Church- 
 men was about one to twenty-five, by 1800 it was computed 
 to be one to four.' On the other hand, its indirect effect in 
 stimulating zeal within the Church itself was undoubtedly 
 great. Though neither Sunday Schools, nor Foreign Mis- 
 sions, nor the Abolition of the Slave Trade, can be claimed 
 among the results of Methodism indeed, Whitefield himself 
 was a slave-owner all these movements owed much to the 
 religious and benevolent spirit kindled by Methodism, as well 
 as by the more constant influence of the Evangelical School. 
 
 The short chapter in which Canon Overton shows the 
 affinity and the contrast between Methodism and so-called 
 Evangelicalism is one of the most interesting in the volume. 
 It would be a great delusion to imagine that ' Evangelical ' 
 religion, as now understood, was invented or first developed 
 by the apostles of Methodism. Not to speak of the great 
 Puritan divines, or of such American writers as Jonathan 
 Edwards, there had never been wanting in the Church of 
 England a succession of pious and sober-minded clergymen 
 holding the same views as were afterwards connected with the 
 names of Wilberforce and the Clapham School. Both Metho- 
 dists and Evangelical Churchmen ' aimed at reviving spiritual 
 religion ; they both so far resembled the Puritanism of the 
 seventeenth century in that they contended for the immediate 
 and particular influence of the Holy Spirit, for the total 
 degeneracy of man, for the vicarious nature of the Atonement, 
 for the absolute unlawfulness of certain kinds of amusement, 
 for the strict observance of the Lord's Day or Sabbath (for 
 they used the words indiscriminately) ; and they both agreed 
 in differing from Puritanism, by taking either no side in 
 politics at all, or else taking the opposite side from that 
 which the Puritans would have taken, by disclaiming sym- 
 pathy with Dissenters or Nonconformists, by glorying in the 
 fact that they were members of the Church of England 
 (Methodists no less than Evangelicals), and by the most staunch 
 loyalty to the Throne.' The distinctions between them con-
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 831 
 
 sisted mainly in the differences of spirit and mode of working. 
 The Methodists were restless and impulsive, the Evangelicals 
 valued moderation and self-restraint : the Methodists drew 
 their converts from the lower and lower-middle classes, ' the 
 backbone of Evangelicalism was in the upper and upper- 
 middle classes ' : the Methodists adopted an elaborate organi- 
 sation of ' societies,' in lieu of the parochial system, to which 
 the Evangelicals adhered. But there were many connecting 
 links between the two, and many excellent clergymen whom 
 it would be difficult to assign exclusively to either camp. 
 Such were James Hervey, William Eomaine, John Newton 
 (the friend of Cowper), Thomas Scott, Eichard Cecil, the two 
 Milners, Walker of Truro, and Fletcher of Madeley, who, 
 though closely identified with Methodism, were thoroughly 
 attached to parochial work, and refused to be diverted from 
 it. These men, with others, to whom Canon Overton devotes 
 short notices, were only not Methodists because they were 
 satisfied to labour for the good of souls within the sphere traced 
 for them by the Church of England, and would assuredly 
 have kept alive Evangelical religion in the country, even if 
 Wesley and Whitefield had never existed. 
 
 As we review the work of the Evangelical Eevival of the 
 last century, we cannot but recognise in it a noble expression 
 of individual piety, and a powerful instrument for the purifi- 
 cation of national character. The Christian life has seldom 
 been seen in greater perfection, or missionary enthusiasm in 
 a manlier form, than among the apostles of Methodism, with 
 their Evangelical precursors and successors in the Church of 
 England itself. They may have been inferior in mental 
 stature to the greatest of the Puritan leaders, and in 
 scholarly culture to the pioneers of the Tractarian movement. 
 They knew little of Biblical criticism, and never dreamed of 
 the influence to be exercised by modern science on theology : 
 many articles of their dogmatic creed will not bear the 
 scrutiny of a later philosophy : their popular discourses were too 
 highly charged with appeals to mere religious emotion : their 
 domestic controversies were sometimes carried on with an
 
 832 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 
 
 acrimony unworthy of their professions. But in personal 
 holiness, in self-denial, and in single-minded devotion to 
 Christian duty, as exemplified by Christ and His Apostles, 
 they rose as far above the ordinary moral standard of their 
 age as they sank below its highest intellectual aspirations. 
 Theirs was no barren faith : it constantly bore fruit in good 
 works, and its unseen operation was felt in that practical 
 spirit of philanthropy which stirred the heart of England, 
 while the dreams of Rousseau were plunging France into 
 anarchy, in the latter part of the. eighteenth century. This 
 is a debt which the nation owes to Wesley and his Evangelical 
 contemporaries, but which has never been fully acknowledged. 
 It was they who laboured most abundantly among the Chris- 
 tian ministers of their day to associate religion with humanity, 
 making it a true bond of sympathy between classes, teaching 
 rich men to regard the poor as their brothers in Christ, and 
 poor men to console themselves with a hope beyond the grave, 
 welcoming into their fellowship the very outcasts of society as 
 the chosen objects of Divine mercy; and thus insensibly com- 
 bating those perilous counsels of revenge and despair which 
 possessed the minds of the French peasantry at the same 
 epoch, and culminated in the French Revolution.
 
 333 
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 1 
 
 Two centuries have elapsed since the publication of Anthony- 
 Wood's ' History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford,' 
 yet no serious attempt has been made until now to improve 
 upon that wonderful, but cumbrous and singularly ill-arranged, 
 compilation of precious materials. More than one modern 
 antiquary has essayed to complete it by annotations or con- 
 tinuations ; but nearly all subsequent historians have been 
 content to quote it as an original authority, and Mr. Maxwell 
 Lyte is the first who has ventured to go behind Anthony 
 Wood, in the spirit of modern criticism, 2 by ransacking the 
 manuscripts of Bryan Twyne, and other unpublished docu- 
 ments in the Eecord Office and the great public libraries. 
 The result is a handsome volume of the highest value and 
 interest, which, however, must be regarded as an historical 
 torso, since it concludes with the death of Cardinal Wolsey. 
 In fact, Mr. Maxwell Lyte's History, in its present form, 
 would be more properly entitled a History of the University 
 in the Middle Ages, and we must still have recourse to 
 Anthony Wood for the more eventful periods of the Keformation 
 and the Civil Wars, in which the University played a foremost 
 part. But a cursory glance at Mr. Lyte's table of contents 
 is sufficient to show that a History of the University in the 
 
 1 A review of ' A History of the University of Oxford, from the Earliest 
 Times to the Year 1530,' by H. Maxwell Lyte, M.A., Deputy Keeper of the 
 Public Eecords. London. 1886. Eeprinted from ' Macmillan's Magazine.' 
 
 2 A curious proof of Anthony Wood's almost mechanical accuracy is afforded 
 by an entry in the ' Fasti Oxon.' stating that John Favour, of New College, 
 graduated as LL.B. on April 31, 1585 ; which impossible date turns out to be 
 textually copied from the original record.
 
 834 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Middle Ages is no dry record of merely academical transac- 
 tions. On the contrary, as he truly observes, the early clerks 
 of Oxford were anything but a body of sequestered students, 
 intent only upon the advancement of learning.' They were a 
 struggling and militant society, constantly in conflict with 
 external authorities claiming spiritual or civil jurisdiction 
 over them : swayed by every current of popular opinion : 
 waging an eternal warfare against the townsmen among 
 whom they lived ; and distracted among themselves by feuds 
 of race, language, political sentiment, and philosophical or 
 theological conviction. The well-known distich which de- 
 scribes Oxford as the hotbed of national strife was amply 
 justified by the facts ; and Mr. Lyte's readers are fully 
 rewarded for their patience in mastering the details of the 
 mediaeval curriculum by narratives of disorderly outbreaks 
 which make us marvel how, in so turbulent an atmosphere, 
 quiet study could be carried on at all. 
 
 It is not very easy to understand why the author should 
 have reserved for his ninth chapter an exhaustive examination 
 of the myth which assigned the foundation of the University, 
 and even of University College, to Alfred the Great. Suffice 
 it to say that not a shred of real historical evidence can be 
 produced in support of it. The passage which deceived 
 Camden, and was imported by him into Asser's ' Life of King 
 Alfred,' is now generally rejected as a forgery, dating, at 
 earliest, from the reign of Richard II. Other records, alleging 
 an equally ancient origin, are now believed to be of an equally 
 recent date ; and University College is more than suspected 
 of having fabricated the whole story, for its own purposes, 
 at the end of the fourteenth century. The Schools of Oxford, 
 out of which the University afterwards developed itself, can- 
 not be traced back with certainty to a period beyond the 
 reign of Henry I. Indeed, one of Mr. Lyte's critics regards 
 Giraldus Cambrensis's account of his visit in 1186 as the first 
 historical mention of them. But the authentic history of the 
 City in which these Schools grew up begins at least two 
 centuries earlier, and was so important during the age imrae-
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 335 
 
 diately preceding the Norman Conquest as to deserve a fuller 
 notice than Mr. Lyte awards to it. 
 
 Old as it is by comparison with the University, the City 
 of Oxford is new by comparison with London and other seats 
 of Roman colonies in Britain, or even with the older settle- 
 ments of Saxons. Its situation on a low ridge of gravelly 
 soil between the Cherwell and the Thames, protected by a 
 network of watercourses on every side but the north, might 
 well have recommended it for a station of the Eoman legions, 
 yet there is no record of its having been inhabited for cen- 
 turies after the Saxon Conquest. A few traces of British 
 occupation, as well as the remains of Roman villas, have been 
 found in the neighbourhood, but not on the actual site, of 
 Oxford : the Roman road from Dorchester to Bicester passes 
 near, but not through, it ; and in the long struggles between 
 the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, no siege of Oxford, or 
 battle for the possession of it, is recorded among the incidents 
 of any campaign. It is an equally significant fact that we hear 
 nothing of Oxford in connection with the Abbey of Dorchester, 
 but nine miles distant, where St. Birinus is stated to have esta- 
 blished his see in 624, as the first Bishop of the West Saxons. 
 
 The unwritten history of Oxford, indeed, really begins with 
 the foundation of St. Frideswide's Nunnery in the eighth 
 century, on the site now occupied by Christ Church ; for the 
 fact of this foundation in 727, or soon afterwards, admits 
 of no reasonable doubt, whatever legends may have since 
 obscured it. At this period Oxford, which had once been 
 enclosed within the Mercian dominions as they encroached 
 southward on Wessex, had again become a border-town of 
 Mercia. This position it finally lost when Egbert, who suc- 
 ceeded, in the year 800, extended his rule over all England. 
 The alleged establishment of a mint at Oxford by King Alfred 
 rests on the existence of coins with the inscription Orsnaforda, 
 or Oksnaforda, the interpretation of which has of late been 
 gravely disputed. The first undoubted mention of the City 
 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is under the date 912. ' This 
 year,' says the chronicler, ' died iEthered, ealdorman of the
 
 836 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Mercians, and King Eadward took possession of London, and 
 of Oxford, and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto.' 
 It is evident that Oxford already ranked as a place of some 
 importance, since King Edward the Elder thus separated it 
 from the province of Mercia, ruled by his sister, widow of 
 ./Ethered, and brought it, with London, under his own imme- 
 diate dominion. It is probable, but not certain, that its 
 natural defences were strengthened during this century by 
 the remarkable conical mound known as the Castle Hill, to 
 guard it against incursions of the Danes moving up the river, 
 the great border-stream of Wessex and Mercia.' It seems 
 to have been the first town erected on the Thames above 
 London, and must have increased in importance when London 
 and the Lower Thames valley were lost to England in the 
 Danish Wars. There are some reasons for conjecturing that 
 it had actually fallen into the hands of the Danes in the raids 
 which preceded the peace of Wedmore (878), and was then 
 restored. At all events, it appears to have been a fortified 
 place before the end, if not at the beginning, of the tenth 
 century, and to have become the capital of a shire, incor- 
 porated into the kingdom of Wessex, already on the eve of 
 embracing the whole kingdom of England. 
 
 It was at Oxford, and probably within the precincts of its 
 Castle, that yElfward, son of King Edward, died in 924, very 
 soon after his father. Oxford, however, can scarcely have 
 been a town of the first dignity, if it be true that a National 
 Gemot or Council was held, not there, but at Kirtlington, 
 eight or nine miles distant, in 977, the King and Archbishop 
 Dunstan being present ; and that, when the Bishop of Credi- 
 ton suddenly died there, his body was conveyed, not to St. 
 Frideswide's, but to St. Mary's at Abingdon. At the opening 
 of the next century, however (1002), it was forced into an 
 infamous notoriety by the massacre of Danes perpetrated 
 there by King Ethelred's order on St. Brice's day. In the 
 course of this massacre, which is known to us through a 
 charter of King Ethelred himself, the unfortunate Danes took 
 refuge in the tower, or church of St. Frideswide's; but the
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 337 
 
 people set fire to the wooden roof, and they were all burned 
 with the sacred edifice. It is hardly surprising to hear that, 
 seven years later (1009), the victorious Danes, having marched 
 through the Chiltern Woods, sacked and burned Oxford, return- 
 ing to their ships. They visited the country again in the 
 following year ; and in 1013 King Sweyn imposed ' his law. ' 
 on the men of Oxford and Winchester towns which; in this 
 century, are mentioned as almost in the same rank with 
 London. 
 
 In 1015 Oxford again became the meeting-place of a 
 National Gemot, and the scene of another treacherous murder. 
 As the English Chronicle informs us in its simple language, 
 1 there the Ealdorman Eadric insnared Sigeferth and Morkere, 
 the chief thanes in the Seven Burghs. He enticed them into 
 his chamber, and therein they were foully slain. And the 
 King then took all their possessions, and ordered Sigeferth's 
 widow to be taken, and brought to Malmesbury.' In the 
 following year Ethelred died, and was succeeded by his son 
 Edmund Ironside, who had seized the widow of Sigeferth and 
 made her his wife. After a short but stormy reign of a few 
 months only, Edmund suddenly died on his way back from 
 Gloucester to London. According to Henry of Huntingdon, he 
 was assassinated at Oxford by order of the same traitor, Eadric, 
 who had in the meantime submitted to Canute. Two years 
 after his accession (1018), Canute also held a Gemot at Oxford, 
 where ' the Danes and Angles were unanimous for Eadgar's ' 
 (that is, for English) ' law.' In Oxford, therefore, and doubt- 
 less within the precincts of Oxford Castle, were enacted several 
 tragical incidents of the Danish invasion, as well as the 
 solemn acceptance of English law, though under a Danish 
 ruler. Eighteen years later, on the death of Canute, in 1036, 
 another great National Gemot was held at Oxford, and elected 
 Harold Harefoot, under the influence of Northern thanes and 
 Londoners, opposed by Earl Godwine, who, however, secured 
 the dominion of Wessex for Harthacanute. In 1039, or 1040, 
 Harold Harefoot died at Oxford. Nothing is heard of the 
 City during the next twenty-six years, except that its tolls 
 
 z
 
 888 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 were regulated by law under Edward the Confessor, and that 
 Earl Harold, afterwards king, passed through it on an expe- 
 dition into Wales. In 1065, however, it once more becomes 
 memorable, as the place selected for the famous Gemot at 
 which Tostig, Harold's brother, was outlawed. Morcar was 
 made Earl of Northumberland, and the Danish law was 
 actually re-enacted, apparently at the instance of powerful 
 nobles, representing the Danish section of England, whom 
 Harold resolved to conciliate, against the wish of the King. 
 
 Considering the space which Oxford fills in the history of 
 he eleventh century, it is remarkable that it should have 
 played no important part in the great drama of the Norman 
 Conquest. It has been alleged, indeed, that it was besieged 
 and half-demolished by William the Conqueror ; but there is 
 no trustworthy evidence of such a siege, or of William having 
 even approached so near to Oxford as Wallingford the point 
 at which he is traditionally reported to have crossed the 
 Thames. What is certain is, that in 1071 the Castle of 
 Oxford was either built, or rebuilt on Saxon foundations, by 
 Robert D'Oilgi. This Baron is also reported to have built the 
 churches of St. George in the Castle, and St. Michael at the 
 North Gate, as well as that of St. Mary Magdalen and St. 
 Peter in the East, besides repairing other parish churches. 
 He was also the reputed builder of the original Hythe Bridge, 
 which probably formed the only western approach to the 
 City. 
 
 By far the most authentic description of Oxford under the 
 Conqueror is to be found in Domesday Book, which, however, 
 makes no reference to churches or other public buildings. In 
 this unique record Oxford, ' as well within the wall as with- 
 out,' is stated to have contained ' 243 houses paying geld, 
 and 478 so waste and destroyed that they cannot pay the 
 geld.' Much stress has been laid on this last statement, as 
 supporting the story of a recent siege ; but it has been ex- 
 plained, with greater probability, as the result of devastation 
 committed by the rebel mob of the North, headed by Edwin 
 ;ui(l Morcar, who had broken up the Gemot at Northampton
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AOES 339 
 
 in 1085, and ravaged the country as far as Oxford, where it 
 was ultimately held. At all events, we find but 243 houses 
 paying ' geld,' some of which are described as vasta ; and the 
 whole population of Oxford at that period has been estimated, 
 upon a review of the data afforded by Domesday Book, as not 
 exceeding one thousand. A large proportion of the registered 
 houses or ' mansions ' are styled ' mural,' because held subject 
 to an obligation to repair the wall perhaps no more than 
 an earthen rampart. Twenty-five of the mansions belonged 
 to the King : sixty-nine to the Archbishop and five Bishops, 
 among whom the Bishop of Lincoln was by far the largest 
 proprietor: twenty-eight to the Abbeys of Bury St. Edmunds, 
 Abingdon, and Eglesham : ninety-five to Bobert D'Oilgi and 
 eighteen other nobles of various degrees : eighteen to priests 
 and canons in Oxford ; and sixty-two to Oxford burgesses or 
 other private owners. Not the slightest allusion is made to 
 an University, or even to Schools. It is easy to fill up this 
 picture with graphic details of the petty Oxford community, 
 trafficking at markets and fairs, assessing its annual con- 
 tribution of 601. to the royal treasury at periodical town- 
 meetings, and holding courts or motes for various purposes, 
 one of which retained from an earlier age the singular name 
 of Portmannimot. But all such details must needs be imaginary 
 in the absence of contemporary records ; and it is not even 
 certain whether the City then contained only eight, or as 
 many as fifteen churches and chapels, or whether it had been 
 mapped out into parishes. There can be no doubt, however, 
 that in Port-Meadow, still the common pasture of the Oxford 
 freemen, we have a genuine survival of pre- Norman times ; or 
 that in the Sheriff of the City we have, under a misleading 
 name, a true representative of the ancient Port-reeve, whose 
 business it w r as, as it still is, to watch over this municipal 
 domain. 
 
 The later history of the mediaeval City is almost merged 
 in that of the University, and a large part of Mr. Lyte's 
 volume is devoted to an account of the incessant and almost 
 internecine struggles between the clerks and the townsmen. 
 
 z 2
 
 840 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The late Mr. J. E. Green, himself a native of Oxford, con- 
 demned the mediaeval University, in no measured terms, as 
 having crushed the liberties of the City. It is no less true, 
 however, that the City owed its prosperity and renown, 
 though not its existence, to its academical population ; and 
 that, when the strife between the rival communities was at 
 its height, the most powerful weapon of the University was 
 the threat of removal to some other provincial town. This 
 threat was partially carried out on more than one occasion. 
 In 1209, and again in 1239, there were secessions of discon- 
 tented Oxonians to Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. Soon 
 after the famous Parliament of Oxford in 1258, there arose a 
 desperate conflict, in which the clerks seem to have been 
 most to blame. The King withdrew his protection from 
 them; and a large body of Oxford scholars migrated to 
 Northampton, whither many refugees from Cambridge had 
 already betaken themselves in consequence of a similar riot. 
 They afterwards took an active part in defending North- 
 ampton against the Royal forces, but ultimately returned 
 to Oxford in 1264 or 1265, in deference to orders issued by 
 Simon de Montford in the King's name. So familiar was the 
 idea of migration from Oxford, that Walter de Merton, in 
 founding the first Oxford College, expressly authorised its 
 scholars to settle, if necessary, at some other place of general 
 education. The murderous affrays of 1279 and 1354, which 
 are graphically depicted by Mr. Lyte, were followed by a 
 temporary suspension of lectures and dispersion of students, 
 few of whom, however, appear to have settled elsewhere. 
 The memorable secession to Stamford, in 1334, was 
 chiefly the result of violent feuds between the northern and 
 southern ' nations ' within the University itself ; and the 
 memory of it was preserved in an oath against attending 
 lectures at Stamford, which, up to the year 1827, was ad- 
 ministered to all candidates for a degree. 
 
 In the meantime, the chronic disputes between the Uni- 
 versity and City had assumed so aggravated a form as fre- 
 quently to call for royal intervention. The very earliest
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 841 
 
 document preserved in the University archives records the 
 punishment of certain Oxford townspeople who had arrested 
 and hanged three clerks. But the most compendious state- 
 ment of the grievances alleged by the citizens is to be found 
 in a Eoyal award (scarcely noticed by Mr. Lyte) made by 
 Edward I. in 1290, which embodies certain articles of peace 
 then concluded between the parties. It begins with a mutual 
 renunciation of all past claims up to the date of the appeal, 
 and a promise on the part of the Mayor and Burgesses to 
 respect in future all the rights and privileges of the Uni- 
 versity under their Charter, which, however, they allege to 
 have been grievously strained. Their first complaint is that 
 the Chancellor of his own authority sets free prisoners who 
 have been lawfully arrested by the Aldermen and Bailiffs, and 
 cites the latter to appear before himself. To this complaint 
 the King replies by conceding this authority to the Chancellor 
 where one of the parties to a quarrel is a clerk, except in cases 
 of homicide, or ' mayhem,' and enjoins the Mayor to seek 
 redress for any abuse of such jurisdiction in the King's Courts. 
 The next complaint is that the Chancellor appropriates to 
 himself victuals forfeited under the statutes against fore- 
 stalling and regrating : of which the King disposes by giving 
 a concurrent jurisdiction to the Chancellor and the Mayor, 
 with a provision that victuals so forfeited shall be given to 
 the Hospital of St. John. A third complaint is that the 
 Chancellor imposes exorbitant fines and recognisances on 
 laymen (townspeople) imprisoned for trespasses against clerks, 
 as the condition of their liberation : a practice which the 
 King censures, ordering him to exact only reasonable sums 
 in future. A fourth complaint is that, whereas the Bailiffs 
 of the City are bound, under the University Charter, to be 
 sworn before the Chancellor in some ' common place,' they 
 are compelled by the University to take the oath in St. Mary's 
 Church, with no saving clause for their allegiance to the 
 Crown, and with an additional clause precluding them from 
 recourse to the King's Courts. This usurpation, as might be 
 expected, is absolutely condemned and prohibited by the King.
 
 342 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The fifth complaint is of the same nature as the second, but 
 relates to the forfeiture of unsound meat or fish, and is de- 
 cided in the same way, by assigning the forfeited victuals to 
 the Hospital of St. John. The sixth complaint is that the 
 ' chartered privilege of the University ' in respect of juris- 
 diction, which properly belongs only to scholars, is unduly 
 extended so as to embrace tailors, barbers, writers, parchment- 
 makers, and others, with their families. This point seems to 
 have been settled by agreement, without the King's interven- 
 tion, by defining the University privilege as including clerks 
 and their families, with servants and tradespeople, even of 
 the classes specified, if immediately engaged in waiting upon 
 clerks. The seventh complaint is that the University will 
 not allow townspeople to let their houses to scholars for a 
 term of less than ten years. This limitation is annulled for 
 the future by the King, who, however, forbids any collusion 
 whereby scholars may be turned out of houses tenanted by 
 them, or rents may be raised against them. The eighth 
 complaint is that townspeople are summoned before the Chan- 
 cellor at unreasonable times without due notice : in response 
 to which the King requires one day's notice to be given in 
 ordinary cases, but allows summary citations for violations 
 of the peace. The ninth complaint is that, at the suit of clerks, 
 the Chancellor deprives soldiers and other strangers passing 
 through Oxford of their riding-gear and trappings to make 
 satisfaction for debts contracted elsewhere. This arbitrary 
 power is restricted by the King to' debts contracted in Oxford. 
 The tenth complaint is that, when a layman is desperately 
 wounded by a clerk, the Chancellor demands the person of 
 the clerk to be surrendered to him, before it is known whether 
 the sufferer be wounded to death. On this point the Chan- 
 cellor is covertly rebuked by the King, and sternly enjoined 
 to desist from the rescue of clerks in such cases. The last 
 complaint is that the University insists upon houses rented 
 by scholars being valued every five, instead of every seven, 
 years : which complaint the King overrules, declaring five 
 years to be the period contemplated in the Charter. This
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 343 
 
 complaint, like the seventh, is, of course, a protest against the 
 ancient claim of the University to something like fixity of 
 rent, if not of tenure, for houses in the occupation of 
 scholars : a claim which proved the fertile source of innumer- 
 able quarrels. 
 
 The frequent reference in this award to the Chancellor 
 and Charter of the University opens out a long vista of anti- 
 quarian controversy, which runs through almost every chapter 
 of Mr. Lyte's history. The unlearned reader, however, may 
 be content to believe that, after all, ' the University of Oxford 
 did not spring into being in any particular year, or at the 
 bidding of any particular founder : it was not established by 
 any formal charter of incorporation. Taking its rise in a 
 small and obscure association of teachers and learners, it 
 developed spontaneously into a large and important body, 
 long before its existence was recognised by prince or by 
 prelate.' In the earliest writs and documents relating to 
 its privileges it is recognised as an existing institution ; but 
 perhaps the decree issued by Henry III. in 1244 may deserve 
 to be called ' the Magna Charta of the University,' since it 
 definitely ' created a special tribunal for the benefit of students, 
 and invested the Chancellor with a jurisdiction which no 
 legate or bishop could confer, and which no civil judge could 
 annul.' The origin of the Chancellor's office is enveloped in 
 much obscurity ; but he is clearly described, in a letter of the 
 Papal Legate, dated 1214, as the nominee of the Bishop of 
 Lincoln, whose vast diocese then embraced Oxford. It does 
 not follow that even then he was not elected by the University 
 Convocation ; and it is certain that soon afterwards he was 
 so elected, though his election long continued to be subject 
 to confirmation by the diocesan. Probably his gradual 
 absorption into the academic body was facilitated by the fact 
 that, unlike the Chancellor at Paris, he was not a member of 
 a Cathedral Chapter, or living under the eye of a resident 
 bishop. At all events, by the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury he was treated as an independent representative of the 
 University, while the Archdeacon of Oxford was the official
 
 344 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 deputy of the Bishop. A century later he was given full 
 jurisdiction, by the Pope himself, over all members of the 
 University, religious and lay, to the exclusion of the Arch- 
 deacon ; and it was solemnly ordained that his election by 
 the University itself should be sufficient, without the confirma- 
 tion of the diocesan. 
 
 Mr. Lyte observes a judicious reticence on the rise and 
 growth of the Proctorial authority. Proctors are associated 
 with the Chancellor, as delegates of the University, in letters- 
 patent of 1248 ; but it does not appear what their original 
 functions were, or how they were appointed. Anthony Wood 
 tells us that, in 1343, the University agreed that one Proctor 
 should always be a Northerner, and the other a Southerner, 
 for the purpose of scrutinising the votes at elections of the 
 Chancellor. On the other hand, at the University of Paris 
 the Proctors specially represented from the very first the four 
 ' nations ' into which the Faculty of Arts was divided, the 
 Deans being the chosen officers of the Faculties as such. 
 Considering that the University of Paris was the elder sister, 
 at least, if not the mother, of the English university, this 
 analogy raises a strong presumption in favour of the Proctors 
 being at first representatives of the two nations into which 
 the Oxford ' Artists ' were divided. Such a presumption de- 
 rives some confirmation from an expression found in a letter 
 of Adam Marsh, written in 1253, where ' duo Rectores pro 
 Artistis' are mentioned as subscribing a statute against the 
 Friars. Mr. Lyte identifies these two Rectors with the Proc- 
 tors, and at Cambridge the phrase ' Rectores sire Proctores ' 
 was common in the Middle Ages. But, as Proctors are spe- 
 cifically named in an University Ordinance of about the 
 middle of the thirteenth century, it is perhaps safer to regard 
 them generally as officers elected by the whole body of 
 graduates, filling a place not unlike that of the Rector at other 
 Universities, but more particularly charged with the financial 
 duties of stewards and collectors. The importance attached 
 to such duties, as compared with the highest objects of 
 education and learning, is a distinctive feature of Academical
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 345 
 
 statutes in the Middle Ages. Like the primitive Church, the 
 primitive University was essentially a society of men strug- 
 gling for their livelihood ; and the great movements of thought 
 which agitated Oxford in the age of the Schoolmen and of 
 Wyclif left fainter traces in University legislation than 
 squabbles with the City over pecuniary rights, and conflicts 
 between the secular and regular clergy, in which material 
 interests were very largely involved. 
 
 These conflicts, indeed, engrossed much of the internal life, 
 and wasted much of the energy, of the University during the 
 whole period of the Middle Ages. Probably the claustral schools 
 of the Benedictines were the cradle of Academical study ; but 
 the University had already outgrown its infancy, and had deve- 
 loped a vigorous secular teaching before the establishment of 
 the Mendicant Friars at Oxford in the early part of the thirteenth 
 century. During the remainder of that century, these Orders, 
 encouraged by the great Eobert Grostete, supplied the Uni- 
 versity with its most eminent lecturers ; and it is the special glory 
 of the Franciscans to have produced in the same age Adam 
 Marsh and Eoger Bacon. But the secular clerks soon became 
 jealous of the Friars, partly because they sought to obtain 
 degrees in theology without satisfying the requirements of the 
 Arts Faculty, which at Oxford, no less than at Paris, claimed 
 a paramount ascendancy ; and partly because they were 
 constantly decoying young students into the assumption of 
 monastic vows. Merton, the first of Oxford Colleges, was ex- 
 pressly founded by a Bishop of Bochester as a seminary for 
 the secular clergy, and no 'religious ' person could be admitted 
 to its benefits. The same policy was adopted by almost all 
 the other founders of Colleges, and the gradual rise of Colleges 
 marked the downfall of monastic influence. Mr. Lyte seems 
 to have undervalued the importance of Colleges in the medi- 
 aeval University, when he says that they did not become 
 predominant until near the end of the fifteenth century. No 
 doubt it was not until 1432 that ' chamber-dekyns,' or non- 
 collegiate students, were formally abolished by statute, and for 
 many years afterwards a majority of students may have been
 
 346 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 lodged in Halls rather than in Colleges. But it is certain that 
 even in the fourteenth century, when the number of Colleges 
 rose from three only to seven, they were already the dominant 
 element in the University. Out of about sixty-eight Proctors 
 who are known to have held office in that century, all but 
 eighteen were entered as members of a College; and it is 
 highly probable that in several of these eighteen cases the 
 name of the College was accidentally omitted. The propor- 
 tion of Chancellors and Vice -Chancellors (or Commissaries) 
 known to have been members of Colleges is much smaller in 
 the earlier part of the century, but very considerable in the 
 later part. Mr. Lyte himself, with a happy inconsistency, 
 dwells at great length on the history of each collegiate found- 
 ation, and furnishes elaborate extracts of their statutes, which 
 are by no means the least readable or instructive part of his 
 work. 
 
 Few readers will care to master the chapters which deal 
 in detail with the organisation of studies and disputations in 
 the University of the Schoolmen. Those who are familiar 
 with the restless multiplication and amendment of examina- 
 tion-statutes in modern Oxford will be slow to believe in the 
 existence at any one time of a symmetrical or uniform 
 working-system, and will readily surmise that various 
 arrangements for lectures and degrees, commonly described as 
 successive, were really in simultaneous operation. The broad 
 features of the mediaeval curriculum may, however, be 
 concisely stated. Neither the University nor the Colleges 
 enforced any entrance-examination; and Freshmen had to 
 undergo a preliminary training in grammar, then regarded 
 as the basis of all knowledge. The subsequent course of in- 
 struction was mainly logical. But it is material to observe 
 that, in that age, logic, in common with most of the other 
 ' Arts,' represented an accomplishment deemed to be useful. 
 It was not only as an intellectual discipline, but as giving 
 the power of reading and writing Latin, that grammar was 
 assiduously taught. It was as instruments of controversy 
 and persuasion that logic and rhetoric were cultivated. It was
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 847 
 
 chiefly for the sake of practical astronomy, closely allied to 
 astrology, that mathematical lore was valued. Logic derived 
 an additional advantage from its supplying the method by 
 which proficiency in all other studies was tested, and the 
 mediaeval disputations were the prototype of modern examina- 
 tions. Little or no attention was given to scholarship, in the 
 ordinary sense, to literary culture, or to the acquisition of 
 useful knowledge. The grand aim of education was to sharpen 
 the logical powers, and so to prepare the mind for instruction 
 in the higher professional Faculties law, medicine, and, 
 above all, theology which mediaeval thinkers agreed in re- 
 cognising as the crown of all the sciences. The ' three philo- 
 sophies ' natural, moral, and metaphysical were mainly 
 reserved for the interval of three years between ' determina- 
 tion,' which qualified a student for the degree of Bachelor, 
 and ' inception,' which constituted him a Master, and con- 
 ferred on him the lucrative privilege of teaching. 
 
 This system, if such it can be called, was finally over- 
 thrown by the Eeformation ; but it was undermined by the 
 Eenaissance, which made itself felt at Oxford earlier than 
 is usually supposed. Mr. Lyte connects this movement with 
 the return of the Papal Court to Eome after the Great Schism, 
 and his description of it, though somewhat too biographical, 
 is extremely interesting. It may be true, as he says, that 
 ' no attempt was made in England to revive the study of 
 classical literature before the reign of Henry VII.' But Mr. 
 Lyte himself mentions five more or less eminent students 
 from Oxford who attended the lectures of Guarino at Ferrara 
 in the first half of the fifteenth century, and became collectors 
 of classical books. 
 
 The effect of the Eenaissance in modifying the studies of 
 Oxford may be illustrated by a comparison between the con- 
 tents of College libraries at the end of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries respectively. A very interesting catalogue 
 of the Oriel College Library in the year 1375 has lately been 
 published. From this it appears to have consisted almost 
 entirely of manuals on grammar, logic, philosophy, theology,
 
 348 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and law, both canon and civil the studies cultivated in the 
 various Faculties. Translations of Aristotle, copies of the 
 Digest and the Code, works of Peter Lombard, Thomas 
 Aquinas and Duns Scotus, treatises of Augustine, Gregory, 
 and other standard divines, with a Bible, and a Latin edition 
 of Euclid, make up the staple of this collection. Literature 
 is conspicuous by its absence, and the Classics are represented 
 by ' Macrobius de sompno Scipionis.' There is, unhappily, no 
 record of the books contributed by William Rede and Simon 
 Bredon to form the Merton Library about the year 1376 ; but 
 the few books which are specifically named among the many 
 said to have been presented by Fellows of Merton during 
 the same period are of an exactly similar character. On the 
 other hand, a catalogue of Lincoln College Library, compiled 
 about 1474, or a century later, includes a large number of 
 the Latin Classics, such as Virgil, Cicero, Livy, Terence, 
 Plautus, Horace, and Juvenal. The University Register 
 shows that, so far back as 1448, the Georgics of Virgil were 
 the subject of University lectures ; and in the catalogues of 
 books given to the University by Humphrey, Duke of Glou- 
 cester, in 1439 and 1443, we find, among tomes of scholastic 
 lore, Cicero's Orations and Epistles, Livy, Suetonius, Ovid, 
 Pliny, Terence, and an oration of iEschines, with Dante, 
 Boccaccio, and Petrarch. The University system of disputa- 
 tions and examinations was still based on the old learning, 
 but the new learning had already penetrated into the libra- 
 ries. It was soon to receive an impulse from the efforts of 
 Erasmus and his fellow-labourers, which, after a brief re- 
 action, ultimately secured for Latin and Greek scholarship 
 a supremacy in Oxford education as complete as that once 
 held by scholastic logic, until it was once more challenged 
 by the progress of philosophy, history, and natural science. 
 
 Though rich in illustrations of mediaeval life and manners, 
 the history of the University before the Reformation has few 
 points of contact with the great political events of that 
 romantic period. The clerks of Oxford were not concerned 
 with the escape of Matilda from Oxford Castle, or with the
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 349 
 
 two Councils held there by Stephen, or with the Parliament 
 of 1258, which gave its name to the Provisions of Oxford, or 
 with the frequent residence of the Court at Woodstock. The 
 Barons' War of the thirteenth century, the Scotch and French 
 Wars of the next two centuries, the Peasants' Revolt, with its 
 sequel in the insurrection of Jack Cade, the Wars of the 
 Roses, and the constitutional reaction under the Tudors, left 
 no trace on academical life, and scarcely find a record in 
 Academical annals. The great and direct influence which the 
 University was destined to exercise on the State Church in the 
 sixteenth, and on the State itself in the seventeenth century, 
 was as yet undeveloped and unrealised. But the depth and 
 extent of its influence upon the world of thought and belief 
 can hardly be overestimated. There were trained most of 
 the great ecclesiastics who became, not only the prelates, but 
 the Chancellors and statesmen, of the Middle Ages. There 
 natural science found its earliest apostle in Roger Bacon, and 
 scholastic philosophy two of its profoundest exponents in 
 Duns Scotus and Bradwardine. There William of Ockham 
 is believed to have raised the standard of revolt against Papal 
 authority in matters of faith, and to have proclaimed the 
 severance of logic from theology. There John Wyclif (to 
 whose career Mr. Lyte devotes an admirable chapter) as- 
 suredly became the pioneer of the Lollard movement, and 
 anticipated by four generations several of the doctrines after- 
 wards preached by Luther. The ignorant statement of Huber, 
 that ' Oxford was nowhere to be found in the great Church 
 Councils of the fifteenth century,' is almost the reverse of the 
 fact. True it is that it no longer eclipsed Paris, as it had in 
 the golden age before the great pestilence, and that its part 
 in ecclesiastical affairs was secondary to that played by the 
 leading University of Western Christendom. But it steadily 
 and successfully resisted the scheme proposed by the Uni- 
 versity of Paris for ending the Great Schism, insisting that a 
 General Council must be summoned. This General Council, 
 which met at Pisa in 1409, deposed both the rival Popes, and 
 procured the election of a Friar who had taken a Bachelor
 
 350 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 of Divinity's degree at Oxford. At the Council of Constance, 
 held in 1414, the University of Oxford was ably represented ; 
 and Henry of Abingdon, afterwards Warden of Merton, pro- 
 duced a great impression by his sermon advocating a reforma- 
 tion of the Church. The University was specially invited 
 to appear by its delegates at the Council of Basle in 1431 ; 
 and though it was reduced to solicit contributions towards 
 the expense of the mission, it found a worthy representative 
 in John Kemp, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Poor 
 as it was, it maintained a small public library when such 
 institutions were still unknown in Italy, which, enriched by 
 the noble benefaction of Duke Humphrey, was among the 
 marvels of the age before the invention of printing. If 
 Oxford was not the place at which this momentous invention 
 was first adopted in England, it certainly possessed one of 
 the very earliest presses, from which issued the first classical 
 book printed in England a significant emblem of the coming 
 Renaissance, in which the University took so leading a part. 
 Two conclusive proofs of the position occupied by the Uni- 
 versity at the beginning of the sixteenth century are the 
 superb projects of Cardinal Wolsey for organising there a 
 propaganda of ' the new literature in the service of the old 
 Church ' ; and the unscrupulous efforts of Henry VIII. to 
 obtain decrees from the Oxford Convocation in favour of the 
 Divorce and the Royal Supremacy. 
 
 But we are here on the confines of the Reformation-period, 
 and almost beyond the border-line of the Middle Ages, which 
 embrace the infancy and youth of the University. Hence- 
 forth its political and social importance was to increase, and 
 a more conspicuous place was reserved for it in the general 
 history of England. But its original character was to be 
 changed. It was no longer to share with Cambridge an 
 almost exclusive monopoly of English education in all its 
 departments, from the highest realms of philosophical specu- 
 lation to the simplest rudiments of grammar. It was no 
 longer to be the schola secuiulu ecclrsia in Europe ; and the 
 intellectual centre of gravity in England was inevitably to
 
 OXFORD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 351 
 
 be shifted to the commercial and political centre of the 
 kingdom, in the Metropolis itself. In the ampler and brighter 
 day now dawning upon the nation, the light of scholastic 
 learning, so long kept alive at Oxford, could not fail to wax 
 pale and dim. In becoming secularised, the University for- 
 feited that unique prestige which it derived from the trans- 
 cendent authority of the mediaeval Church. It was still to 
 become a great power in the State, and to educate a long 
 succession of scholars and gentleman for service in Parlia- 
 ment, in the sacred ministry, and in the learned professions. 
 But its empire over the national mind was no longer to be 
 so far-reaching, and its place in the national life was never 
 again to be so imposing, as it had been in the Middle Ages.
 
 352 
 
 THE PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 Three Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Grea t Britain 
 in April, 1890. 
 
 The University of Oxford first emerges into history at the 
 close of the twelfth century. Whether its origin is to be 
 sought in the monastic seminaries of St. Frideswide's and 
 Oseney, or in a migration from the University of Paris ; and 
 whether or not we believe that Robert Pullus lectured on 
 Theology in 1133, and Vacarius on Roman law in 1149, the 
 Schools of Oxford had evidently not acquired the character of 
 an University until the reign of Henry II., and did not acquire 
 the name of an University until the following century. The 
 most sceptical of modern critics admit the truth of the positive 
 statement, made by Giraldus Cambrensis, that he publicly read 
 at Oxford his work on the Topography of Ireland in the year 
 1186 or 1187. If we can trust his further assertion, that the 
 most learned and famous of the English clergy were then to 
 bo found at Oxford, and if ' the doctors of the different 
 faculties,' whom he professes to have feasted, were actually 
 possessors of regular degrees, we must believe the Academical 
 system to have reached a considerable maturity long before 
 popes or kings took cognisance of it. 
 
 In such an age, it is true, such an institution as the infant 
 University could never have organised itself permanently 
 without active encouragement from the Crown, as well as 
 from the Church. At the same time, its early growth appears 
 to have been essentially spontaneous, and far more indepen-
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 353 
 
 dent than we might have expected, both of ecclesiastical control 
 and of Eoyal patronage. The ' Schools of Oxford,' which ulti- 
 mately became incorporated into ' The University of Oxford,' 
 were not claustral but secular, and centred in a particular 
 quarter of the city, removed from the great religious houses. 
 The lecturers were, doubtless, ' clerks,' in the mediaeval sense, 
 but mostly private adventurers, owing allegiance to no monas- 
 tic superior. There was no resident Bishop of Oxford, and no 
 Chancellor of an Oxford Cathedral, under whose superintend- 
 ency they could be directly placed, like their brethren in the 
 University of Paris. The one paramount authority which 
 they recognised was that of their diocesan, the Bishop of 
 Lincoln ; but he lived at a safe distance, and the Archdeacon 
 of Oxford was the highest resident functionary of the Church. 
 Still less were the ' Schools of Oxford ' overshadowed, like those 
 of Paris, by the feudal and official hierarchy of a great metro- 
 polis. The authorities of the Academical body had, practically, 
 no competitors but the authorities of the City, which received 
 its first charter just before the first official recognition of the 
 Oxford clerks as a privileged society, under the special protec- 
 tion of the Pope. This was occasioned by a murderous out- 
 rage of the townspeople on the students, which occurred in 
 1209. Five years later the Papal Legate, in relieving the City 
 from an interdict the penalty of this outrage placed the 
 scholars expressly under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of 
 Lincoln, or the Archdeacon, or his official, or the Chancellor 
 set over them by the Bishop of Lincoln. It is probable, how- 
 ever, that even then, and certain that soon afterwards, the 
 Chancellor was not a mere episcopal officer, but elected by the 
 scholars, though confirmed by the Bishop. Finally, in 1244, 
 a Boyal decree invested the Chancellor of the University with 
 a substantive jurisdiction, not derived from the Bishop, and 
 not subject to civil tribunals. This decree has been justly 
 called the Magna Charta of the University ; but as the Great 
 Charter itself purported to define and extend rights already 
 existing, so the Chancellor and scholars of the University are 
 here treated as a corporate and self-governing body, which 
 
 A A
 
 354 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 already enjoyed important franchises under previous Ordin- 
 ances of the Crown. 
 
 The famous University thus developed, by stages no longer 
 to be traced by the historian, out of schools as humble 
 as those which languished under the shadow of many a 
 cathedral, was destined to fill a larger space in the medieval 
 history of England than any corporation, except only the City 
 of London. And yet, at first sight, the seed once sown by 
 unknown hands in the little town of Oxford might seem to 
 have been favoured by no special advantages of soil or climate. 
 But the earlier annals of that town may help us to under- 
 stand why it became the home of a great University, while the 
 schools of Canterbury, Winchester, and Peterborough fell into 
 decay and oblivion. In the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, and 
 still more in the long struggle with the Danes, its situation, 
 on the great border-stream of Wessex and Mercia, had given 
 it a high degree of strategical importance. There were held 
 three National Councils, at least, of the highest interest ; there 
 were enacted sundry tragical scenes of the Danish invasion ; 
 there English law was solemnly accepted under the Danish 
 king, Canute ; and there Danish law was adopted once more 
 in the year before the Conquest. There had resided Edmund 
 Ironside, Canute, and Harold Harefoot, who actually died in 
 the City ; while Edward the Confessor was born in the neigh- 
 bouring village of Islip. There was erected a castle to 
 command the passage of the river by Robert D'Oilgi, one of 
 the Conqueror's barons ; and there a country palace, called 
 Beaumont, was built for Henry I., with a bowling-green and 
 gardens, which became a favourite resort of the earlier 
 Norman kings. A hunting-seat and park, serving the purpose 
 of a menagerie, had already been established at Woodstock, 
 and the surrounding country, then covered with forest, was 
 a paradise for Norman sportsmen. Council after Council was 
 held at Oxford in the twelfth century ; its Castle is memorable 
 for the winter siege conducted by Stephen and the romantic 
 escape of the Empress Maud ; Henry II. lived much at 
 Woodstock and Beaumont, and granted the citizens of Oxford
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 355 
 
 a charter which placed it in a position second only to that of 
 London ; Eichard I., himself born at Beaumont, enlarged 
 this charter just before going on the Crusade ; John, born 
 at Woodstock, often visited Oxford, and summoned National 
 Assemblies to meet there on several great occasions. The City 
 of Oxford figures in many leading events of Henry III.'s 
 reign, and that unfortunate king seems to have shown more 
 wisdom in his frequent regulations of University matters 
 than he did in his government of England. Such facts as 
 these alone go far to explain the influences under which the 
 obscure Schools of Oxford expanded into an University. In 
 days when there was no real capital of England, and when 
 the governing power was practically lodged in the hands of 
 the King and his Council, wherever they might be assembled, 
 the attractions of Oxford to ambitious students must have 
 quite eclipsed those of older and wealthier towns seldom 
 honoured by the presence of a Court. 
 
 But there can be no doubt that Oxford also owed much to 
 its geographical position, which rendered it not only a natural 
 stronghold, but a place easily accessible by water or road from 
 the more populous districts of central, southern, and western 
 England. In this respect, neither Bristol nor any one of the 
 great cathedral towns in these districts could bear comparison 
 with it ; and if Cambridge gradually became a worthy rival, 
 it was partly by virtue of like advantages over great com- 
 mercial and ecclesiastical centres of the eastern counties, such 
 as Norwich or Lincoln. The very reasons which had origin- 
 ally made Oxford a resort of kings, a mustering-place of 
 armies, and a meeting-place of National Councils, continued 
 to operate for the benefit of its Schools, until they claimed 
 the guardianship of the Pope, and earned the respect of 
 Western Christendom. The disorders which befel the Uni- 
 versity of Paris in 1229, and caused its temporary dispersion, 
 largely contributed to strengthen the ascendancy of Oxford. 
 Henry III., skilfully profiting by this misfortune, encouraged 
 a migration to England, and succeeded in inducing several 
 French teachers of eminence, with many of their scholars, to 
 
 A A 2
 
 856 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 settle in the new English University. But it would be unjust 
 not to acknowledge the debt of the University to monastic 
 Orders in its infancy, and, still more, to the Friars in the next 
 stage of its development. Without the shelter provided by 
 religious houses, the best class of its earliest students might 
 never have sought education there. Without the motive 
 power supplied by the educational zeal of the Friars, its 
 intellectual life would certainly have been much feebler in the 
 thirteenth century especially during that interval between 
 the death of Eobert Grostete, the great reforming Bishop of 
 Lincoln, and the rise of Colleges, dating from the foundation 
 of Merton in 1274. It was the Dominicans who first en- 
 listed the Aristotelian philosophy in the service of the Church ; 
 it was the Franciscans who adopted, if they did not pro- 
 duce, the two greatest leaders of Oxford thought in the 
 thirteenth century Roger Bacon and Eobert Grostete. 
 When the College system was initiated by Walter de 
 Merton, the University system was fully organised, and 
 the convents, as well as the Halls, were full of eager students. 
 What the Colleges provided was, not so much new aids 
 or incentives to study, as a tranquil retreat for adult 
 scholars, and the discipline of a well-regulated home for the 
 boys who then formed so large a part of the Academical 
 society. 
 
 This is a feature of the mediaeval University which is 
 seldom adequately realised. Oxford was then, not only the 
 chief training-school of the more learned clerks destined for 
 the secular priesthood ; it was also the great high-school of 
 half the country. Thousands of schoolboys were learning 
 grammar there, while their seniors were being exercised in 
 logical disputations before and after attaining the Bachelor's 
 degree, and a much smaller number of Masters were engaged 
 in scholastic or scientific research. Even the average age of 
 the University and College lecturers was probably much lower 
 than it now is, and the governing, as well as the teaching 
 power, was mainly vested in the so-called Regents, or junior 
 Masters of Arts. But the Academical society of that age,
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 857 
 
 consisting so largely of very young men, was, for another 
 reason, thoroughly democratic. The nobility and country- 
 gentry were mostly engrossed by warlike pursuits, and the 
 young squire was trained in castles rather than in College 
 lecture-rooms. The richer burghers and higher trading- 
 classes troubled themselves about learning as little as the 
 barons and their retainers. It was the lower-middle class in 
 town and country, and even the peasantry, from which 
 Oxford students were chiefly drawn ; and, like the Maynooth 
 students of our own time, they retained in an intensified 
 form the prejudices of their ancestry. Latin was the only 
 literary tongue, and no one could properly keep the accounts 
 of a petty manor without a certain knowledge of it, which 
 could be acquired most readily at the University. Many of 
 those who came there in search of such humble professional 
 qualifications, actually begged their way to Oxford, and all the 
 evidence to be derived from University and College records 
 proves conclusively that the common herd of students, inmates 
 of Halls and inns and lodging houses, lived in a state of great 
 poverty. Crowded together in miserable sleeping-rooms and 
 lecture-rooms, often rendering more or less menial services 
 in return for their instruction, and sometimes rescued from 
 insolvency by loans from the University chest, they knew 
 nothing of domestic care or comfort, and were strangers to all 
 those frank and generous relations which naturally spring up 
 among young Englishmen, especially of gentle birth, in the 
 kindly intercourse of modern College life. 
 
 And here I will venture to borrow a passage from my own 
 History of the University : 
 
 Under such conditions, and in such a society, it was utterly 
 impossible that education or learning could flourish generally, 
 according to our modern ideas ; and yet it is certain that a restless 
 and even feverish activity of speculation prevailed within an inner 
 circle of philosophical spirits, to which there are few parallels in the 
 history of thought. If their treasury of knowledge was scanty in 
 the extreme, yet the range of their studies was truly sublime, both 
 in its aims and in its orbit. In the chilly squalor of uncarpeted
 
 358 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 and unwarmed chambers, by the light of narrow and unglazed 
 casements, or the gleam of flickering oil-lamps, poring over dusky 
 manuscripts hardly to be deciphered by modern eyesight, undisturbed 
 by the boisterous din of riot and revelry without, men of humble 
 birth, and dependent on charity for bare subsistence, but with a 
 noble self-confidence transcending that of Bacon or of Newton, 
 thought out and copied out those subtle masterpieces of mediaeval 
 lore purporting to unveil the hidden laws of Nature as well as the 
 dark counsels of Providence and the secrets of human destiny, 
 which frivolous and baseless as they may appear under the scrutiny 
 of a later criticism must still be ranked among the grandest 
 achievements of speculative reason. We must remember that 
 archery and other outdoor sports were then mostly in the nature of 
 martial exercises, reserved for the warlike classes, while music and 
 the fine arts were all but unknown, and the sedentary labour of the 
 student was relieved neither by the athletic nor by the aesthetic 
 pastimes of our own more favoured age. Thus, driven inward upon 
 itself, the fire of intellectual ambition burned with a tenfold intensity, 
 and it was tempered by no such humility as the infinite range of 
 modern science imposes on the boldest of its disciples. In many a 
 nightly vigil, and in many a lonely ramble over the wild hillsides 
 beyond Cowley and Hincksey, or along the riversides between 
 Oodstow and Iffley, these pioneers of philosophical research, to 
 whom alchemy was chemistry, and astronomy but the key to 
 astrology, constantly pursued their hopeless quest of Wisdom as it 
 was dimly conceived by the patriarch Job, pressing Aristotle into 
 the service of mediaeval theology which they regarded as the science 
 of sciences and inventing a mysterious phraseology which to us 
 has lost its meaning, but which they mistook for solid knowledge, 
 fondly imagining that it might lead them upward to some primary 
 law governing the whole realm of matter and of mind. They 
 failed, indeed, because success was hopeless; but their very failure 
 paved the way for the * new knowledge ' of the next century, and 
 cleared the ground for the methods and discoveries which have 
 made other names immortal. 
 
 It is no less certain that, while it was regarded by Popes 
 and Bishops as an integral part of the vast Church-system 
 xcltola secunda ecclcsice the mediaeval University maintained 
 throughout an attitude of proud independence towards eccle- 
 siastical superiors. That august sacerdotal power, armed
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 859 
 
 with the terrors of the unseen world, before which princes 
 and nobles were often forced to bow, treated Oxford University 
 less as a dutiful handmaid than as a potent ally. One of the 
 earliest events in its annals is the interdict imposed, in 1238, 
 by the Papal Legate, Otho, upon the clerks of Oxford, in 
 consequence of an outrage committed upon him by some 
 disorderly students ; and in this case the cause of the University 
 was stoutly maintained against him by Robert Grostete and 
 other English Bishops. In 1254 Innocent IV. exempted the 
 masters and scholars from vexatious appeals to Papal juris- 
 diction. About the same time, both the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury and the King himself invited the judgment of the 
 University on controversies between themselves and certain 
 Bishops ; while in 1257 the liberties of the University were 
 defended before the King at St. Albans against its own para- 
 mount superior, the Bishop of Lincoln. In the beginning of 
 the next century, Oxford signalised itself by vigorous protests 
 against the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, already dis- 
 credited by its subjection to French influence at Avignon. 
 Soon afterwards the University triumphed, after along struggle, 
 over the non-resident Cardinal Archdeacon De Mota, who had 
 assumed to exercise jurisdiction through local agents. The 
 Cardinal invoked the authority of the Pope ; the University 
 was supported effectively by Edward II. and Edward III. 
 Finally, in 1368, a Bull of Pope Urban solemnly ratified the 
 right of the University to elect its own Chancellor, without 
 seeking the confirmation of its diocesan, the Bishop of Lincoln. 
 Meanwhile, the University had been engaged for a whole 
 century in vigorously combating the encroachments of the 
 Mendicant Orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, who not 
 only succeeded in diverting pupils from the Academical Schools 
 into their own more commodious lecture-rooms, but claimed 
 for their theological students the privilege of exemption from 
 regular exercises in Arts. So far back as 1253, the Oxford 
 Masters of Arts had defeated these pretensions, which had 
 been partially sanctioned by the University of Paris ; but the 
 practice of seducing young students into taking religious vows
 
 360 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 seems to have continued until it was decisively checked by an 
 University statute of Edward III.'s reign. The Pope vainly 
 interfered on behalf of the regular clergy, who, however, 
 succeeded in inducing Parliament to annul the obnoxious 
 statute. But Parliament also annulled any Papal Bulls to be 
 procured by the Friars which might prejudice the rights of 
 the University, and Edward III. issued a Royal order that the 
 Chancellor of Oxford should not be summoned to appear 
 before the Roman Court. 
 
 The place of the University in English history during the 
 Middle Ages must, of course, be mainly determined by its 
 intellectual influence, for with State affairs, as then under- 
 stood, it had no concern whatever. The extent of its 
 influence on the intellectual life of the nation may be 
 measured by the part that it played at three great epochs 
 the age of the Schoolmen, the age of Wyclif, and the age of 
 the Renaissance. 
 
 In his brilliant description of the Scholastic Philosophy, 
 Dean Milman points out that two out of the five greatest 
 Schoolmen were Englishmen, and both of these are claimed 
 by the University of Oxford. It cannot, indeed, be proved 
 with absolute certainty that either of these Duns Scotus, or 
 "William of Ockham was actually educated at Oxford. The 
 evidence of the former having been a Fellow of Merton is 
 not conclusive, and the records of that College do not support 
 the statement, long received as indubitable, that Ockham, too, 
 was among its early Fellows. But that Oxford was the chief 
 stronghold of Scholasticism in England, and the chief battle- 
 ground of the famous but utterly futile controversy between 
 the Nominalists and Realists, admits of no doubt at all. 
 Several writers of the highest eminence in the second rank 
 of Schoolmen are known to have studied or lectured there. 
 One of these, Alexander de Hales, belongs to the age before 
 the rise of Colleges. Two others Walter Burley, who earned 
 the enviable title of Doctor Planus, or J'trspiaius, and Thomas 
 Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury were certainly 
 Fellows of Merton, to whose members Bradwardine expressly
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 861 
 
 dedicates his great treatise, De Causa Dei.' Mediaeval Theo- 
 logy may almost be said to have ultimately formulated itself 
 in the Schools of Oxford, which eclipsed even those of Paris 
 in the fourteenth century ; and the boldness of speculation 
 there encouraged made itself sensibly felt, not only in the 
 doctrinal teaching of English Churchmen, but in the resolute 
 stand made by the English Church against the pretensions of 
 the Holy See. But the Oxford of the Schoolmen also pro- 
 duced a scholar and philosopher of no merely scholastic order, 
 whose fame now towers above that of all his philosophical 
 contemporaries. While the Franciscan School at Oxford was 
 earning an European reputation in Theology and scholastic 
 lore under the great Friar, Adam Marsh, Koger Bacon, him- 
 self a Franciscan, was anticipating modern scholarship by 
 his superiority to learned dogmatism, and modern science 
 by his independent researches in astronomy and optics, 
 mechanics and chemistry. The spirit represented and 
 kindled at Oxford by Boger Bacon never wholly died out 
 there until it was quickened into new life by the Renaissance 
 and the Beformation. A large number of advanced students in 
 the University are known to have prosecuted lifelong studies 
 in mathematics and physics during the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, and the ancient library of Merton College alone 
 contained numerous manuscripts on these subjects written or 
 presented by resident Fellows. The wholesale destruction of 
 such manuscripts, as well as of those relating to school- 
 divinity, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., has 
 made it impossible to estimate the full extent and nature of 
 the knowledge attained by Oxford men of science in the 
 Middle Ages. Doubtless it yielded few direct fruits in the 
 shape of discoveries or inventions, but it cannot have been 
 wholly barren in its effect on the Academical mind ; and the 
 eminently liberal tone of English thought, even before the 
 Renaissance, may probably have been due, in some degree, 
 to Boger Bacon and his almost forgotten successors. 
 
 But, of all the English Schoolmen, the one whose career 
 most properly belongs to the history of Oxford is the last
 
 862 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 and most illustrious of them all John Wyclif, ' the Evangelical 
 Doctor' of the fourteenth century. Three Colleges have 
 claimed the honour of enrolling this remarkable man among 
 their alumni, and not without historical warrant. It is highly 
 probable that he was a Fellow of Merton, and certain that he 
 was at one time Master of Balliol, at another, an inmate, 
 though not a member, of Queen's ; while there is at least good 
 reason to believe that he was the first Warden of Canterbury 
 College, since absorbed into Christ Church. It is known that 
 he also held various benefices in the country. But the chief 
 work of his life was carried on at Oxford, where he formed a 
 School of his own, and was held in the highest honour. There 
 his notable sermons were preached, and there his marvellous 
 skill in disputation was matured. Thence he was summoned, 
 in 1377, to appear before the Convocation of Canterbury, and 
 there, under a Papal Bull issued soon afterwards, he was to be 
 cited to appear before the Pope himself within three months. 
 In another Bull of the same date, Gregory XI. severely 
 reproved the University for harbouring Lollards in its bosom, 
 and enjoined that John Wyclif and his adherents should be 
 handed over to Archbishop Sudbury and Bishop Courtenay. 
 Loud protests were made against this demand in the Oxford 
 Convocation, which, after all, forbore to pass a formal con- 
 demnation of Wyclif s teaching. It was in Oxford that he 
 organised and located his new Order of itinerant preachers, and 
 it was in the Schools of Oxford that he propounded (in 1381) 
 his twelve ' conclusions,' or theses, on the Eucharist, which drew 
 down upon him, not only the official censure of the Chancellor, 
 supported by ten Doctors of Divinity, but also the hostility 
 of the Mendicant Friars, who had formerly been his allies. 
 The next Chancellor, however, was a friend of Wyclif, and 
 when a Committee or Council of Divines, assembled by the 
 new Archbishop (Courtenay), despatched to Oxford a mandate 
 for the extirpation of Lollard doctrines, their emissary, Stokes, 
 found the leading dignitaries of the University arrayed 
 against him, with the hearty concurrence of a majority among 
 the Masters of Arts. The Chancellor, indeed, replied that
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 863 
 
 compliance with the mandate was as much as his life was 
 worth ; and though he, with other followers of Wyclif, was 
 at last compelled to submit by the intervention of the King's 
 Council, Lollardism died hard, if it died at all, in the 
 University. Though a Convocation of the Province of Canter- 
 bury, held at Oxford in 1382, succeeded in silencing its 
 spokesmen for a while, and Wyclif s failing health apparently 
 disabled him thenceforth from active controversy, Oxford, as 
 Mr. Maxwell Lyte points out, ' continued to be the headquarters 
 of the reforming movement.' Writ after writ was addressed 
 to its authorities, urging them to suppress Lollard treatises, 
 and eleven years after Wyclif s death the Chancellor of the 
 University was ordered by the King, it would seem in vain, 
 to have a catalogue of his errors drawn up by the Doctors of 
 Divinity, with a view of banishing all who should maintain 
 them. At last Parliament, false to its ancient traditions, was 
 enlisted on the side of persecution. The infamous statutes 
 passed against heretics in the reign of Henry IV. had, pro- 
 bably, quite as much effect in putting down Lollardism in the 
 University as the despotic censorship of books and lectures 
 established by Archbishop Arundel and a provincial Council 
 held for this purpose at Oxford in 1409. At all events, in 
 1409 the obnoxious works of Wyclif, under the strongest 
 pressure from Lambeth, were publicly burned at Carfax, in 
 the centre of Oxford, and in 1411 the most stringent decrees 
 against all who should embrace his tenets were extorted from 
 the University, which had never ceased to be proud of him. 
 If ever there was a typical representative of Oxford, it was 
 John Wyclif, and his truly heroic figure, viewed across an 
 interval of five centuries, assumes proportions of which 
 neither his disciples nor his enemies could then form any 
 true conception. 
 
 The part played by the University of Oxford in the Revival 
 of Letters was scarcely less important than it had been in the 
 Reform movement of- Wyclif, which had assuredly paved the 
 way for it. Dean Colet, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More 
 have been singled out as prominently ' The Oxford Reformers '
 
 364 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 of the Renaissance ; but the title is equally deserved by Grocyn 
 and Linacre, if not by Archbishop Warham, and, still more, by 
 Cardinal Wolsey. The rise of the New Learning, as it was 
 then called, is generally dated from the capture of Constanti- 
 nople in 1453, and the light of its dawning certainly spread 
 to England from Italy. Thither Linacre, a young Fellow of 
 All Souls, went out as early as 1485 ; and there he was joined, 
 in 1488, by Grocyn, who had probably been his instructor at 
 the University, and who is described by Erasmus as the first 
 of English scholars. Not that he, or any one single individual, 
 can be regarded as the solitary pioneer in England of that 
 unique literary revolution which brought to a close the history 
 of mediaeval civilisation. No doubt, the foundation of great 
 public grammar-schools like Winchester and Eton helped to 
 prepare the minds of English scholars for the reception of 
 Greek culture. Moreover, Professor Montagu Burrows, in his 
 interesting Memoir of William Grocyn, has adduced strong 
 reasons for believing that he owed much to the instruction of 
 Vitelli, an Italian lecturer already settled at Oxford, and some- 
 thing to Chaundler, Warden of New College, who seems to have 
 been Vitelli's patron. But there is conclusive evidence that 
 Grocyn was justly regarded by his contemporaries as the English 
 patriarch of the New Learning. It is possible that he taught 
 Greek at Oxford before his visit to Italy ; it is certain that, 
 having studied at Florence under the famous teachers Politian 
 and Chalcondyles, he returned to Oxford, and delivered at 
 Exeter College the first public lectures in Greek that had 
 been heard in England. Nor was he a mere ' Humanist,' or 
 votary of Pagan literature. On the contrary, he warmly 
 encouraged Aldus's designs for publishing new editions of the 
 Scriptures in the original languages, and, if Erasmus can be 
 trusted, was ' exceedingly observant of ecclesiastical rules, 
 almost to the point of superstition.' 
 
 About four years after the return of Grocyn and Linacre, 
 Colet, who had taken his degree at Oxford, and then held a 
 living in Suffolk, proceeded on a like errand to Italy. His 
 interests were theological rather than literary, and it is pro-
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 365 
 
 bable that he came under the influence of Savonarola at 
 Florence ; but his studies embraced the New Learning in all 
 its branches, and when he announced a course of public 
 lectures on St. Paul's Epistles at Oxford, about the end of 1496, 
 he was fully-equipped for the contest that awaited him against 
 the old Scholastic Philosophy. These lectures were attended, 
 not only by large audiences of students, but also by doctors 
 and abbots. They were, in fact, the earliest essays in that 
 Biblical criticism which formed a most important element in 
 the ' New Learning,' as propagated in England so unlike the 
 brilliant semi-Pagan reaction typified by the Greek and 
 Italian Eenaissance. A year or two later, Colet was joined in 
 Oxford by Erasmus, himself an organic link between the 
 Eenaissance and the Eeformation, who came to complete his 
 study of the Greek language. Though Erasmus's stay in 
 Oxford was short, his own letters conclusively prove how much 
 he owed to his intercourse with the little circle of Oxford 
 friends, which embraced also Sir Thomas More, who had then 
 left the University, and was studying law in London. It is 
 true that More's legal and political career had no direct con- 
 nection with his University life ; that Erasmus's greatest works 
 were produced on the Continent or at Cambridge ; that 
 Linacre's vast acquirements were chiefly displayed in London, 
 where he founded the College of Physicians ; that Colet is 
 better known as Dean of St. Paul's, founder of St. Paul's 
 School, and the first preacher of his day, than as an inter- 
 preter of St. Paul's Epistles at Oxford. But it is equally 
 true that in the minds and hearts of all these men the sacred 
 flame of a new intellectual Gospel and the noble ambition of 
 propagating it among their countrymen was conceived and 
 even nursed into maturity within the University. 
 
 Their influence made itself sensibly felt on their Oxford 
 contemporaries and juniors. Lilly, the first of English 
 grammarians, was practically a disciple of Colet, and not only 
 Colet, but Erasmus and Cardinal Wolsey, co-operated with him 
 in the compilation of his Grammar. Tyndall, whose name is 
 second to none among the English Eeformers, is stated by
 
 806 FLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 John Foxe to have been ' brought up from a child in the 
 University of Oxford, where he, by long continuance, grew up 
 and increased, as well in the knowledge of tongues and other 
 liberal arts as specially in the knowledge of the Scriptures.' Yet 
 Tyndall loudly protested against the perfunctory nature of 
 University studies in his own time, against the arbitrary 
 restrictions on the free interpretation of Scripture, and against 
 the scandalous ease with which degrees were granted. Wolsey 
 himself, who must never be forgotten as a zealous promoter 
 of the Renaissance in England, had graduated at Magdalen 
 College before the Oxford Reformers had commenced their 
 labours. But he was among the first to appreciate the signi- 
 ficance of the classical revival, and to the last never ceased to 
 be its most discerning as well as its most generous patron. It 
 must have been with his sanction, though it was at More's 
 instance, that a peremptory Royal order put down the barbarous 
 faction of so-called Trojans, who actually endeavoured to 
 suppress Greek studies in the University. His favourite pro- 
 ject for the foundation of Christ Church, as a propaganda of 
 ' the new learning in the service of the old Church,' had 
 been partly forestalled by Bishop Fox in his foundation of 
 Corpus Christi College. But Wolsey's design was on a scale of 
 grandeur before unknown, and the policy of applying monastic 
 endowments to educational purposes was originated by him, 
 though reversed by the rapacity of Henry VIII. and his 
 courtiers. 
 
 But the place of Oxford University in English and Euro- 
 pean history during the later Middle Ages is not to be deter- 
 mined solely by its contributions to learning and Theology. 
 Its influence is strongly attested, not only by the frequent 
 intervention of English kings in its internal affairs, but also 
 by its relations with the Papal See. We have seen how 
 vigorous was the action taken by the Pope in the suppression 
 of Wyclifs adherents at Oxford. On the other hand, the 
 University had no mean share in the termination of the great 
 schism then undermining the Church, and was consulted more 
 than once by the Crown on that subject. When a Provincial
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 867 
 
 Synod was held in London to consider the conduct of Gregory 
 XII., the Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge were present 
 in person. No doubt the University of Paris assumed the 
 lead in the long negotiations for restoring the unity of the 
 Latin Church; yet the University of Oxford steadily and 
 successfully resisted the scheme of settlement proposed by its 
 elder sister, insisting that a General Council must be sum- 
 moned. This General Council, which met at Pisa in 1409, 
 deposed both the rival Popes, and procured the election of a 
 Friar known as Alexander V., who had taken a v Bachelor of 
 Divinity's degree at Oxford ; being the only Pope who ever did 
 so. The Bishop of Salisbury, the head of an English deputa- 
 tion to Pisa, had been Chancellor of Oxford, and received 
 instructions from the University for the protest j which he 
 there delivered against the abuses of the Church. Before the 
 Council of Constance, held in 1414, the University of Oxford 
 drew up an elaborate series of articles for the reformation of 
 the Church. At that Council, which established the supre- 
 macy of General Councils over the Papacy, the University 
 was ably represented ; and Henry of Abingdon, afterwards 
 Warden of Merton, produced a great impression by his sermon 
 advocating the views embodied in those articles. The Univer- 
 sity was specially invited to appear by its delegates at the 
 Council of Basle, in 1431 ; and though it was reduced by 
 poverty to solicit contributions towards the expenses of the 
 mission, it found a worthy representative in John Kemp, after- 
 wards Archbishop of Canterbury. On two subsequent occasions 
 it received marks of special respect from Popes Eugenius IV. 
 and Innocent VIII. Probably, if the archives of the Lateran 
 and the Vatican had been preserved intact, and could now be 
 ransacked by an Academical historian, the Universities of 
 Europe, and, not least, the University of Oxford, would be 
 found to have engaged the attention of the Papal Court to a 
 far greater extent than is commonly realised. In the mean- 
 time, enough evidence remains to show that, within the 
 ecclesiastical sphere at least, it was a power to be conciliated 
 as well as to be controlled.
 
 368 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 The close of the fifteenth century, so momentous in the 
 annals of European civilisation, wrought an insensible but 
 irrevocable change in the position and character of Oxford Uni- 
 versity. The Revival of Learning had checked the degeneracy 
 which set in with the decay of scholastic exercises during 
 the previous half-century, but the marvellous series of events 
 which followed it, dividing mediaeval from modern history, 
 was destined to have a contrary effect. The diffusion of know- 
 ledge through the invention of printing, aided by the improve- 
 ment in paper-making ; the burst of commercial enterprise 
 consequent on the discovery of America and of a maritime 
 route to India ; the revolt against Church authority and 
 clerical ascendancy, which underlay the Reformation these 
 were causes which could not but diminish the unique prestige 
 of the Universities. Though Oxford is said to have been the 
 first place at which movable types were employed in England, 
 and though books were certainly printed there between 1479 
 and 1486, the Press was sure to prove a most formidable 
 rival of the Oxford Schools. When the only books were 
 manuscripts, the Universities and the very few other institu- 
 tions which possessed large collections of manuscripts 
 attracted the whole literary class from all parts of the country. 
 When instruction in the sciences was only to be obtained from 
 the lips of a living teacher, and when schools hardly existed 
 elsewhere, except in connection with cathedrals or monasteries, 
 the lecture-rooms of Oxford were thronged with students of 
 all ages, and represented, with those of Cambridge, the 
 central machinery of national education. When the Church 
 ruled supreme over the wide realm of thought, and learning 
 was the monopoly of ' clerics,' the great ecclesiastical strong- 
 hold of Oxford far surpassed the Metropolis itself as an 
 intellectual centre. When Latin was the one language of 
 scholars, and English literature hardly existed, the Academical 
 masters of Latinity, especially as they were carefully trained in 
 disputation, maintained a peerless supremacy over their less 
 favoured competitors in the clerical, medical, and legal pro- 
 fessions. When foreign trade was confined within mediaeval
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 869 
 
 channels, and the mercantile aristocracy had not yet developed 
 its strength, the clerks of Oxford held a social position far 
 above that to which their birth or wealth entitled them. In 
 the new order which took its birth from the Reformation, the 
 exclusive privileges of the Universities became inevitably 
 depreciated, and their function in the body-politic somewhat 
 humbler than it had been in the golden age of clerical 
 ascendancy. But they did not cease to form an organic and 
 energetic part of the national life. When the curtain fell on 
 the vast drama of the Middle Ages, transforming almost every 
 mediaeval institution in Church and State, the University of 
 Oxford re-appeared in a more secular character, to claim 
 henceforth a less commanding, but not less distinctive, posi- 
 tion in English history. 
 
 II 
 
 With the fall of Cardinal Wolsey one of the greatest land- 
 marks in our history the University of Oxford entered on a 
 new phase of its existence. Henceforth, its political and 
 social importance were to increase, and a more conspicuous 
 place was to be reserved for it in those spheres of national 
 life which fill the pages of historians. But it was to lose that 
 'original brightness' which it derived from being a part, 
 though a very independent part, of the vast fabric of the 
 mediaeval Church. Instead of attracting humble pilgrims 
 from the lowest ranks of society, converting them into ' clerks,' 
 and qualifying them to fill places more or less honourable in 
 the great ecclesiastical hierarchy, it became more and more 
 a training-school for the lay professions, now definitely 
 formed. It was no longer to share with Cambridge, and one 
 or two public schools, an almost exclusive monopoly of 
 English education, from the highest realms of philosophical 
 speculation to the simplest rudiments of grammar. It was 
 no longer to be the schola seciuida ecclesice in Europe ; and 
 the intellectual centre of gravity in England itself was 
 inevitably to be shifted to the commercial and political centre 
 
 B B
 
 370 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 of the kingdom, in the Metropolis. In the ampler and 
 brighter day now dawning upon the nation, the light of 
 scholastic learning, so long kept alive at Oxford, could not 
 fail to wax pale and dim. In becoming secularised, the 
 University forfeited that transcendent prestige which it owed 
 to Church authority ; but it was to be used as a powerful 
 engine of State-authority in working out the various stages of 
 the English Reformation, and perhaps to exercise a more 
 potent influence in moulding the national character. 
 
 The first occasion on which the University came into 
 contact with the new statecraft of Henry VIII. was that of 
 his famous appeal to the chief Universities of Europe on the 
 legality of his intended divorce. This expedient is supposed 
 to have been contemplated by him in 1527, but to have been 
 abandoned by reason of discouraging reports from Oxford 
 and Cambridge. However this may be, the question was 
 formally laid before the Oxford Convention in 1529, not 
 without a significant mixture of Royal promises and threats. 
 Nevertheless, though a docile majority of seniors was in 
 favour of compliance, the younger Masters of Arts worthy 
 successors of those who had supported Wyclif stood firm in 
 their refusal. It was not until two other Royal commands 
 had been received, and the Graduates in Arts had been 
 excluded from Convocation by a clever stratagem, that the 
 desired vote was secured ; not, however, in the full Convocation 
 of the University, but in a packed committee, empowered to 
 act in its name. Soon afterwards the King gave a fresh 
 proof of his anxiety to keep the University under his control, 
 by coming to visit it in person. The Plantagenet sovereigns, 
 as we have seen, had often held their Courts at Oxford, and 
 the same compliment was paid to it by Edward IV. and 
 Richard III. But the visit of Henry VIII. was essentially 
 political, and his example was followed by every one of his 
 successors, except Edward VI. and Mary, down to the reign 
 of George I. It is significant of his motives that, on this 
 occasion, he took back into his own hands the Charter of the 
 University, which ho did not restore until 1543.
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 371 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1534, the University was again invited to 
 pronounce a solemn verdict, no longer upon a question of 
 private right, but upon the gravest issue of national policy 
 ever submitted to its judgment that of the Royal Supremacy. 
 This was, in truth, a foregone conclusion, and the University 
 was not disloyal to its traditional principles in casting off the 
 Papal yoke, which it had always borne impatiently, and 
 which had been deliberately repudiated earlier in the year by 
 the Convocations of both Provinces, after several preparatory 
 measures had been passed in succession. Accordingly, in 
 common with these bodies and the University of Cambridge, 
 it declared that ' The Bishop of Eome hath no greater juris- 
 diction conferred on him by God in this kingdom of England 
 than any other foreign Bishop.' By this time Protestant 
 doctrines, propagated by some of the scholars imported from 
 Cambridge and the Continent, had taken root in Oxford soil. 
 So far back as 1527, Cardinal Wolsey, tolerant as he was, had 
 thought it necessary to issue a Commission for the discovery 
 of heretical books in the University, and Garrett, who had 
 disseminated them, was compelled to fly. The King himself 
 was alarmed, and made vigorous efforts to put down free 
 thinking among the students. Several years were to elapse 
 before the spirit of Wyclif should be allowed free scope in 
 Oxford ; but it was now thought prudent to secure both 
 Universities against the danger of reaction towards Rome by 
 an Act, passed in 1536, which required every candidate for a 
 degree to abjure allegiance to the Pope. 
 
 The determination of Henry VIII. to place the new Church 
 order on a sure footing at Oxford was further shown by 
 Thomas Cromwell's Visitation in 1535 the first of several 
 Visitations whereby his successors, and the leaders of the 
 Commonwealth, sought to regulate the Universities, as the 
 great fountain-heads of education, into harmony with the 
 principles adopted by the Government of the day. This 
 Visitation, or Commission, as we should call it, of which Dr. 
 Leighton was the most prominent member, had a twofold 
 object to ensure ecclesiastical conformity, and to promote 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 classical learning at the expense of the old scholastic discipline, 
 which had revived since the Renaissance. The study of the 
 Canon Law was suppressed, and Leighton joyfully reported that 
 ' Dunce ' (Duns Scotus) was relegated to an Academical limbo ; 
 while the leaves of scholastic manuscripts, torn up by whole- 
 sale, might be seen fluttering about New College quadrangle. 
 But the study of Aristotle was enjoined, together with that of 
 the Holy Scriptures an interesting survival of the strange 
 alliance between Aristotelian logic and Christian theology 
 framed by the Dominican teachers of the Middle Ages. 
 Meanwhile, Cardinal Wolsey's great foundation was remodelled, 
 on a reduced scale, into the modern Christ Church ; new 
 classical lectureships were established at the expense of the 
 richer colleges, and the five Regius Professorships were en- 
 dowed out of the spoils of the Church. Moreover, the loyalty 
 of the University was rewarded by a special exemption from 
 the payment of firstfruits, or tenths, recently granted by 
 statute to the Crown. 
 
 The respect of the King for the University, and his desire 
 to retain it as a trustworthy instrument of his dynastic aims 
 and ecclesiastical policy, was displayed in a signal manner 
 after the dissolution of monasteries. Monks and friars were 
 regarded as the bodyguard of a foreign power, which had 
 become the enemy of the Monarchy, and though a formidable 
 insurrection was provoked by Cromwell's barbarous treatment 
 of them, it is marvellous how little popular support they com- 
 manded in their hour of need. On the other hand, the Colleges 
 had long been identified with the secular clergy : they had 
 sided with the Crown and Parliament in resisting the en- 
 croachments of Rome ; they had come to rank among national 
 institutions, and they had cheerfully accepted the Royal 
 Supremacy. The famous reply of Henry VIII. to some of his 
 courtiers, who clamoured for a Dissolution of Colleges, was, 
 therefore, a genuine expression of the sentiment which ho 
 shared with the nation, and might, perhaps, be studied with 
 advantage by modern reformers of the utilitarian school. 
 ' Whereas we had a regard onlie to pull down sin by defacing
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 373 
 
 the monasteries, you have a desire also to overthrow all good- 
 ness by subversion of Colleges. I tell you, Sirs, that I judge 
 no land in England better bestowed than that which is given 
 to our Universities. For by their maintenance our realme 
 shall be well governed when we be dead and rotten. I love 
 not learning so ill that I will impair the revenewes of any one 
 House by a penie, whereby it may be upholden.' Neverthe- 
 less, the general sense of insecurity produced by the King's 
 despotic rule, and the arbitrary restrictions imposed on Pro- 
 testantism by the Six Articles, could not but have a blighting 
 effect on the University system. Nor did the dissolution of 
 monasteries bring to it any accession of strength. Almost 
 every great monastery had maintained scholars at Oxford or 
 Cambridge by means of exhibitions, if not in lodgings under 
 its own control. These were now cast adrift, and there is good 
 reason for believing that some of them contributed to swell the 
 vast crowd of sturdy vagrants against whom savage enact- 
 ments were passed by obsequious Parliaments in the latter 
 part of Henry VIII. 's reign. The disappearance of Oseney 
 Abbey, Eewley Abbey, and the great churches of the 
 Dominicans, Franciscans, and Bernardines, left Oxford all 
 the poorer architecturally, and the new studies failed to 
 attract such multitudes of eager students as those which, in 
 earlier times, had thronged the lecture-rooms of famous 
 logicians, and engaged in bloodthirsty conflicts with the 
 citizens. 
 
 We may pass lightly over the next stage in the history of 
 the Reformation at Oxford, because it mast be confessed that, 
 as compared with Cambridge, that University played a subor- 
 dinate, if not undignified, part during this eventful period. 
 When the Protector Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer 
 determined to reform it in the interests of the new Anglican 
 Church, in the reign of Edward VI., they had met with no 
 effective opposition. It is probable that Huber, the German 
 historian, may be right in asserting that a decided majority 
 in the University, including the most learned men and the 
 best scholars, was in favour of the old religion. But many of
 
 874 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 them fled before the Commission, or Visitation, appointed in 
 1549, and, of those who remained, many were forcibly expelled 
 to make room for Peter Martyr and other Protestant teachers 
 imported from other universities. In dealing with Colleges, 
 the spirit in which they acted was ruthlessly iconoclastic, and 
 not only were the old services abolished, but altars, images, 
 statues, monuments, organs, and everything else which seemed 
 to savour of superstition, were defaced or swept awiy. The 
 amount of destruction wrought by their orders, and those of 
 Cromwell's Visitors, in the College libraries, will never be 
 known, but it seems to have resembled, on a humbler scale, the 
 losses incurred by learning in the conflagration of the Alexan- 
 drine Library, or the Latin capture of Constantinople. Philo- 
 sophy fared no better than Natural Science, and it is 
 recorded that ' cartloads ' of classical and scientific manu- 
 scripts were consigned to the flames, together with many an 
 illuminated masterpiece of scholastic literature. At the same 
 time, new University Statutes were drawn up, remodelling 
 the Faculty of Arts, and eliminating everything which could 
 favour Popery from the Academical constitution. But the 
 Protector Somerset refused, like Henry VIII., to sanction any 
 general disendowment of Colleges, and the Edwardine Statutes, 
 as they were called, were more liberal in their spirit than 
 might have been expected. Seven years later, the importance 
 of manipulating the University for Imperial purposes was once 
 more recognised under Queen Mary, whose accession had been 
 hailed with loyal demonstrations at Oxford, not yet estranged 
 from the old religion, and who afterwards showed her prefer- 
 ence for Oxford over the less Catholic University of Cambridge. 
 A fresh Visitation was instituted by Cardinal Pole. Peter 
 Martyr and the leading Protestant lecturers now made their 
 escape, Heads and Fellows of Colleges were released from their 
 obligation to renounce the authority of the Pope, the Mass 
 superseded the Prayer-Book, and before long Oxford became 
 the scene of those Protestant martyrdoms which have left an 
 indelible impression of horror and sympathy on the English 
 mind.
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 875 
 
 It is often said, and not without reason, that Oxford 
 burned the great Protestant divines whom Cambridge edu- 
 cated. But it must not be supposed that Cranmer, Ridley 
 and Latimer were actually tried and condemned by an 
 University Court. It is, indeed, a remarkable proof of the 
 deference paid to University opinion by Mary's advisers, not 
 only that Oxford should have been selected as the place for 
 the shameful travesty of justice enacted in April 1554, and 
 again in September 1555, but also that the proceedings should 
 have been made to include an Academical disputation in the 
 Divinity School, followed by a judicial inquisition held in the 
 choir of St. Mary's Church. Still, the Commission which 
 sat in St. Mary's Church on April 14, 1554, under a mandate 
 from the Crown, derived no authority from the University of 
 Oxford, as such, but was, in effect, a Committee of the Convo- 
 cation of Canterbury, with its Prolocutor, Dr. Weston, as 
 President. His assessors were eight members of that Con- 
 vocation, with the Vice- Chancellor of Cambridge, as well as of 
 Oxford, and Doctors of Divinity elected by each University. 
 The sentence pronounced on this occasion was one of excom- 
 munication, and not of death, grave doubts being, in fact, 
 entertained by Ultramontane Catholics upon the right of a 
 Eoyal Commission to declare three bishops guilty of heresy. 
 Accordingly, Ridley and Latimer, after a mitigated imprison- 
 ment of seventeen months in private houses, were finally 
 tried before Commissioners appointed under the legatine 
 authority of Cardinal Pole ; while the Court which tried 
 Cranmer had for its President, Brookes, the chief of these 
 Commissioners, acting as sub-delegate of the Pope, with two 
 proctors appointed by the Crown. But these mock trials 
 were conducted, as before, in the choir of St. Mary's Church 
 and the Divinity Schools ; it was in St. Mary's that Cranmer 
 was subjected to the ignominy of degradation, and when 
 Ridley underwent a like indignity in the house where he was 
 confined, Brookes was accompanied by the Vice- Chancellor of 
 the University. Finally, when Ridley and Latimer were led 
 out to be burned in Canditch, a sermon was preached before
 
 876 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 the stake by an Academical preacher on the text, ' Though I 
 give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth 
 me nothing ' ; and when Cranmer was required to repeat his 
 previous recantations in prospect of death, St. Mary's Church 
 was again selected as the scene of his humiliation. The 
 sequel is well known. It was through an University mob, and 
 past the Divinity Schools of the University, that he was hurried 
 off, with brutal eagerness, to give at the stake that noble 
 example of heroic constancy which has atoned for all his earlier 
 errors in the eyes of Protestants, and crowned the martyr- 
 doms of the English Reformation. Assuredly Oxford Uni- 
 versity has gained something of celebrity from the fact that 
 in Oxford was lighted that candle of religious liberty which 
 should never be put out ; but it cannot be forgotten that, if 
 the University itself did not, and could not, pass sentence of 
 death on the martyrs, it made itself an accomplice in that 
 memorable deed of infamy. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth supplies fresh examples of the 
 efforts made by the Tudor princes to conciliate and control 
 the University of Oxford, as a formidable power in the body- 
 politic. Within six months of her accession, she appointed a 
 new body of Visitors, to make what she called ' a mild and 
 gentle, not rigorous, reformation,' which, however, involved a 
 strict enforcement of obedience to the Act of Supremacy. 
 Though many graduates, as before, conformed readily enough, 
 the Dean and two Canons of Christ Church, nine Heads of 
 Colleges, and a considerable number of Fellows, were ex- 
 pelled or forced to resign. Some Protestant exiles returned 
 from Zurich, Strasburg, and other foreign towns ; but it is 
 doubtful whether Oxford learning gained more from this 
 accession than it lost by the migration of Catholic scholars to 
 Douay. At all events, we know from the impartial testimony 
 of Peter Martyr and Jewell how serious an intellectual and 
 moral degeneracy had resulted from such rapid vicissitudes in 
 religious doctrine and ecclesiastical government, unsettling 
 the minds of students, and keeping Academical rulers in a 
 constant state of suspense or time-serving. It was, doubtless,
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 877 
 
 with a view of counteracting these effects, and reviving the 
 energies of a body on which she greatly relied for support, 
 that Queen Elizabeth paid two State visits to Oxford, in 1566 
 and 1592, losing no opportunity on either occasion of rebuking 
 extremists and ' precisians,' as she called them, and showing 
 her resolution to have an Anglo- Catholic rather than a Puritan 
 or Eomanistic Church. It seems clear that a like far-sighted 
 policy inspired the efforts of her favourite, Leicester, to reform 
 the University, of which he became the Chancellor. Non- 
 resident and courtier as he was, Leicester had the real good 
 of Oxford at heart ; and, repressive as some of his measures 
 were, he cannot be greatly blamed for desiring to exclude the 
 Romanising party, then openly disloyal, from positions of 
 influence at Oxford. We may deplore his creation of a legis- 
 lative oligarchy to curb the old democratic spirit of the 
 University and, still more, his imposition of subscription to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles and the Royal Supremacy, to be 
 required from every student above sixteen years old on his 
 matriculation. But we cannot forget that under his Chan- 
 cellorship the University first obtained a parliamentary 
 incorporation, that he earned an honourable place among its 
 benefactors, and that most of the regulations which he recom- 
 mended were intended, and wisely conceived, for the restoration 
 of sound discipline. 
 
 This was the weak point of the Elizabethan University ; 
 and it was by no means strengthened by the introduction of 
 a new test. Thenceforth the University of Oxford, once open 
 to all Christendom, was narrowed to an exclusively Church of 
 England institution, and became the favourite arena of 
 Anglican controversy, developing more and more that special 
 character, at once worldly and clerical, to which it owes its 
 distinctive place in later history. While its highest dignitaries 
 were mostly animated by intense party-spirit, rather than by 
 zeal for education, its students fully shared in the genial 
 laxity of manners, fostered by increasing luxury, which marked 
 the age of Elizabeth. Her judicious patronage of Oxford 
 culture was not without effect upon scholars like Bodley and
 
 378 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 Savile, yet it may be doubted whether there was as much real 
 vitality and freedom of thought in the Protestant Oxford of 
 Elizabeth, as in the Catholic Oxford of the first three Edwards. 
 The number of students was increased during her reign, but 
 they were recruited from a wealthier class ; there were more 
 young gentlemen among them, and more of them were 
 destined for lay professions or trade ; but there was a smaller 
 propi rtion of hardworking scholars ; more of worldly accom- 
 plishments, but less of severe and earnest study. 
 
 It was the object of Archbishop Laud, during his long 
 period of Academical ascendancy, to counteract such tenden- 
 cies by a comprehensive reform of discipline, with a view of 
 making Oxford once more a model school of the Church, while 
 it should become a powerful bulwark of the Monarchy. James I. 
 had followed the policy of the Tudors by patronising the 
 Universities, visiting them in person, and taking an active 
 interest in their affairs. In the year of his accession he gave 
 them, for the first time, representation in Parliament, on 
 the express ground that it was necessary for them to be pro- 
 tected, through Burgesses of their own, against the risk of 
 ignorant legislation affecting their privileges. At the same 
 time, he invited the Colleges to join him in a self-denying but 
 abortive scheme for re-endowing benefices out of impropriated 
 tithes a scheme which Charles I., by a secret vow, but lately 
 made known, bound himself to carry out if he should recover his 
 throne. Soon afterwards he made over to them the right of 
 presenting to all livings in Koman Catholic patronage, and 
 thrice exempted them from liability to subsidies. He enlisted 
 their support in the great struggle between the ecclesiastical 
 Courts and the Common Law Judges ; he secured their co- 
 operation in compiling the Authorised Version of the Bible. 
 But it was under the influence of Laud that he and his 
 successor, Charles I., deliberately employed the University of 
 Oxford as the instrument of reactionary statecraft. It was 
 Laud's saying, ' Nothing can be transacted in the State with- 
 out its being immediately winnowed in the Parliaments of the 
 Scholars.' He was first known to the world as President of
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 879 
 
 St. John's College, and no more perfect specimen of the 
 College don, in the old sense, ever rose to fill high office in the 
 State. Laud clearly perceived, and the King was not slow to 
 recognise, the natural affinity between Arminian theories of 
 Church authority and absolutist notions of Divine Right. 
 His first efforts, before he became Chancellor, were therefore 
 directed to check the growth of Puritanism in the University, 
 and in 1616 he procured a stringent order from the King, by the 
 advice of the clergy in Convocation, for the subscription of the 
 Three Articles in the Thirty-sixth Canon by every candidate for 
 a degree, for strict attendance on University sermons, and for 
 the enforcement of other safeguards against heterodoxy. Six 
 years later in 1622 the University disgraced itself by passing 
 a declaratory resolution, absolutely condemning resistance to 
 a reigning sovereign, offensive or defensive, upon any pretext 
 whatever. Thenceforward, the doctrine of passive obedience 
 may be said to have become the official creed of Oxford for at 
 least two generations, and survivals of it appeared more than 
 once in the eighteenth century. 
 
 It was in 1630 that Laud became Chancellor of Oxford, 
 an office which he filled until his fall eleven years later ; so 
 that his personal government of the Academical body nearly 
 coincided in duration with Charles I.'s personal government 
 of the kingdom. It was characteristic of his inquisitorial 
 energy, but it is also a significant proof of the space occupied 
 by the University in his political and ecclesiastical designs, 
 that petty Academical concerns received from hiin the same 
 minute attention as the highest interests of Church and State. 
 Some of his reforms were of permanent benefit, such as the 
 introduction of the Proctorial Cycle, and, still more, the com- 
 pilation of the Caroline Statutes, which remained in force 
 within living memory. Other features of his administration 
 betrayed his arbitrary temperament, such as his system of 
 correspondence with confidential agents at Oxford, and his 
 permanent establishment of a collegiate monopoly in University 
 government. But there is no doubt that, in his dark and dis- 
 astrous counsels, the aggrandisement of his University was
 
 890 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 second only to the aggrandisement of his Church, or that he 
 was highly successful in promoting it. Anthony Wood tells 
 us that, under his Chancellorship, the University recovered 
 its popularity, numbering 4,000 students; and, though it did 
 not produce so many illustrious names as Cambridge during 
 the seventeenth century, the generation of Oxford men which 
 preceded the Civil War included not a few whose learning 
 and piety might have adorned a happier age. That was no 
 ordinary circle of University friends which shared the dignified 
 hospitality and studious leisure of Falkland at Great Tew, 
 comprising, as it did, Sheldon and Hammond, Morley and 
 Earle, as well as Chillingworth, re-converted to Anglican doc- 
 trine by Laud himself. Nor was it only Churchmen whom the 
 University trained under the guardianship of Laud. Among 
 those who there disciplined themselves for political life during 
 those golden days of respite were Sir John Eliot and John 
 Hampden, John Pym, John Selden, Robert Blake, Speaker 
 Lenthall, and Sir Nathaniel Brent, men who afterwards took 
 a leading part on the Parliamentary side in the stormy times 
 already looming on the horizon. 
 
 This is not the place to review that rapid succession of 
 events, ever memorable for Englishmen, which brought about 
 a temporary disruption of all our national institutions, with 
 an almost complete suspension of Academical life at Oxford. 
 Nor must we attempt to investigate the various military 
 reasons which made Oxford a place of the first strategical 
 importance during the campaigns of 1642 and the three 
 following years. A glance at the instructive maps in Mr. 
 Gardiner's History of this period will suffice to show that it 
 stood nearly at the eastern extremity of the country, which for 
 the most part declared for the King; while it was virtually the 
 key to the Midland Counties. It was to Oxford that Charles I. 
 repaired after the battle of Edgehill, and thither he retreated 
 for the winter after his abortive march on London. Thence- 
 forward, until the eve of his surrender to the Scotch in 1G4C, 
 Oxford became, not only the base of operations for the Royal 
 army, but the chief seat of the Royal Government. Already,
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 381 
 
 in 1625, when the plague was raging in London, the first Par- 
 liament of Charles I. had been adjourned to Oxford, and here 
 in January 1644, he again summoned a Parliament, ignor- 
 ing that assembled in permanent session at Westminster. A 
 small body of loyal Peers and Commoners obeyed the summons, 
 and assumed to hold a regular session, during which they 
 vainly strove to open negotiations with the rebellious assembly 
 then engaged in levying war against its sovereign. The 
 reasons which thus converted Oxford into a Eoyalist capital 
 were not merely strategical : no other provincial town could 
 have contributed an equal weight of moral support to his 
 cause ; nowhere else could he have found an equal number 
 of young and ardent spirits devoted to his interest : no other 
 community would or could have replenished his empty 
 treasury with equally valuable supplies of plate and ready 
 money, or provided so many volunteers to fortify and defend 
 the City, which now became once more the frontier-fortress of 
 central England. 
 
 Seldom in history, and never in the annals of Oxford 
 University, have characters so diverse been grouped together 
 into so brilliant and picturesque a society as that which 
 thronged the ancient City during the residence of Charles I., 
 with his Queen, Henrietta Maria, in the autumn and winter of 
 1643 the last happy interlude of their ill-starred lives. 
 Notwithstanding the paralysis of Academical studies, and the 
 transformation of Colleges into barracks, neither religion nor 
 learning was entirely banished from the University. Grave 
 dons and gay young students were still to be seen in the 
 streets, but too often in no Academical garb, and affecting the 
 airs of Cavaliers, as they mingled with the ladies of the Court 
 in Christ Church "Walks and Trinity College Gardens, or with 
 roystering troopers in the guardhouses at Kewley, where they 
 entertained their ruder comrades with flashes of scholar-like 
 wit. Most of the citizens, too Eoundheads as they might be 
 were glad to remain, secretly cherishing, perhaps, the hope of 
 a future retribution, but not unwilling in the meanwhile to 
 levy high rents for the lodging of those courtiers and military
 
 882 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 officers for whom there was no room in the Colleges. With 
 these were blended in strange variety other elements imported 
 from the country or the Metropolis lawyers who had come 
 down to attend the Courts held by the Lord Keeper and one 
 of his judicial brethren ; the faithful remnant of the Lords 
 and Commons, who sat in one of the Schools and the Con- 
 vocation House respectively, while the University Acts were 
 performed once more in St. Mary's Church ; loyal gentlemen 
 driven out of their manor-houses by the enemy ; clergymen 
 expelled from their parsonages ; foreigners seeking audience 
 of the perplexed and vacillating King ; needy poets, musicians, 
 and players in the service of the Court, who acted Shake- 
 spearian plays or lighter pieces in the College Halls. New Inn 
 Hall was converted into a mint, where plate contributed by 
 the Colleges and country squires was melted down and coined 
 into the money for the payment of the troops. The ' Mer- 
 curius Aulicus,' the earliest of English newspapers, issued from 
 the Oxford Press, and every broadside published in London 
 was answered by a counter-broadside from the Royalist head- 
 quarters. Services were still performed in the Chapels ; 
 sermons were preached from the pulpit of St. Mary's ; degrees 
 were conferred wholesale, as rewards for loyalty, until they 
 were so depreciated that at last the King promised to recom- 
 mend no more candidates for them. The outward appearances 
 of Academical routine were maintained with decorum ; the 
 King dined and supped in public, moving freely among his 
 devoted adherents, with the royal grace and easy dignity which 
 long seemed to have perished with the Stuarts ; the Queen 
 held those receptions in Merton College of which a tradition 
 has survived to our own prosaic days ; the far sense of 
 danger, and warlike rumours from without, lent a fresh zest to 
 amusement and to gallantry ; and all the resources of courtly 
 literature were employed to enliven a spectacle over which 
 the awful catastrophe of that historical tragedy, unforeseen 
 by the actors themselves, has shed a lurid glamour, never 
 equalled by the romance of fiction. 
 
 The siege of Oxford, though many a student was stationed
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 383 
 
 on its ramparts, while others were formed into a complete 
 regiment, belongs to the history of the City rather than of the 
 University. It was, however, assuredly out of respect for the 
 University that Fairfax addressed to the Governor of Oxford 
 his well-known letter, in which he counselled a timely sub- 
 mission, that he might be enabled to preserve from ruin ' that 
 place, so famous for learning'; and, in the final treaty of 
 surrender, the privileges of the University, and even the con- 
 stitutions of Colleges, were expressly guaranteed. Anthony 
 Wood describes, in language which has often been quoted, the 
 utter confusion in which the past three years had left the 
 University: the Colleges impoverished, the lectures almost 
 abandoned, many of the students dispersed, and others quite 
 demoralised ' in a word, scarce the face of an University left, 
 all things being out of order and disturbed.' Nevertheless, it 
 is some proof of its inherent vigour that, no sooner was peace 
 restored, than students began to return and collegiate life to 
 revive. In the year 1646, the Parliament, following the 
 example of so many sovereigns, decisively showed its anxiety 
 to secure the allegiance of Oxford by commissioning seven 
 ministers to convert the Academical mind to orthodoxy, 
 through Presbyterian discourses from the pulpit. This ex- 
 pedient naturally failed to produce the desired effect, and in 
 the year 1647 more effectual means were taken to purge the 
 University of loyalists and prelatists, by issuing a solemn Visi- 
 tation ' for the due correction of offences, abuses, and disorders, 
 especially of late times, committed there.' This Visitation, 
 twice renewed with important changes in the personnel of the 
 Visitors, and more than one interval of suspended animation, 
 lasted altogether for ten years, during the whole of which 
 period the University was practically governed by Commission. 
 The President of the first Visitors was Sir Nathaniel Brent, 
 Warden of Merton, and, of his twenty-three colleagues, ten 
 were clergymen and thirteen laymen, including the celebrated 
 Prynne. The Visitors were instructed to inquire by oath 
 concerning those who neglected to take the ' Solemn League 
 and Covenant,' or the ' Negative Oath ' against aiding the
 
 384 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 King, those who opposed the orders of Parliament concerning 
 ecclesiastical discipline, those who contravened ' any point of 
 doctrine the ignorance whereof doth exclude from the Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper,' and those who had borne arms 
 against the Parliament. By the same Ordinance, a standing 
 Committee of Lords and Commons was appointed to receive 
 reports and hear appeals from the Visitors. This Committee, 
 being soon controlled by the dominant Independent faction 
 in Parliament, began to overstep these functions, and some- 
 times took upon itself the right of legislating directly for the 
 University. But the intestine feuds between the Presby- 
 terians and Independents gave the University much the same 
 advantage which St. Paul derived from the enmity of the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees, enabling it to offer a passive but 
 not ineffective resistance to the Visitors for several months, 
 until the Parliamentary Chancellor, the Earl of Pembroke, 
 arrived, in April 1648, to enforce obedience. 
 
 The dignified and forcible statement of ' Reasons ' drawn 
 up by the University to justify its action in not submitting to 
 the new tests about to be imposed, was not unworthy of its 
 best days, and, what is most remarkable, it was almost 
 unanimously accepted in full Convocation. As Professor 
 Huber says, the adoption of such an attitude at such a time 
 goes far to redeem the reproach of cowardly subservience to 
 Henry VIII. It fairly earned for the University the thanks 
 of Parliament in 1G65, and deserves, in some degree, the 
 glowing eulogy of Clarendon. The University, he says, 
 ' met in their Convocation, and, to their eternal renown 
 (being at the same time under a strict and strong garrison 
 put over them by the Parliament, the King in prison, and all 
 their hopes desperate), passed a public act and declaration 
 against the Covenant, with such invincible arguments of the 
 illegality, wickedness, and perjury contained in it, that no man 
 of the contrary opinion, nor the Assembly of the Divines, which 
 then sat at Westminster, ever ventured to make any answer 
 to it ; nor is it, indeed, to be answered, but must remain to 
 the world's end as a monument of the learning, courage, and
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 385 
 
 loyalty of that excellent place against the highest malice and 
 tyranny that was ever exercised in or over any nation.' It 
 was impossible, however, for the University or Colleges 
 permanently to withstand the authority of Parliament, whose 
 demands increased with the growing fanaticism of its lead- 
 ing spirits. At first, University dignitaries and holders of 
 College endowments were asked generally whether they would 
 submit ; but afterwards they were required to subscribe, not 
 only the Negative Oath, but the ' Engagement,' pledging the 
 signatories to a form of Government without a King or a 
 House of Lords. Several eminent men, including Eeynolds, 
 who had taken all the former tests, resigned their offices 
 rather than submit to this ; but it does not seem to have been 
 strictly or universally applied. Still, a summary expulsion 
 of contumacious officials took place : ten Heads of Colleges 
 were ejected ; most of the Professors and Canons of Christ 
 Church shared the same fate, and were replaced, often by 
 excellent successors, under orders from the Visitors. No 
 exact list of ' submissions ' and ' expulsions ' can now be made 
 out, but the evidence preserved in the 'Visitors' Eegister,' 
 which has come down to us, leads to the conclusion that their 
 numbers were nearly equal, amounting in each case to four 
 hundred or five hundred, and spread over several years. 
 
 The later records of this great Visitation are somewhat 
 obscure, but it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it 
 was deliberately moderated, until it finally collapsed, by the 
 friendly influence of Cromwell. That crafty political schemer 
 but true-hearted Englishman, who shrank not from regicide 
 or massacre, yet loved to indulge in politic acts of clemency, 
 and who veiled under the jargon of Puritanical cant the 
 far-sighted aims of a statesman, clearly discerned the import- 
 ance of conciliating one of the few centres of independent 
 thought which had survived the Puritan Revolution, and of 
 preserving one of the few solid fragments of English society 
 which the Commonwealth had left standing. While the first 
 set of Visitors was engaged in its work, inquisitorial, judicial, 
 and administrative, Cromwell visited Oxford in state, with 
 
 c c
 
 386 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 Fairfax, on May 17, 1649. Notwithstanding the recent 
 execution of the King, they were cordially welcomed, and 
 received a D.C.L. degree. They dined at Magdalen, played 
 bowls on the College green, had supper in the Bodleian 
 Library, and attended University sermons at St. Mary's 
 Church. On this occasion Cromwell, addressing the Univer- 
 sity authorities on behalf of himself and Fairfax, professed 
 his respect for the interests of learning, and assured them of 
 his desire to promote these interests for the sake of the 
 Commonwealth. Nor were these vain words: Fairfax had 
 already shown his partiality for the University when the 
 City was in his power, and Cromwell, becoming Chancellor in 
 January 1650, gave it substantial proofs of his favour. Like 
 Archbishop Laud, he presented it with a collection of manu- 
 scripts ; like Henry VIII., he defended it against the spolia- 
 tion designed by the Barebones Parliament, and supported by 
 Milton himself. It was by Cromwell that men like Thomas 
 Goodwin and John Owen were introduced into Oxford, the 
 first as President of Magdalen, the second as Dean of Christ 
 Church. These men, with John Conant of Exeter, did much 
 to reconcile the new settlement with ancient traditions, and it 
 has been well said that, when the discipline re-established by 
 them was abolished, amidst the orgies of Charles II. 's return, 
 it was not the discipline of Laud that took its place. The 
 Board of Visitors was twice reconstituted, and lingered 
 on till 1658, but its later history deserves little notice. 
 Owen was appointed Vice-Chancellor by Cromwell in 1652, 
 and placed at the head of a Commission to execute all 
 the Chancellor's official powers. This Commission was soon 
 merged into a new Board of Visitors, which, in its turn, 
 was reconstituted by Cromwell as Protector. The later 
 Visitors were nearly all resident dignitaries ; and, while this 
 was a safeguard against innovations dictated by ignorance, 
 it naturally produced an insensible reaction. Having done its 
 real work, the Visitation was beginning to perish of inanition 
 when Cromwell resigned the Chancellorship in 1657. Under 
 Richard Cromwell, his successor, the University gradually
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 887 
 
 recovered its independence, and became impatient of being 
 nursed and schooled by a meddlesome select committee of its 
 own members. As its Convocation alleged, ' Visitors residing 
 upon the place did rather nourish and foment than appease 
 differences ' the more so as they sometimes acted as judges 
 on their own causes. At last, in 1658, the Visitors ceased to 
 sit ; and it is a significant fact that it is not known how 
 their commission was terminated, or whether it was termi- 
 nated at all. By this time, however, it was beginning to 
 be manifest that, after all, the old order in Church and State 
 was regretted by a majority of the people, and that England 
 was almost tired of Puritan despotism. Parliament itself 
 had virtually established an amended Monarchy, with a new 
 House of Lords, and the army alone had prevented Cromwell 
 from assuming the Crown. No one was so well aware as he 
 of the revulsion in popular sentiment, calling for a revival of 
 the institutions so hastily demolished, and his prescient mind 
 foreboded, if it did not actually foresee, the coming restoration 
 of the Stuarts. 
 
 The first presage of this event was the news brought to 
 Oxford, on February 18, 1660, that a ' free Parliament,' or Con- 
 vention, was about to be assembled. The effect produced by it on 
 the Oxford world is graphically depicted by Anthony Wood : 
 
 ' The scene of all things is now changed, and alteration 
 made in the countenances, actions, manners and words of all 
 men. Those that for these twelve years last past had 
 governed and carried all things in a manner at their pleasure, 
 looked discontented, plucked their hats over their eyes, and 
 were much perplexed, foreseeing that their being here must 
 inevitably vanish. Those that had laid under a cloud for 
 several years behind appear with cheerful looks, while others 
 that had then flourished drooped away or withdrew them- 
 selves privately. . . . The Common Prayer-Book and surplice 
 were restored in every church and chapel, and the service 
 that had been lately practised, viz., a Psalm or two, two 
 chapters, and a prayer of the priest's own making, with a 
 little more, laid aside. All tokens of monarchy that were 
 
 c c 2
 
 888 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 lately defaced or obscured in the University were also restored 
 or new furbished over, and whatsover was as yet fit to be 
 introduced many did not spare to effect, and some, to 
 outrun and overdo the law, before the King and Parliament 
 had commanded or put it in force.' Yet historical justice 
 compels us to acknowledge that Oxford had neither been 
 depopulated nor ill-governed under the Commonwealth. On 
 the contrary, the Academical population was already larger 
 than it had been in the reign of James I., and one fact alone 
 is sufficient to show that it was not devoid of intellectual life. 
 While the Visitation was still in progress, Oxford was the 
 scene of those meetings which entitle it to claim an almost 
 equal share with London in the foundation of the Eoyal 
 Society. We learn from Dr. Wallis, an original member of 
 that Society, that scientific conferences had been held 
 weekly in London, so early as 1645, by a small company of 
 savants, including himself, Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Warden of 
 Wadham, and Dr. Goddard, afterwards Warden of Merton. 
 In the early days of the Commonwealth, these three removed 
 to Oxford, and there continued to meet, as before, at the 
 lodgings of Sir William Petty, or Dr. Wilkins, or Robert 
 Boyle, who afterwards joined them, with such colleagues as 
 Dr. Bathurst and Sir Christopher Wren, of whom Evelyn 
 speaks as ' that miracle of a youth,' ' that rare and early 
 prodigy of universal science.' Meanwhile, as Wallis tells us, 
 ' those meetings in London continued, and after the King's 
 return, in 1660, were increased with the accession of divers 
 worthy and honourable persons,' who, together with their 
 Oxford associates, afterwards constituted the Royal Society. 
 Assuredly Oxford was not at its worst in the days of 
 Cromwell. Clarendon himself reluctantly admits that, 
 although such a reign of barbarism as he describes to have 
 followed the Visitation would naturally have extirpated both 
 learning and religion, yet, ' by God's wonderful blessing, 
 the goodness and richness of that soil could not be made 
 barren by all that stupidity and negligence.' Instead 
 thereof, he continues, ' it yielded a harvest of extraordinary
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 389 
 
 good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning ; and many 
 who were wickedly introduced applied themselves to the 
 study of good learning and the practice of virtue, and had 
 inclination to that duty and obedience they had never been 
 taught ; so that when it pleased God to bring King Charles 
 the Second back to his throne, he found that University . . . 
 abounding in excellent learning, and devoted to duty and 
 obedience little inferior to what it was before its desolation.' 
 
 With these words of Clarendon we may fitly conclude our 
 brief review of the stormiest episode in University history. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Eestoration of Charles II. ushered in an age of degene- 
 racy for Oxford University which lasted for more than a 
 century. Of course there was a fresh Visitation ; but eight of 
 the new Visitors had held offices under the late ' usurpation,' 
 as it was now to be called, and though a restitution of expelled 
 Royalists was the main purpose of their commission, so few 
 appeared to claim it that most of the Fellows elected under 
 the Commonwealth were allowed to keep their places. More 
 important than any personal changes was the Royal letter 
 re-establishing all the statutes and regulations in force during 
 the last reign, including the oaths introduced under James I. 
 This was followed by the Act of Uniformity, passed in 166*2, 
 and containing a provision, but lately repealed, which required 
 every College Fellow on his election to make, before the Vice- 
 Chancellor, a declaration of conformity to the Liturgy of the 
 Church of England. With this Act, as has been well said, 
 not merely the reign but the very being of the Puritans in the 
 Universities came to an end. Thenceforward, Oxford became 
 more effectually than ever a seminary of the Anglican clergy 
 and country gentry ; but there was no violent break in the 
 continuity of its corporate life, and the University, so long the 
 battle-ground of rival parties in the State, enjoyed compara- 
 tive repose throughout Charles II. 's inglorious reign. Anthony 
 Wood, however, Royalist though he was, soon found reason
 
 390 PLACE OF OXFORD IMVKKSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 to deplore both the laxity of manners and the dearth of 
 students. Writing in 1677, he puts the question : ' Why 
 doth solid and serious Learning decline, and few or none follow 
 it now in the University ? ' In his answer he divides the 
 blame pretty equally between the alehouses, of which there 
 were said to be above 270 in Oxford, the newly-established 
 1 coffee-houses,' and the ' common chambers,' by which he 
 means what are now known as common-rooms. Writing in 
 1682, he attributes the decline in the number of students to 
 three causes. The first is the constant expectation of a Parlia- 
 ment, and the fear of being turned out to make room for 
 members of both Houses. The second is (in his own words) 
 that ' all those that we call Whigs, and side with the Parlia- 
 ment, will not send their sons, for fear of their being Tories.' 
 The last is that, like the Episcopal Bench, the University 
 labours under the suspicion of a leaning towards Popery. 
 
 Of these reasons, the first two were not ill-founded. When 
 the plague was at its height, in September 1665, a Parliament 
 was actually held at Oxford, and passed the Five Mile Act, 
 which prohibited Dissenting ministers from teaching in schools, 
 or settling within five miles of any city or borough, under a 
 penalty of 401. The ' Oxford Gazette,' afterwards transformed 
 into the 'London Gazette,' which has lasted to our own times, 
 was first published during tbis visit. The King remained in 
 Oxford for the winter, lodging, as usual, at Christ Church ; 
 while the Queen was accommodated at Merton, residing in the 
 very rooms where her mother-in-law, Henrietta Maria, held 
 her Court during the Civil War. The University was justly 
 scandalised by the fact of rooms at Merton being also assigned 
 to Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, and Barbara 
 Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, who there gave birth to her son, 
 the Duke of Grafton. Sixteen years afterwards, in the spring 
 of 1681, Charles II. opened the last Parliament ever held at 
 Oxford. Like his father, he regarded the University as a 
 stronghold of loyalty, and supposed that Whig members 
 would there be subjected to influences under which they 
 might be deterred from passing the Exclusion Bill, directed
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 391 
 
 against the succession of his brother, the Duke of York. 
 Macaulay tells us that he feared an outbreak of revolutionary 
 violence if the Parliament should be held at Westminster; 
 and though at Oxford there was no such danger, he journeyed 
 thither surrounded by his guards of horse and foot. The 
 Exclusionist members were escorted by hosts of armed tenants 
 and retainers ; so that, as Macaulay says, the meeting at 
 Oxford resembled that of a Polish Diet rather than of an 
 English Parliament. Some of the Schools, as before, were 
 fitted up for the Lords, and the Convocation House for the 
 Commons. The session lasted but a week. In spite of un- 
 expected concessions from the King, the majority proved 
 hopelessly refractory ; whereupon the Parliament was sud- 
 denly dissolved by the King in person, who had quietly put 
 the crown and robes into a sedan-chair, got into it himself, 
 and taken both Houses by surprise. After this perform- 
 ance he is reported to have exclaimed : ' Now am I King of 
 England, and was not before.' As two out of five Parlia- 
 ments summoned by Charles II. had met in Oxford, the fear 
 of another suspension of University studies was natural ; but 
 it was never realised, for he took care to hold no Parliament 
 at all during the last three years of his reign. 
 
 The spread of Toryism at Oxford was an undoubted fact, 
 and its principles were dogmatically affirmed by the University, 
 in the very year after this event, in a fit of servile loyalty 
 evoked by the disclosure of the Eye House Plot. On July 2 1 , 
 1683, the University Convocation passed a decree formally 
 condemning the doctrine that resistance to a king is lawful ; 
 which doctrine it reduced to six propositions, expressly stated 
 to have been culled from the works of Milton, Baxter, and 
 Goodwin. One of the condemned propositions, which now 
 reads like a truism, was as follows : ' There lies no obliga- 
 tion upon Christians to passive obedience, when the prince 
 commands anything against the laws of our country.' This 
 decree in favour of passive obedience was publicly burned, in 
 1709, by order of the House of Lords. It is fair, however, to 
 remember that it also contained a solemn anathema against
 
 392 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 other heresies, mostly founded on the despotic principles of 
 Hobbes's ' Leviathan,' thereby anticipating the verdict of the 
 country in 1688. The expulsion of Locke from Christ Church, 
 in the following year, by direct order of the King, was a fit 
 sequel to an Academical declaration of non-resistance, and 
 shows that he, no less than Henry VIII. , regarded the Uni- 
 versity as a potent instrument of his Eoyal will. Macaulay, 
 indeed, regards the power of both the Universities as having 
 reached its height during the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century, and that of Oxford had been strenuously exerted 
 on the side of the Crown. It was characteristic of James II. 
 to strain its well-tried loyalty to breaking-point, and he was 
 doubtless encouraged in his fatuous designs by the singular 
 outburst of martial ardour in the University upon the news 
 of Monmouth's rebellion. His mistake was that he shared 
 the impression which Anthony Wood describes as prevalent, 
 and interpreted the effusive Toryism of the gownsmen as 
 implying a leaning towards Popery. With that strange 
 ignorance of his countrymen which ultimately proved his 
 ruin, he proceeded to use the dispensing power without stint 
 for the purpose of dislodging the Church of England from 
 the position secured to it at the Reformation, and gradually 
 restoring the supremacy of the ancient faith. A new Court 
 of Ecclesiastical Commission was set up, and soon declared 
 war against both Universities, whose submission appears to 
 have been taken for granted. Having already nominated 
 Massey, a Papist, as Dean of Christ Church, and having a ready 
 tool in Obadiah Walker, Master of University, the infatuated 
 King seriously meditated the conversion of the University. 
 As the army was to be Romanised by granting commissions 
 to Papist officers, and the municipal corporations by can- 
 celling their charters and appointing Papist mayors, so the 
 University and Colleges were to be reclaimed through Papist 
 Heads and Fellows. The brunt of the battle was borne, as 
 is well known, by Magdalen College, on which the first experi- 
 ment was made, and the record of its manful resistance to 
 James II. 's outrageous violence is part of English history.
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 393 
 
 The Presidentship of Magdalen had become vacant in 
 March, 1687. Farmer, a Papist of notoriously bad character, 
 and statutably ineligible, was recommended for the office by 
 a peremptory Royal mandamus. The Fellows, supported by 
 their Visitor, took their stand upon the College statutes, and, 
 after vainly petitioning the King to withdraw his command, 
 elected Hough, one of their own body, to whom no exception 
 could be taken. They were summoned before the new Court 
 of Ecclesiastical Commission, over which the infamous Jefferies 
 presided ; the election was annulled, and the King issued a 
 new mandate in favour, not of Farmer, but of Parker, Bishop 
 of Oxford, a man after the King's own heart. James came 
 to Oxford in person, on September 4, 1687, to enforce com- 
 pliance, probably imagining that members of an University 
 which had embraced the doctrine of passive obedience would 
 not scruple to break their oaths at his bidding. To his sur- 
 prise, they stood upon their constitutional rights and duties, 
 braved all his threats of punishment, and, after some feints 
 of submission or compromise, held out until they were forcibly 
 dispossessed by a Royal Commission. True to his implacable 
 character, James had insisted, not only on their submission, 
 but on a retractation of their errors and a confession of their 
 guilt ; the Ecclesiastical Commission now proceeded to declare 
 them incapable of Church preferment. Having admitted 
 several Popish Fellows and Demies at the King's dictation, 
 Parker died ; whereupon James appointed Bonaventura Giffard, 
 a Papist of the Sorbonne. But the handwriting was already 
 visible on the wall. The acquittal of the Seven Bishops, the 
 spread of open disaffection in the army and navy, the invita- 
 tion to William of Orange, and the news of his preparations 
 for an expedition, suddenly awakened, not the conscience, 
 but the perceptions, of James. During the month of October 
 1688, he made desperate efforts to save himself from ruin, 
 giving back the forfeited town charters, recalling Protestant 
 officers who had been cashiered, dissolving the Ecclesiastical 
 Commission, and consulting the Episcopal Bench on the 
 best means of escape from his hopeless position. On their
 
 894 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 advice, he addressed letters to the Visitor of Magdalen, re- 
 instating the ejected Fellows. But this act of deathbed re- 
 pentance came too late. The Fellows were restored, indeed, 
 on October 25 ; but on November 5 William landed, and less 
 than six weeks later James fled the kingdom. 
 
 Considering how gross an outrage had been offered by the 
 last Stuart king to the privileges of the University, and how 
 large a space this outrage filled in the public mind on the 
 eve of the Revolution, we may well marvel that no enthusiasm 
 greeted the Revolution at Oxford. It seems to have been 
 quietly accepted there as an irrevocable fact, rather than 
 welcomed as the consecration of civil and religious liberty. 
 It is true that deputies were sent to salute William on his 
 way to London, and that most of the chief University and 
 College dignitaries signed a pledge to support him in restor- 
 ing order and liberty. But their adhesion proved to be 
 half-hearted ; reactionary tendencies soon manifested them- 
 eelves : William himself was coldly received when he 
 visited the University in 1695 ; and within fifteen years 
 after the repulse of James II. at Magdalen, Oxford became 
 a hotbed of Jacobite disaffection, which lasted for two whole 
 generations. 
 
 In attempting to ascertain the motives of this reaction, 
 which at first sight appears so unreasonable, we must be on 
 our guard against a common fallacy of our age. Since the 
 French Revolution, when the Rights of Man first became the 
 watchword of progress, and the impulse was given to con- 
 stitutional reforms by the intolerable sufferings of the labour- 
 ing-classes, we have become accustomed to seek a democratic 
 source for all revolutionary movements, and to assume that 
 advocates of Liberal measures receive their mandate, if they 
 do not draw their inspiration, from the masses of the people. 
 But in the olden times it was not so. Neither the Reforma- 
 tion, nor the Puritan revolt against the Stuarts, nor the 
 Revolution of 1688, nor even the American Revolution, was 
 essentially popular in its origin, or commanded, in its earlier 
 stages, the sympathy of a majority in the nation. Henry VIII.
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 895 
 
 could rely on an obsequious Parliament ; but he knew well 
 how deeply rooted was the old religion in the hearts of his 
 poorer subjects, including those whom the Dissolution of 
 Monasteries converted into ' sturdy vagrants.' Cromwell 
 ruled by the will of the army, but he would never have 
 submitted his authority to a plebiscite. William III. and the 
 first two Georges were supported on the throne by a Whig 
 oligarchy, whose influence preponderated in the governing 
 class, and was guided by leaders of rare sagacity. Civil 
 liberty and religious toleration were not democratic triumphs ; 
 they were achieved by a resolute and compact minority, which 
 possessed itself of the Government, and succeeded in main- 
 taining them until they were accepted by the great body 
 of Englishmen as their natural birthright. But even the 
 governing class, then but a fraction of the country, comprised 
 within itself a large Tory element, which, however unwilling 
 to risk another change of dynasty, cherished Jacobite senti- 
 ment with marvellous tenacity. This minority was largely 
 represented among the clergymen and country gentlemen 
 who received their education at Oxford. Probably they in- 
 herited a traditional High Church partisanship, handed down 
 from the days of the Puritan Visitation ; doubtless many of 
 them resented the harsh treatment of the Non-Jurors, while 
 nearly all of them mistrusted the latitudinarian opinions 
 attributed to William III., openly patronised by Whig states- 
 men, and partially embodied in the Comprehension Bill. It 
 must be confessed that, with the doubtful exception of Anne, 
 none of the four sovereigns who succeeded James II. were 
 qualified to inspire feelings of personal loyalty ; nor is it easy 
 to determine whether George I. and II. or the two Pretenders 
 were the less worthy of the devotion manifested on their 
 behalf. At all events, however Oxford Jacobitism may have 
 been engendered, and whether it was in the nature of a pro- 
 found conviction or of an inveterate fashion, it was not 
 only shared by ' dons ' and students, but also by the noisier 
 section of Oxford citizens ; it was the one important feature 
 in the external history of the University during the first half
 
 396 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 of the last century, and, like Scotch Jacobitism, it retained a 
 sort of poetical life up to a still later period. 
 
 We can but glance at the evidence which all but justifies 
 the statement that, ' during the Hanoverian rule, Oxford 
 became the Jacobite capital of England, against London.' 
 Locke is said to have warned King William that, unless the 
 Universities were reformed again, the work of the Revolution 
 4 would all soon go back.' Queen Anne, being suspected of 
 Toryism, was heartily received at Oxford on two occasions ; 
 but even during this period of Whig ascendancy, in the earlier 
 part of her reign, Burnet concurred with the antiquary Hearne, 
 a fanatical Jacobite, in regarding the University as honey- 
 combed with High Church bigotry, which broke out into a 
 flame on the trial of Dr. Sacheverel. It was now that the 
 University decree of 1683, in favour of passive obedience, 
 was publicly burned by order of the House of Lords. Under 
 the Administration of Harley and St. John, Oxford paraded 
 its Toryism without disguise and the peaceful accession of 
 the Elector of Hanover was received by gownsmen with 
 sullen disappointment. The Tory Democracy of the Uni- 
 versity now took refuge in libels, disloyal toasts, and offensive 
 lampoons, while the Tory mob of the City disported itself in 
 wrecking Dissenting chapels. On the other hand, a ' Con- 
 stitution Club ' was founded by a few Whig graduates. 
 The attempt of this Club to celebrate the King's birthday in 
 1715 led to a serious riot. The University again incurred 
 the censure of the House of Lords, and the Government, in 
 view of the Scotch rebellion, took decisive measures by sending 
 down a military force to Oxford, and proclaiming martial 
 law there. It was this act of severity which an Oxford wit 
 contrasted with the King's recent present of a library to 
 Cambridge in lines which, together with the Cambridge re- 
 partee, have become historical. 
 
 King George, observing with judicious eyes 
 The state of both his Universities, 
 To Oxford sent a troop of horse for why ? 
 That learned body wanted loyalty.
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 897 
 
 To Cambridge, books he sent, as well discerning 
 How much that loyal body wanted learning. 
 
 The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse, 
 For Tories own no argument but force ; 
 With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent, 
 For Whigs admit no force but argument. 
 
 But the Oxford Whigs long continued to be subjected to 
 Academical persecution by the dominant Tory faction, and 
 it was seriously contemplated by the Government to introduce 
 a Bill suspending the constitution of both Universities, and 
 placing the appointment to all offices therein, for the next 
 fifteen years, in the hands of the Crown. Neither George I. 
 nor George II. ever deigned to visit Oxford, well knowing that 
 covert Jacobitism was the prevailing creed of the University, 
 where it sometimes broke out into violent demonstrations, 
 as when, after the withdrawal of Walpole's Excise Bill, the 
 University bells were rung, disorderly revels lasted for three 
 nights, and the healths of Ormond, Bolingbroke, and James 
 III. were publicly drunk round the bonfires. Even after the 
 suppression of the Kebellion in 1745 it was not extinct, and a 
 congratulatory address from the University on the Peace of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle was rejected by the King with disdain. By 
 this time, however, it had ceased to be formidable, betraying 
 itself chiefly in University sermons and elections to the 
 Chancellorship. Though Pitt denounced it in the House of 
 Commons so late as 1754, it seems to have been sensibly 
 checked by the patriotic enthusiasm called forth during the 
 closing years of George II. 's reign, and to have been finally 
 quenched by the accession of George III. 
 
 That University studies and University morals were at a 
 low ebb during the eighteenth century admits of no doubt 
 whatever. Too much stress, indeed, has been laid on the 
 evidence of Gibbon, who became a Gentleman-Commoner of 
 Magdalen in his fifteenth year, and was constantly making 
 it the starting-point of pleasure-excursions. But this evidence 
 is substantially confirmed by that of witnesses differing widely 
 from each other in their character and Academical experience
 
 398 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 by Swift and Defoe, Addison and Gray, Johnson and John 
 Wesley, Lord Malmesbury, Lord Eldon, and Lord Chester- 
 field, the last of whom speaks of the University as ' known 
 only for its treasonable spirit.' The well-known strictures of 
 Adam Smith are chiefly directed against the system of teach- 
 ing; and, in spite of many honourable exceptions, it is certain 
 that the three generations which followed the llevolution were 
 the Dark Age of Oxford University. Several reasons may be 
 suggested for this decay of education and learning in Oxford, 
 while mathematical studies were vigorously cultivated in 
 Cambridge, and had already contributed to English science 
 the greatest name in its illustrious history. One of these 
 reasons, however, is sufficient, and it is one which throws a 
 flood of light. on a theory, once happily exploded, but now 
 boldly revived. If, as some high authorities maintain, the 
 scarcity of genius among us is mainly due to our students 
 being harassed by examinations, then Oxford under Queen 
 Anne and the first Georges ought to have been a very 
 Paradise of what is now called ' mature study and original 
 research ' ; for the old statutable exercises, which tested know- 
 ledge in former ages, had fallen into disuse, the examination 
 for the B.A. degree was little more than a mockery, and there 
 was no Honours List at all. Yet this was the age in which 
 Oxford rendered the minimum of service, not only to learning 
 and science, but to political and national life, being fairly 
 distanced in the performance of its highest functions by the 
 sister University of Cambridge, which had been less disturbed 
 by politics, and wisely adopted the examination system at an 
 earlier period. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that when this intel- 
 lectual and spiritual torpor was at its worst in the first years 
 of George II.'s reign the Methodist Revival owed its origin to 
 Oxford. Though Oxford had just produced the ablest of its 
 orthodox theologians in Bishop Butler, the influence of prac- 
 tical Christianity in the University had been on the decline 
 ever since the Restoration, and was never weaker than during 
 the long twenty years' peace under Walpole. Walpole himself
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 899 
 
 was no unworthy representative of the moral and religious 
 principles which then prevailed in the common-rooms of 
 Oxford. Notwithstanding their boisterous sympathy with the 
 High Church party in politics, many senior members of the 
 University, both clerical and lay, secretly leaned to Bationalism, 
 and the Deism which came in with the Eevolution of 1688 
 became rife again under the Georges. Of course, it was dis- 
 countenanced by the authorities. In the year 1730, three 
 students were expelled for holding Deistical tenets ; several 
 heads of Colleges issued a joint notice censuring the spread 
 of Deism among the students, and the Vice-Chancellor, in 
 a ' programma,'' solemnly warned tutors and undergraduates 
 against literature calculated to disturb Christian faith. It 
 was about the same year, and in this unpromising soil, teem- 
 ing with High Church prejudices, saturated with mere world- 
 liness, and now infected with Deism, that the seeds of 
 Methodism were sown at Oxford by the two Wesleys, Whitefield, 
 Hervey, and a very few associates. 
 
 Of this little band, John Wesley at once became the 
 acknowledged leader. Their earliest meetings were held for 
 the simple purpose of reading the Greek Testament, and en- 
 couraging one another in study and good works. From the 
 first they adopted a strict code of religious observance which 
 some of them carried to the length of asceticism and made a 
 practice of receiving the Holy Communion weekly in that 
 age, a rare proof of religious devotion. But within a year their 
 sympathies widened, and took a philanthropic direction. To 
 John Wesley and his fellows the essence of the movement, 
 soon to be called Methodism, was not so much devotional aa 
 practical not so much the propagation of a new creed, aa 
 charitable ministrations and the moral salvation of human 
 souls. They strove to rescue young students from evil 
 company, relieved poor families, taught in schools, and visited 
 the inmates of the workhouse and gaol. Strange to say, thia 
 brought unmerited ridicule upon them, which may have been 
 also provoked by the eccentric demeanour of the more ardent ; 
 but they persevered, and the impression which they produced
 
 400 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 was quite out of proportion to their numbers, always insignifi- 
 cant. Their enthusiasm, however, was steadily discouraged 
 by the College authorities, and Methodism was short-lived in 
 Oxford. The history of its activity virtually ends with the 
 ill-advised mission of John and Charles Wesley to Georgia in 
 1735. The Oxford Methodists could not survive, as an inde- 
 pendent sect, without the presence and example of their 
 leader ; and, within three years of his departure, the com- 
 munion destined to exercise so great an influence on both 
 sides of the Atlantic had dwindled to impotence in the City 
 which had been at once the cradle of the movement and the 
 stronghold of opposition to it. Still, individuals continued to 
 be suspected of Methodism, and so late as 1768 the Vice- 
 Chancellor expelled six Methodist students from St. Edmund 
 Hall as disturbers of the peace, notwithstanding the protest 
 of the Principal. This high-handed act was actually defended 
 by Dr. Johnson, at a time when University discipline was 
 shamefully lax, gambling, blasphemy, and drunkenness being 
 condoned as venial offences. After this we hear no more of 
 Methodism at Oxford. Nor is it hard to understand why it 
 failed to command acceptance there after its first conquests, 
 since it appealed more and more to the religious emotions of 
 the less educated classes, abandoning any attempt to satisfy 
 the reason of inquirers. 
 
 Nearly a century elapsed before another wave of religious 
 excitement this time a reactionary wave passed over the 
 still and apathetic surface of University society at Oxford. 
 It was less important than Methodism in its purely moral 
 aspect, since it was far less popular and practical, leaving no 
 such profound impression on the religious life of the nation. 
 On the other hand, it sprang from deeper political causes, and 
 exercised a more powerful influence on Anglican theology, since 
 it wore a more scholar-like garb, was more attractive to cul- 
 tivated and imaginative minds, allied itself with the romantic, 
 speculative, and historical spirit of the age, and purported 
 to be essentially constructive, or reconstructive. The great 
 Neo-Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century was set on
 
 PEACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 401 
 
 foot by a select body of Oxford men, with the deliberate 
 purpose of defending the Church and the Christianity of 
 England against the dominant Liberalism which had carried 
 the Eeform Act, and openly avowed its Erastian principles. 
 The University of Oxford was the national centre for such a 
 reaction, and it was so intimately identified with that Uni- 
 versity that it came to be generally known as ' The Oxford 
 Movement.' It took its rise in the Common-Room of Oriel 
 College, of which Pusey and Keble were Fellows ; but its real 
 leader was John Henry Newman. As Wesley's sympathies 
 were originally with High Church doctrines, so Newman's 
 were originally with Evangelical doctrines, and it was not 
 until after his return from Italy, in 1833, that he brought out, 
 in concert with Hurrell Froude, the first of that series of 
 ' Tracts for the Times ' from which his party derived its 
 familiar name of Tractarians. This is not the place to review 
 the distinctive tenets of that party ; suffice it to say, that it 
 contemptuously rejected the name of ' Protestant,' and treated 
 the Reformation with the scantiest respect, yet emphatically 
 disavowed allegiance to Rome. Newman's professed object 
 was to revive the usages and doctrines of the primitive Church ; 
 to co-operate, indeed, with the Church of Rome, but to keep 
 aloof from its pernicious corruptions ; to establish the catho- 
 licity of the Anglican Church, but, above all, to hold the via 
 media laid down by its founders. This ideal was soon to be 
 shattered ; but, while it lasted, it produced a profound impres- 
 sion on the younger graduates, predisposed to rebel against 
 the self-complacent and lifeless orthodoxy which then ruled, 
 both in the Oxford lecture-rooms and in the University pulpit. 
 Like Methodism, the Tractarian movement spread from Oxford 
 over the whole country ; but, unlike Methodism, it long re- 
 tained Oxford as its central base of operations, and became an 
 intellectual fashion of the University. Still, the influence of 
 Tractarianism over Oxford thought must not be exaggerated. 
 It fascinated many subtle and imaginative minds of a high 
 order, it gathered into itself much of the spiritual life of the 
 University, and allied itself with much latent discontent 
 
 D D
 
 102 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 which had little real affinity to it. But there were many 
 robust intellects and earnest hearts which it not only failed to 
 reach, but stirred into hostility. When Tract XC. shocked the 
 moral sense of most Churchmen, and the Bishops declared 
 against the movement, the power of Newman sensibly waned, 
 and he resigned the Vicarage of St. Mary's, in 1843, under an 
 impulse of despondency, on failing to dissuade a young friend 
 from conversion to Romanism. Two years later he was him- 
 self received into the Church of Rome, the real tendency of 
 his teaching was revealed, and, though some devoted adherents 
 followed him, the progress of the Neo-Catholic Revival was 
 suddenly arrested. But the ' Oxford Movement ' had left its 
 mark on the English Church, as well as on the University, in 
 the widespread restoration of churches, in the improvement of 
 church services, and in a greater energy of practical religion. 
 After a period of suspended animation, it took a new departure 
 under the name of Ritualism ; but it had then lost its Acade- 
 mical character, and ceased to draw its inspiration from the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 Two episodes, and one sequel, of the Oxford Movement 
 deserve a brief notice, since they illustrate the notable influ- 
 ence of the University on the Church of England during the 
 last fifty years. The one was the controversy arising out of 
 the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the Regius Professorship 
 of Divinity in 183G, followed by a vote of censure on him 
 in the Oxford Convocation, and culminating in the protest, 
 supported by thirteen Bishops, against his nomination to 
 the see of Hereford in 1847. The other was the solemn con- 
 demnation of Mr. Ward by the University in 1845, a year or 
 two after Dr. Pusey had been suspended from preaching in 
 the University pulpit. In both these cases, the University as- 
 sumed the position of a quasi-Ecclesiastical Commission, and 
 its jurisdiction was recognised, not, indeed, by the Ministers 
 of the Crown, still less by the English people, but certainly 
 by u majority of the Anglican clergy. Thirty years after his 
 own suspension, Dr. Pusey, now regarded as a champion of 
 orthodoxy , came forward, with certain other Doctors of 1 >ivinity,
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 403 
 
 to bring a charge of heresy against Mr. Jowett of Balliol, the 
 Regius Professor of Greek, who had contributed to the volume 
 called 'Essays and Reviews.' This volume contained seven 
 articles, five of which were contributed by eminent members 
 of Oxford University, and was generally received as a prelude 
 to a new Oxford Movement in the direction of Rationalism. 
 While proceedings were taken in the Ecclesiastical Courts 
 against two of its authors, the suit against Mr. Jowett was 
 instituted in the Chancellor's Court, the jurisdiction of which 
 in spiritual matters was affirmed by the judgment delivered on 
 February 6, 1863, though a decision on the merits of the 
 case was skilfully avoided. A somewhat undignified contro- 
 versy followed, and greatly disturbed the peace of the Univer- 
 sity, on the question of increasing the very meagre endowment 
 of the Greek Professorship a measure which Dr. Pusey and 
 his adherents opposed, on the sole ground that it would 
 strengthen the position of the existing Professor. This con- 
 troversy agitated the Church as well as the University, but it 
 was at last settled by a compromise, on February 18, 1865, to 
 the satisfaction of even the High Church residents, who no 
 longer cared to please the non-resident clergy by perpetuating 
 an apparent injustice which damaged their own credit with 
 the abler students. Soon afterwards, the supremacy of the 
 Conservative Party in the constituency was decisively esta- 
 blished by the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, and two fruitful sources 
 of Academical discord were removed within a few months 
 of each other. Since 1865, a tacit concordat has prevailed 
 between the two great schools of thought in Oxford, and a 
 philosophical toleration of opinion has superseded the intole- 
 rant dogmatism, not confined to one party in the Church, 
 which had its origin in the Neo-Catholic Revival. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length on these religious move- 
 ments, because the place of the University in English history 
 since the accession of George III. must be mainly determined, 
 not by its connection with Imperial politics, but rather by its in- 
 fluence on the opinion of the governing classes. We may seek 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 ill vain for any memorable events in its external life during the 
 reigns of George III. and George IV., unless it be the visit of 
 the Allied Sovereigns in 1814 ; and even the records of its 
 domestic life during this long period are meagre and trivial in 
 the extreme. It is right, however, to notice the new Exami- 
 nation Statute of 1800, and the subsequent introduction of the 
 class-system, which, in reforming and invigorating the methods 
 of classical study at Oxford, sensibly enriched the intellectual 
 life of the country. The system thus instituted has been 
 maintained in principle ever since, though it was transformed 
 afresh in 1850, only to be amended and extended by a series 
 of supplementary measures, which is by no means completed. 
 Whatever be its shortcomings, the services rendered by Oxford 
 to Church and State in the nineteenth century have been 
 greater, beyond comparison, than it rendered in the eighteenth, 
 and the improvement in Academical education has raised in 
 an equal degree the standard of Academical learning. 
 
 Still more important have been the changes effected in the 
 constitution of the University and Colleges, within the last forty 
 years, by the direct action of the Legislature. Nearly two 
 centuries had elapsed since the Puritan Visitation, when Parlia- 
 ment was again moved to undertake the work of University 
 reform, and a Royal Commission was issued in 1850, ' for the 
 purpose of enquiring into the state, discipline, studies and 
 revenues ' of the University and Colleges. The report of this 
 Commission of Enquiry was followed in 1854 by an Act of 
 Parliament, which constituted a fresh Executive Commission 
 to remodel the collegiate system. In 1872, a new wave of 
 democratic sentiment impelled the Government of Mr. Glad- 
 stone to issue a third Commission, to enquire specially into the 
 application of University and College revenues Finally, in 
 1877 the Government of Lord Beaconsfield carried a Bill 
 empowering a fourth Commission to make a large provision 
 out of College revenues for University purposes. In the 
 meantime, after a contest prolonged over nine years, the com- 
 plete abolition of University Tests, already reduced by the A(^t 
 of 1854, was brought about by an Act passed in 1871, and
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 405 
 
 due to a persistent movement chiefly emanating from the 
 Universities themselves. 
 
 The frequency of these Parliamentary interventions is a 
 significant feature of University history during the reign of 
 Queen Victoria, and they have been supplemented by a rest- 
 less activity of innovation within the University itself. "What- 
 ever may be said against some of the measures thus initiated 
 by successive Commissions and successive groups of University 
 legislators, their general result has certainly been to strengthen 
 and popularise the University as a national institution. In- 
 stead of being administered by the old Hebdomadal Board, 
 consisting solely of the Heads of Colleges with the two Proc- 
 tors, it is now practically governed by an elective Council 
 and a vigorous deliberative assembly, comprising all resident 
 Masters of Arts. The monopoly of Colleges has been finally 
 broken down,' not only by the revival of private Halls, but 
 also by the full recognition of non-collegiate students. All 
 University degrees, except those in Divinity, and all College 
 emoluments, with trifling exceptions, are now thrown open 
 to candidates without distinction of creed, and, in most cases, 
 without restriction on the place of birth or education. In- 
 stead of being confined to classics and mathematics, the Uni- 
 versity curriculum and examination system have been so 
 extended as to include all branches of Natural Science, 
 Modern History, Law, Theology, and Oriental Languages. 
 A large appropriation of College revenues has been made for 
 the endowment of Professorships ; and though it has not 
 been found so easy to provide the new Professors with audi- 
 ences, the educational function of the University is at least 
 redeemed from the reproach of being merged in mere College 
 tuition. The University Library, Museums, and other insti- 
 tutions for the common benefit of students, have received a 
 vigorous development. With the almost total abolition of 
 clerical privileges, the clerical spirit of the University has 
 been largely tempered, and, though its religious character 
 has not been impaired by the admission of Nonconformists, 
 it has ceased to be a hotbed of theological controversy. It
 
 10<; PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 is not too much to say that within the last thirty-five years 
 the University has made greater progress than in any pre- 
 vious century : Oxford science has once more begun to com- 
 mand the respect of Europe ; the professoriate has received 
 an accession of illustrious names; and the work of College 
 tutors, instead of being the temporary vocation of Fellows 
 waiting for livings, has gradually placed itself on the footing 
 of a regular profession. Instead of drying up the bounty of 
 founders, as had been confidently predicted, the reforms of 
 late years have apparently caused the stream of benefactions 
 to flow with renewed abundance. Nearly all the older Colleges 
 have extended their buildings, mostly by the aid of private 
 munificence, a new College has been founded, two Noncon- 
 formist Colleges for post-graduate study have been transferred 
 to Oxford, and the aggregate number of undergraduates in 
 residence has been nearly doubled within forty years. Nor 
 is the educational influence of the University during this 
 period to be measured solely by its internal growth. By 
 means of Local Examinations, instituted thirty years ago, it 
 lias indirectly assumed, together with the University of Cam- 
 bridge, the inspection of middle-class education throughout 
 England. By another system of examinations, conducted in 
 concert with the sister University, it has largely increased its 
 control over the higher class of public schools, whose studies 
 had long been regulated by the standard established at the 
 Universities. By the organisation of Academical lectures in 
 populous centres, it has extended the spirit of its teaching to 
 classes who cannot afford the expense of prolonged residence 
 at Oxford itself. But this is not all. We must also re- 
 member how vast a number of those who govern the educa- 
 tional movement, directly or indirectly, have themselves passed 
 under the discipline of Oxford or Cambridge. Not only the 
 Head Masters of all the public schools, but the great body of 
 clergymen and of barristers, all the Bishops, and a majority 
 of the Judges, are alumni of English or Irish Universities. 
 By virtue of their connection with the Church, especially, 
 thi two older Universities arc responsible for the guidance of
 
 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 407 
 
 National Education to an extent which it is hardly possible 
 to exaggerate. It is clergymen there educated who not only 
 arc the sole representatives of learning in most country 
 parishes, but manage the great majority of parochial schools 
 which are not under School Boards. Nearly the whole staff 
 of the Education Office itself, as well as that of the Civil 
 Service Commission, has been recruited from Oxford and 
 Cambridge, and graduates of those Universities fill the highest 
 positions in the administrative and political service of the 
 State in a ratio out of all proportion to their numbers, even 
 as compared with the wealthier classes of society. But 
 perhaps the most potent of all educational agencies is what 
 is known as the Press. If it could be ascertained how largely 
 English journalism and periodical literature are indebted to 
 Oxford and Cambridge men for their present characteristics, 
 and how largely English habits of thought are formed by 
 English journalism and periodical literature, it would furnish a 
 crowning proof of the unseen but all-pervading influence 
 exercised by those Universities on National Education. 
 
 Such has been the place of Oxford University in the past 
 history of England a place which it has mainly owed to its 
 own inherent vitality, but which has been secured to it by the 
 policy of successive Governments, and which it has shared 
 with Cambridge alone among the non -political institutions of 
 the country. To forecast the place which it may be destined 
 to fill in the future history of England is beyond our aim 
 and beyond our skill. That it has survived three civil wars, 
 the dissolution of monasteries, the shock of the Eeformation, 
 and the levelling reign of Puritanism, is no proof that it will 
 be spared by the utilitarian spirit of modern Democracy. It 
 may be that its endowments will excite the cupidity, and its 
 privileges will excite the jealousy, of classes disposed to believe 
 that man does indeed live by bread alone, and that it will be 
 smothered by an undergrowth of provincial Colleges, miscalled 
 Universities, like those which have sprung up in America. It 
 may be, on the other hand, that it will be wisely preserved, as 
 a regulating force of higher value than ever, in a new system
 
 108 PLACE OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 of National Education, at once the healthiest school of social 
 equality and the purest fountain of intellectual honour. 
 What is certain is, that it cannot be again what it was in 
 bygone ages. Nevermore shall the wayworn student, his wallet 
 empty, but his soul filled with a divine thirst for knowledge, 
 ' look down upon the city of Roger Bacon and of Ockham with 
 the passionate reverence of the pilgrim, with the joy of the 
 miner who has found his gold.' Nevermore shall judgments 
 of the University be cited with respect in the Councils of 
 Popes, or invoked by Kings to ratify great acts of State. 
 Nevermore shall its Colleges be converted into officers' quarters, 
 and its public Schools into legislative chambers. And yet it is 
 possible nay, it is even probable, that, having ceased to be 
 an engine of the Church or an engine of the State, the occa- 
 sional seat of Government, or the last asylum of a disloyal 
 faction, it may continue to exercise a power more subtle but 
 no less profound, as part and parcel of the national life. Not 
 only the possession of unique libraries, collections, and archi- 
 tectural treasures, but the sacred memories of 700 years, the 
 prestige of an influence which has so deeply moulded both 
 English thought and English character, the recent and mani- 
 fold extension of that influence through new associations with 
 the English people these are attributes which no revolu- 
 tionary decree can either destroy or create, and which true 
 statesmanship will know how to cherish, whatever force may 
 henceforth be dominant in the shifting world of English 
 politics.
 
 VI 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES
 
 411 
 
 TO THE ELECTOES OF THE BOROUGH OF 
 WOODSTOCK (1858) 
 
 Gentlemen, I have been invited by an influential body of 
 Electors, whom I believe to represent a majority among you, 
 to come forward as a Liberal Candidate for the Borough of 
 Woodstock. Having been unable to attend the meeting from 
 which that invitation proceeded, I feel it right to lose no time 
 in laying before you a full statement of my political views, 
 and I shall take an early opportunity of ascertaining, by 
 personal conference, the sentiments of the constituency. 
 
 I am, and have ever been, a sincere Liberal. It is to 
 successive triumphs of Liberal principles over selfish interests 
 and prejudices, miscalled ' Conservative,' that we owe our 
 present liberties and social advancement, and it is by the light 
 of these principles that we must be guided in the reforms 
 yet to be accomplished. I welcome the large extension of the 
 franchise effected by the Preform Act of last session, not as 
 the settlement of a troublesome question, but as a measure of 
 justice to classes hitherto jealously excluded from political 
 influence, and as the lever whereby a new power may be 
 brought to bear on legislation. That it was forced upon an 
 unwilling Government by the determined attitude of the 
 people, and that clause after clause, designed to neutralise its 
 effect, was struck out by the ceaseless exertions of the Liberal 
 Party, headed by Mr. Gladstone, is now matter of history. 
 We might well be content to forget the insidious policy which 
 dictated its original form, had not this policy left its mark in 
 the so-called rating-clauses and other vexatious provisions, 
 which must, ere long, be amended. 
 
 It will be the first duty of the new constituencies to
 
 412 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 employ, resolutely and independently, the power thus placed 
 in their hand. Though I might prefer, in the abstract, a 
 system of open voting, I regard the Ballot as an essential 
 safeguard for the protection of electors, and the necessary 
 accompaniment of Household Suffrage in the present state of 
 society. 
 
 Foremost among the questions which await the decision 
 of the Reformed Parliament is that which is now the question 
 of the hour The Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 
 The injustice of maintaining a Protestant State Church > in a 
 community of which a large majority is Roman Catholic was 
 among the earliest of my political convictions, and I rejoico 
 that Mr. Gladstone has not shrunk from challenging tho 
 verdict of the country upon it. That verdict cannot bo 
 doubtful. Such an institution is manifestly indefensible on 
 principle, and, in my judgment, equally indefensible on 
 grounds of expediency. 
 
 It is said that disestablishment will injure the Protestant 
 cause in Ireland as if the interests of religion could ever be 
 served by wrongful means, and as if Protestantism were too 
 weak to hold its own on the basis of religious equality. It is 
 said that it will fail to extinguish the spirit of Fenianism as 
 if the object of statesmanship were only to salve over tho 
 symptoms of disaffection, instead of removing its deep-seated 
 causes. It is said that it will involve the downfall of the 
 Church of England as if the Church of England did not 
 depend for its existence on being that which the Protestant 
 Church of Ireland is not, and never has been a National 
 Church. It is said that it will endanger the foundation of 
 property as if property had any stronger foundation than 
 Parliamentary enactment, and as if some of the largest 
 private estates in the United Kingdom were not derived from 
 the endowments of monasteries dissolved by the will of Par- 
 liament. I believe from my heart that an act of righteous 
 conciliation, such as that proposed by Mr. Gladstone, will 
 strengthen and not weaken the legitimate influence of Pro- 
 testant zeal, will go far to disarm the reasonable discontent
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES 413 
 
 of Irish Catholics, will relieve the Church of England from a 
 scandal which now weighs her down, and will render the 
 proprietary titles of landlords far more secure than is possible 
 so long as they are associated with the odious traditions of 
 Protestant ascendancy. Whatever may be the difficulty of 
 appropriating afresh the surplus revenues of the existing 
 Establishment, after due provision for vested interests, I 
 regard them as a fund of which the State is entitled and 
 bound to dispose for the benefit, and, if possible, with the 
 consent, of the whole Irish population. 
 
 Another source of discord in Ireland is the unsatisfactory 
 relation between landlord and tenant. While I cannot re- 
 cognise the claim for absolute fixity of tenure, I think the 
 Legislature, having regard to the peculiar circumstances of 
 Ireland, ought at least to protect the tenant against capricious 
 eviction by the landlord, and to secure to him the value of un- 
 exhausted improvements. 
 
 Next to the condition of Ireland, the subject of Education, 
 in the largest sense, appears to me the most urgent of those 
 which call for the earnest consideration of the Liberal Party. 
 Without a more efficient system of popular education, our 
 efforts to grapple with crime, vice, and pauperism, must 
 needs be vain, our place in the scale of nations will surely be 
 lowered, and even our commercial supremacy cannot long be 
 maintained. I hold it to be the duty, as well as the right, of 
 the State to provide for this primary need of the poorer 
 classes, with due respect for religious scruples, but with a 
 paramount regard for the interests of society. If elected to 
 Parliament, I should therefore support any judicious scheme 
 for bringing the means of education within the reach of every 
 child in every parish throughout the country. Such a scheme 
 must, of course, exclude the imposition of vexatious conditions 
 upon the consciences of parents in any school aided by a 
 public grant. It must, at the same time, protect the rising 
 generation against the consequences of parental neglect ; and 
 I should not scruple to extend still further the compulsory 
 principle of the Factories and Industrial School Acts.
 
 414 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 The education of our higher and middle classes is only 
 second in importance to that of our working classes, and I 
 believe we ought no longer to postpone a thorough revision of 
 our educational institutions, with a view, especially, to a better 
 application of endowments and a more liberal recognition 
 of new branches of knowledge. As a Graduate of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, and as a Fellow of one of its most ancient 
 Colleges, I feel a special interest, and have taken an active 
 part, in recent efforts to assert the national character of our 
 two older Universities. It is my conviction that by throwing 
 open all Academical honours and emoluments to members of 
 all denominations, by reducing the scale of necessary expenses, 
 and by enlarging the course of studies to meet the require- 
 ments of the age, a new life may be infused into these noble 
 foundations, hitherto crippled by restrictions and privilege 1 ?, 
 a new impulse given to our whole system of higher education, 
 and a new bond of union developed in English society by the 
 construction, as it were, of a ladder of merit, reaching from its 
 lowest to its highest grades. 
 
 In Foreign Affairs, my voice would ever be for Peace, if 
 not at any price, yet at the price of that menacing or meddle- 
 some influence, too seldom used on the side of liberty, which 
 depends on the maintenance of great armaments. I can, 
 indeed, imagine circumstances under which it would be the 
 duty of this country, as of old, to arm herself against an 
 aggressor ; but such occasions, I am persuaded, will be of less 
 nd less frequent occurrence as the rights and interests of 
 people become the mainspring of international policy, in 
 the meantime, I conceive that we shall best maintain friendly 
 relations with foreign Powers, not by disguising our sympathy 
 with the cause of political liberty on the Continent, or the 
 cause of personal freedom in America, but rather by abstain- 
 ing from entering into engagements which can only servo the 
 purposes of dynastic ambition. I believe that we may effect 
 a vast reduction in the cost of our naval and military esta- 
 blishments without in any degree impairing their efficiency, 
 nor do I despair of seeing the moral power of England exerted
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES 415 
 
 in bringing about a general disarmament and a permanent 
 system of international arbitration. 
 
 The question of Church Rates has, I trust, been settled by 
 the adoption of Mr. Gladstone's compromise, though I should 
 have been prepared to abolish that liability without reserve. 
 There are other questions, however, of a more or less similar 
 nature, which need to be dealt with in a like spirit. The 
 secret of their solution is, in my opinion, to be found in a 
 broader assertion of national rights over local or sectarian 
 privileges. 
 
 The forthcoming report of the Commission on Trades- 
 Unions will doubtless pave the way for new legislation on the 
 subject. I see but one safe principle on which the law can 
 be founded. We must, on the one hand, give entire freedom 
 of combination to employers and workmen for all purposes 
 not criminal in their nature. On the other hand, we must 
 provide stringent remedies, not only against violent outrages, 
 but against coercion in every form. I feel persuaded that all 
 such difficulties will be approached far more hopefully by a 
 Parliament more directly representing those who have a per- 
 sonal interest in their settlement. 
 
 There are other reforms, likely to engage a larger share 
 of Parliamentary attention than heretofore, which I earnestly 
 desire to promote. Such is the reform of our legal procedure, 
 the reform of our public departments, of our municipal 
 organisation, of our charitable endowments, of our Poor-Law 
 administration, of the laws regulating the descent and transfer 
 of land, of the rating system, and of the licensing system. 
 Such, too, is the creation of financial boards, upon which the 
 representatives of the ratepayers may sit with the magis- 
 trates, and share the control of county expenditure. Upon 
 all these questions, and especially upon those which imme- 
 diately affect the material and moral well-being of the people, 
 I should desire to follow the enlightened leadership of Mr. 
 Gladstone, who, above all living statesmen, has given proofs 
 of the will and capacity to subordinate class-interests to 
 national interests, and has been inspired, throughout his
 
 416 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 political career, by a genuine sympathy with the feelings and 
 wants of his countrymen. 
 
 In conclusion, Gentlemen, I have only to assure you that, 
 if you see fit to return me, I shall enter Parliament under a 
 deep sense of responsibility. I have no professional or com- 
 mercial objects to promote by obtaining a seat, nor any other 
 personal ambition than to devote myself, heart and soul, to 
 public life. While I have entire faith in Liberal principles, 
 my endeavour, I trust, will ever be to carry them out in a 
 spirit of moderation. In my opinion, the time has come 
 when a higher statesmanship than has directed our national 
 policy since the establishment of Free Trade is urgently 
 required by the country. We have removed some grievances 
 and many abuses, but we have not grappled with the most 
 vital problems of our age. It is my highest aspiration, as it 
 has been my constant aim for years past in the study of 
 politics, to bear a part, however humble, in so great a work. 
 It is this privilege, and this alone, which I now solicit at your 
 hands, fully conscious of its magnitude, but sustained by an 
 earnest hope that, with your encouragement and support, I 
 shall not prove wholly unworthy of the confidence which you 
 
 may repose in me. 
 
 I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Bear Hotel, August 27, 1868. 
 
 TO THE ELECTORS OF WOODSTOCK (1874) 
 
 Gentlemen, An immediate Dissolution of Parliament being 
 announced by Her Majesty's command, I come amongst you 
 once more to ask your support in vindicating Liberal princi- 
 ples and the independence of your Borough. 
 
 During the General Election of 1808, I laid before you a 
 full statement of my political views. If I now address you 
 more briefly, it is because I have nothing to retract, and 
 nothing to alter, of what I then deliberately advanced. The
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES 417 
 
 experience of five eventful years has but confirmed my 
 conviction that a Liberal policy is the only policy whereby 
 the power and progress of this, or any other nation, can be 
 permanently maintained. The claim of Mr. Gladstone's 
 Administration to the renewed confidence of the people is 
 founded on no vague professions, but on a series of past 
 achievements which have been equalled by no previous 
 Government in our Parliamentary history. The Irish Church 
 Act, the Irish Land Act, the Elementary Education Act, the 
 Endowed Schools Act, the Act which swept away Religious 
 Tests in the Universities, the Ballot Act, the Trades-Union 
 Act, the Mines Eegulation Act, the Judicature Act, the Aboli- 
 tion of Purchase in the Army, the extension of Promotion by 
 Merit to all branches of the Public Service, and the restora- 
 tion of friendly relations between Great Britain and the 
 United States these are the enduring monuments of a 
 Liberal policy, under Mr. Gladstone's leadership ; and of 
 these measures there is scarcely one which the Conservative 
 Opposition has not exerted itself vigorously to defeat or to 
 mar. It would be too much to say that no defects remain to 
 be amended in some of the Acts which have been passed 
 under this obstructive pressure, or that no mistakes of judg- 
 ment have been committed in carrying out administrative 
 reforms. But such mistakes, few and slight compared with 
 the great benefits which Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues 
 have conferred upon the country, have been due to no un- 
 worthy motives, but rather to an exclusive zeal for the 
 national interest, to guard which is the highest duty of a 
 Liberal Ministry. 
 
 In his recent Address to the Electors of Greenwich, Mr. 
 Gladstone has pointed out that, within the last five years, 
 taxes have been remitted to the extent of 12,500,000/., the 
 National Debt has been reduced by more than 20,000,000/., 
 a further saving of 9,000,000/. has enabled the Government 
 to purchase the Telegraphs for the State, the ' Alabama ' in- 
 demnity has been paid out of the revenue, and a surplus of 
 at least 5,000,000/. may be anticipated for the coming year. 
 
 E E
 
 418 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 Out of this surplus, aided by adjustments of existing taxes, he 
 proposes to abolish the Income Tax, and at the same time 
 avows a confident belief that it may be possible to lighten 
 the burdens on articles of popular consumption, and to effect 
 the relief, coupled with the reform, of local taxation. I need 
 hardly say that, having entire faith in Mr. Gladstone's finan- 
 cial ability, I should, if elected, heartily support him in 
 carrying out these beneficent objects. 
 
 The other questions indicated by Mr. Gladstone as de- 
 manding the early attention of Parliament are the Municipal 
 Government of the Metropolis, University Reform, the Licens- 
 ing Laws, the laws respecting the descent, transfer, and 
 occupation of Land, the Game Laws, the laws affecting the 
 relations of Employers and Employed, and the laws which 
 regulate Local Government. The last four of these questions 
 possess a special interest for the constituency of Woodstock, 
 containing, as it does, a very large proportion of agricultural 
 labourers. I shall, therefore, make no apology for quoting 
 at length the statesmanlike and generous language in which 
 Mr. Gladstone speaks of this class : 
 
 ' Of all the changes marking the present day, there is 
 none which I view with more heartfelt satisfaction than the 
 progressive rise of wages in the agricultural districts. I view 
 this rise as the natural and proper, though long-delayed, 
 result of economic laws ; as the removal of something like a 
 national discredit ; as carrying with it a great addition to the 
 stock, never too abundant, of human happiness ; and as a 
 new guarantee for the stability of the Throne and institutions 
 of the country.' 
 
 While I adopt every word of this declaration, I venture 
 to go a step further, and to submit that, since unwise legisla- 
 tion has concurred with economic laws in depressing the 
 condition of agricultural labourers, wise legislation may 
 properly concur with economic laws in raising that condition. 
 It is for this reason, and because no class ought to be excluded 
 from representation in the national council, that I desire to 
 see Household Suffrage established in the counties. When
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES 419 
 
 tins has been accomplished, Parliament may be expected to 
 deal in a new spirit with the law of Primogeniture and the 
 custom of Entail, with the Game Laws, with the Enclosure 
 Laws, with the law of Landlord and Tenant, with the law of 
 Master and Servant, with the law of Conspiracy, with the 
 system of County and Parish Administration, and with a 
 variety of other questions in which agricultural labourers 
 are nearly concerned. 
 
 Holding these convictions, and having a hearty sympathy 
 with all the efforts of agricultural labourers to better their 
 social position by legitimate means, I rely with entire confi- 
 dence on their united support in the approaching contest. I 
 am, however, no advocate of Socialistic measures, nor will 
 I be party to an agitation whereby class may be set against 
 class. On the contrary, I maintain that farmers as well as 
 labourers, and landlords as well as farmers, have been to 
 some extent the victims of legislative errors in former times ; 
 that all have a common interest in developing to the utmost 
 the resources of the land, with due security of tenure ; and 
 that, in the end, all will profit by the prosperity which now 
 at last appears to be reaching the home of the labourer. 
 
 In conclusion, Gentlemen, I would earnestly impress upon 
 you that union is strength, and that under the protection of 
 the Ballot your votes are your own. Let us combine modera- 
 tion in speech with unflinching energy in action, remember- 
 ing that such a contest as ours will be eagerly watched by 
 friends and enemies throughout England, and resolving 
 that nothing said or done on our part shall impair the effect 
 of our victory. 
 
 I remain, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your Friend and faithful Servant, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Merton College, Oxford, Jan. 27, 1874. 
 
 S E 2
 
 420 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 TO THE ELECTORS OF THE COUNTY OF MONMOUTH 
 
 Gentlemen, At a grave crisis in the political history of this 
 country, we respond to a hearty invitation from the Liberals 
 of Monmouthshire, and offer ourselves as candidates for the 
 representation of your county. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield has challenged the verdict of the country 
 on his Foreign Policy, and by that policy his Government 
 must be mainly judged. We condemn its principles, and 
 deplore many of its results. We are not advocates of Peace 
 at any price, but we see nothing but evil in that menacing 
 and meddlesome influence which depends on warlike demon- 
 strations, and has actually involved us of late in two un- 
 righteous, because unnecessary, wars. The question is not, 
 as the Prime Minister would have you believe, whether the 
 1 Imperial character of this realm ' shall be maintained. In 
 common with all Liberals, we are prepared to uphold the 
 integrity of the Empire, which Liberal statesmen have done 
 so much to strengthen, by giving the Colonies the privileges 
 of self-government, and by studying to remove every just 
 cause of discontent in Ireland. In common with all Liberals, 
 we claim for England not ' ascendancy,' indeed, but a just 
 share of authority in the councils of Europe. But we con- 
 ceive that England will best retain that authority, not by 
 vain boasts of her power, still less by secret conventions and 
 reckless annexations, but rather by deserving the confidence 
 of foreign nations, and setting them a noble example of true 
 national greatness, founded on constitutional liberty. 
 
 The results of the opposite policy have certainly not been 
 encouraging. If the object of the Government was to check 
 the aggrandisement of Russia, the result has been that Russia 
 has obtained nearly all that she coveted. If their object was 
 to preserve the integrity of Turkey, the result has been that 
 Turkey is dismembered. If their object was to avoid incum- 
 bering this country with the protection of Christian nationali- 
 ties in Eastern Europe, the result has been to incumber it
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES 421 
 
 with the protection, and even the military defence, of Maho- 
 medan tribe's in Western Asia. Nor is this all. By move- 
 ments purporting to be defensive, but really aggressive, they 
 have converted the Afghan nation from a natural ally into a 
 deadly enemy, and have vastly increased both the cost and 
 the responsibility of Colonial Government in South Africa. 
 
 Experience has ever shown that what is called ' a spirited 
 Foreign Policy ' means a feeble and reactionary Home Policy. 
 Certain reactionary projects of Lord Beaconsfield's Govern- 
 ment were, happily, defeated by the Liberal Party. Its Home 
 Policy has since been almost a blank, and nothing whatever 
 is promised for the future. An extension of the County 
 Franchise, a thorough revision of the Laws regulating the 
 descent, tenure, and transfer of land, a comprehensive reform 
 of County Government and Local Taxation, a settlement of 
 the Burial Question on the basis of religious equality these 
 are measures which may be expected from a Liberal Govern- 
 ment, and from a Liberal Government alone. Such measures, 
 together with all others which may conduce to moral, social, 
 or material progress, will receive our warmest support. 
 
 We observe that leading members of the present Govern- 
 ment look forward to an early reduction of the national 
 expenditure ; and we gladly agree with them. It will be re- 
 duced when an economical Ministry succeeds the present 
 extravagant Administration ; then, and not before. It is 
 vain to expect economy from a Conservative Government, 
 and especially from one which is pledged to a policy of rest- 
 less Imperialism. Its sympathies will always be with the 
 consumers, rather than with the producers, of taxes ; its 
 traditional prejudices are opposed to retrenchment in the 
 Army, Navy, and Civil Service ; and its partiality for class 
 interests renders it incapable of resisting the manifold tempta- 
 tions of jobbery. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that 
 the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, having inherited a 
 surplus of six millions from Mr. Gladstone, should bequeath 
 to his successor eight millions of accumulated deficits, to 
 remain for the next five years as a burden on the national
 
 422 ELECTION ADDRESSES 
 
 finances. For the means of clearing off this heavy liability 
 we must look to a revival of trade, following on the adoption 
 of a less wasteful policy at home and a less ambitious policy 
 abroad. 
 
 Such, Gentlemen, are the principles which we, if elected, 
 should endeavour to support, in a spirit of moderation and 
 independence, but as loyal members of the Liberal Party, 
 It is hardly needful to add that we should regard the interests 
 of this county as possessing a special claim to our attention. 
 
 We regret that it will be impossible for us to visit most of 
 the electors personally, but we hope to have opportunities of 
 stating our views more fully at public meetings. Let ub 
 earnestly impress upon you, in conclusion, that union is 
 strength, and that, under the protection of the Ballot, the 
 vote of the humblest elector is his own. It is our desire to 
 conduct the contest without bitterness, on strictly public 
 grounds, and no effort shall be spared on our part to deserve 
 the confidence which you may repose in us. 
 We are, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient Servants, 
 
 George C. Brodiuck. 
 
 Cornelius M. Warmington. 
 
 Liberal Committee Room, Newport, March 18, 1880.
 
 VII 
 SPEECHES AND LETTEES 
 
 POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL
 
 DR. PUSEY AND PROFESSOR JOWETT 
 
 To the Editor of the Times. February 23, 1863 
 
 Sir, Dr. Pusey is a bold as well as an orthodox man, or he 
 never would have ventured into the open arena of discussion 
 with those for whom the anathemas of the University pulpit 
 and the citations of the Vice-Chancellor's Court have no 
 terrors. It is scarcely possible, however, that he can have 
 consulted his two allies, or ' friends,' as he now calls them, 
 before taking this hazardous step. Had he done so, they 
 would surely have recalled to his mind circumstances which 
 would have deterred him from making the public the con- 
 fidant of his motives and intentions. It is true that he 
 ' abstains from saying anything except as to the abstract 
 principle,' but abstract principles are just the weapons which 
 Dr. Pusey's enemies would wish him to choose, and which 
 his ' friends ' should keep out of his hands. 
 
 It appears, Sir, you were mistaken in supposing that Dr. 
 Pusey ' distrusts the power of God's truth ' (by which I fear 
 he means Dr. Pusey's truth) ' to abide the most searching 
 inquiry.' Only the inquirer must be a man after Dr. Pusey's 
 own heart, for ' it is quite another question whether all indi- 
 viduals are judges of truth.' It startles one a little to hear 
 that Dr. Pusey himself has read, for forty years, ' more anti- 
 Christian writings than any, probably, of your readers.' It 
 may be the part of valour to state this, but is it the part of 
 discretion? Does it not attract undue attention to the fact 
 that Dr. Pusey's first publication was on the state of religious 
 opinion in Germany, and that it betrayed a close acquaintance 
 with neologian writers, which was mistaken by many for
 
 426 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 sympathy with them ? Of course, the Doctor has now out- 
 grown these youthful errors, and finds, what every schoolboy 
 is taught to say, as though it were the fruit of his own ex- 
 perience, ' that all deeper thought and criticism uniformly 
 tends to the support of the faith.' But does it not occur to 
 him that the honest search after the truth which has made 
 him a bulwark of Anglicanism may be innocently followed by 
 others, and that the shipwreck of individual faith which he 
 mentions as a consequence of false teaching, may in reality 
 be a consequence of that teaching which, trammelling inquiry 
 with foregone conclusions, puts the interests of orthodoxy 
 first, and those of truth second ? 
 
 But then, says Dr. Pusey, ' I cannot imagine anything 
 more demoralising than that clergymen should profess their 
 belief in great fundamental truths, and assert the contrary.' 
 When I read this passage, Sir, I confess I thought that it must 
 be the preface to a solemn disclaimer of the doctrines laid down 
 in ' Tract XC.,' and that Dr. Pusey was about to sacrifice his old 
 friend, Dr. Newman, to his new ' friends,' Drs. Ogilvie and 
 Heurtley. Remembering the reproaches that had been heaped 
 on clergymen of blameless life and saintly piety for remaining 
 in the Church of England when their hearts were with tho 
 Church of Rome, and on Dr. Pusey himself for not following 
 his own principles to their logical results, I interpreted these 
 words too hastily, and fancied they must be meant to prepare 
 our minds for a confession, when, in fact, they were tho 
 basis of an accusation. That accusation is one which, lightly 
 as it is made, will have to be substantiated by proof in a 
 court of justice, and I cannot but think, Sir, that it would be 
 in better taste to postpone it till Professor Jowett has been 
 fairly tried. 
 
 This suicidal argument discloses the weakest point of all 
 in Dr. Pusey's position. We have it now on his own authority 
 that he is prosecuting the Greek Professor for an offence 
 against ecclesiastical law, and not against Academical disci- 
 pline. The premisses are that Professor Jowett has been 
 party to a ' systematic attempt to revolutionise the Church
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 427 
 
 of England,' and that ' duty to God, to the Church, and to 
 the souls of men,' compels Dr. Pusey to enter the lists against 
 him. The conclusion is not that Dr. Pusey should with- 
 stand him with the learning amassed by forty years' study of 
 infidel writings, for that method of warfare is tedious and 
 uncertain ; not that he should proceed against him before an 
 ecclesiastical court, for to that jurisdiction Dr. Pusey admits 
 that Mr. Jowett is not amenable but that he should deliver 
 him over to the secular arm of a tribunal which has no power 
 to protect the Church of England, which has nothing to do 
 with the rights and liabilities of clergymen, and which will, 
 in all probability, decline to take cognisance of the matter. 
 I have read the statutes upon which Dr. Pusey and his 
 ' friends ' rely again and again, and I am thoroughly satisfied 
 that they were never designed, and cannot be strained, to 
 touch Professor Jowett's case at all. If they could, there is 
 not a lay Master of Arts resident in Oxford who could venture 
 to publish in London a book like that by which Dr. Pusey 
 first made himself known. I have too much confidence in 
 the ability and discretion of Professor Bernard to believe that 
 this suit will be allowed to proceed, but I am quite certain 
 that such a claim of jurisdiction will not be recognised for 
 one moment in the Queen's Bench. But the Queen's Bench 
 is not sitting, nor will it sit again until after Easter. Is it 
 possible, Sir, that Dr. Pusey, who professes to put ' good 
 faith ' above ' theological truth,' can have selected this time 
 for the prosecution on purpose to evade the lawful interference 
 of that Court ? 
 
 Let Dr. Pusey reflect on these two things : first, that the 
 decision, whatever it may be, cannot bind the Church, or 
 any one who has not the misfortune to reside within the pre- 
 cincts of the University cursed by the surveillance of this 
 modern Holy Office ; secondly, that the University itself will 
 not be bound by it for a day. If it should be ever so oppres- 
 sive, it will not be the solemn judgment of the University, 
 but of a coterie appointed by the Proctors for the time being. 
 Next year anti-Puseyite Proctors may be in office, a new set
 
 428 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 of Delegates with kindred sentiments may be nominated, and, 
 as there is no Statute of Limitations, Dr. Pusey himself may 
 be brought under their ban for the sermons and books which 
 have already incurred the censure of the University, unless 
 the memory of that earlier work, which he has since, no doubt, 
 committed to the flames, should then be revived in extenua- 
 tion of his offence. I can well understand, Sir, that with the 
 consciousness of all this, and the recollection of those facts 
 which were pointed out in your article of Saturday last, Dr. 
 Pusey feels it ' painful to have to act against one with whom, 
 in this place, we must be brought into contact ' ; but I cannot 
 understand what service he conceives himself to be rendering 
 the Church by doing violence to that honourable feeling. If 
 he turns Professor Jowett out of Oxford, he will turn him 
 into some diocese in the Church of England, where (under the 
 provisions of the Church Discipline Act, section 20) he can 
 no longer be molested in respect of a work published more 
 than two years ago. 
 
 ' Prosecution is not persecution,' insists Dr. Pusey, as 
 though he had not kept back Professer Jowett's salary before 
 he invoked 'the majesty of justice,' meaning thereby the 
 Small Debts Court over which the Vice-Chancellor presides. 
 Of course it is not. Expulsion from one's home and the 
 scene of one's cherished labours is not imprisonment ; the 
 loss of livelihood is not torture. This is an argument which 
 lias grown grey in the service of bigotry, and against which, 
 it appears, Sydney Smith exhausted in vain the armoury of 
 his scathing wit. Where he failed I cannot hope to succeed ; 
 but, though I should despair of convincing Dr. Pusey by 
 reason that the use of any tactics can be illegitimate in 
 defence of the faith, I am more sanguine of influencing him 
 by authority. If I might presume to suggest to so learned 
 a man an admirable precedent for conduct in a religious 
 crisis, I should direct him, not to the history of Germany, 
 but to that of Judaea. I would say to him: Put aside all 
 those heterodox authors whose insidious sophistry may have 
 left your faith unshaken, but has certainly warped your
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 429 
 
 judgment and perverted your sense of justice. Go to the 
 New Testament, and read there the advice which a master in 
 Israel, an accomplished Hebraist, a doctor of divinity, and 
 theological professor in his way, gave to those who were for 
 hushing up and stifling by a prosecution certain strange 
 opinions, which happened in that case to be true : ' Eefrain 
 from these men, and let them alone ; for if this counsel or 
 this work be of men, it will come to naught ; but if it be of 
 God, ye cannot overthrow it : lest haply ye be found even to 
 fight against God.' 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 A Protestant. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE TOWN-HALL, WOODSTOCK, 
 OCTOBER 8, 1868 
 
 Electors of Woodstock, I feel it a high honour, as well as 
 a great pleasure, to stand before you to-night as the Liberal 
 candidate for this borough. As our Chairman has observed, 
 this is the first time that I have addressed a public meeting 
 in your Town-hall, but the kind reception which I have just 
 received proves to me indeed, my own feelings tell me that 
 I am no longer a stranger in Woodstock. It is now more 
 than six weeks since I commenced my canvass, and during 
 this period I have personally visited and conferred with the 
 greater number of the electors. Perhaps it is never very 
 wise to speak too definitely of results in such cases, but I 
 have no hesitation in assuring you that I have met with all 
 the encouragement that I could have expected ; and I am 
 now in a position to state publicly, and without reserve, that, 
 come what may, I shall certainly go to the poll. I believe some 
 of our opponents complain that I have come to disturb what 
 they are pleased to call the peace of the borough. We have 
 all heard of false prophets who cried 'Peace, Peace,' where 
 there was no peace ; and I leave you to judge whether these 
 gentlemen do not labour under a like delusion. But I shall
 
 430 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 not condescend to answer such a charge. I hold that any 
 man who aspires to be a member of Parliament has a right 
 to offer himself to any constituency, and to challenge the 
 opinion of the electors on his political sentiments and per- 
 sonal claims. The mere fact, of which our Chairman has 
 reminded you, that the number of electors in this borough 
 has been more than trebled by the Reform Act, is surely 
 enough to justify a contest, if any justification were needed. 
 
 I do not think the importance of this fact has yet been 
 fully realised. Lord Palmerston, being once asked what he 
 believed would be the consequence of a large extension of the 
 franchise, made a reply which is worth remembering. He 
 said, borrowing a figure-of-speech from the theatre : ' I don't 
 believe the actors will be much changed, but they will play 
 to the gallery instead of playing to the pit and boxes.' He 
 meant, I suppose, that, instead of consulting the wishes and 
 interests of the upper and middle classes, Parliament would 
 thenceforth have to consult the wishes and interests of the 
 whole nation. Now, I go further than Lord Palmerston. I 
 think, not only the style of playing, but the actors themselves, 
 will be greatly changed, and ought to be greatly changed. 
 New measures require new men, and it is not to be expected 
 that persons trained in the old school of politics should be 
 equal to all the exigencies of the critical time which is coming. 
 When the railways superseded the stage-coaches, engine- 
 drivers were not elected from the class of coachmen ; and I 
 must say that, judging by his Address, if Mr. Barnett were 
 about to drive a political engine in the new Parliament, I 
 should not like to be a passenger by the train. 
 
 I regard this as a very momentous crisis in our national 
 history, and I believe the future historian will date its com- 
 mencement from the death of Lord Palmerston. Lord 
 Palmerston was a most remarkable man, but he was no 
 lie former ; and not the least remarkable of his qualities was 
 his power of lulling to sleep the political spirit and conscience 
 of the nation, so that he managed to stave off during his own 
 lifetime the question of Reform, with all the other questions
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 481 
 
 which Eeform was sure to force on. But the calm which 
 reigned under his Administration was but a deceptive calm 
 
 The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below, 
 
 and we have now to deal with difficulties which he only post- 
 poned. On Lord Palmerston's death Lord Russell succeeded 
 him, with Mr. Gladstone for his Chancellor of Exchequer. 
 An honest, though perhaps too moderate, Eeform Bill was at 
 once introduced, and would have enfranchised a large propor- 
 tion of the working classes. It was defeated by a coalition of 
 the Tories with a disloyal section of the Liberal Party, who 
 denounced it as a ' degradation of the suffrage,' a ' transfer 
 of power ' from the educated to the ignorant masses, a scheme 
 for ' swamping the constituencies,' as if with the refuse of 
 the population, and a downward step towards the lowest 
 depth of all Household Suffrage. Lord Bussell and Mr. 
 Gladstone thereupon sacrificed office to principle, and were 
 replaced by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, who as promptly 
 sacrificed principle to office. Convinced by the great meetings 
 held all over the country, and by the Hyde Park riots, that 
 it was unsafe to trifle with the people, they yielded to fear 
 what they would not yield to justice. They brought forward, 
 indeed, at first, a make-believe Eeform Bill so ludicrously 
 inadequate that some fancied Mr. Disraeli must have sunk 
 into a state of hopeless imbecility ; but it was only put out as 
 a feeler, and quickly set aside for another measure containing 
 the principle of Household Suffrage. That measure was 
 studiously cumbered with vexatious clauses designed to 
 neutralise its effect, and keep the power in the hands of the 
 upper classes ; but these disappeared one by one under the 
 assaults of the Liberal Party, and the result is a highly 
 democratic Reform Act. It has often been said that, 
 throughout all these transactions, there was no fixed principle 
 in the policy of Mr. Disraeli and his friends. That seems to 
 me an entire mistake. There was a fixed principle, and that 
 principle was a determination to retain place at any cost~of 
 honour. I have never been able to understand how English
 
 482 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 noblemen and gentlemen could sit beside Mr. Disraeli and 
 be parties to a course so utterly profligate ; still less can I 
 understand how they can now stand up without blushing, 
 and pledge themselves never to consent to this or that, and 
 expect the world to believe them. And now, having taken 
 credit for granting Reform, of which they hate the very name, 
 the Conservatives are doing their best to make it nugatory 
 by what they call ' influence,' but I call bribery and intimida- 
 tion. I remember a Radical friend of mine, who sometimes 
 uses strong language, remarking last year : ' That fellow 
 Disraeli, who is as clever as the very devil, thinks he is going 
 to manipulate Democracy. Now, I say, take his Democracy, 
 and hang his manipulation.' I adopt the spirit of this advice, 
 though not the form of expression. It is our business to 
 defeat these base tactics, and convert that into a reality which 
 was designed to be a sham. It is to bear my part in this 
 work that I have come forward, and it is to bear their part 
 in it that so many good Liberals are assembled here to-night. 
 And now let us consider for a few minutes the question 
 which has become the first battle-ground between the two 
 parties the question of the Irish Church. I own that I 
 have so long been convinced of the necessity for Disestablish- 
 ment that I feel a certain surprise, not unmixed with amuse- 
 ment, when I hear it treated as a new idea. Some, however, 
 ask why Mr. Gladstone should have raised the issue just now, 
 and accuse him of having done so for mere party motives. 
 No man is more proof against such a charge than Mr. Glad- 
 stone, and I think I can give a conclusive answer to it. In 
 the first place, the question was not started by Mr. Gladstone. 
 It was the Government who proclaimed, with a flourish of 
 trumpets, 'a truly liberal policy' for Ireland, and Mr. Glad- 
 stone, unless prepared to accept it, was bound to produce a 
 counter-policy, as he actually did. But, again, with a General 
 Election in prospect, how could Mr. Gladstone have concealed 
 his mature conviction that it was time to abolish the Irish 
 Church, and what would have been said and justly said, too 
 had he masked his design, when an appeal was made to
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 433 
 
 the new constituencies, and ' sprung ' it upon the next Par- 
 liament ? In approaching the merits of the case, I dismiss 
 at once the historical argument, upon which so much learning 
 has been expended, for the simple reason that, from my point 
 of view, it is quite irrelevant. I shall be prepared, on any 
 proper occasion, to show how thoroughly hollow it is, but I 
 must decline to enter upon it now, because I hold that it is a 
 statesman's duty to be guided by practical, and not by his- 
 torical, considerations. The maintenance of the Irish Church 
 is not a point to be settled, like a right of way, by title-deeds, 
 but a grave question of Imperial policy, to be determined by 
 a reference to facts. Now, the facts are that, for two centuries 
 at least, the vast majority of the Irish people have been 
 Eoman Catholics, that persistent but vain attempts have 
 been made to convert them by persecution and persuasion, 
 but that at this moment there are six Roman Catholics to 
 one member of the Established Church in the whole popula- 
 tion, and twenty or thirty to one among the poor. Yet the 
 rich minority has all the ecclesiastical endowments, while the 
 poor majority is left to shift for itself. Is this right ? is it 
 just ? is it Christian ? No unprejudiced man will venture to 
 affirm that it is ; but I will say more it is not safe. I know 
 it has been said that Eoman Catholic laymen in Ireland do 
 not regard it as a grievance. But the very people who allege 
 this are the same who alleged that there was no popular 
 demand for Reform, till the railings of Hyde Park fell down 
 and the Government surrendered at discretion. The memorial 
 presented last session from more than 900 Roman Catholic 
 noblemen and gentlemen disposes of this statement, which is 
 one calculated to provoke agitation. I sincerely rejoice that 
 the Irish people have not yet demanded the abolition of the 
 Irish Church with arms in their hands. I believe they have 
 not done so because they rely on your sense of justice, and 
 the action of your representatives in the new Parliament ; 
 and such is my own confidence in justice, that I doubt not 
 that Disestablishment will be followed by a gradual but real 
 diminution of discontent in Ireland. The absolute necessity 
 
 F F
 
 434 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 of doing something, with this object, has been acknowledged 
 by the Government in what Mr. Lowe described as their 
 ' hot-potato policy ' of levelling up ; but the plan of bribing 
 the Roman Catholics, which they proposed, has been properly 
 rejected by the country. Mr. Gladstone's proposal is founded 
 on the very opposite principle. As it is impossible to endow 
 all denominations alike, he recommends that all should be 
 disendowed alike, due provision being made for vested interests, 
 and that, henceforth, the ecclesiastical settlement of Ireland 
 should rest on the basis of religious equality. 
 
 No one pretends to doubt that, if the question were new, 
 this would be the right solution of it ; but a thousand objec- 
 tions are put forward to show, either that it is too soon, or 
 that it is too late, or that it would be inconsistent with some- 
 thing else, to adopt this solution. It is asserted, for instance, 
 that the Irish Church is an integral part of the English 
 Church, so that both must stand or fall together. Why, how 
 is it possible for two institutions of the same kind to be more 
 radically different? The one is national, the other anti- 
 national ; the one professes, and not without reason, to be 
 the Church of the poor, the other is notoriously, and almost 
 exclusively, the Church of the rich. It is as if the crew of a 
 fine seaworthy vessel were urged to quit her and place them- 
 selves in a leaky boat, just about to founder. Not that I 
 would deny that our Church is in danger. The Church is in 
 danger, and ever must be, so long as her rulers, blind to 
 the signs of their own times, and forgetful of the corruptions 
 which threaten her safety from within, persist in identifying 
 her with the injustice and tyranny of Protestant ascendency 
 in Ireland. But then, it is said that such a concession to 
 Popery will be a fatal blow to the Protestant religion. What ! 
 is Protestantism, which, three centuries ago, wrested whole 
 kingdoms from the dominion of Rome by the might of truth 
 alone is Protestantism now so weak that it needs exclusive 
 protection, and fears a battle with Popery on equal terms ? 
 I believe, on the contrary, with Macaulay, that error, though 
 no match for truth alone, will often prove more than a match
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 485 
 
 for truth and power together ; and that Protestantism in 
 Ireland, relieved from State patronage, will be more powerful 
 for good than ever. I confess I am filled with amazement 
 and shame when I hear, not only lawyers, but divines, speak- 
 ing of the Irish Establishment as if its existence were bound 
 up with the interests of the Protestant religion confounding a 
 Church which is a mere creation of law, a mere engine of State 
 policy, which Parliament established, and which Parliament 
 can destroy, with that spiritual Church which is not of this 
 world, which is founded in the hearts of men, and against 
 which, as Scripture tells us, the gates of hell shall not pre- 
 vail. As for the plea that it ought to be maintained as a 
 ' Missionary Church,' I say that is the very reason why it 
 should not be an Established Church. A Missionary Church 
 ought to depend entirely on voluntary effort, and I never 
 heard of a heathen population being required to support the 
 mission sent out to convert it. But I will not dwell further 
 on these objections. They have been answered over and over 
 again by abler pens and tongues than mine, and they have 
 no force against the broader view which I take of the whole 
 question. This is no question of precedence between rival 
 Churches it is a question of Imperial statesmanship, of 
 conciliating or alienating Ireland, perhaps of cementing or 
 dissolving the Union. You will never heal Irish discontent ; 
 you will never quench the Fenian spirit ; you will never 
 check the tide of emigration, or attract an influx of capital ; 
 you will never get rid of the danger which menaces you from 
 that new Ireland beyond the Atlantic, until you have shown 
 before the face of Europe and the world that you are resolved 
 to do justice to our Irish fellow-subjects ; and you will never 
 convince the world of this while the Irish Church stands. 
 
 There are many other questions which must soon engage 
 the attention of a Eeformed Parliament, but which I will not 
 weary you by discussing to-night. Education, however, in 
 its largest sense, is a subject which cannot be altogether 
 passed over. First, there is popular, or primary education, 
 which has yet to be brought within the reach of every child 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 in every parish throughout England. I was present at the 
 Manchester Conference last spring, and I entirely adopt the 
 general conclusions at which that conference arrived. We 
 shall have, I am convinced, to modify our present system of 
 voluntary school-management by introducing the principle 
 of rating. We must, also, by making the Conscience Clause 
 universal, provide against the imposition of any vexatious 
 condition on the children of Nonconformist parents. I own 
 that, like Mr. W. E. Forster, I am not yet prepared to go 
 the whole length of compulsory school-attendance, which can 
 only be enforced in the last resort by the policeman ; but I 
 foresee that vigorous measures will be needed, and applied, 
 to check the spread of juvenile crime and vagrancy. Middle- 
 class education, too, needs a thorough reform, especially in 
 respect of endowments, now wasted, or worse than wasted, 
 but available for the educational requirements of this class. 
 Nor do I see why our great public schools, like Eton and 
 Winchester, with their large revenues, should be altogether 
 closed against boys of superior ability from the humbler 
 ranks of society. University reform is a still larger subject. 
 I have long laboured, with my friend Mr. Sidgwick, who is 
 here to-night, and other Oxford reformers, to open both our 
 ancient Universities to students of all classes and all deno- 
 minations, encouraging at the same time new branches of 
 study, and greatly reducing the necessary expenses. When 
 these great changes shall have been accomplished in our 
 several educational institutions, I look forward to seeing what 
 I may call a national system of promotion by merit, enabling 
 a poor man's son, if he be clever enough, to rise, step by 
 step, to the highest eminence in Church or State. At the 
 great question of taxation and expenditure I can but glance 
 in passing. This is not the place or time for statistical dis- 
 quisitions, but I regard the financial extravagance of Tory 
 Governments as having been established by conclusive proofs. 
 Now, I ask myself, and I ask you, why this should be so. I 
 believe there are two sufficient answers. In the first place, 
 the sympathies of Tory Ministers arc with the consumers,
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 437 
 
 and not with the producers, of taxes ; they have a natural 
 propensity for spending other people's money with generosity, 
 like the man who was so affected by a charity sermon that he 
 plunged his hand into his neighbour's pocket, and poured the 
 contents of it into the plate. But there is another reason. 
 A Tory Government is ever, and I trust ever will be, a weak 
 Government, and weak Governments cannot resist the pres- 
 sure of demands from all sides on the public purse, lest they 
 should lose the support of wavering adherents. Mr. Glad- 
 stone, on the contrary, will be at the head of a strong 
 Government and, what is more, he will have the people of 
 England at his back and I feel no doubt that he will make 
 a vigorous and successful effort to cut down our overgrown 
 Estimates. And now, Gentlemen, I must pass in silence over 
 many topics mentioned in my Address, such as those which 
 would fall under the head of social legislation, and the whole 
 province of foreign policy. I will do Lord Stanley the justice to 
 say that his administration of foreign affairs has been worthy 
 of a Liberal Minister, but I question whether even Lord 
 Stanley would have been able to withstand the clamour of 
 his party for the recognition of the Slave States a step 
 which, if taken, would have plunged us into the most wicked 
 and disastrous of wars. It is the less necessary that I should 
 range over this great field, because I trust what I have 
 already said, and published in my Address, has satisfied you 
 that I am a sound and thoroughgoing Liberal by conviction 
 and study ; and when a man is that, if he is not too old or 
 proud to learn, he has within himself a key to unlock most of 
 the problems which he is likely to encounter. Moreover, I 
 have professed myself, and now profess myself again, a loyal 
 adherent of Mr. Gladstone a man who, in political know- 
 ledge, has never been matched since the days of Sir Eobert 
 Peel ; who, in political courage, is far superior to Sir Eobert 
 Peel, and who, in the highest qualification for government 
 an enlightened sympathy with the wants of all classes stands 
 alone among the statesmen of our time. 
 
 And this brings me to what, after all, is the grand differ-
 
 438 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 ence between the Liberal and Conservative Party at the pre- 
 sent juncture. Read the addresses issued and the speeches 
 made by Conservative candidates, and you will find them full 
 of apology and negation. They tell you, glibly enough, 
 what they will not do ; but when you ask what they will do, 
 they have nothing to say. Talk of Conservative policy ! they 
 have no policy but to wait for something to turn up. What 
 President Lincoln said of General McClellan is not inapplic- 
 able to Mr. Disraeli : ' That fellow is always talking of his 
 plans, but I'll be hanged if I believe that he has any plans at 
 all.' After the experience of the last two years, how can any 
 one speak of Conservative principles ? Prejudices, passions, 
 party-spirit, they may have, but principles they have none ; 
 and this is the fact they would vainly endeavour to disguise 
 by adopting the new-fangled name of ' Constitutionalists.' 
 Constitutionalists, indeed ! why, if there be any characteristic 
 of our Constitution, it is that it has no such limitation as 
 Conservatives would fix, but has grown with the growth, 
 strengthened with the strength, and expanded with the ex- 
 pansive energies of the English people. No ! the Conserva- 
 tives of our own day have no longer any faith to rally them. 
 They have no faith in themselves or their leader : and there 
 I cannot blame them. They have no faith in truth, or they 
 would not be afraid to leave Protestantism face to face with 
 Popery in Ireland. They have no faith in justice, or they 
 would not despair of pacifying Ireland by a righteous act of 
 conciliation. They have no faith in progress, in the onward 
 march of civilisation, or in the ultimate triumph of good over 
 evil, and are inspired by no hope of a happier future reserved 
 for the toiling and suffering masses of mankind. There is 
 but one thing in which they appear to have faith, and in that 
 their faith is unlimited. I mean their own power to work 
 upon the vices and weakness of human nature, by corrupting 
 and intimidating those whom they pretend to have delibe- 
 rately enfranchised. Thank God, we Liberals have a nobler 
 and more hopeful creed ! To us Reform was no ' leap in the 
 dork,' for we had long foreseen it, and striven to bring it
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 439 
 
 about, not only as a measure of justice to classes so long 
 and so jealously excluded from power, but as a new lever for 
 beneficent legislation. To us the future is not clouded with 
 visions of Democratic violence ending in national ruin, but 
 rather, bright with fresh hopes of progress, of improvement, 
 of a national unity such as has never been realised in the 
 lifetime of any of us. We look forward to questions hitherto 
 neglected being viewed in a new light, and treated in a new 
 spirit to all that concerns the happiness of the people being 
 far more earnestly considered than heretofore. But let us 
 not deceive ourselves. Before we can grasp these results we 
 have a very hard battle to fight. That battle is being fought 
 even now in almost every constituency throughout the United 
 Kingdom, and we here in Woodstock have no mean part in it 
 allotted to us. You know, and I know, and the world knows, 
 the formidable nature of the influence which must be over- 
 come before we can vindicate as vindicate we shall the inde- 
 pendence of this Borough. We shall need all our energy and 
 all our courage to win the crown of victory. But we do not 
 stand alone : public opinion is with us, the spirit of the age is 
 with us, and I, for one, feel that I am fighting before the 
 eyes of all my countrymen. Believe me, I have undertaken 
 this contest in no presumptuous spirit ; I know my own 
 weakness, but I know also the sustaining power of a good 
 cause. I rely on the untiring support of the gentlemen 
 round me ; I rely on the hearty and vigorous efforts of those 
 who now hear me, and I feel within myself a deep assurance 
 that I shall not fight in vain. 
 
 A LETTER TO THE REV. G. J. B. 
 
 My dear Sir, It is seldom wise for a clergyman to descend 
 from his pulpit, where he may dogmatise without fear of 
 refutation, into the free and open lists of political controversy. 
 It is hardly ever desirable for a non-elector to meddle with a
 
 440 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 contested election, unless where a special appeal has been 
 made to him. 
 
 In the letter which you have recently addressed to the 
 electors of Woodstock, you have committed both these acts of 
 indiscretion, without any excuse that I am able to perceive. 
 The speeches on which you comment were delivered, not at 
 Woodstock, but at Abingdon, and your reply will have the 
 effect of making them known to some persons who might 
 otherwise never have heard them. Nor do you confine your- 
 self to the subject of those speeches ; on the contrary, you 
 volunteer general advice to your readers on their political 
 duties, and do not scruple to launch out into personalities. 
 You plead, in justification of your interference, that the Irish 
 Church is ' emphatically an ecclesiastical and clerical ques- 
 tion ' ; but I am at a loss to understand how this presump- 
 tuous statement can warrant your flippant reference to the 
 Ballot. You further plead ' a sense of duty,' arising from 
 the circumstance that you ' commenced your ministry as 
 Curate of the parish of Woodstock, and have been more or 
 less connected, almost ever since, with the Borough.' You 
 omit to mention what, however, is a material fact in the case 
 that you were also Domestic Chaplain and Tutor at Blenheim 
 Palace, and that you were lately appointed to your present 
 living by the Duke of Marlborough. I acquit you of a con- 
 scious desire to please your patron by issuing an electioneer- 
 ing pamphlet, but I cannot acquit you of an officious parti- 
 sanship which fairly lays you open to such a suspicion. I do 
 not doubt that you wrote under a sense of duty, but your 
 assurance that you did not write ' from any inclination for 
 such polemics ' is too much even for that charity which 
 belie veth all things. 
 
 Your arguments respecting the Irish Church are so ably 
 refuted in the accompanying letter of Sir G. Young to the 
 Rev. A. Headley, that I shall not waste my own time by 
 replying to them at length. But, as your reflections on the 
 conduct of Mr. Lushington clearly exhibit the prevailing 
 spirit of your pamphlet, I will deal briefly with them. The
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 441 
 
 electors of this Borough will then be able to judge for them- 
 selves what degree of weight attaches to your most confident 
 assertions. You allege that Mr. Lushington frankly avows 
 hostility, not only to the Church in Ireland, but to the Church 
 in England also ; and you proceed to ask ' how his present 
 convictions can be reconciled with accepting a Fellowship in 
 a Church of England College.' Now, it is not strictly true 
 that Mr. Lushington avows hostility to the Church of England. 
 He only goes so far as to say, what Dr. Pusey would probably 
 endorse that he has no special love for Establishments, and 
 that if the English Establishment ' came to represent the 
 religious views of a much smaller proportion of the popula- 
 tion,' he would be in favour of severing its connection with 
 the State. But let me now put a plain question to you. Are 
 you aware that several years ago, and long before his mar- 
 riage, Mr. Lushington spontaneously resigned his Fellowship 
 at All Souls' College on conscientious grounds ? If you are 
 not, you have recklessly made an attack on an University 
 contemporary, in every way entitled to your respect, without 
 taking pains to inform yourself of a fact destructive to your 
 argument and easily ascertained. If you are (which I will 
 not readily believe), you have been guilty of an unworthy and 
 disingenuous suppression of truth. I leave you to choose 
 between the horns of this dilemma, and the public to decide 
 how far you can be trusted on questions of historical research, 
 when you thus misrepresent circumstances almost within 
 your own knowledge. But you do not stop here. You pro- 
 ceed to sneer at persons whom you describe as ' accepting 
 Fellowships, founded for purposes of study and tuition, at 
 Oxford, and living habitually in London or elsewhere.' I 
 must infer that, had you been fortunate enough to obtain a 
 Fellowship, which is the highest reward of Academical merit, 
 you would have scrupled to hold it in the position, for 
 instance, of Curate at Woodstock. If so, I do not share that 
 scruple, though, in common with most Oxford Liberals, I am 
 for reforming the whole system of non-resident Fellowships. 
 In the meantime, I may apprise you that the founder of
 
 442 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Merton College, whose views in the thirteenth century would 
 appear to have been more enlarged than yours in the nine- 
 teenth, expressly ordained that his Fellows should not be 
 confined to the walls of a College, but should go abroad into 
 the world. As it is, every College has the right to call into 
 residence any Fellow whose services are required, and Mr. 
 Lushington (like myself) always took a most active part in 
 the government of his College, so long as he remained a 
 Fellow. 
 
 The narrow view which you take of the Irish Church 
 Question does not surprise me, since you premise that it is 
 ' emphatically an ecclesiastical and a clerical one.' I deny 
 this. Matters of theology may be peculiarly within the 
 province of the clergy, though even there an assumption of 
 authority on their part is inconsistent with the first principles 
 of Protestantism. But the establishment or disestablishment 
 of a particular Church by the State, instead of being emphati- 
 cally a question for clergymen, is emphatically a question for 
 statesmen, or, rather, for the Imperial Legislature. Clergy- 
 men, like any other citizens, have doubtless a right to express 
 their opinions upon it, but those opinions are very likely to 
 be coloured by a contemptuous ignorance of legal principles, 
 which has always been characteristic of the clerical mind. 
 The vice of which I speak is well illustrated by every para- 
 graph of your pamphlet. 
 
 You assert, for instance, as ' a fact,' that the Irish Esta- 
 blished Church ' is the ancient Church of the Country,' 
 ' that its property is in no sense the property of the nation,' 
 and that the argument now used against it ' would apply 
 with equal force to Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle ' or the Duke 
 of Bedford's possession of Woburn Abbey. You adduce no 
 evidence, and quote no authority, in proof of this assertion, 
 which is only true in a sense which is not worth discussion. 
 Those who believe in Apostolical Succession may trace, if they 
 please, the pedigree of the Irish Episcopate up to St. Patrick, 
 and recognise the existing Protestant Establishment as the 
 proper representative of the old Catholic Church. For me it
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTEES, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 443 
 
 is enough to know that, whereas that Church embraced the 
 whole nation before the Eeformation, it then ceased to em- 
 brace more than a small part of the nation, thereby forfeiting 
 all claim to be treated as a national Church. No wonder 
 that you ' cannot pause to explain ' the causes through which 
 ' the Irish nation unhappily failed to receive the benefit ' of 
 that great awakening ' to the same extent as the English.' 
 The simple explanation of the fact is, that Queen Elizabeth's 
 Ministers, no less blind than yourself to considerations of 
 justice, strove to force Protestant truth upon the Irish by 
 making them pay for their own conversion ; and the same 
 policy has produced the same fruits from that day to this. 
 With a disregard for popular rights which is not yet obsolete 
 among Conservative statesmen, they took counsel with the 
 Bishops alone, relied on ' influence ' for the success of their 
 enterprise, deliberately excluded the representatives of the 
 inferior clergy from the Irish Parliament which adopted the 
 Eoyal Supremacy, and visited them with penalties for their 
 resistance to it. As for the great mass of the people, they 
 had no voice in the matter, and never accepted the new 
 religion which their rulers had provided for them. All this 
 seems to you perfectly right, and you stand aghast at the 
 proposal to undo it by an Act of the Imperial Legislature, 
 with the consent of a vast majority of the Irish nation. Ac- 
 cording to your view, an Irish Parliament carefully packed 
 by the Lord Deputy, and representing a mere fraction of the 
 population, was competent to establish the State Church ; 
 yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom, including repre- 
 sentatives from all Ireland, is incompetent to disestablish it. 
 And then you echo Lord Derby's absurd saying, that ' the 
 Church has at any rate as good a title to its property as the 
 House of Eussell has to Woburn Abbey.' Who disputes that 
 either has a valid title in a Court-of-law a title, that is, 
 which is valid against any claimant except the State ? The 
 best precedent for the Disendowment of the Irish Church is, 
 in fact, to be found in the dissolution of the monasteries, and 
 it is those who may hereafter share its revenues whose title
 
 444 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 will be as good as that of the Duke of Bedford. You may 
 call the application of national property to national purposes 
 a robbery of the Church. We call its present application a 
 robbery of the nation. You wish to see a little more trans- 
 ferred from the Bishops to parochial clergymen, or from 
 richer to poorer dioceses : ' robbing Peter to pay Paul ! ' We 
 wish to have only such of the revenues of the Establishment 
 as were originally the gift of the nation redistributed in the 
 true sense of the word I mean, devoted to objects of national 
 utility, instead of being appropriated to a rich minority of 
 the community, and serving to aggravate the grievances of 
 the poor majority- 
 Two more fallacies I must point out, inasmuch as the ex- 
 posure of them cuts the ground from under all your remarks 
 upon the proprietary rights of the Church. You boldly allege 
 that ' the property of the Irish Church had its origin in 
 special gifts some from public, some from private sources : 
 some before the Reformation, a considerable number after it.' 
 The simple answer to this vague statement is, that of the 
 531,000. that form the annual revenue of the Irish Church, 
 S64,000Z. is tithe rent-charge, besides the income derived 
 from 132,000 acres of glebe land, both of which are purely 
 State gifts ; while, of the remainder, I cannot succeed in 
 tracing more than 7,000L to private sources. The Churches 
 have been built : firstly, by rates levied on Catholics and 
 Protestants alike ; secondly, by Parliamentary grants ; thirdly, 
 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, with funds drawn from 
 the entire Church Revenue ; and fourthly, to a small extent, 
 by private beneficence. But Mr. Gladstone, as you ought to 
 know, never once has proposed to appropriate any portion of 
 the revenues of the Irish Church that can be traced to a 
 private source. You seem, indeed, to be conscious of this 
 historical fallacy, for you seek to cover it with an economical 
 fallacy, if possible, more transparent. You describe the tithe 
 rent-charge as ' no tax at all, but simply a sum paid by the 
 landlord,' and ' as to seven-eighths, by Protestant landlords.' 
 I do not care to discuss the question whether tithe is not a
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 445 
 
 'tax' just as much as the land-tax, but it is a downright 
 absurdity to suppose that it makes any difference whether 
 the landlord or tenant is the actual paymaster. Whatever 
 be the channel through which the 864,000Z. is paid, it is a 
 fund applicable to the benefit of the whole Irish nation, and 
 now reserved for the benefit of one section. You deny that 
 1 any man, woman, or child is one penny the poorer for the 
 Established Church.' I assert that all the Irish Eoman 
 Catholics are the poorer by five-eighths of those revenues which 
 the Established Church derives from the gift of the nation. 
 
 I will not dwell upon that passage of your letter in which 
 you cast off the mask of the divine, facetiously compare my 
 opponent to King Log, who did nothing, and affect to ridicule 
 ' the talk about intimidation.' The endeavour to extenuate 
 what you well know to be the curse of this constituency, 
 apparently because the guilt of it lies at the door, not of the 
 poor, but of the rich and powerful, is but too much in keep- 
 ing with the rest of your pamphlet. Let me recommend to 
 your notice the last paragraph of Sir George Young's letter , 
 in which he points out the real duty of a clergyman at a con- 
 tested election. 
 
 There is one point, and one only, upon which you and I 
 are entirely agreed. You raise the cry of ' The Church in 
 danger ! ' and I heartily admit that you have good reason to- 
 do so. The Church of England is in danger, and ever will 
 be, so long as her champions, blind to the signs of their own 
 times, persist in opposing truth and justice in the outraged 
 name of religion and piety. She cannot fail to be in danger, 
 so long as her advocates disavow her claims as a national 
 Church, or as the Church of the poor, by identifying her with 
 an anti-national Church which is maintained in the interest 
 of a dominant class. She must be in danger, so long as she 
 is undermined from within by Romish doctrines and practices,, 
 encouraged as they are by some of those very Bishops who 
 profess to be dismayed by the aggressions of Rome from 
 without. She ought to be in danger, if her parochial clergy 
 betray their sacred trust by reserving their censures and
 
 446 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 warnings for the sins of the poor, lest they should offend the 
 resident nobleman or squire, instead of crying aloud, like the 
 prophets of old, against aristocratic pride, against commer- 
 cial fraud, against oppression and corruption in high places. 
 I remain, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Bear Hotel, Woodstock, November 13, 18G8. 
 
 SPEECH ON THE HUSTINGS AT WOODSTOCK, 
 NOVEMBER 16, 1868 
 
 Electors of Woodstock, I stand before you to-day as the 
 Liberal candidate for the representation of this Borough, as a 
 loyal supporter of our great leader, Mr. Gladstone, and as 
 the champion of your independence. Gentlemen, there is a 
 time for all things, and a contested election is a time for good 
 humour. Though we have had a little rough play in front of 
 these hustings, I am happy to observe that, on the whole, 
 this good rule has been respected, and that our proceedings 
 hitherto have been disgraced by no serious outbreaks of ill- 
 feeling. My relation, Colonel Thomas, who proposed Mr. 
 Barnett, has been kind enough to give me some advice from 
 a sporting point of view. No one can be more competent 
 than Colonel Thomas to give advice in the hunting-field, and 
 I should always be glad to follow his lead across country. 
 But politics are altogether a different affair, and there I 
 flatter myself that I know the line of country better than he 
 does. I have no reason to complain of the way in which 
 Mr. Barnett has spoken, on this occasion, of myself. But he 
 has presumed to attack more than one of my supporters, and 
 I beg to inform him publicly that I am not base enough to 
 accept compliments to myself at the expense of my friends. 
 I say here, as I said elsewhere, that I am proud of my sup- 
 porters, and I utterly repudiate, on their part, the use of the 
 smallest undue influence. My friend Mr. Hiorns, to whom 
 allusion has been made, has not only put no pressure on his
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 447 
 
 tenants, but has not even asked them for their votes. My 
 friend Mr. Baugh, instead of having been brought down from 
 London by me, was at Kidlington before I was invited to 
 stand for Woodstock, and when I first met him I had no 
 idea who he was. But as Mr. Barnett has expressed a wish 
 to abstain from personalities though he has not quite acted 
 up to it I am willing to brush aside all matters of this kind, 
 and I hope to say nothing which can give him, or any other 
 individual, legitimate offence. 
 
 Now, in coming forward to contest this Borough of Wood- 
 stock, I cannot but feel that my opponent has some advan- 
 tages over me. In the first place, he was in the field a month 
 before me, and, to my knowledge, obtained many promises, as 
 the first comer, by representing that it was almost certain 
 that no other candidate would present himself. Then, again, 
 he is not, like myself, a novice in political life ; he has already 
 represented Woodstock, or, if not Woodstock, yet somebody, 
 and some place, for three years, and ought to be able to give 
 you some account of all the measures which he has promoted 
 for the good of the people. Mr. Barnett, indeed, complains 
 that I have described him as the enemy of the poor. I have 
 never so described him in his private capacity, but I have 
 often said, and I now repeat it, that he belongs to a party 
 which has always resisted, and still resists, measures for the 
 benefit of the working classes. But then Mr. Barnett is a 
 neighbour, as he is very fond of telling you, while I was a 
 stranger to most of you until three months ago. Not that 
 I can admit that this gives him any claim to your votes. I 
 have read my catechism, and hope that I know my duty to 
 my neighbour ; but I was never taught that it is any part of 
 your duty to your neighbour to vote for him at a contested 
 election. And I cannot help observing that in that parish of 
 Wootton, which lies close to Mr. Barnett's home, he does not 
 seem to have a very numerous body of supporters. . . . 
 
 On the other hand, I feel that I have some great advan- 
 tages over Mr. Barnett advantages so great that, instead of 
 being angry with him at this moment, I actually pity him.
 
 448 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 I pity him because this is the first time that his face has 
 dawned on the Woodstock horizon since the last election ; 
 and it must be very unpleasant to ask publicly for the votes 
 of a constituency which you have treated with so little respect. 
 I pity him because he has been compelled to canvass work- 
 ing men whom he tried to exclude from the franchise as 
 long as he could, and on whom he helped to lay an extra rate 
 when he could exclude them no longer. I pity him because 
 throughout his canvass he must have seen that he has not 
 the hearts of the people, and because he relies for success on 
 a kind of influence of which, as an honourable man, he must 
 be ashamed, of which I would not avail myself to save my 
 election, and which Sir Henry Dashwood, my chairman, 
 would rather cut off his right hand than exert. I pity him 
 because he will go to the poll with this paper tied round his 
 neck [Mr. Brodrick here opened a paper recording Mr. Bar- 
 nett's votes in Parliament] a paper which shows how entirely 
 he has unrepresented your interests and feelings in the House 
 of Commons. I can well understand that my observations do 
 not please some of our opponents. That is not because they 
 are untrue, but, on the contrary, because they are too true. 
 Let me tell you an American story which throws light on 
 their feelings. A man came home to his wife looking very 
 much put out and offended. She asked him what was the 
 matter ; when he explained that one of his neighbours had 
 been calling him names, and imputing to him all kinds of 
 misdeeds. ' Well, my dear,' she replied, ' what does that 
 signify ? He may say it, but he can't prove it.' ' Confound 
 the fellow ! ' roared the husband, ' but he has proved it, and 
 that's just what I can't bear.' And so it is with our friends 
 here on the right ; they writhe under my appeal to facts, 
 because there is no answer to it. [Mr. Brodrick then replied 
 to Mr. Barnett's defence of the Conservative policy on the 
 question of Reform, Economy in Public Expenditure, and the 
 Irish Church. He expressed his surprise that Mr. Barnett 
 should have referred with self-complacency to our present 
 friendly relations with America, remembering, as he must, that
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 449 
 
 his party did all in their power to plunge us into what would 
 have been the wickedest and most disastrous war that ever 
 afflicted mankind.] Of course (Mr. Brodrick continued) our 
 opponents profess entire confidence in their success. That 
 is part of their game. Some people don't know when they are 
 beaten, and some, it is said, don't even know when they are 
 killed. You must have heard of the gentleman who was 
 beheaded without being aware of it. So dexterous was the 
 executioner, that although the knife passed clean through the 
 poor man's neck, his head remained on his shoulders as if 
 nothing had happened. ' Why, you've not done your duty,' 
 he called out, looking hard at the executioner. ' Shake your 
 head, sir,' rejoined the latter ; and so he did, and the head 
 rolled off before him into a basket. Perhaps, when Mr. Barnett 
 shakes his head about 4 o'clock to-morrow afternoon, he may 
 find that it is not so firm in its position as he now supposes. 
 
 As for myself, I can hardly describe better what my course 
 in Parliament would have been than by saying that it would 
 have been the very reverse of that adopted by Mr. Barnett. 
 I should have voted for, and not against, the total abolition of 
 Church-rates. I should have voted for, and not against, the 
 admission of Dissenters to the Universities and Colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. I should not have voted against 
 giving the Borough Franchise to the working classes in 1866, 
 or against giving the County Franchise to 14Z. occupiers. I 
 should not have voted, in 1867, for requiring the payment of 
 full rates from all householders, relieving many landlords 
 from a just burden, and throwing it upon the cottagers. I 
 should not have voted for requiring a longer residence from 
 the poorer than from the richer elector. I should not have 
 voted for maintaining the Church of a rich minority, at the 
 expense of the people, in Ireland. I should not have voted 
 for restricting the importation of foreign cattle, and thereby 
 raising the price of meat. [Interruption from Mr. Barnett's 
 supporters on the platform.] I hear some murmurs from the 
 farmers and butchers who stand behind Mr. Barnett ; you 
 know what that means, and how far their interests in this 
 
 G O
 
 450 SPEECHES AND LETTER8, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 matter are the same as yours. I should not have voted for 
 keeping up the unjust system of purchase, under which pro- 
 motion in the Army depends on wealth, and not on merit or 
 length of service. I would not, above all, have voted for 
 keeping up the degrading practice of flogging soldiers in time 
 of peace especially when the more humane and enlightened 
 members of the Conservative Party joined with the Liberals 
 in abolishing it. And, lastly, I should not have voted against 
 the Ballot, but, on the contrary, should have given it my 
 heartiest support. 
 
 If you send me to Parliament, I should go thither as a 
 
 member of that great Liberal Party to which this country, 
 
 and especially the working classes, owe all the grand reforms 
 
 that have been carried in the present century Free Trade, 
 
 Education, and a cheap Press, and that Act of last year which 
 
 bus increased this constituency from 800 to 1,100 a party 
 
 which alone has any policy or any hope for the future. I 
 
 should go to support, not Mr. Disraeli, whom I regard as a 
 
 mere political Jesuit, distrusted by his own party as much as 
 
 lie despises them but Mr. Gladstone, a true man of the 
 
 people, a man who has the eye to see and the heart to feel 
 
 the w r ants and interests of his countrymen, and, what is 
 
 more, the courage to do and dare anything in carrying out 
 
 his convictions. I should go to advocate measures which I 
 
 believe to be urgently demanded by public opinion from the 
 
 new Parliament the Ballot, a broad and unsectarian system 
 
 of national education, promotion by merit in the Army and 
 
 Civil Service, justice to Ireland, a large retrenchment in the 
 
 national expenditure, a further reduction in taxes which press 
 
 most heavily on the working classes, and, generally, all 
 
 measures which can elevate the moral condition and increase 
 
 the happiness of the struggling and toiling masses. But I 
 
 should also go, and I now come forward, to vindicate the 
 
 independence of this Borough. It is vain to conceal, what all 
 
 the world knows, that Woodstock has always been regarded, 
 
 Hiid justly regarded, as a pocket-borough of the Duke of 
 
 Marlborough. I remember hearing of a case in which a
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 451 
 
 member had been returned for another of these pocket- 
 boroughs by the influence of a great nobleman. He wrote a 
 polite letter to his patron, thanking him for his election, and 
 enclosing another for the mayor of the borough. The noble- 
 man answered by return of post, acknowledging the letter to 
 himself, but stating that as the other was a mere formality, 
 he had thrown it behind the fire. I don't know, Mr. Mayor, 
 whether anything of that kind has occurred within your 
 recollection at Woodstock, but I am quite sure that it might 
 very well have occurred. Mr. Barnett, I know, objects very 
 strongly to being called a nominee of the Duke, and, in one 
 sense, I believe he is right. It is no secret that Mr. Barnett 
 is not the candidate whom the Duke would have preferred, 
 and there are those present who were parties to an intrigue 
 for bringing forward the Marquis of Blandford. However, 
 about that time I appeared on the scenes, the Tories said 
 that it would not do to divide their strength, and Mr. Napier 
 at once joined Mr. Barnett's committee. Henceforth Mr. 
 Barnett has been the nominee of the Duke. If any one doubts 
 that he is entirely dependent on the Duke's influence, let me 
 ask you this plain question : Suppose there were no Liberal 
 candidate in the field, and suppose that the Duke were to put 
 up his coachman against Mr. Barnett, which would you back 
 Mr. Barnett or the coachman ? Now I think it is high time 
 for it to be decided once for all whether it is Blenheim or 
 Woodstock that returns a member to Parliament, and I have 
 come forward to give you the opportunity of declaring that 
 this unconstitutional influence shall exist no longer. 
 
 And now, Electors of Woodstock, I leave this great issue 
 in your hands. My part is played; yours is now to begin. 
 I have not spared myself in fighting your battle for it is 
 your battle and my friends around me have supported me 
 with an energy and devotion which nothing but an earnest 
 faith in the justice of our cause could have inspired. I have 
 everywhere been met with a kind welcome that I can never 
 forget ; and let me here say that I rely entirely upon the 
 promises which I have received. To me the promise of the 
 
 G G 2
 
 452 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 poor is as the promise of the rich. I do not believe that men 
 who have enlisted under my banner will turn their backs in 
 the day of battle, or that Englishmen will sell their birthright 
 for a mess of pottage, and submit to be driven like slaves to 
 the poll. Small as Woodstock is, no election has attracted 
 more attention throughout the country than ours, because all 
 England knows how great is the principle at stake. I appeal 
 to your reason and consciences alone. If Mr. Barnett's cause 
 is your cause, if Mr. Barnett's principles are your principles, 
 if you honestly believe that he is the best man to represent, 
 not Blenheim, but Woodstock, in Parliament, then vote for 
 Mr. Barnett. But if you believe that mine is the cause of 
 truth, of justice, of liberty, of progress the cause, above all, 
 of the working classes if you are resolved to break from off 
 your necks a yoke which neither you nor your fathers have 
 been able to bear then, I say, go and record your votes for 
 me, like honest and brave men, at the poll ; and may God 
 defend the right ! 
 
 SPEECH IN THE TOWN-HALL, WOODSTOCK, 
 JANUARY 28, 1874 
 (Very imperfectly reported) 
 
 My Friends, and Electors of Woodstock, At last the time 
 1ms come to which I have so long looked forward the time 
 when I should again meet you face to face, and address you 
 in this hall in the capacity of a Liberal candidate. And now, 
 the first question I have to answer is why, during all these 
 five years, I have never been in Woodstock. My answer is 
 very easy and simple. Woodstock is a small place, and it is 
 a place where party feeling runs very high I should not 
 wish it to be otherwise at the time of elections and I felt 
 that my appearance here would not only be a signal for a 
 fresh outburst of party spirit, that would not do any good to 
 anyone, but would be a signal for that influence to be brought 
 to bear against which we have to fight to-day as we have 
 fought before. The next question I have to answer is. How I
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 453 
 
 come to be here now. I am here now in response to an 
 assurance which reached me that I might hope on this occa- 
 sion, not only to carry those who voted for me on a former 
 occasion, but also many of those who could not vote for me 
 then, although they voted for me in their hearts, but will, 
 under the protection of the Ballot, now have the power of 
 voting at the poll as they voted in their hearts before. I 
 think it right to tell you that it cost me no mean sacrifice to 
 come here, as I did yesterday morning when I knew that I 
 was likely to receive the support of the agricultural labourers 
 in a body, upon whom I count with great confidence to sup- 
 port me as one man. Until I knew this, I confess I felt that 
 it would be very little use renewing the old acquaintance, and 
 at the moment this assurance reached me I was receiving a 
 most influential deputation from Evesham in Worcestershire; 
 and I shall never forget to the last hour of my life the 
 entreaties with which I was importuned on all sides that I 
 would not desert them for Woodstock. But I was proof 
 against these entreaties, because I was told, and felt, that 
 Woodstock had the first claim on my services. The chair- 
 man of the meeting that was held at Evesham and it was 
 one of the best meetings I ever saw got up, and said to the 
 people assembled : ' Gentlemen, we must not blame Mr. 
 Brodrick ; we must remember that Woodstock has not only 
 the first claim upon him, but that a victory at Woodstock is 
 more important for the country than at Evesham.' 
 
 The next, and last question, is, What have I come here to 
 do ? Well, I have told you that in the very outset of my 
 Address ; I have come here to vindicate Liberal principles. Mr. 
 Godden has spoken, and we have heard a great deal of late, 
 about what many call Conservative reaction, and I think that 
 Mr. Godden hit the right nail upon the head when he mentioned, 
 as one of the causes of that so-called Conservative reaction, 
 the tendency of people as they get on in the world, and 
 become rich and prosperous, to be very well contented with 
 things as they are, and to desire very little change for the 
 benefit of others. I take this to be one of the great and main
 
 151 SPEECHES AND LETTEES, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 causes of the Conservative reaction. When a man has made 
 his fortune, and got all that he wants, and particularly if he 
 happens to take a country-house, his first ambition is to get 
 his wife and daughters into what is called, or what calls 
 itself, county society ; and I am sorry to say that in many 
 parts of the country I am not sure that it is not so here 
 the best passport to county society is a certificate of having 
 turned Tory. 
 
 If this were the time and place to do so, I could mention 
 other causes ; but of one thing I am sure that if this Conser- 
 vative reaction exists to a great extent among the rich and 
 noble, it has not yet reached the homes of the poor, and 
 therefore I rely with confidence, not only on the Liberal prin- 
 ciples manifested in this Borough five years ago, but also on 
 the development of these principles among that class which 
 holds the fate of this election in their hands. If I am asked 
 what Liberal principles are, I would refer the inquirer, as I 
 do in my Address I am anxious not to repeat anything I 
 have said there to that wonderful series of great measures 
 passed in the last five years. I think that these are the most 
 extraordinary pieces of legislative work that have been done 
 in our Parliamentary history. As I am speaking frankly, I 
 will confess to you that I have been rather disappointed at 
 some things not being done which I did hope would havo 
 been done by this Parliament. There have undoubtedly been 
 shortcomings, particularly in the direction of legislation for 
 the benefit of the people at large ; but they are shortcomings 
 which are very easily to be explained, because during the 
 first two or three years of this Parliament the attention of 
 the House of Commons was almost entirely engrossed with 
 Irish affairs. Well, no doubt some mistakes were made, and 
 a good many people's toes trodden upon, and many interests 
 offended ; but I maintain that it is the highest virtue and the 
 crowning merit of Mr. Gladstone's Administration, that it 
 lias deliberately preferred national interests to the inter* 
 nf any individuals, or class, or section whatever ; while it will 
 be a lasting disgrace to the Opposition, as led by Mr. Disraeli,
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 455 
 
 that it has sought every opportunity of combining with any 
 little discontented class, whether it were the purchase-officers, 
 or the Irish clergy, or the publicans that it has always been 
 ready to enter into league with any class that happened to be 
 discontented, simply because its interests appeared to conflict 
 with the interests of the public at large. 
 
 If you look at Mr. Disraeli's Address, which I will not 
 read to you, though it is a clever document, you will find that 
 one of the main charges against this Government is, that it 
 has meddled a great deal too much with Home affairs, and 
 too little with Foreign affairs. This is a very strange charge 
 to make against a person a charge that he had minded bis 
 home business too much. Mr Disraeli says that he wished 
 there had been a little more energy in Foreign Policy, and a 
 little less energy in Home Policy. Well, I can quite under- 
 stand his being of that opinion. No one who has read 
 history can be ignorant of the fact that times of war, in 
 which there has been a spirited foreign policy, have been 
 dark and depressing times for the cause of the people. Mr. 
 Disraeli is very fond of a spirited Foreign policy, because he 
 knows well that such a policy means a feeble and reactionary 
 Home policy. All the great things that have been done for 
 domestic improvement, for progress, and for civil and religious 
 liberty, have been done in quiet times ; and you may depend 
 upon it, we should never have got through the work of the 
 last five years if we had done as Mr. Disraeli would have 
 wished us, and been poking our fingers into every foreign pie, 
 and quarrelled with Germany or taken the part of France, 
 and, as he evidently wishes, had not settled the dispute with 
 America. I look upon the settlement of the dispute between 
 this England and that England on the other side of the 
 Atlantic as a great and magnificent achievement on the part 
 of the present Government. I speak from positive knowledge 
 respecting this matter, having visited that country last autumn. 
 I should like to read you a very short paragraph in Mr. Lowe's 
 Address. It is as follows : ' Mr. Disraeli tells us that he 
 does not think the condition of the United Kingdom is im-
 
 456 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 proved by incessant and harassing legislation. This means 
 that it is best not to legislate at all, and, if you do legislate, 
 to take care to offend no one. Compare the state of England 
 with her state forty years ago. To what do we owe the 
 change ? To laws which harassed the owners of boroughs, 
 the corrupt corporations, the protected trades and industries, 
 and the Universities in short, all persons and institutions 
 which held privileges adverse to the general welfare.' Well, 
 Gentlemen, Mr. Disraeli goes on to speak of the income tax. 
 Mr. Gladstone proposes to abolish the income tax, and Mr. 
 Disraeli says he would have done exactly the same. To this 
 Mr. Lowe gives a good reply, and says that it is a great pity 
 that he did not tell us that before, and adds, that he did not 
 wonder at his being very much upset about the income tax, 
 because this tax was to enable the country to carry out the 
 policy of Free Trade, which he bitterly resisted. I wonder at 
 Mr. Disraeli alluding to finance, for finance is not a strong 
 point of the Tory policy. I believe I am correct in saying that 
 there has bten scarcely a single year of Tory Administration, 
 within living memory, that has failed to show an increase in 
 the national expenditure, or a deficit in the revenue. But 
 during the last live years no less than 10,000,000/. has been 
 taken off in the shape of taxes, and the National Debt has 
 been reduced by 25,000,000/. And this is in addition to the 
 cost of the purchase of the telegraphs, and the money paid to 
 America in respect of the ' Alabama ' claims. Of course, we 
 must not forget the A sh an tee War ; but the cost of that war 
 will not be so great as was anticipated. Surely this is a 
 happy account for Mr. Gladstone to render. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli alludes to the difference of opinion in the 
 Liberal Party. Well, Gentlemen, no doubt there is a differ- 
 ence of opinion among the Liberal Party, and 1 will tell you 
 why. There are many ways of going on, and only one way 
 of standing still. If you go on, there is always a difference 
 of opinion as to the road you shall choose ; but if you want to 
 stand still, there is no difficulty in deciding the way in which 
 that shall be done. Then he says that the Liberal Party are
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 457 
 
 attacking the institutions of the country. Well, I don't know 
 what he means by that ; but if he means the Monarchy, if he 
 means that there is a considerable party, or a party at all, 
 among the Liberals, who are hostile to the Monarchy, or dis- 
 loyal to the Constitution, I believe it to be an utter and com- 
 plete delusion. On the contrary, I do not scruple to say that 
 I have heard more disrespectful language used about Her 
 Majesty in high and aristocratic circles than I have ever 
 heard or read in the proceedings of any public meeting. Mr. 
 Disraeli must then needs go on to speak of the House of 
 Lords ; but I am very much afraid that he means to imply 
 that any idea of reforming that House is an attack on the 
 institutions of the country. I think that it would have 
 been far more prudent on his part to have been silent respect- 
 ing the House of Lords, because I must say that the conduct 
 of that House for the last forty years, and especially during 
 the last five years, has sorely and severely tried the patience 
 of the people. The House of Lords exists, they tell us, for 
 the purpose of revising hasty legislation that might have been 
 passed by the House of Commons and a very useful purpose 
 that is but I entirely deny that it fulfils that purpose. I am 
 unable to mention a single hasty measure, such as we should 
 all regret, that has been stopped by that House, but, on the 
 contrary, the few such measures that have been passed have 
 gone through that House by acclamation. But what that body 
 has stopped have been the salutary measures upon which the 
 House of Commons have resolved, and which are destined to 
 become laws, and which the House of Lords will pass, sooner 
 or later, but upon which they waste a great amount of public 
 time in their vain attempts at obstruction. I don't wonder 
 that Mr. Disraeli is silent about the future, and that for the 
 best of all reasons ; as is also my noble opponent, Lord 
 Bandolph Churchill, whose Address I have had the pleasure 
 of reading because there is no future whatever to Tory policy. 
 I defy you to extract from either of those Addresses, or from 
 any of the Tory Addresses issued throughout the country, a 
 single indication of what Mr. Disraeli would really do if he
 
 458 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 got into power. I think it would be possible to sum up in a 
 single sentence the real essence of Tory policy, and that is 
 the very reason why I will for ever oppose and resist it. I 
 believe that Tory policy means nothing more nor less than 
 Government by the landed aristocracy, aided more or less by 
 the Tory section of the country clergy. 
 
 I have said enough, perhaps, about Liberal principles and 
 the Tory Addresses ; but I must not forget that I have not 
 only to vindicate Liberal principles, but also, as I have said 
 in my Address, to vindicate the independence of this Borough. 
 That is a topic about which Mr. Godden has said something. 
 I have told Lord Randolph Churchill privately, and I will 
 now say it publicly, that I hope this contest will be conducted 
 in an amicable manner, and without needless personality, 
 and to that Lord Randolph replied in a spirit which did 
 honour to him. Having said that, you will easily understand 
 why I do not wish to dwell too strongly on this particular 
 topic the independence of this Borough ; but at the same 
 time I was rather amused on Saturday, just after the an- 
 nouncement of the Dissolution, by meeting a man in the 
 streets of London, whom I did not know, but who had a very 
 rough coat on. He said to me : 'I hope you are going to be 
 member for Blenheim, sir.' I thought it a very odd mis- 
 take to make, but I am afraid it was a mistake that others 
 have made. I may say that I should feel myself totally unfit 
 to be member for Blenheim. All that I aspire to, is to be 
 member for Woodstock, and that, with your assistance, I hope 
 to be before I am much older. I will remind you of what Mr. 
 Godden has said that our position is altered by the introduc- 
 tion of the Ballot. I am not in favour of the practice, nor 
 would any one in this room be, of promising one thing and 
 doing another, but now it is possible for a man to give his 
 vote exactly as he pleases. He has nothing to do but to 
 decline to promise, if he chooses to do so, and he can go and 
 give his vote as his conscience dictates at the polling-booth. 
 
 There is another cause which I also came to vindicate, and 
 that is- 1 say it openly and in a straightforward manner
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 450 
 
 the cause of the agricultural labourers. Gentlemen, let us 
 understand each other on this point. I am not an Unionist ; 
 I am not a labouring man, and don't live in the country, and 
 have not thought it my duty to join the Agricultural Labourers' 
 Union. I have seen many things that have been done, said, 
 and written, in the name of the Union, which I cannot approve 
 of, but, on the contrary, I somewhat deplore as damaging the 
 good cause. If I were asked to take part in an Union meeting, 
 I must confess I should have some hesitation in doing so, and 
 perhaps the remarks that I make will come somewhat flat 
 and tame compared with those you have been accustomed to 
 hearing of late. Having, however, said this much, I wish to 
 add that I have a true and hearty sympathy with the object 
 which the Agricultural Labourers' Union has in view, and I 
 entirely agree with the generous words I have quoted in my 
 Address from that of Mr. Gladstone, as well as the words in 
 the same sense uttered by my friend, Sir W. Harcourt, at 
 Oxford. I believe that movement to be one of the most 
 beneficial of our age. It is a movement which could never 
 be brought about by legislation ; it is a movement which has 
 been the creation of a man sprung from the ranks of the 
 people ; it is both just and righteous in itself, and likely to 
 conduce, as Mr. Gladstone says, to the stability of the Throne 
 and all the institutions worth preserving. Mr. Gladstone 
 says : ' Of all the changes marking the present day, there is 
 none which I view with more heartfelt satisfaction than the 
 progressive rise of wages in the agricultural districts. I view 
 this rise as the natural and proper, though long-delayed, 
 result of economic laws ; as the removal of something like a 
 national discredit ; as carrying with it a great addition to the 
 stock, never too abundant, of human happiness ; and as a 
 new guarantee for the stability of the Throne and institutions 
 of the country.' We shall perhaps be told that Mr. Gladstone 
 is a very impulsive man, and that you don't know how far 
 his feelings will carry him. This reminds me very forcibly 
 of the remark of President Lincoln about Mr. Grant, who is 
 now President of the United States, and who was one of the
 
 4<)0 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 most successful of the United States generals. When Grant 
 was carrying all before him, President Lincoln was told that 
 it was very distressing that General Grant was rather addicted 
 to strong liquors ; to which Lincoln replied : ' I wish you 
 could tell me of which particular liquor he is fondest, because 
 I should like to send a large cask of it to every one of my 
 generals.' Well, that is just what I feel about Mr. Gladstone's 
 impulsiveness. He is impulsive, because his heart beats in 
 unison with the hearts of his countrymen ; his mind is open 
 to new and noble impulses, because he has a real faith in the 
 sound feeling, not only of the higher or the lower classes, but 
 of all the people of this country, every class of which he 
 recognises as his own flesh and blood. 
 
 I have said, Gentlemen, that what has been done on be- 
 half of the agricultural labourer could not have been done by 
 any legislation or Parliament whatever. I don't believe any 
 reasonable man thinks that it is in the power of Parliament 
 to raise wages 2*. a week ; but in former times very unjust laws 
 were passed, expressly intended to reduce the rate of wages, 
 but these laws entirely failed in their effect, as must any laws 
 of a similar nature. I have said in my Address that some- 
 thing may be done to improve the condition of the labourers 
 by legislative enactment, and that since ' unwise legislation 
 has concurred with economic laws in depressing the condition 
 of agricultural labourers, wise legislation may properly concur 
 with economic laws in raising that condition.' Gentlemen, it 
 would be impossible for me on the present occasion, and 
 within the time allotted for me, to specify all the modes by 
 which I believe that improvement may be effected or aided. 
 I have mentioned several of them in my Address, and every 
 thing I have there said has been carefully weighed. The first 
 thing to be done to aid the agricultural labourers' movement 
 is to get Household Suffrage in the counties, for then the 
 labourer would in a great measure be able to help himself. 
 That is a really sound and salutary way of bringing about 
 the results they desire, if they would only send men to Par- 
 liament whom they could trust, and let them judge as far as
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 4G1 
 
 possible what would be the best and wisest means of arriving 
 at the object they desire. 
 
 That is exactly the position which I venture to claim for 
 myself. The truth is, this district, and even the very Borough 
 of which most of you are electors, is really a slice of the 
 county with Household Suffrage. We, in this Borough, are 
 exactly in that position which Mr. Arch claims for the 
 counties, and I wish he was here to-night. He knows me 
 well, and the last time I met him was in Canada. I now ask 
 you to place me in that position by which I may further the 
 end you have in view, and undoubtedly the country will look 
 with interest for the decision of this constituency at the ap- 
 proaching election, and see what man you return to Parlia- 
 ment. I therefore ask you to give me your confidence. I 
 don't claim for myself all that the Chairman has said of me. 
 I claim not the power of instructing you, and I should be 
 sorry to claim the right of leading you, without the aid of 
 much wiser persons than myself. But I do claim to be inde- 
 pendent. I am not a labourer, farmer, or landlord. I am 
 simply a man who, having had certain advantages of educa- 
 tion, have earnestly devoted myself to the study of politics, 
 and I hope, if you send me to Parliament, I shall go there 
 with an impartial and unbiassed mind, without the slightest 
 desire of promoting any personal or professional objects. I 
 have no profession except politics, and it would be my highest 
 ambition to feel that, when I should leave Parliament, I had 
 done something to better the condition of the people. It is 
 upon these grounds that I venture to ask for your kind and 
 unanimous support at the approaching election. Let me 
 earnestly entreat of you to study union, and stick together. 
 Everyone should feel and act as if the Liberal and Agricultural 
 Labourers' causes depended upon the contest at Woodstock. 
 We don't want a long pull this time, because there is very little 
 time left us ; but we want ' a strong pull, and a pull all to- 
 gether,' and if we have this, depend upon it next Tuesday the 
 victory will be ours, and no victory throughout the country 
 will be more heartily welcomed by all thorough Liberals and
 
 l;-2 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 generous minds than that which may wrest and rescue this 
 Borough from the influence I will not speak disrespectfully 
 to which it has hitherto been subject, and vindicate once and 
 for all the Liberal Cause in the Borough of Woodstock. 
 
 SPEECH AT SOUTHSEA, MARCH 7, 1877' 
 
 TnE Hon. G. C. Brodrick said he felt it a high honour to 
 have been selected to return thanks for the Liberal Party 
 before that great audience. He stood before them that even- 
 ing as a stranger and as an unknown man in Portsmouth ; 
 and as he looked around him, he was afraid he saw very few, 
 if any, faces that were familiar to him. He did not possess 
 the advantage enjoyed by his friend Mr. Eeed, of being a 
 member of Parliament, and he was only too well aware that 
 lie had not the special claims to their attention which Mr. 
 Beed derived from his connection with this Borough ; but, as 
 their Chairman had reminded them, he was one who had 
 fought and Buffered for the Liberal cause. He had strong 
 faith in Liberal principles, and was glad to say that he was 
 in no way under the influence of what had been termed the 
 Conservative reaction ' ; and speaking to men whom he 
 believed to have strong faith in Liberal principles, and who 
 were willing to make sacrifices for the purpose of upholding 
 tbose principles, he felt that, although unknown to them, he 
 was not speaking among strangers, but rather among friends. 
 Now, he saw in one of the papers published in Portsmouth a 
 notice which would lead them to suppose that he was going 
 to say something that evening on the subject of Education. 
 He begged them to dismiss any such supposition from their 
 minds. It was true he might have to allude, in the course of 
 liis observations, to education ; but the text he had chosen that 
 night was ' Liberal Opinion on the Basis of Distinctive Liberal 
 Principles.' That was his text; and, unlike some preachers, 
 he should endeavour to stick to it as closely as possible. 
 ' Abridged Report from the Hampshire Telegraph.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 4(53 
 
 With reference to distinctive Liberal principles, the first 
 thing he desired to impress upon those present, or, rather, he 
 should say, to remind them of, was the fact that it was a dis- 
 tinctive feature of Liberalism to have principles at all. Not 
 very long ago a witness was giving evidence at an election 
 inquiry he believed it was at Taunton when the Judge put 
 the question to him, ' Pray, sir, may I ask you what are your 
 political opinions ? ' To which the man replied, ' Well, my 
 lord, I do not know much about politics. I am no great 
 politician. I have no politics. I am a Conservative.' Now, 
 he did not believe that it was possible for the witness to have 
 given a better definition of Conservatism than that. He 
 understood that last week the Conservatives of Portsmouth 
 had what they termed a banquet in that very hall. He was 
 not invited to it, and he very much doubted whether any of 
 those present were. However, he had read a report of the 
 proceedings ; and he naturally looked through the various 
 speeches to see if he could discover throughout either of them 
 any trace of Conservative principle. What did he find ? 
 Why, he found that one gentleman compared Mr. Eeed to a 
 pot of Holloway's Ointment. That was certainly not a prin- 
 ciple. Then he found that another gentleman said he should 
 like to punch Mr. Gladstone in the ribs. That was not a 
 principle, and he should certainly advise the gentleman 
 who gave utterance to that remark never to try to gratify his- 
 desire. Then, again, he observed that Mr. Lowther, who had 
 the reputation of always being able to make a good rollicking 
 after-dinner speech, actually had the courage to praise Bussia, 
 not because she had vindicated the cause of the Christians 
 in Turkey, but because she kept the Liberals in good order 
 throughout Europe. That was one of the most daring asser- 
 tions he had heard for a long time ; and he was afraid it 
 would not be endorsed by many. When the Conservatives 
 talked of principles and it was a well-known fact that they 
 often borrowed Liberal principles to talk of there was no 
 doubt that, while the voice was Jacob's, the hands were the 
 hands of Esau. When the Conservatives talked of principles.
 
 4G4 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 he was forcibly reminded of something that President Lincoln 
 once said of General McClellan, who was so unsuccessful at 
 the beginning of the American War. Now, the General was a 
 man who was continually arranging schemes which, unfortu- 
 nately, ended in nothing, and the President said on one 
 occasion : ' That fellow is always talking of his plans ; but I 
 will be hanged if I believe that he has any plans at all.' 
 That was exactly what he believed of Conservatives ; but yet 
 he was forced to admit that they had one principle, and that 
 was, Government by the landed aristocracy. He maintained 
 strongly that that was the one and only principle by which 
 Conservatives would really be willing to stand. Let them 
 just look for a moment at the composition of the present 
 Government, or, perhaps, he ought to say, of the present 
 Cabinet. What would they find ? Why, that there was not 
 a single member of that Cabinet, except Mr. Gathorne Hardy, 
 who represented Oxford University, who was not either a 
 noble lord or a member for a county. There was not a single 
 representative of a borough among them. If they looked at 
 their measures, to which the Chairman had so ably referred, 
 including one of the most creditable to them namely, the 
 Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Act they would not, if 
 they looked through them from first to last, find one that 
 cither touched the interests or in any way affected the preju- 
 dices of the landed aristocracy. He was the very last man 
 to set class against class. On the contrary, he was one of 
 those who admired the landed aristocracy as a class. He 
 believed that if any other privileged class throughout all the 
 world had had equal power, such power would have been far 
 more unscrupulously exercised than it had been exercised by 
 the landed aristocracy. He would even go further than that, 
 and say that, if he were to be governed by one particular 
 Hass, and not by the nation, he would most certainly rather 
 be governed by that class. But still, he maintained that 
 class government, such as the Conservatives believed in, was 
 not national government, and that class government was 
 utterly and absolutely inconsistent with Liberal principles.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 465 
 
 What were Liberal principles ? It would be perfectly im- 
 possible for him that evening to do more than touch in the 
 most summary way on some of the more distinctive of those 
 principles ; and, giving them a few outlines, he would leave 
 his audience to fill up the details for themselves. Some of 
 the illustrations he should have placed before them had 
 already been suggested by their Chairman, and he would 
 avoid, if possible, going over the same ground again. Liberals 
 were often challenged as to what their principles really were. 
 First and foremost, then, Progress was a Liberal principle. 
 When he was asked, as he sometimes was, whether he were 
 an Advanced Liberal, he invariably said, ' No.' The fact was, 
 he was not an Advanced Liberal, but an Advancing Liberal ; 
 and if he were not an advancing Liberal, he could not be a 
 Liberal at all. Why, the whole of their constitutional history 
 was a history of progressive changes and progressive reforms, 
 made and carried out by the Liberal Party for the time being, 
 under whatever name, and against the strongest and most 
 violent opposition on the part of the Tory Party for the time 
 being, under whatever name. All this was not mere accident ; 
 but, on the contrary, it arose from a most profound and 
 serious difference between the Liberal and the Tory point of 
 view. The Liberal had a faith in human nature, and es- 
 pecially in the good sense of his own countrymen, and in 
 their capacity for self-government, which gave him what 
 Mr. Gladstone had called confidence in the people, such as no 
 Tory ever could possess. And, what was more, the Liberal 
 had a faith in the future, which no Tory ever had possessed, 
 or ever could possess. The Liberal was a man of progress, 
 and entirely unlike the Tory. He did not carry his eyes in the 
 back of his head, but looked forward with great calmness and 
 confidence to the future, believing, with the poet, that what 
 men had done was but an earnest of what they yet might do, 
 fully convinced that a good time was indeed coming, though 
 it may be far distant, and that a happier future was designed 
 in the counsels of Providence for the toiling and suffering 
 masses of mankind. 
 
 nil
 
 466 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Need he tell his hearers that evening that Freedom was a 
 Liberal principle ? Surely not ; for it was well known that 
 freedom was the very life-blood of Liberalism. Their Chair- 
 man had already reminded them of some of the ways in 
 which this Liberal principle had been enforced in times past. 
 There was freedom of the Press a freedom which was only 
 won after a most desperate struggle, at the peril of both life 
 and limb, by Liberals a few generations ago. But it was 
 personal freedom for which Liberals had always fought 
 most strenuously. He was not then speaking of the freedom 
 secured under the Habeas Corpus Act, but personal freedom 
 to British subjects throughout the British Empire. He boldly 
 asserted that personal freedom was never won until the great 
 Reform Bill had been carried by the efforts of their ancestors, 
 and entirely by the united efforts of the Liberal Party. The 
 Abolition of Slavery, it was hardly necessary to remark, 
 received the violent opposition of the Tory Party, allied with 
 the West India interest. Freedom of worship and freedom 
 of election to municipal offices, were, in the same way, advo- 
 cated and secured by the Liberals, against the resistance of 
 the Tories, from a Conservative Minister the great Duke of 
 Wellington himself downwards. These liberties were not 
 secured until the struggle had been prolonged for generations. 
 As for the freedom of trade, most of those present would 
 remember how that was won by the Liberal Party, who at 
 last succeeded, chiefly through the exertions of one man, tho 
 late Mr. Cobden ; and how that statesman ultimately succeeded 
 in converting Sir Bobert Peel. He would remind them that 
 Sir Bobert Peel paid the penalty of that conversion, not 
 merely by exclusion from office, but by the lifelong and im- 
 placable hatred of tho Tory Party. Then, again, freedom of 
 labour was never secured until the other day, when the 
 iniquitous Combination Laws were broken down by an Act 
 passed by the late Government. Freedom of voting, too, was 
 never secured until the Ballot Act was passed, against the 
 united opposition of the Conservative Party, who relied on 
 what they called ' influence,' but which he called corruption
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 467 
 
 and intimidation. Then, as to freedom of education, that, as 
 their Chairman had reminded them, was first guaranteed by 
 Mr. Eorster's Education Act ; for until then there was no 
 such thing as freedom of education, seeing that it could not 
 exist so long as all creeds were not placed on equal terms in 
 schools largely supported by the nation. It was the Liberals, 
 again, who secured freedom of education in the Universities 
 by sweeping away religious tests. It was not possible to 
 avoid noticing the abolition of that which could only be de- 
 scribed as a tax upon knowledge. He alluded to the heavy 
 stamp duties upon newspapers, which prevented the poor 
 man from acquiring information ; and it must be remembered 
 that such abolition was the work of the Liberal Party. He 
 was much amused, some time ago, by the saying of a Tory 
 gentleman who was a member of the House of Commons. 
 That gentleman was listening to Lord Beaconsfield, then 
 Mr. Disraeli, who was moving one of his Budgets, he then 
 being the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This Tory gentleman 
 waited until Mr. Disraeli had described all the taxes he 
 proposed to take off and they were not very numerous 
 when he was overheard to say : ' I hope to God he is going 
 to lay on a thundering tax upon knowledge ! ' evidently 
 thinking that such a tax would never reach himself. 
 
 There was another principle which was also purely Liberal ; 
 and that was, Equality. He was aware that the word ' equality,' 
 used in relation to politics, had a somewhat democratic sound, 
 and he did not know that he should have ventured to have 
 mentioned it a week ago in that room. But he must say 
 that the word Democracy did not alarm him ; and he trusted 
 that it would not alarm those present. Three years ago he 
 attended a meeting of the Banbury Liberal Association, and 
 was pleased at the manner in which its affairs were conducted. 
 They put forward as their main object a purpose so excellent 
 and so admirably worded that he would recommend it strongly 
 to the consideration of the Liberal Association of Portsmouth. 
 The object he alluded to was defined to be ' Liberal legisla- 
 tion tending towards perfect equality among all classes, in 
 
 H II 2
 
 468 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 all relations of public life, whether civil or religious.' He 
 maintained that all true Liberals were fully impressed with 
 the importance of that principle of Equality ; and that that 
 was one of the reasons why they were so hearty in their 
 support of everything tending to help forward the cause of 
 education. They believed that education was the safest and 
 best of all levellers. That, too, was one reason why, or, rather, 
 he should say, the main reason why the Liberal Party so 
 heartily supported the abolition of purchase in the Army ; 
 and that was the reason why they promoted and supported 
 competitive examinations and promotion by merit in all 
 branches of the Public Service. He remembered at the time 
 of the Crimean War an amusing story went about to the effect 
 that some old-fashioned general for the fact must not be 
 concealed that there were old-fashioned generals as well as 
 admirals had said, on hearing of the introduction of the prin- 
 ciple of promotion by merit : Good heavens ! If they intro- 
 duce this principle of promotion by merit, all my officers will 
 be wanting to distinguish themselves.' "Why, that was exactly 
 what the Liberals wanted to see, not only at Alma and 
 Inkermann, but in all the relations of public life, civil and 
 religious to use again some of the words denning the object 
 of the Banbury Liberal Association. They desired that pro- 
 motion should follow upon these acts of distinction, and not upon 
 any privileges of mere birth or wealth, or anything of that kind. 
 Another Liberal principle was one which was, perhaps, 
 not quite so easy to state, but he would call it, Respect for 
 Human Nature, as such. Here he was afraid he might trench 
 somewhat upon the ground which Mr. Reed was expected to 
 occupy. However that might be, he felt bound to maintain 
 that it was essentially a Liberal principle to respect human 
 nature, as such, not merely because Christianity taught them 
 the value of human souls, but also because experience taught 
 them that all races, and all classes, and all types of mankind 
 were capable of almost infinite elevation. And he would say, 
 that it was by virtue of that principle that Liberals abolished 
 the penalty of death for, he was afraid to say how many
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 469 
 
 hundred, comparatively trifling offences. Liberals felt that 
 even criminals and outcasts from society were worthy of some 
 respect and consideration. And it was by virtue of that feel- 
 ing that they did away with the lash and the branding-iron, 
 and by virtue of the same principle that they had introduced 
 humanity, as far as possible, into our relations with the 
 savage nations, and forbearance into our relations with sub- 
 ject-populations. It was the same principle which led all 
 Liberals sternly to condemn the atrocities practised under 
 the name of martial law in Jamaica. He verily believed that 
 it was not a hatred of Turkey or a love of Russia which 
 stirred up this country against the Bulgarian Massacres ; but 
 that it was the principle of respect for human nature, as such, 
 which all true Liberals held. He was very glad to read the 
 assurance of Mr. Lowther that not a solitary button on one 
 of their blue jackets, or a single hair of one of their gallant 
 soldiers, would be placed in jeopardy for any matter arising 
 out of the internal administration of the Turkish Empire. 
 He thought, however, that it was rather an odd thing for a 
 man who belonged to a Government which boasted of its 
 ' spirited ' foreign policy to say. He thought it a great pity that 
 Mr. Lowther or his leaders had not said that until the nation 
 had taken the conduct of Eastern affairs into its own hands. 
 
 He would mention one other Liberal principle viz., the 
 Supremacy of all National Interests over all Particular Inte- 
 rests, whether they were personal interests, or class interests, or 
 professional interests, or sectional interests interests of any 
 kind whatever. He knew that that was a somewhat delicate 
 topic to handle in a place like Portsmouth ; but he had not 
 come here to conceal opinions, but, on the contrary, to express 
 what he felt. And he could speak with some freedom, be- 
 cause he could truly say that, as far as he understood the 
 matter, he had never been in favour of that reduction in the 
 Dockyard establishment which he supposed had been so un- 
 popular in this town. He was one of those men who would 
 always bake his bread and brew his beer at home, and have 
 a family dairy ; and if he would do that, it would be seen that
 
 470 SPEECHES AND LETTERS. POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 he would naturally bo in favour of building our ships at home, 
 at our own national establishments. He was, as a matter of 
 fact, opposed to the principle (whether rightly or wrongly, he 
 did not know) of having our warships mainly built by contract 
 at private yards. Speaking generally, however, instead of 
 the course taken by Mr. Gladstone's Government in carrying 
 certain unpopular measures being a reproach, he considered 
 the course one which entitled them to much credit, showing, 
 as it did, that the national interests were held to be far above 
 all other interests whether the interests of the lawyers, of 
 the clergy, of the landlords, or of the people interested in 
 educational endowments. To put the matter shortly, Mr. 
 Gladstone and his Administration set the interests of the 
 nation wholly above the interests of all classes of individuals. 
 It was well known that the Conservative Government had 
 traded upon the opposite principle. When a Conservative 
 Government came into office, an impression seemed to spread, 
 from the admiral and general down to the humblest seaman 
 and private soldier or marine, and from the heads of depart- 
 ments down to the humblest clerk or messenger, that their 
 private interests would be protected, and it would almost 
 seem that they supposed that England no longer expected 
 that every man would do his duty, but only hoped that he 
 might do so. For some time that impression seemed to pre- 
 vail, and no harm was done ; but afterwards this state of 
 things created mischief. The fruits of the good seeds sown 
 by the previous Administration were soon reaped ; and the 
 savings which had been made by a judicious and complete 
 system of economy were soon exponded ; while the classes of 
 people to whom he had alluded began to get disappointed, as 
 well they might, finding that the promises made to them had 
 not been performed. Then the nation, roused at last from 
 its fit of indolent inaction, discovered that a vigilant regard to 
 the national interests was, after all, of paramount importance. 
 He would say no more on Liberal principles. Many, 
 perhaps, would say that he had been telling the old story, 
 and that it was all very fine ; but the Liberals were so weak
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 471 
 
 and divided that they could do very little at present, and had 
 very little chance of being again united. Was that so ? 
 They might not have been able to do much good no Oppo- 
 sition could do much good ; but it was perfectly clear that 
 they had prevented a good deal of harm being done. He 
 would mention a few instances in which the Liberal Party 
 had effectively intervened to prevent great mischiefs being 
 done. The first was, when the Liberal Party modified the 
 provisions of that Bill whereby Mr. Cross thought to pro- 
 pitiate the licensed victuallers ; and, while mentioning this 
 subject, he might perhaps say that he conscientiously believed 
 that these concessions to publicans were just as contrary to 
 the interests of the publicans themselves as they were to the 
 interests of the public at large. Then, again, the Liberal 
 Party interfered to prevent mischief being done by the Tories 
 in the case of the Endowed Schools Bill, introduced in 1874 
 by Lord Sandon, the effect of which Bill would have been to 
 have tied up for an indefinite time many of the middle-class 
 endowments of this country to the Church of England alone. 
 In that case the Liberals were entirely successful. The 
 Liberal Party had, too, prevented the Government from 
 stifling the agitation so righteously got up by Mr. Plimsoll. 
 The Liberals on that occasion secured, at all events, a partial 
 measure of shipping-reform. Then, with regard to the issue 
 of the Slave Circular, the Liberal Party resisted the Govern- 
 ment in their attempt at reviving, indirectly, that system of 
 slavery which it was the pride of the last generation to boast 
 that they had for ever abolished. They all remembered, too, 
 the Boyal Titles Bill. It was just possible that too much 
 was made of the matter on both sides ; but, however that 
 might be, it was clear that if the Liberal Party did not succeed 
 in getting rid of the Bill altogether, they reserved it for use, 
 as his friend Lord Bosebery had wittily said, as an external 
 application only. The title of Empress could not be applied 
 in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, and that was certainly 
 something gained. Again, the Liberal Party had intervened 
 in the Eastern Question ; and most certainly (though he did
 
 472 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 not wish to do any injustice to the Government, and though 
 he believed Lord Derby was a man of peace) he was of opinion 
 that, unless his Lordship had been supported and urged 
 forward by the Liberal Party, he might, against his own 
 judgment, have committed this country to the maintenance 
 of the Turkish Empire. 
 
 Let them now look for a moment to the future ; and in 
 directing their attention to this point he would (although 
 not a cricketing man himself) refer them to something which 
 took place in connection with that national game about three 
 years ago. At the time he mentioned, there was a panic 
 among cricketers lest the art of batting should become so 
 perfect that the adepts in bowling could not get the batsman 
 out ; and the question was, whether it would not be desirable 
 to alter the rules of batting in order to meet the case. While 
 the panic existed, a very sensible letter appeared in print from 
 Mr. Lilly white, who suggested that one way of getting rid of 
 the difficulty would be to improve the bowling. Now that was 
 exactly the principle which he (Mr. Brodrick) would apply to 
 their Parliamentary tactics ; only he thought there should be 
 more frequent changes of bowling. He reposed great confidence 
 in the true patriotism and solid good sense and sound Liberal 
 principles of the Marquis of Hartington, and he was quite 
 sure there was no man who would more desire than he would 
 to afford everybody the opportunity for fully and openly ex- 
 pressing his opinions. He thought the great superiority in 
 debate of the Liberal Party was now beginning to tell on the 
 country. The Liberal Party could not carry Parliamentary 
 divisions, it was true ; but, thanks to the Press, their freely- 
 expressed ideas were largely influencing the opinions of the 
 public. The Tories did not like to feel that they were in the 
 wrong, and that they were overmatched in debate. He 
 thought it was to that superiority in debate that was partly 
 due the encouraging signs of a turn in the tide which were 
 now visible. Let them look, for instance, at the results of 
 the municipal elections last autumn in many of the boroughs 
 of England, and then, again, at the results of the School
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 478 
 
 Board elections a sign which was the most encouraging 
 of all. 
 
 They were told, however, that the Liberal Party could not 
 be rallied on any measure, and that all they could do was to 
 criticise. Now let them look at two or three questions. He 
 would first deal with the question of Education. He was 
 very pleased to see in that day's ' Times ' that the Education 
 League of Birmingham was about to be dissolved. Why did 
 he say he was glad ? By no means because he did not fully 
 sympathise with the objects of the League, of which he was 
 once a member, but because he thought they had acted wisely 
 in saying that they had now merged into the Liberal Party, 
 and could trust the Liberal Party to carry out those of their 
 aims which yet remained to be accomplished. He should 
 like to know what Liberal was in favour of denominational 
 education, and what Liberal did not feel that in the future 
 education must be placed on a national or municipal, and 
 not on a denominational, footing ? That was the reason why 
 the Liberal Party opposed as one man that reactionary Bill 
 of Lord Sandon's which, he regretted to say, was carried last 
 session whereby it was possible for schools which called 
 themselves voluntary, without there being any voluntary 
 subscriptions whatever, to cease to be voluntary at all, and 
 be maintained chiefly at the national expense. The Liberals 
 were, too, opposed to those provisions in the University 
 Beform Bill which retained all clerical Fellowships, as really 
 giving an exclusive privilege to the Church of England, to 
 which he belonged, and against which he hoped never to say 
 a word. There were also questions relating to the land and 
 to local government ; but time would not permit him to dwell 
 upon them. What Liberal was there who was in favour of 
 the law of primogeniture and strict entail, and all those 
 cumbrous formalities which helped to keep the land in the 
 hands of a very few people ? Then, again, what Liberal was 
 there who was not in favour of protecting the rights of com- 
 moners against the aggression (he must use that word) of 
 lords of manors ? and what Liberal was there who was in
 
 474 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 favour of maintaining the present Game Laws and the present 
 system of the administration of those laws by an unpaid 
 magistracy ? As far as the question of the County Franchise 
 was concerned, he might say that he referred to it the more 
 boldly because he was quite aware that many Liberals thought 
 it unwise to introduce Household Suffrage for the counties ; but 
 how different were the reasons advanced by the Liberals from 
 those advanced by the Tories. The Tories dreaded the in- 
 crease of independence among the labouring classes ; and 
 while they were waiting in anxious dread of being compelled 
 to take another ' leap in the dark,' and to rely upon their 
 ' influence,' which, as he had before said-, simply meant corrup- 
 tion and intimidation, the Liberals looked forward anxiously 
 to the time when the labouring classes in the counties of 
 England would be rendered fit, by the advancement of educa- 
 tion, to be entrusted with the franchise. It was a shame 
 that, for three whole centuries since the Eeformation, so large a 
 class of the people should be kept in a state of political infancy. 
 He firmly believed that before many years had passed away 
 a measure granting Household Suffrage in the counties would 
 be passed by the Liberals ; or, if they did not do that, they 
 would manage to convert into a reality some sham measure 
 for the purpose which might be proposed by the Tory Party. 
 
 There was one word he wished to say in conclusion, and 
 that was on the subject of Organisation. There were some 
 people who professed to distrust organisation, and who were 
 of opinion that a party got on best without it, and that when 
 a candidate came forward he became the Centre of his own 
 organisation. Other people believed that the divisions which 
 existed in the Liberal Party were of such a character as would 
 not admit of the members being brought together. Now he 
 utterly disagreed with the first of those two opinions, believ- 
 ing, as he did, that the success of the Conservatives at tho 
 last election was mainly due to tho fact that they were as 
 infinitely superior to the Liberals in organisation as the 
 Germans were to the French in the late war. To say that 
 organisation was of no use, was like saying that a man was
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 475 
 
 just as likely to hit a mark without aiming at it as by taking 
 aim. He quite admitted that there was more force in the 
 second opinion. There could be no doubt that there were 
 divisions in the Liberal Party ; but he must confess to being, 
 in a certain sense, proud of them, as showing that Liberals 
 retained freedom of thought and independence of action, two 
 things which had always characterised them as a party. He 
 thought, however, that Liberals, when dealing with the 
 common cause, should subordinate the lesser questions to 
 the greater ones, and should sacrifice smaller points, retain- 
 ing, of course, their private convictions. They should learn 
 the lesson which adversity taught them that some sacrifices 
 must be made for the sake of ensuring the triumph of their 
 cause. If they wished to ensure success, let them waive 
 opinions on questions which were, after all,' of minor impor- 
 tance, as compared with those great distinctive Liberal princi- 
 ples they all held, and rally themselves upon those questions. 
 After all, however, organisation was of little use without 
 individual energy and individual faith in principles. There 
 were some present that evening who might have spent a 
 lifetime in fighting for Liberal principles, and there might 
 also be others who had never given the matter any thought, 
 and to whom that evening's gathering might be a first ex- 
 perience in politics. The former he would urge to rally upon 
 the basis of distinctive Liberal principles ; and if their courage 
 should fail and the courage of all of them was wont to fail 
 in trying times let them remember those who, in days far 
 rougher than the present, were content to live and die for the 
 liberties which they had handed down to the present genera- 
 tion. Let them remember their fathers, who waged a life- 
 long struggle, against far greater difficulties than had now to 
 be encountered, in order to get the Reform Bill passed. Let 
 them also recognise the courage displayed by the Tories 
 throughout more continuous adversity than that which the 
 Liberals now experienced ; and let them firmly resolve that, 
 come what might, and whatever others might do, they would 
 each, in his own place and in his own station, do his duty faith- 
 fully by the great Liberal Party and the great Liberal Cause.
 
 476 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 ADDRESS ON 'IMPERIALISM AND LIBERAL POLICY,' 
 DELIVERED AT GUILDFORD, DECEMBER 28, 1878' 
 
 I have undertaken to speak to-night of Imperialism and 
 Liberal Policy. Speaking on such a subject, before such an 
 audience, I shall not pretend that I am not going to deliver 
 a political address, but I can assure you with perfect sincerity 
 that I am not going to deliver a party address. By this I 
 mean, not only that I shall not indulge in those violent per- 
 sonalities which are too common among our opponents, but 
 which are unworthy of the Liberal cause, and, I may add, 
 inconsistent with my own character, but that I shall not 
 think it necessary to denounce every Conservative idea, and 
 extol every Liberal idea without qualification or exception. I 
 stand here as a Liberal from boyhood ; as a Liberal, not by 
 interest, but by conviction ; as a hearty and thoroughgoing 
 Liberal, who is not afraid to trust his principles : but I do 
 not stand here as a passionate or one-sided Liberal partisan. 
 I can afford to admit that Conservatives now and then but 
 not very often get hold of some principle worth conserving, 
 and that Liberals now and then ride their hobbies too hard. 
 And therefore, when I speak of Imperialism, I shall not shut 
 my eyes to its better side ; nor shall I shrink, on the other 
 hand, from alluding to one or two weak points not in Liberal 
 principles, but in Liberal policy. 
 
 Well now, I dare say this word ' Imperialism ' has a 
 strange, un-English sound to most of you, as I am sure it 
 has to me. In fact, it is a word of which the British Consti- 
 tution knows nothing, and which never came into common 
 use in this country until some two years ago, when the present 
 Government thought proper to dress up our Queen in Imperial 
 robes, and proclaim her Empress of India ; as if we must 
 needs pick up a title which France had the good sense to 
 fling down, and as if any new-fangled and high-sounding title 
 
 1 One or two passages in this Address are borrowed from the Speech at 
 Southsea.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 477 
 
 could add dignity to a crown which English kings and queens 
 have worn for a thousand years, not by Divine right, but, 
 simply and solely, by the consent of the English people. 
 Still, we must not forget that long before the Queen became 
 Empress of India Great Britain was the centre of a mighty 
 Empire, including, not only India, but all our Colonies in every 
 part of the world. This Empire is partly the result of con- 
 quest, like the great Koman Empire in aneient times and 
 far be it from me to justify all the wars by which some of our 
 foreign dominions have been acquired. But it is mainly the 
 result of colonisation, and, if we put out of sight India, and 
 mere fortresses like Gibraltar and Malta, most of our Colonies 
 are really free nations as free as Great Britain herself. 
 They acknowledge the Queen as their sovereign, and they 
 speak of the Home Government as the Imperial Government, 
 but they are practically their own masters, except when they 
 apply to the Colonial Secretary for advice or assistance. 
 Now, if it be a Conservative idea to be proud of such an 
 Empire as this, I am not ashamed to avow myself as, so far, 
 a Conservative ; and if there are any Liberals who desire to 
 see the Colonies separate themselves gradually from the 
 mother-country, I can only say that I am not one of them. 
 I cannot look at it as a mere question of pounds, shillings 
 and pence; a man is none the richer for having a large 
 family, and yet what father of a family would desire to 
 reduce the number of his children ? I like to know and to 
 realise that, travel where I may in Asia, in Africa, in 
 America, or in the isles of the Pacific Ocean I cannot go far 
 without seeing the Union Jack floating over some peaceful 
 and orderly settlement of my countrymen, with English faces, 
 English manners, English notions, English religion, and 
 English laws, talking of England as their home, cherishing 
 equally the English sentiments of loyalty and of liberty, and 
 speaking that familiar but noble language which is the 
 glorious birthright of the English race. I like to feel that 
 where the Colonial Office does interfere with colonial affairs, 
 it interferes chiefly as a beneficent adviser or mediator. Yes,
 
 478 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Gentlemen, Imperialism in our Colonies nowadays means 
 neither Imperial tyranny nor Imperial jobbery. It means 
 helping forward and guiding the great experiment of self- 
 government in young communities ; it means keeping the 
 peace between two European races in the same colony, or 
 between Europeans and natives ; it means reconciling French 
 Catholics to Canadian Orangemen ; it means encouraging free 
 trade in Australia, and checking famine in India, and putting 
 down slavery everywhere. This is true Imperialism, and 
 this I am prepared to advocate as strongly as any Conserva- 
 tive. And if this be not enough for our ambition if we 
 must needs indulge in dreams of a Greater Britain than even 
 Great Britain and her Colonies then let us dream, not of 
 warlike conquests and annexations, but of that great peaceful 
 conquest which may yet be reserved for us in the fulness of 
 time, when this England of ours shall join hands with that 
 other England across the Atlantic, and the whole Anglo-Saxon 
 family shall be united in one confederation, be it under a 
 monarchy or be it under a republic. 
 
 If this be true Imperialism, what is the false Imperialism 
 to which Liberal policy is opposed, and against which every 
 Liberal should protest ? False Imperialism is the policy to 
 which the present Government and the Conservative Party 
 has been committed under the leadership of Lord Beaconsfield. 
 This policy rests on the notion that national greatness consists, 
 not in the prosperity or the virtue much less, in the political 
 intelligence of the people, but mainly in the extension of 
 territory ; just as some landowners measure their importance 
 by their acreage, and not by their real influence, or even by 
 their real wealth : but also in the increase of national prestige 
 in what Lord Carnarvon well describes as ' Swaggering down 
 the High Street of the world, with the hat cocked, and on 
 the look-out for some fancied insult or affront.' This perni- 
 cious delusion I believe to have been deliberately embraced 
 by Lord Beaconsfield, if not by his colleagues. When Mr. 
 Gladstone was in office, no charge against him was so per- 
 sistently repeated as the charge that his foreign policy was a
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 479 
 
 tame, and not a spirited, foreign policy. He settled our dis- 
 putes with America by arbitration, instead of by going to war 
 about them ; he declined to interfere between France and 
 Germany, but left them to fight out their own quarrels ; and 
 he actually allowed Eussia, with the consent of all the other 
 European Powers, to have ships of war in the Black Sea. 
 Lord Beaconsfield succeeded, as we can now see, with a fixed 
 determination to have a spirited, and even an Imperial, 
 foreign policy ; but so long as he had Lord Derby, an eminently 
 cautious man, for his Foreign Secretary, and Lord Carnarvon 
 for his Colonial Secretary, this was not so easy. However, 
 a time came, as it was sure to come, when this partnership 
 was dissolved, and since that we have had an Imperial policy 
 in foreign affairs with a vengeance. It is not my intention 
 to dwell on the earlier stages of the Eastern Question, about 
 which you have probably heard quite enough ; and, if I did, I 
 should be unable to justify everything said or done by the 
 more impulsive section of our Liberal friends. I never could 
 stand on a platform and attribute just, generous, and unself- 
 ish and far-sighted views to almost every Government in 
 Europe except our own. I cannot defend hypocrisy and bad 
 faith and cruelty, even when they are practised against Turks ; 
 nor can I be wholly blind to the aggressive ambition of 
 Bussia, even when she proposes to be the champion of suffer- 
 ing Christians. But all this I regard as ancient history. A 
 new chapter in the Eastern Question opens with the Treaty 
 of Berlin, and my charge against Lord Beaconsfield is that, 
 in the pursuit of a false Imperialism, and out of an utterly 
 mistaken patriotism for I admit that he is a patriot at 
 heart he has dragged this country, without consulting Par- 
 liament beforehand, into new engagements of the most 
 perilous kind, w 7 hich have already involved us in war, which 
 must involve us in enormous expense, and which may involve 
 us in national disaster. As I said, I believe this policy to 
 have been long before conceived in Lord Beaconsfield's own 
 mind, but I consider the proclamation of the Queen as 
 Empress of India to have been the first open manifestation
 
 480 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 of it. We know from Lord Beaconsfield himself that his 
 object was to show the Native Princes of India that we can 
 give our sovereign as grand a title as the Emperor of Eussia, 
 and to warn the Emperor of Russia against trifling with us 
 in the East. If this is not Imperialism run mad, I don't 
 know what is. But it has been followed up by more serious 
 and mischievous steps in the same direction. By the Anglo- 
 Turkish Convention, secretly concluded at the very moment 
 when Great Britain was going to take part in a European 
 Congress, we obtained possession of an unhealthy island in 
 the east of the Mediterranean, and undertook an indefinite 
 and shadowy protectorate of the old Turkish dominions in 
 Asia. I defy any man to show how this nation will be the 
 richer, or the better, or even the stronger, for this specimen 
 of Imperialist policy. The one excuse for it might have been 
 that Great Britain was determined to spread the blessings of 
 peace and civilisation over Western Asia ; but we have cut 
 this excuse from under us, because we have justified the 
 Convention on purely military grounds, and bound ourselves 
 to retire from Cyprus altogether if Russia should ever retire 
 from Armenia. It remains to be seen whether Cyprus is 
 worth anything as a naval or military station, and whether 
 we might not have done far more with the same money at 
 Malta or elsewhere. If so, we have gained nothing. But 
 what have we lost by this stroke of Imperialism ? We have 
 lost, not merely the enormous sums of money and they will 
 be enormous required to fortify and hold Cyprus, but some- 
 thing far more precious : we have lost our reputation for a 
 disinterested foreign policy before the eyes of Europe. Until 
 we sprung this Convention upon the Berlin Congress, it was 
 believed that England sought nothing for herself, and was 
 only striving to make the best settlement of the Eastern 
 Question for the benefit of Turkey and her subject-popula- 
 tions. It is now believed that England, under Lord Beacons- 
 field, is as bad as the rest of them, and that, if Turkey is 
 broken up, we are determined to have our share of the spoils. 
 This loss of national character would be too heavy a price to
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 481 
 
 pay for a most valuable acquisition ; but I fear we have paid 
 for a bargain that is worse than worthless. 
 
 But this is not enough. No sooner had we recovered 
 from our surprise about Cyprus and the Anglo-Turkish Con- 
 vention, than we heard that we were almost committed, and 
 soon afterwards that we were committed outright, to a war 
 with Afghanistan ; and we have been told lately again on 
 Lord Beaconsfield's own authority that we are not to look 
 at this war as an Indian affair as a movement undertaken 
 for the defence of our Indian frontier but rather as a part 
 of a great Imperial policy for checking the growth of the 
 Russian Empire in the East. I have taken much interest in 
 this question for many years. I am old enough to remember 
 the awful reverses of the first Afghan War. I happened to be 
 in Calcutta during the second Sikh War, and circumstances 
 led to my studying carefully, nearly ten years ago, several of 
 the papers which have only just been published. Therefore, 
 if necessary, I could deliver a long and tedious lecture on this 
 subject ; but I am not going to do any such thing. Many of 
 you have read the whole case in the papers, and I will simply 
 ask you what judgment you have formed upon it. My 
 judgment is, that it is a war of Lord Beaconsfield's and Lord 
 Lytton's own seeking an offensive, and not a defensive war 
 another stroke of aggressive Imperialism, which cannot be 
 justified either by justice or by expediency. Some of you 
 may remember the humorous advice of Mr. Dickens to any 
 one who wishes to earn a cheap reputation for courage. He 
 says you have only to wait until a row occurs, and then to 
 single out the smallest man in the crowd, and give him a 
 good thrashing ; for that everybody will think you chose the 
 smallest man by accident, and would have been equally pre- 
 pared to thrash the biggest. This, it seems, is what the 
 Government have done. In saying this, I do not for a 
 moment intend to praise the conduct either of Eussia or of 
 Shere Ali. I know perfectly well that the state of affairs in 
 Afghanistan and Central Asia is very different from what it 
 was in Lord Lawrence's time ; but it does not at all follow 
 
 I i
 
 482 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 that our policy should be different, and I firmly believe that 
 until Russia threatens Afghanistan our strength is to sit 
 still. Instead of Russia threatening Afghanistan, she has 
 been very shrewdly coaxing and conciliating the Ameer ; it 
 is we who have threatened him, and are now endeavouring 
 to thrash him into good humour. In fact, we have been 
 playing Russia's game in Asia, as we played it in Europe. 
 It was certain that whichever Power Russia or England 
 should be first to interfere with the independence of the 
 Afghans, would make the whole nation its enemy. Instead 
 of waiting to let Russia do this, and then coming in as a 
 protector, we have actually contrived to put ourselves in that 
 odious position, with the risk that Russia may come in as a 
 protector of the Ameer. And what can we gain ? No one 
 proposes to annex the country that is disclaimed in the 
 proclamation of war ; and yet, if we retire from it, as we did 
 before, we shall only leave behind us a population more 
 hostile than before. As for a scientific frontier, that could 
 have been obtained by treaty with the border tribes for a 
 tenth of the cost, had it been worth obtaining ; but I believe 
 that a majority of military authorities are against advancing 
 on the frontier at all. In short, I look upon the Afghan 
 expedition as a gigantic blunder like the Anglo-Turkish 
 Convention, and, like that, a blunder directly resulting from 
 the new policy of Imperialism. 
 
 But I protest against Imperialism on another and different 
 ground. An Imperialist foreign policy that i, a spirited 
 and meddlesome policy abroad, a policy of Jingoism, as it 
 has been grotesquely named invariably means a feeble and 
 reactionary policy at home ; and this, I fear, is one of the 
 reasons which make it so popular with Tory politicians. So 
 it is in domestic life. You cannot have good economy and 
 a well-managed household, where the wife is always meddling 
 with the affairs of her neighbours, instead of looking after 
 her own husband and children. And so, as history tells us, 
 it has ever been in the political life of this country. No 
 one who has read history can be ignorant that civil and
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 483 
 
 religious liberty has always made the greatest progress in 
 times of peace, and that times of foreign war, however 
 glorious especially the whole period of that great war ending 
 with the battle of Waterloo have been dark and depressing 
 periods for the cause of the people. You cannot have a 
 spirited foreign policy and a spirited, or even a sound, home 
 policy, at one and the same time. Look at Mr. Gladstone's 
 Administration. Not to speak of the Irish Church and Land 
 Acts, I maintain that such Acts as the Education Act, and 
 the Endowed Schools Act, and the Act abolishing University 
 Tests, and the Trades-Union Act, and the Judicature Act, 
 and the abolition of Purchase in the Army, and the extension 
 of Promotion by Merit to all branches of the Public Service, 
 are enduring monuments of real statesmanship, and proofs of 
 what may be done by a spirited Home policy, when a Govern- 
 ment has the courage to cast aside the illusions and the impos- 
 ture of a spirited foreign policy. Look at Lord Beaconsfield's 
 Administration. "What has this Government done for the 
 people? what great measures of domestic legislation has it 
 carried in five years of power ? There were one or two 
 useful Bills, which it found ready-made in the pigeon-holes 
 of its offices, left there by its predecessors, and which it 
 had the good sense to adopt. Then there was the Act 
 called the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Act, but more 
 properly described as the Towns' Improvement Act a very 
 good Act in its way, but one which does next to nothing for 
 the better accommodation of working men in towns, and 
 absolutely nothing for the accommodation of working men in 
 the country. There was also a Bill, introduced with a great 
 nourish of trumpets, to redress the wrongs of the publicans. 
 Well, I leave the publicans to say how much good it did them, 
 whether their position has been much changed, and whether 
 they have not found out the hollowness of the promises made 
 them at the last election. No doubt the Government did its 
 best to reverse the Liberal policy in the Endowed Schools 
 Bill, and the Bill for keeping up the price of meat by shut- 
 ting out foreign cattle, but it was happily defeated by the 
 
 i i 2
 
 484 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Liberals, supported, in this last case, even by the Conser- 
 vative members for boroughs. If the present Ministry brings 
 forward a more or less Liberal measure such as Mr. Sclater- 
 Booth's measure for the better government of counties 
 they withdraw it the very moment that the country gentlemen 
 get alarmed, and we hear no more about it. I say, again, 
 look at the Statute-book for the last five years, and tell me 
 how many measures for the good of the country have been 
 passed. But I go further ; I say, look at the Queen's Speech 
 for the present session, and tell me how many good measures 
 are even promised. Why, it is like a bill-of fare at a public 
 dinner with only one course. The provision to be made for 
 the Afghan War is the beginning and the end of it, and, so far 
 as appears, when that war is finished if it ever is finished 
 Parliament will be invited to hear grace said. To be sure, 
 we are promised some kind of Bill for improving the system 
 of brakes on railways and no doubt a party so well versed 
 in putting on the drag is well qualified to deal with such a 
 question. And why have we this suspension of domestic 
 legislation ? Not because Lord Beaconsfield is not surrounded 
 by able and honest colleagues. I believe Mr. Cross is as able 
 and honest a Home Secretary as we have had for many 
 years ; I believe Sir Stafford Northcote, the former secretary 
 and pupil of Mr. Gladstone, to be as anxious to keep down 
 taxation and produce a good Budget as any Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer can be ; and there are several other members of 
 the Government whom every Liberal must respect. The 
 reason is, simply, that a false and pernicious idea of Imperialism 
 of a spirited foreign policy has been fostered by Lord 
 Beaconsfield, and possessed the mind of the whole Conserva- 
 tive Party, diverting them from any endeavour to benefit 
 Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen, to wild schemes of 
 foreign aggrandisement. 
 
 There is a third ground on which I must protest against 
 this new policy of Imperialism, though it is a somewhat diffi- 
 cult topic for a loyal subject to handle, and this is certainly 
 not a time when any loyal subject would have the heart to
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 485 
 
 speak disrespectfully of Her Majesty. It is only since the 
 Queen was made Empress of India, and since Lord Beacons- 
 field has been made an earl, that we have been favoured 
 with new theories of the Royal prerogative and the liberties 
 of the people. I said ' new theories ' ; but I was not strictly 
 correct, for they are in essence the same theories which the 
 English nation rejected in the reign of Charles I., and which, 
 though revived in a milder form by George III., were rejected 
 again in the last two reigns. Do not let me be misunder- 
 stood ; the Queen's accession was hailed by all true Liberals, 
 as the end of all unconstitutional and disloyal attempts to 
 shelter Ministers from responsibility under the name of the 
 sovereign, and I quite agree with Mr. Gladstone, that while 
 Queen Victoria remains on the throne ' Personal Government 
 is an absurd and impossible bugbear.' No, Gentlemen, I am 
 not afraid of ' Personal Government ' in England ; what I 
 am afraid of is, that an Imperialist Minister like Lord 
 Beaconsfield, abusing the undoubted rights of the Crown, 
 may hurry us into secret treaties, and military demonstrations, 
 and annexations of territory without previously consulting 
 Parliament, and then appeal to our loyalty and patriotism 
 not to desert the Queen in a great emergency. This is what 
 actually happened when the Suez Canal was brought under 
 our control, and the Transvaal was annexed, and the fleet 
 was moved up to the Bosphorus, and the Indian troops were 
 ordered to Malta, and Cyprus was occupied, and war was 
 declared against Afghanistan. All these acts were done, and 
 purposely done, without the sanction of Parliament. Of 
 course, Parliament could have undone them, or refused the 
 necessary supplies, but this is like shutting the stable-door 
 after the horse is stolen. Besides, Lord Beaconsfield has 
 succeeded in educating his party that is his own expression 
 into mistaking his own will for the will of the sovereign, 
 and imagining that a Prime Minister's business is to receive 
 orders from the Crown, and not from the people. This pro- 
 cess of education began in 1867, and I should like to know 
 where it is to end. When I think of its effects on the Con-
 
 486 SPEECHES AND LETTERS. POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Bervative Party, I am forcibly reminded of the Scotch child 
 who asked his grandmother whether all Tories were born bad, 
 and was informed by the old lady that he was right that all 
 Tories were born bad, and that they became worse by educa- 
 tion. That is very nearly what I believe. I believe the new 
 Toryism invented by Lord Beaconsfield to be far more 
 dangerous than old Toryism, because it easily lends itself to 
 an unscrupulous Imperialism, ruinous in its cost, damaging 
 to our national character, the enemy of peace, retrenchment, 
 and reform, and inconsistent with the liberties of the English 
 people. 
 
 Such is Imperialism, according to my conception of it. 
 And now, what is Liberal policy ? I should not be very far 
 wrong if I were to describe it as the exact opposite of Im- 
 perialism. But this would not be enough ; for it is not 
 merely negative it consists in firmly and wisely carrying 
 out Liberal principles. Some of you may, perhaps, have seen 
 a little pamphlet in which I endeavoured, some years ago, 
 to sum up the leading principles of the Liberal Party, and to 
 show, very briefly, how they have been applied in late years. 
 I never like to repeat myself, and therefore I will not go over 
 the same ground this evening ; I will come at once to what 
 I regard as the grand and central doctrine of the Liberal 
 creed, which strongly resembles the central doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity itself. This doctrine is that human happiness, in its 
 highest and broadest sense the happiness of men, women, 
 and children the happiness of all mankind, but especially of 
 our own countrymen, and especially of the toiling and suffer- 
 ing masses is the supreme end of statesmanship, just as it 
 is the supreme end of religion and philanthropy. The man 
 who has grasped this principle, and acts upon it in politics, is 
 a true Liberal, whatever he may call himself. Such a Liberal 
 will have a very simple foreign policy a policy of peace and 
 good-will between nations a policy of peace, not at any price, 
 but at the price of that meddlesome interference, too seldom 
 exercised on the side of liberty, which depends on the main- 
 tenance of great armaments, which magnifies the renown of
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 487 
 
 sovereigns and statesmen and soldiers, and neglects the real, 
 permanent interests of the people. Look at Europe, with its 
 three emperors and six millions of armed men. Then look 
 at America, with no emperor and only 25,000 troops, and 
 ask yourselves which system does most to develop the re- 
 sources of a country, and to promote the moral and material 
 welfare of its inhabitants. Or compare France under the 
 Empire, threatening all Europe with her spirited foreign 
 policy, and France under the Republic, so rapidly recovering 
 her strength, and becoming an object of envy to her conqueror, 
 who was foolish enough to borrow the French Imperialism. 
 Of course, I do not mean that we should isolate ourselves 
 altogether from the commonwealth of nations, refuse to 
 exercise the smallest influence on the Continent, and resolve 
 not to strike a blow unless our own shores are attacked. But 
 I do mean that English Ministers, being guardians to a third 
 of the whole human race, should first consider the interests 
 thus entrusted to them, and that in every case which has 
 occurred during my lifetime those interests were on the side 
 of peace. 
 
 The same principle, the same exclusive regard for the 
 happiness of the people, is a sure guide to Liberals in Home 
 policy. A true Liberal must ever be in favour of progress. 
 And why ? Because he knows that institutions even the 
 most venerable are made for man, and not man for institu- 
 tions ; that nations are always growing, and that institutions 
 must be adapted to their growth. A true Liberal must also 
 be always on the side of liberty and self-government. And 
 why ? Because experience shows that Englishmen are the 
 best guardians of their own interests, and, as Mr. Bright 
 once said, ' the people have no interest in wrong,' which is a 
 great deal more than can be said for privileged classes. A 
 true Liberal must, further, be a friend of equality. I do not 
 mean of levelling down, but of levelling up ; not of destroying 
 the natural advantages of superior ability, superior energy, 
 or even superior birth, but of clearing away the artificial 
 barriers which Privilege, Monopoly, and Ascendancy have
 
 488 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 raised between man and man. I need hardly say that he 
 will always be an advocate of political justice ; but he will also 
 be an advocate of humanity in all its manifold applications. 
 And why ? Because he is possessed with a profound respect 
 for human nature, and an immutable faith in human destiny, 
 which makes him feel a merciful sympathy, even with the 
 most degraded races and the very outcasts of society. Lastly, 
 he will always keep steadily in view the interest of the nation 
 as a whole the greatest happiness of the greatest number 
 even when it would be far more popular to make things 
 pleasant all round by conciliating and bribing one powerful 
 class after another, at the expense of the nation. I cannot 
 enlarge to-night on this great principle of Liberal policy, but 
 I will venture, though I know popular audiences hate the 
 very look of a book, to read you a very short passage from 
 the pamphlet to which I referred : 
 
 ' But this distinction between Liberal and Conservative 
 ideas is more clearly marked in everyday administration than 
 it is in legislation, and in those details of administration 
 which are not seen than it is in those which are seen. The 
 sinister Conservatism of modern times, which seeks to mar 
 the effect of Liberal measures which it dares not attempt to 
 repeal, saps the very foundations of administrative public 
 spirit. When a Conservative Government comes into office, 
 there is not a public servant, civil or military, from the 
 admiral or general to the humblest sailor or private, and 
 from the heads of departments to the lowest clerk or mes- 
 senger, who does not receive the impression that strict 
 vigilance is no longer the order of the day, that national 
 requirements are no longer to domineer over private claims, 
 that England no longer expects every man to do his duty, 
 but only hopes that he will do so. The evil consequences of 
 this impression are not felt at once. For a while it appears 
 that it is possible for a Government to scatter and yet to 
 increase, to serve its friends and the nation with equal fidelity, 
 to reap efficiency without sowing purity and economy. But 
 a time surely comes when the Estimates are mysteriously
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 489 
 
 swelled no one can say how and there is less than ever 
 to show for the outlay ; when the fruits of Liberal policy 
 have been consumed ; when one class after another manifests 
 signs of disappointment ; and when the nation, roused from 
 its indolent good-nature, realises that a paramount regard 
 for national interests is, after all, the only principle on which 
 national interests can be permanently secured.' 
 
 And this leads me to speak very briefly of one practical 
 difference between Imperialism, or Toryism, and Liberal 
 1 olicy. I mean that Imperialism is sure to be wasteful and 
 extravagant, while a Liberal policy is always an economical 
 policy. Now I am not one of those who make an idol of 
 economy for its own sake ; I think both in public and in 
 private life one should know how to spend, as well as how to 
 save : but I do maintain that sound finance and sound policy 
 almost always go together. I never like to overstate a case, 
 and I am not going to contend that we have to thank Im- 
 perialism alone for the present commercial depression, and 
 the widespread distress of which we hear every day. Other 
 causes may have contributed to produce it, but it has as- 
 suredly been aggravated very much by the spirited and restless 
 foreign policy of the Government, discouraging commercial 
 enterprise. And then, in the midst of this depression, 
 we have to pay twopence extra for income tax, and shall 
 certainly have more laid on next year to fortify Cyprus 
 and conquer Afghanistan. I shall not inflict upon you long 
 tables of figures ; it is enough to say that, under Mr. Glad- 
 stone, taxes amounting to 12,000,000/. or 13,000,000/. a year 
 were taken off, while more than 25,000,000/. of National 
 Debt was paid off ; and that under Lord Beaconsfield taxation 
 was at first diminished, but afterwards increased, while the 
 National Debt, funded and unfunded, is, on the whole, as 
 great as ever. This is not an accident ; it is what always 
 used to happen under Tory Governments, even before Jingoism 
 came into fashion. It is vain to expect economy from a Tory 
 Government. Its natural sympathies will always be with the 
 consumers, rather than with the producers, of taxes ; its
 
 490 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 traditional prejudices are opposed to retrenchment in the 
 Army, Navy, or Civil Service ; and its desire to court popularity 
 renders it incapable of resisting the manifold temptations of 
 jobbery. Nothing is so pleasant as to be generous with other 
 people's money, and the generosity of a Tory Government 
 always reminds me of the man who was so much affected by 
 a charity sermon that he plunged his hand into his neigh- 
 bour's pocket, and poured the contents of it into the plate. 
 Depend upon it, Gentlemen, a Tory Government is always an 
 expensive luxury, and when a Tory Government takes up an 
 Imperial policy, it is time for you to consider whether you 
 can afford to indulge any longer in so ruinous an amusement. 
 But economy is not the only feature of Liberal policy ; 
 there are plenty of reforms, yet to be accomplished, which 
 never will be accomplished till we give up Imperialism and 
 revert to a Liberal policy. But time warns me that I must 
 not attempt to sketch out a Queen's Speech for the next 
 Liberal Government. It is for this reason, and this reason 
 alone not because I am afraid to face such questions, but 
 simply because I could not do justice to them in a few minutes 
 that I shall not dwell on the Reform of the House of Lords, 
 or on the Church Question, or on the Liquor Question, which 
 in other constituencies have created such unhappy divisions 
 in the Liberal Party. But I should like to say a word or two 
 on a few questions closely related to each other, about which, 
 so far as I know, there is no difference of opinion among 
 Liberals. Take, first, the County Franchise. We all know 
 what Tories really think about measures to promote the 
 independence of the working classes. A friend of mine once 
 said, addressing a meeting of agricultural labourers at Wood- 
 stock ' they like the sheep to lie still while he is being shorn ' ; 
 and there is too much truth in that expression. But what 
 Liberal would hesitate to support the extension of Household 
 Suffrage to agricultural labourers? Some of us may wish 
 that education had made a little more progress in country 
 districts, and others may be rather afraid that labourers 
 would vote in gangs with their landlords and employers.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 491 
 
 But looking broadly at the matter, and after ten years' ex- 
 perience of Household Suffrage in towns, I believe all Liberals 
 would vote for this measure, remembering that agricultural 
 labourers are, after all, ' our own flesh and blood,' as Mr. 
 Gladstone once said, and that it is, on the whole, safer to 
 enfranchise them too soon than too late. 
 
 Take, again, a whole group of questions connected with 
 the Land and County Government. People sometimes talk 
 of the Land Question in the singular ; but I always say we 
 ought to talk of it in the plural, for there is no single land 
 question in England, as there was in Ireland, and yet there 
 are a number of land questions which call for very serious 
 consideration. I mean such questions as the great question 
 of Primogeniture, of which you will hear more before very 
 long ; or the Game Law Question, or the question about public 
 rights over commons, or the much larger questions of county 
 finance and self-government in the country parishes of 
 England. The very mention of these questions frightens 
 many country gentlemen nearly out of their wits, because 
 they touch on the rights and privileges of ' property by 
 which these gentlemen always mean landed property, as if 
 this were sacred, and no other kind of property were to be 
 put on a level with it. Therefore, you will never get a Con- 
 servative Government to deal with them effectively ; but almost 
 all good Liberals are agreed about them, and I look forward 
 to seeing them all settled in due time by the light of Liberal 
 principles. 
 
 I will mention but one other Liberal measure, which all 
 must desire to see carried out a measure connected with 
 Education. We have done much for education in this age. 
 We have at last got a truly national system of primary edu- 
 cation ; we have reformed the public schools and grammar- 
 "schools to a certain extent ; and we have opened the Univer- 
 sities to young men of all creeds. But we have not organised 
 our education from top to bottom, and I, for one, shall never 
 be satisfied till we have so linked the various parts together 
 that elementary schools may serve as nurseries for grammar-
 
 492 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 schools, and grammar-schools as nurseries for the Universities, 
 and till we have constructed a ladder of merit by which a boy 
 of remarkable ability may rise from the very gutter to the 
 highest preferment in Church or State. Of course, a Tory 
 Government might do this ; but, depend upon it, a Tory 
 Government never will do this, for it might involve a consider- 
 able disturbance of educational interests, and you know Tory 
 Governments don't like 'harassing' interests. Besides, Tories 
 do not want labouring men to become too enlightened ; that 
 is why they were against the cheap newspaper press. A 
 Conservative friend of mind once told me that when Lord 
 Beaconsfield, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was making 
 a Budget speech, and was just going to explain what taxes he 
 must put on to supply the place of one or two which he was 
 taking off, a worthy county member, also a Conservative, 
 was overheard saying to his neighbour : ' I hope to God he's 
 going to lay a thundering tax upon knowledge ! ' evidently 
 feeling that, come what might, such a tax would never reach 
 him. 
 
 And now, my friends, I feel that although I have by no 
 means exhausted my subject, I must have almost exhausted 
 you ; and I have come to my last word. These last live years 
 have been trying years for the faith of Liberals, and we must 
 not wonder if the courage of some has faltered, and the love 
 of others has waxed cold. Just now, in spite of the recent 
 divisions in Parliament, the horizon looks somewhat brighter, 
 our party is more united than it has been for some time, and 
 there seems at last some prospect of the Conservative reaction 
 being followed by a Liberal revival. Whether this be so or 
 not, let me implore you never to despair of the Liberal cause. 
 Rally yourselves again and again on the basis the eternal 
 basis of Liberal principles. Let your policy be truly Imperial, 
 but also truly Liberal. Imperial in the true sense, because it 
 is Liberal, and Liberal in the true sense, because it is Imperial. 
 Never forget that we have duties to perform towards our 
 Colonies, towards India, towards other members of the great 
 Kuropean family; but remember also, and remember above
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 493 
 
 all, that England herself is the heart of these vast dominions 
 and this world-wide influence, and that our first concern is 
 with the happiness and the political character of our country- 
 men at home. It is in vain that you have an Empire on 
 which the sun never sets, that your flag waves over every sea, 
 and that your voice is heard with the utmost respect in the 
 councils of Europe, if you are not faithful to that highest and 
 greatest mission of England, which is one and the same with 
 the Liberal Cause the cause of liberty, the cause of progress, 
 the cause of justice, the cause of humanity, the cause of peace 
 and good-will, not for this nation alone, but for all nations, 
 and all classes, and all races of mankind. 
 
 SPEECH ON 'HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE IN COUNTIES,' 
 TOWN-HALL, OXFORD, MAY 81, 1884 
 
 We are met to-night, as Liberals, for a very simple purpose, 
 which appeals directly to Liberal sympathies. It is to support 
 a measure which is mainly designed to give householders 
 that is, practically, heads of families in counties the same 
 franchise which has been possessed for the last fifteen years 
 by householders, or heads of families, in boroughs. Even if 
 this claim was a new one, even if it had no historical basis, 
 and if Household Suffrage in counties were an innovation 
 in the British Constitution, I think we ought to concede it, 
 because I think it can be shown that it is sanctioned alike by 
 justice and expediency. But those who know anything of 
 history, know that Household Suffrage in counties is by no 
 means a new experiment. For a full century and a half 
 after the first House of Commons was summoned, and Par- 
 liament established as we now see it, all the freeholders in a 
 county not merely the 40s. freeholders, but all the free- 
 holders had the right of electing members ; and in those 
 days a very large number of the agricultural labourers had 
 freeholds of their own, as I hope they may have once more
 
 494 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 before many years have passed. But I will not go further 
 into history in the few minutes at my disposal ; nor will I 
 anticipate the arguments which you will hear, from Mr. Arch 
 and others, to show that householders in counties are entitled 
 to a share of political power, and may be expected to use it 
 wisely. On this last point I will offer but one remark, but 
 it is one founded on my own personal experience. I have 
 twice contested the neighbouring Borough of Woodstock a 
 borough in which agricultural labourers and men of the same 
 class, like those who work in the pits at Stonesfield, form a 
 very large part, if they do not form a majority, of the whole 
 constituency. My first contest was in 1868, before Mr. Arch 
 had founded the Agricultural Labourers' Union ; and my 
 second in 1874, when that Union had made great progress, 
 especially in the district about Woodstock, which, I need not 
 tell you, is a group of country parishes a sort of little county 
 in itself. Therefore, I speak of what I have seen and known, 
 and I say deliberately here, what I have said more than once 
 before, that in my opinion these poor men were even then 
 when popular education was less advanced than it is now 
 were even then what Mr. Gladstone has well called ' capable 
 citizens ' that is, quite capable of giving an honest, an intel- 
 ligent, and an independent vote. 
 
 People talk as if making a man an elector were the same 
 thing as making him a member of Parliament, or even a 
 member of the Government. If this were so if every elector 
 was expected to understand all the great questions of politics, 
 like Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington I should like to 
 know how many of the present electors would deserve to 
 possess the franchise. How many of the excellent country 
 clergymen and country gentlemen who used to come up in 
 crowds to vote against Mr. Gladstone in this University, and 
 who would have voted for a hat on the top of a stick if it had 
 been put up as a Conservative candidate I say, how many 
 Oxford Masters of Arts could stand a stiff examination in 
 politics ? Yet no one thinks of disfranchising them, for it 
 may be pleaded on their behalf that a man who has no great
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 495 
 
 knowledge of politics may be quite fit to choose a member. 
 I admit that. I go further, and I insist upon that as the 
 very reason for enfranchising the householders in our villages. 
 I believe that most of them are already fit, and that before 
 long nearly all will be fit, to judge between Liberal and Con- 
 servative principles ; and still more to judge between two 
 rival candidates. They will not all be on one side. If they 
 were all on one side, perhaps Lord Bandolph Churchill 
 would not be member for Woodstock, and perhaps I should 
 not be Warden of Merton. They will sometimes, no doubt, 
 be humbugged, and sometimes intimidated, and sometimes 
 even corrupted ; but all these evils, I fear, are to be found 
 in town constituencies, and they are by no means confined 
 to the working classes. Whatever may be the faults of the 
 working classes, they have quite as much public spirit, and 
 quite as high a standard of political virtue, as the classes 
 immediately above them : and my experience leads me to 
 believe that men who labour in the fields are quite as true 
 Englishmen as those who labour in workshops ; that they 
 are not only ' our own flesh and blood,' as Mr. Gladstone 
 once said, and men of like passions with ourselves, but, in 
 the main, quiet, thoughtful, loyal, and respectable men, with 
 a good deal of Conservatism in them, by no means likely to 
 be carried away by revolutionary agitators, but easily guided 
 by those whom they have learned to respect, and who have 
 fairly won their confidence. 
 
 Even the strongest opponents of Household Suffrage in 
 counties scarcely deny this. I have heard one of the most 
 eminent of them candidly admit it. What they say is, that 
 although householders in counties are personally fit to vote, 
 there are, unhappily, too many of them ; and I remember that 
 Mr. Lowe, in opposing Household Suffrage in boroughs, quoted 
 the saying of Curran about the fleas in an Irish hotel, which 
 were so numerous that, if they had only been unanimous, 
 they would have pushed him out of bed. W T hen I hear such 
 arguments against the extension of political citizenship to 
 millions of my countrymen, I find it difficult not to lose all
 
 496 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 patience. What ! Am I to be told that, if the agricultural 
 labourers were a mere handful a few thousands in each 
 county their claim to enfranchisement would be granted, but 
 that just because they are so important an element in the 
 population they are to be kept outside the Parliamentary 
 pale ? Yet this has really been maintained ; and, what is 
 more, it has been argued that we must not extend the fran- 
 chise too widely, because if we do the masses that is, the 
 bulk of the English people will have all the power in their 
 own hands. This argument forcibly reminds me of a story 
 which I once heard about an old miser who had a great 
 objection to washing himself, and neglected cleanliness so 
 much that at last he fell ill, and had to send for the doctor. 
 The doctor saw at a glance what was really the matter, but 
 he was afraid to tell his patient the whole truth at once, and 
 thought it better to approach the subject gradually ; so he 
 said : * If I were you, sir, I think I would send for a vessel of 
 water, together with soap and a large piece of flannel ; then, 
 after rubbing the soap on the flannel, I would apply it to one 
 part of my body after the other.' Here the patient suddenly 
 got a glimpse of his meaning, and called out in horror : ' Good 
 God, doctor, why, that's washing ! ' ' Well, sir,' replied the 
 doctor, it certainly is open to that objection.' So it is with 
 some nervous politicians when they see that Household 
 Suffrage really means that a majority of the people will be 
 able to return a majority of the House of Commons. ' Good 
 Heavens ! ' they say, ' why this is civil liberty with a vengeance ; 
 this is downright self-government ; this is not aristocracy, or 
 government by the nobles, nor plutocracy, or government by 
 the wealthy classes ; this is out-and-out Democracy, or govern- 
 ment of the people by itself.' Well, gentlemen, I reply, with 
 the doctor, it certainly is open to that objection. It has 
 actually come to this that after six centuries of Parlia- 
 mentary experience, and after more than three centuries of 
 Protestant enlightenment, the English people, who have 
 always been the most orderly in Europe, and will soon take 
 rank among the most educated, are about to be trusted with
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 497 
 
 the management of their own Imperial affairs. For it is 
 this no more and no less which Democracy means, and I do 
 not envy any man who, in this sense, and to this extent, 
 shrinks from accepting democratic principles. 
 
 But then we are told that, according to the British Con- 
 stitution, Parliament ought not to represent numbers, but to 
 consist of a balance of classes or interests, and that it would 
 be highly unconstitutional for one class or interest to prepon- 
 derate over others because it may happen to be superior in 
 numbers. Gentlemen, I hold that a more delusive and un- 
 founded doctrine was never propagated. I know something 
 of constitutional history there are gentlemen around me 
 who know far more and I defy any man to show me any 
 trace in the Statute-book, or any other constitutional docu- 
 ment, about the representation of classes or interests. It is 
 an invention the invention of men who have far less confi- 
 dence than a true Liberal should have in the legitimate and 
 indestructible influence, not of education only, but of birth 
 and wealth, and all the other advantages which the so-called 
 upper classes possess over those who are constantly engaged 
 in manual labour. The very word ' class ' has no fixed 
 meaning. You may twist or turn it as you please ; you may 
 speak of capitalists as a class, and labourers as a class ; but a 
 great many labourers are capitalists through co-operation 
 and likewise and a great many capitalists are practically 
 labourers. Stupid people may be said to form a very large 
 class in the community ; are they to be specially represented 
 by dunces ? Dishonest people may be said to form a class 
 of themselves I hope not a very large one ; are they entitled 
 to special representation ? You may call a thousand electors 
 a class or an interest, and by giving them as much represen- 
 tation as hundreds of thousands, or millions, you might pack 
 your electoral system just as you may pack a jury, and get 
 any verdict you may wish. No, Gentlemen, the representa- 
 tion of classes or interests is no part of the British Constitu- 
 tion as it is ; still less is it any part of the Constitution as 
 it ought to be. The British Constitution gives every voter 
 
 K K
 
 498 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND occasional 
 
 equal rights ; but it does not, and it cannot, give ever}' voter 
 equal power. Do what you will, you may always trust wealth 
 to take good care of itself ; and it is absurd to say that a man 
 who employs hundreds of workpeople has no more power than 
 one of those workpeople because he has only one vote, or that 
 a great landlord will be reduced to a cipher because he shares 
 the franchise with the labourers on his estate. Remember 
 that, come what may, the mighty engines of Education and 
 the Press must always remain in the hands of men far above 
 the multitude in mental stature, if not in social position. 
 The schoolmasters, and those who can write telling leading- 
 articles, will always wield an influence far beyond that of 
 mere numbers ; and even if Democracy should trample down 
 all other aristocratic institutions, it will never trample down 
 the aristocracy of intellect and education. Then, again, are 
 we really expected to believe that, because the agricultural 
 labourers are a class, they will vote together as one man 
 under the dictation of Mr. Arch, and that we shall have a 
 modern edition of Wat Tyler's insurrection ? No doubt Mr. 
 Arch will continue to carry many of them with him and 
 they will not go very far wrong but many others will follow 
 very different leaders, and some of them, I fear, will be 
 thoroughgoing Tories. The moment you come to think of 
 it, you see how ludicrous it is to imagine two or three millions 
 of English electors, some Churchmen and some Dissenters, 
 some Northerners and some Southerners, some Temperance 
 men and some the reverse, living by manual labour, scattered 
 over the country, bound together by no social or local ties, 
 wrapped up in their own everyday cares, and providing for 
 their families, and yet conspiring together to rob the land- 
 lords, or the farmers, or the Exchequer. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, I have detained you too long. I have 
 not discussed, and I am not going to discuss, the question 
 whether Ireland should be included in the Franchise Bill, 
 whether it should contain any provision for the representation 
 of minorities, and whether a scheme of redistribution should 
 form part of it. These questions I leave to other speakers,
 
 8PEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 499 
 
 if they should think fit to discuss them. For my own part, 
 I take my stand on the broad principle of Household Suffrage 
 in the counties. I hope I have shown that some of the 
 dangers apprehended from this measure are, really, mere bug- 
 bears. But do not let us disguise from ourselves that it is a 
 grave and serious affair to invest millions of new voters with 
 the power of controlling the destinies of this great Empire. 
 It does involve a certain amount of danger ; but is there no 
 danger in refusing it ? Is there no danger in keeping millions 
 of men, fathers of families, paying rates and paying taxes, 
 outside the pale of your representative system, not without 
 power for you cannot deprive your whole village population 
 of power but without the sense of responsibility ? And does 
 the nation lose nothing in keeping so many of its citizens 
 disfranchised. I maintain that it does : it loses the value of 
 the political virtue and ability and loyalty which their en- 
 franchisement would call forth. I remember the words of 
 the poet in the last century, as he looked over the graves in 
 a country churchyard : 
 
 Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
 
 Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 
 
 Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
 Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 
 
 But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
 Bich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll ; 
 
 Stern penury repressed their noble rage, 
 And chilled the genial current of their soul, 
 
 Well, Gentlemen, I hope that part of this reproach has been 
 removed. We have given our country labourers access to 
 the tree of knowledge, we have given them education in read- 
 ing, writing, and arithmetic the education of children ; but 
 we have not yet given them the education of grown men a 
 practical interest in the management of local and national 
 affairs. Do not forget that our friend Mr. Arch has sprung 
 from this very class ; and none who know the country will 
 doubt that in many a humble cottage there are men with 
 little scholarship, but of sterling character, and with plenty 
 
 X K 2
 
 500 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 of mother-wit, capable of interpreting the wants of their 
 fellows, and playing their part in the great work of legislation. 
 I believe in my conscience, that by giving such men the full 
 rights of citizenship we shall assuredly strengthen, and not 
 weaken, the institutions of this country, and that, great as 
 England has been in the past, she will be greater still in the 
 future, when her Parliament represents all the heads of 
 English households, not only in town, but in country, and 
 not only those who practise handicrafts in workshops, but 
 those who labour in the open fields perhaps the noblest, as 
 it is certainly the earliest, of human industries. 
 
 ADDRESS ON THE DUTY OF MODERATE LIBERALS 
 AT THE COMING ELECTION 
 
 Delivered at the Reform Club, Oxford, November 19, 1885 
 
 I have undertaken to address you to-night on a question 
 which is now disturbing the minds of many conscientious 
 men, and must be answered within the next few days The 
 Duty of Moderate Liberals at the coming Election. 
 
 Misgivings of ' Moderate Liberals ' 
 
 Let me say at once that I use the phrase ' Moderate 
 Liberals' under protest. I dislike labelling imaginary sec- 
 tions of the great Liberal Party with sectarian names ' Whigs' 
 and ' Radicals,' Moderate ' and ' Advanced ' Liberals. "When 
 I am asked whether I am an Advanced Liberal, I generally 
 reply that I am not ; that I am an Advancing Liberal, and 
 that, if I were not an Advancing Liberal, I should not be a 
 Liberal at all. Still, we all know what is meant by Moderate 
 Liberals in the present crisis, and why their action is anxiously 
 watched on both sides as an omen of victory. Not only 
 thoughtful men of a certain age, trained in the political school 
 of Fox, or Grey, or Russell, or Palmerston, but young men 
 whose ideas have been formed by the political writings of 
 antiquity, or of the last generation, may well be somewhat
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 501 
 
 alarmed by the new departure in politics. The franchise 
 has suddenly been extended to some two millions of new 
 voters, half of whom, perhaps, scarcely know their right hands 
 from their left in the political world now opening before them, 
 and who now find themselves courted and flattered by many 
 an unscrupulous candidate, dependent on their favour for 
 the highest object of his ambition. The old laws of political 
 economy, by which the great reforms of the present century 
 have been shaped and controlled, are openly derided by philan- 
 thropic Liberals who have never taken the pains to under- 
 stand them, and some of the leading pioneers of English 
 Democracy seem to draw their chief inspirations from Con- 
 tinental Socialism. Meanwhile, the differences of opinion and 
 of sentiment, which must always exist between the so-called 
 Whig and Kadical elements in a Liberal Cabinet, have been 
 intensified and exaggerated by the utterances of Eadical 
 politicians since the Liberal Party has been in Opposition ; 
 and there are even those who suspect Mr. Chamberlain, Sir 
 Charles Dilke, and their adherents, not only of a deliberate 
 intention to ' boycott ' Mr. Goschen and certain Whig Peers, 
 but of a desire to exclude themselves from the next Liberal 
 Cabinet, with a view to establish their own paramount ascend- 
 ancy in the next Liberal Cabinet but one. Though a vast 
 majority of Liberals have confidence in the character and 
 judgment of Mr. Gladstone, yet many far more than would 
 like to confess it have not the same confidence in his firm- 
 ness. They fear that, like almost all modern statesmen, he 
 is but an Opportunist after all, and would allow his own 
 hand to be forced by resolute colleagues of the Extreme Left. 
 At all events, they know that he is seventy- six years of age, 
 and they fear that if his moderating influence were removed 
 from the Liberal councils a year or two hence, the Extreme 
 Left would control the policy and destinies of the whole 
 Liberal Party. No wonder that men of cautious tempera- 
 ment, justly believing in political evolution, but justly dreading 
 political revolution, should hesitate to support Eadical, or even 
 Liberal, candidates, at the coming election, lest by so doing
 
 502 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 they should imperil the Liberal cause itself, and bring about 
 the domination, not of Mr. Gladstone, whom they still respect, 
 but of Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, whom they 
 entirely distrust. 
 
 Moderate Liberals ought, if possible, to Vote for 
 Liberal Candidates 
 
 I have stated these misgivings simply and frankly, because 
 I hold that it is the duty of those who are Liberals by con- 
 viction to face such difficulties courageously, and because no 
 man can dispel the honest scruples of others who cannot 
 honestly sympathise with them. I feel and admit the force 
 of these considerations, and of many others which might be 
 urged in favour of neutrality though surely not of apostasy 
 on the part of Moderate Liberals. Mr. Gladstone evidently 
 feels them as strongly as I do, and doubts whether the Liberal 
 union, which he is so earnestly promoting, can be long main- 
 tained after his own retirement from the leadership of his 
 party. Nevertheless, I am as firmly convinced as he can be 
 that it is the duty of Moderate Liberals to vote for Liberal 
 candidates at the coming election, except where those candi- 
 dates are men of unworthy character, or the advocates of 
 important measures which the voter conscientiously repro- 
 bates as disastrous or immoral. I do not rest this opinion on 
 the ground that Liberal neutrality may place a Conservative 
 Government in power for several years to come, and that a 
 Conservative Government means political stagnation, if not 
 political reaction. There was a time when this was true, and 
 when it was said, with some reason, of the Tories, that, if they 
 moved at all, their movements were like those of the heavenly 
 bodies invisible to the naked eye. Assuredly no such re- 
 proach can now be levelled against them ; on the contrary, 
 the rapidity of their movements is wonderful, and, were I 
 disposed to indulge in metaphor, I should rather be tempted 
 to predict that, if they follow the lead of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, they may share the fate of that other party men- 
 tioned in Scripture, which, being possessed by evil and restless
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 503 
 
 spirits, rushed violently down a steep place into the sea, and 
 perished in the waters. It is sometimes alleged that modern 
 Conservatives occupy exactly the same position as the Whigs 
 of twenty or thirty years ago ; in other words, that Lord 
 Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill are the represen- 
 tatives of Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston. I deny this 
 altogether. Lord Salisbury's attitude towards Home and 
 foreign questions is wholly different from Lord Palmerston's, 
 and Lord R. Churchill heartily despises the politics of Lord 
 Russell. But I must not be led into a criticism of the Con- 
 servative Party, since it was transformed by the magic wand 
 of the late Lord Beaconsfield. It is enough for our purpose 
 to point out that, by withholding his vote from a Liberal 
 candidate, a Liberal elector does not escape responsibility, 
 much less does he stop the course of progress, and keep 
 things as they are. What he does is to leave the guidance 
 of an irresistible movement in the hands of Lord Salisbury 
 and his colleagues, instead of in the hands of Mr. Gladstone 
 and those whom he may choose to associate with him. The 
 first question, then, which I would put to you, is the broad 
 question whether the new Democracy is more likely to be 
 wisely led by a Liberal or by a so-called Conservative Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The Weakness and Strengtli of Democracy 
 
 I have spoken of the new Democracy, because it is better 
 to call things by their right names, and the effect of this last 
 Reform Act has been to give us Democracy, and nothing else. 
 What does this w T ord ' Democracy ' mean ? It means the 
 government of the people by the people ; and now that every 
 householder, both in town and country, has a vote, the people 
 will actually be governed by the people, and the sooner we 
 realise this fact, the better. It is true and it would be well 
 if some timid politicians would remember it that having a 
 vote is not the same thing as sitting in Parliament, and that 
 sitting in Parliament is not the same thing as sitting in the 
 Cabinet. A labouring man who is quite unfit to draw an Act
 
 504 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 of Parliament, or to deal with the Eastern Question, may be 
 quite fit to make an intelligent choice between Lord Valentia 
 and Mr. Maclean, between Mr. Hall and Mr. Fyffe. Still, 
 the electors, by choosing such representatives as they please, 
 cp.n ultimately direct the course of national policy, and it is 
 therefore of paramount importance that they should themselves 
 be wisely directed. For myself, I have never been afraid of the 
 word ' Democracy,' and, now that we have got the reality, I 
 await the result with some anxiety, indeed, yet without any 
 disloyal fears. But why ? Not because I do not know the 
 danger and the weakness of Democracy, but rather because I 
 also know its safeguards and its strength. I have read some- 
 thing of history, and I have there studied the example of a 
 perfect Democratic Republic the Republic of ancient Athens 
 in which the popular will ruled supreme over all other 
 powers in the State, and in which the sovereign assembly of 
 the people was at once the Parliament, the Judicial Bench, 
 and the Executive Government, appointing generals, des- 
 patching ambassadors, and performing all the functions of 
 Ministers. That Republic was guilty of many errors, and 
 some crimes, but it proved capable of inspiring its citizens 
 with an heroic patriotism and a matchless public spirit ; it 
 defied in arms the greatest empire of ancient times ; it has 
 illuminated after-ages with its splendid achievements in litera- 
 ture and all the arts of civilisation. I have read of another 
 Democratic Republic, of a different type the Federal Re- 
 public of Switzerland which has maintained its independ- 
 ence for centuries in the centre of Europe, repelling attack 
 after attack from powerful neighbours, surviving the fall of 
 dynasty after dynasty in Germany, France, and Spain, pass- 
 ing through revolution almost unscathed, and still presenting 
 a model of national well-being to other countries of Europe. 
 I know of a third Democratic Republic beyond the Atlantic 
 Ocean, which is the political marvel of the modern world, 
 having overspread a whole continent with Anglo-Saxon insti- 
 tutions and inventions, weathered a civil war in which any 
 monarchy would probably have perished, and reconciled order
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 505 
 
 with liberty in the government of a population vaster in 
 numbers, more various in nationality, and more divided in 
 interest, than has ever been embraced within a single Federal 
 Constitution. 
 
 Tories out of Sympathy with tlie Democratic Movement 
 
 With these remarkable examples before me, I cannot 
 shrink with horror from Democracy ; but I admit that it must 
 depend for the development of its true virtues on wise and 
 honest leadership. Now, I think I know something of my 
 countrymen : I have faith in their good sense, and I believe 
 that, on the whole, they will prefer the leadership, not of 
 impostors or reckless demagogues, but of honourable men 
 and statesmen who deserve their confidence. I maintain that 
 such leadership is likely to be found on the Liberal rather 
 than on the Conservative side, and I will tell you why : be- 
 cause there is an immense preponderance of political ability 
 among the Liberals, and because Liberals are Democrats 
 at heart, Democrats by principle and conscience, while the 
 Conservatives are Democrats if they are Democrats at all 
 only under the stress of necessity. Kemember that until 
 Mr. Disraeli ' educated ' his party, as he called it, the Con- 
 servatives regarded it as their special mission to stem the 
 tide of Democracy; and even when Household Suffrage in 
 boroughs was conceded, they used their utmost efforts to 
 prevent its being extended to counties. Of course, some of 
 them now assure you that they have long been sincerely in 
 love with it. If so, they have behaved strangely like that 
 lady in Shakespeare who never told her love ; and not only 
 so, but they proclaimed to all the world, by their speeches 
 and votes, that agricultural labourers were quite unfit to 
 exercise the franchise. I do not blame them for so doing 
 it was an honest expression of Tory convictions ; but if these 
 be Tory convictions, what am I to think of Tory Democracy ? 
 How can the new electors regard the Conservative Party with 
 confidence ? How can the Conservative Party know how to 
 rule or guide these democratic forces, which have been called
 
 50G SPEECHES AND LETTEES, POlftTICAl AND occasional 
 
 into action against their will, and contrary to all their old 
 traditions ? What is the Primrose League but a nice little 
 conspiracy to bring social influences to bear on voters of the 
 humbler class, who are treated, not as citizens, but as chil- 
 dren, to be amused in some nobleman's park with fireworks 
 and bands of music and merry-go-rounds, and so coaxed into 
 voting for a Tory candidate? I ask you whether a party 
 which relies mainly on these social influences can be trusted 
 to conduct so perilous an experiment as governing this country 
 on democratic principles and under democratic conditions ? 
 Is this Democracy, is this confidence in the people, is this 
 an appeal to men's reason and patriotism ? or is it merely 
 an attempt to keep Democracy in leading-strings ? I cannot 
 forget that Conservatives have never heartily sympathised 
 even with national education. A good many years ago, when 
 Mr. Disraeli was making a Budget speech, and when it was 
 clear that he must propose some new tax in place of one 
 which he was taking off, a Tory squire was overheard to 
 exclaim : ' I hope to God he is going to lay a thundering tax 
 upon knowledge ! ' evidently feeling that, come what might, 
 such a tax would never reach himself. Now I admit that 
 many Tories have now got beyond this, but I do believe that 
 few of them desire at heart to see the English people educated 
 like the Americans, and, like the Americans, managing their 
 own affairs, both local and national. What they desire and 
 that with the best intentions is to keep real power in the 
 hands of the upper classes, and, in order to gain this object, 
 they must needs make great sacrifices and offer large bribes 
 in currying favour with the multitude, whom they regard 
 :is so many counters to be skilfully played in the game of 
 politics. 
 
 Torij Democracy more Dangerous than Liberal Democracy 
 
 This is what I dread in Tory Democracy not its alarming 
 strength, but its alarming weakness, and the unscrupulous 
 bids for popularity which even honourable men are driven to 
 make under a painful sense of weakness. Nor is this a mere
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 507 
 
 speculative fear. Look at their alliance with Mr. Parnell, 
 who has done so much to undermine the security, not of 
 property only, but of human life in Ireland, and who tells us 
 plainly that he is determined to separate Ireland from Great 
 Britain. Surely this portentous confederacy of English Tories 
 with Irish traitors, coupled with Lord Randolph Churchill's 
 unworthy attack on Lord Spencer the best and most high- 
 minded of Irish Viceroys ought to open the eyes of those 
 who fancy that Tory Democracy would be safer than Liberal 
 Democracy. My belief, in a word, is that, on the contrary, 
 Tory Democracy would be less democratic, but more perilously 
 socialistic, than Liberal Democracy, and that whatever danger 
 there may be in mob-rule under Mr. Chamberlain, there would 
 be much greater danger in mob-rule under Lord Eandolph 
 Churchill. No, Gentlemen, if we are to have democratic 
 institutions, let them be worked by men who understand them ; 
 who regard the working classes, not as children or as puppets, 
 but as grown-up citizens ; who are bold in advocating the 
 rights of the people, but who have also the courage to remind 
 the people of their responsibilities and their duties. No man 
 but Pericles could have induced the Athenians to undergo the 
 privations which they did undergo in their great war against 
 Sparta ; and if demagogues should ever lash English mobs, as 
 they have lashed French mobs, into revolutionary excesses, 
 their violence will be checked, not by Tory Democrats, whom 
 no one really trusts, but rather by men who have won the 
 confidence of the masses by long devotion to the people's 
 cause. Far be it from me to deny that Eadical agitators 
 have used language which it is in vain to justify, and held out 
 promises which it is hopeless to fulfil, in the course of the 
 present contest. I will go further, and admit that responsible 
 statesmen on the Liberal side not Mr. Chamberlain and 
 Sir Charles Dilke only, but political veterans like Mr. Chil- 
 ders have sometimes uttered sentiments in addressing great 
 popular audiences which I must condemn as unstatesmanlike 
 and unwise. But the same cannot be said of Mr. Gladstone 
 or of Lord Hartington ; and, after all, while others may
 
 508 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 contribute most of the motive power, it is Mr. Gladstone ami 
 Lord Hartington who are likely to retain the helm of the 
 Liberal Party in the next Parliament, unless Mr. Chamberlain 
 and his immediate friends should assume the attitude of 
 Irreconcilables, and refuse to join them ; which I will never 
 believe until I see it. 
 
 Alleged Difficulties of Liberal Union ; these Difficulties 
 not Insuperable 
 
 This brings me to what is naturally a favourite topic with 
 Tory orators the alleged dissensions in the Liberal camp, 
 which are said to make the formation of a Liberal Govern- 
 ment impossible. I will not stop to dwell on the amusing 
 fact that this reproach of Liberal dissensions is repeated most 
 loudly by the very men whom I may call the successful 
 mutineers of the Tory Party, who openly caballed against 
 their own leaders including Lord Salisbury himself, who 
 nicknamed Sir S. Northcote the ' Grand Old Woman,' who 
 made his life a burden in the House of Commons, and who 
 ultimately worried or hustled him into the House of Lords. 
 The practical question is, whether it is true that a thorough- 
 going Radical like Mr. Chamberlain, and a Whig, or Moderate 
 Liberal, like Lord Hartington, or even like Mr. Goschen, 
 cannot again serve together in the same Cabinet. Gentlemen, 
 I say emphatically and deliberately that, in my judgment, 
 there is no reason why all these able men and good Liberals 
 should not co-operate together in the next Liberal Cabinet, as 
 they have in the past. Their essential aims are the same ; it 
 is chiefly their temperaments which are different. Lord 
 Hartington is a cautious politician, no doubt, but he is a 
 hearty reformer ; he possesses the real popular fibre under an 
 aristocratic exterior, and he is entirely above superstition or 
 prejudice. Mr. Chamberlain is an impulsive politician, it is 
 true, and often resorts to expressions much stronger than I 
 can approve ; but he is a true Englishman, he is no conti- 
 nental Revolutionist or Socialist, he is animated by a genuine 
 sympathy with the suffering classes, he respects an ideal far
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL COO 
 
 higher than mere expediency, and he does not seriously pro- 
 pose the confiscation of property. You may not like his tone, 
 but if you look closely at his actual programme, you will not 
 find it so very monstrous after all. I do not here speak of 
 his theoretical views about the Church, or about a Second 
 Chamber ; these are questions of the future, and the verdict 
 of the constituencies is not challenged upon them at the 
 present election. I speak of his views about the question of 
 Free Schools, Local Government, and Labourers' Allotments. 
 Now, I dare say Mr. Chamberlain himself would call me a 
 Whig a name of which no one who knows history need be 
 ashamed ; but I care little for names, and I am not afraid to 
 say that I agree with Mr. Chamberlain on the principle of Free 
 Schools, though I would apply it and this he is willing to con- 
 cede so as not to crush those Voluntary Schools which have 
 done so much for education. As for Local Government, I have 
 publicly advocated for years past almost as democratic a reform 
 as Mr. Chamberlain would desire not as a Eadical innovation, 
 but rather as a return to a system of self-government which 
 dates far back into Norman and Saxon times. As for allotments 
 and small farms accessible to labourers, I think it a great pity 
 that Mr. Chamberlain should have talked loosely about ' ran- 
 som,' or given any excuse for the suspicion that he would rob 
 Peter to pay Paul ; but when we have once got a good system 
 of Local Government in rural districts, I confess that I see no 
 reason why local authorities should not be empowered, on the 
 same grounds and under the same conditions as railway com- 
 panies, to buy up land and let it to agricultural labourers 
 though I fear that few will have the skill or the capital to rent 
 farms beyond the size of large allotments. And, therefore, 
 ypeaking as one who agrees with Lord Hartington rather than 
 with Mr. Chamberlain, I see nothing outrageous in his practical 
 schemes of reform, apart from the somewhat arrogant spirit 
 in which he is apt to state them, and I arrive at the conclu- 
 sion with great respect for him that his bark is worse than 
 his bite is likely to be. I, for one, would not boycott him 
 if I could, and, so long as he does not boycott men like
 
 510 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Mr. Goschen, I should cheerfully look forward to his occupy- 
 ing an important position in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. 
 
 Prospects of the Liberal Party after Mr. Gladstone's Retirement; 
 Necessity for an Alliance between the Whigs and Radicals 
 
 But it may be said that Mr. Gladstone is not immortal, 
 and that, if he should be compelled to retire in a year or two, 
 the Radical members of his Cabinet would remain masters of 
 the position. I can only reply, that my forecast of events is 
 entirely different. Without Mr. Gladstone, I conceive that 
 Mr. Chamberlain's parliamentary influence would be far less 
 than it is, and that he would need the support of Moderate 
 Liberals more than ever. In spite of present appearances, 
 and however strong may be the Radical impulse at this 
 moment in the new constituencies, the great Conservative 
 forces of the country remain in abeyance, and will surely 
 reassert themselves. England is still, to a great extent, a 
 nation of shopkeepers, and few shopkeepers are Extreme 
 Radicals at heart; while there is a permanent league of 
 reactionary influences in English society, which a Tory 
 leader with Lord Beaconsfield's sagacity would not fail to 
 rally. Perhaps I may venture to quote language which I used 
 eight years ago in defending the claim of the Whigs to a place 
 in the great Liberal Party : ' The instincts of the new com- 
 mercial aristocracy, which is, in fact, a titled plutocracy, are 
 
 ntially Tory; and so, it is to be feared, are those of the 
 ignorant proletariat, on whom Tory politicians place so much 
 reliance. Is this a time for Radicals to fall out with allies 
 who contribute the very qualities and resources in which 
 Radicalism is signally deficient ? In presence of such a coali- 
 tion, can it be wise to alienate that remnant of the ancient 
 nobility which remains faithful to its ancient traditions, which 
 retains the old patrician art of guiding and following the 
 national will at the same time, which has attached to itself 
 nearly all the political experience and most of the political 
 capacity now existing in the Liberal Party, which alone com- 
 mands the confidence of that great non-political class by whose
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 511 
 
 support the fortune of elections is turned, and which alone 
 possesses either the social or the political consistency neces- 
 sary to unite a great party.' If there are a few words in 
 this passage which I might wish to modify by the light of 
 further observation, the lesson which I sought to impress is as 
 true and timely as ever. Not until Mr. Gladstone disappears 
 from the House of Commons will the jealousies, which must 
 needs exist among his followers, be fully revealed ; not until 
 then will it be known how powerful a body of Liberals would 
 rather join the Conservative ranks than submit to a Radical 
 dictatorship. Even then, I believe though Mr. Gladstone 
 himself appears to doubt it that a disruption of the party 
 may be averted ; but it can only be averted by moderate 
 counsels on the part of the Eadical leaders, who, if they strive 
 to govern alone, will certainly be rejected by the country. 
 Not that I anticipate a reaction against Democratic principles. 
 Democratic principles must, and will, continue to prevail ; but 
 Democratic principles are not quite the same as Radical prin- 
 ciples, and a majority of the electors will desire to see them 
 applied in a more or less Conservative spirit. In supporting 
 a Liberal candidate, therefore, at the coming election, Moderate 
 Liberals needs have little fear of strengthening unduly the 
 Extreme Left wing of their party. On the other hand, by 
 deserting their party, and supporting a Conservative, or even 
 by standing neutral, they may unwittingly bring about the 
 very catastrophe which they so much dread. If the Liberal 
 Party be seriously weakened by such desertions, either Lord 
 Salisbury will have a majority which is sure to be very small 
 or Mr. Gladstone will have a very much smaller majority than 
 before. In either case the victory will remain, not with the 
 Moderate Liberals, but with Mr. Parnell and his followers. 
 It is he who will hold the balance between English parties, 
 and I fear the temptation to purchase his aid by unworthy 
 concessions will be too strong for the political virtue of both. 
 This is the main reason which has convinced Mr. Goschen, as 
 well as Mr. Gladstone himself, that it is far safer to have a 
 great Liberal majority than a small Liberal majority, and it
 
 512 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 is a reason which ought to carry great weight in the minds of 
 Moderate Liberals. But I would add to this another reason. 
 If the Moderate Liberals desert their party at the present 
 crisis, they will inevitably lose their hold on their party, and 
 the control of it will pass into the hands of Extreme Radicals. 
 The first effect of this, no doubt, would be to give the Tories 
 a renewed lease of power ; but the ultimate effect would be very 
 different. It would be the gradual creation of a new Demo- 
 cratic Party, unlike any yet seen in England, but such as 
 forms the material of what is called ' the Revolution ' in 
 foreign countries, restrained by no reverence for the past and 
 no statesmanlike foresight of the future, hostile to every 
 established institution, and animated by a fierce hatred, 
 not of birth only, but of wealth and culture. Whether this 
 party would prevail, no man can foresee, but the struggle 
 between it and the present governing classes would convulse 
 England, and the reproach of having brought on this struggle 
 would rest with the Moderate Liberals who timidly despaired 
 of the Liberal Cause at the General Election of 1885. 
 
 Duty of Moderate Liberals to enforce Moderation 
 in Party Action 
 
 At the same time, while I advise Moderate Liberals to stand 
 by the Liberal colours, I cannot advise them to be passive 
 instruments of out-and-out Radicals. As we have seen, one 
 of the strongest motives for their continuing to be loyal 
 members of their party is that they may retain an effective 
 voice in its councils. It is a delusion to suppose that moderate 
 views cannot be held as earnestly as extreme views, or that 
 words of soberness cannot be spoken before popular audiences 
 as impressively as violent appeals to passion and to prejudice. 
 The Liberal Party has owed its past triumphs chiefly to one 
 faet that truth and justice have been on our side. Then 
 let us be careful, above all things, to keep truth and justice 
 on our side. The best service that Moderate Liberals can 
 render to their party is to set themselves resolutely against 
 Opportunism- that is, the sacrifice of principle to expediency
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 513 
 
 and to insist on a full and dispassionate consideration of pro- 
 posed reforms, before the whole credit and power of the party 
 is committed to them. Such a service has been rendered by 
 Mr. Goschen, and, in spite of hi3 past heresies on Household 
 Suffrage, I should consider his exclusion from the next Liberal 
 Cabinet nothing less than a national misfortune. Mr. 
 Goschen is faithful to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone has put 
 forth three or four reforms of the first magnitude, which it 
 will require the concentrated energies of the Liberal Party to 
 carry through. Moderate Liberals have a right to demand, 
 not that nothing else shall be attempted in this Parliament, 
 but that no candidate supported by them shall pledge himself 
 publicly to organic changes, not comprised in this programme, 
 of which they disapprove. I cannot advise a conscientious 
 adherent of the Established Church to vote at the coming 
 election for a candidate pledged to Disestablishment ; or a 
 conscientious adherent of the Union with Ireland to vote for a 
 candidate pledged to Home Ptule, or something equivalent to 
 it ; or a conscientious adherent of a Second Chamber to vote 
 for a candidate pledged to the abolition, as distinct from the 
 reform, of the House of Lords ; or a conscientious adherent of 
 economical justice to vote for a candidate pledged to schemes 
 of philanthropic robbery, even if they are disguised under the 
 specious name of ' restitution.' All these questions, except 
 the last, are proper subjects for political discussion, and may 
 possibly come before the constituencies for decision in the 
 lifetime of some here present. But they are not before the 
 constituencies now, and the attempt to prejudge them without 
 a full and solemn discussion of them on their merits ought 
 to be sternly resisted, not merely by those Liberals who are 
 opposed to them on principle, but also by all Liberals who 
 pretend to statesmanship. This specially applies to the State 
 Church. The English people, who established the Church of 
 England, have a right to disestablish it ; and this right, 
 according to constitutional usage, may be legitimately 
 exercised by a majority of the English people. But it cannot 
 be legitimately exercised by a bare majority of that majority 
 
 LL
 
 514 SPEECHES AND LETTEB8, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 being a minority of the whole nation ; nor is it to be tolerated 
 that a verdict, obtained on other issues, should be held to 
 decide the fate of an institution which fills so grand a space 
 in English history, and is so closely bound up with the 
 structure of English society. 
 
 Foreign and Colonial Policy 
 
 Let me add one word upon Foreign policy ; and here I am 
 happy to adopt the language of Mr. Fyffe's Address. Like 
 him, ' I have uniformly expressed my disapproval of the 
 Egyptian policy of Mr. Gladstone's Government.' Like him, 
 while I regard the warlike spirit with much the same horror 
 as Mr. Bright, ' I cannot hold with those who, in their just 
 sympathy with the pressing needs of our poorer population, 
 and in just resentment at those wasteful and unnecessary 
 enterprises which have at times discredited our history, 
 would withdraw their attention altogether from foreign 
 affairs. ' Still less am I prepared to withdraw it from colonial 
 affairs, and to speak as though I was ashamed of the British 
 Empire. I like to know and to realise that, travel where I 
 may in Asia, in Africa, in America, or in the isles of the 
 Pacific Ocean I cannot travel far without seeing the Union 
 Jack floating over some peaceful and prosperous settlement of 
 my countrymen, with English faces, English manners, English 
 ideas, English religion, and English laws, talking of England 
 as their home, cherishing equally the English sentiments of 
 loyalty and of liberty, and speaking that familiar but noble 
 language which is the glorious birthright of the English 
 race. I say, let your policy be truly Imperial, but let it also 
 be truly Liberal. Imperial, in the true sense, because it is 
 Liberal, and Liberal, in the true sense, because it is Imperial. 
 But are these feelings singular, are they confined to Tories 
 and "Whigs, Are they not professed by Mr. Fyffe, are they 
 not shared by the great mass of Radicals, and so far as 
 they understand foreign and colonial politics by the newly- 
 enfranchised electors? I believe that they are. I beli< 
 that, whatever errors may have been committed during the
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 515 
 
 last five years, have been, in the main, errors of personal 
 judgment, which Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet failed to check, 
 but for which no one section of the Liberal Party has been 
 responsible, and to which the Conservative Party has largely 
 contributed. It is no secret that Mr. Chamberlain and Sir 
 Charles Dilke are favourable to what is sometimes called a 
 spirited foreign policy ; and though some other Radicals hold 
 narrower views of England's mission in the world, I am 
 persuaded that such views will not prevail with the new 
 Democracy. If I have any fear, it is rather the fear that, 
 under a democratic impulse, the masses of the people, who 
 cannot spare the leisure to master great and difficult ques- 
 tions of foreign and colonial policy, may nevertheless insist 
 upon exercising a direct control over them, and put too little 
 confidence in the statesmen who must be specially entrusted 
 with their management. I have always held that Mr. 
 Gladstone erred, and established an evil precedent, by appeal- 
 ing to indignation-meetings against what he considered the 
 unrighteous policy of Lord Beaconsfield in Eastern Europe; 
 not so much because the resolutions of those meetings were 
 somewhat passionate and one-sided, as because those who 
 passed them had not, and could not have, the knowledge 
 necessary to justify a decided opinion. This is a danger 
 against which it will be right to guard under a more democratic 
 system of government, but I do not apprehend that even a 
 Eadical Ministry even if it be influenced by a Eadical caucus 
 in the background will be disposed to put up with national 
 humiliation, or to trifle with the honour of the country. 
 
 Not only the Future, but the Past, belongs to the Liberal Party 
 
 And now I have come to my last word. Let me earnestly 
 warn Moderate Liberals against lightly dissociating themselves 
 from the great future already within our view; but let me 
 also earnestly warn Advanced Radicals against lightly break- 
 ing with the great history and traditions of the Liberal cause. 
 Call ourselves what we may, let us never forget that, if we 
 are Liberals at all, we are members and heirs of that illus- 
 
 u2
 
 516 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 trions party to which England mainly owes its freedom and 
 its character. Let us never be ashamed of our past. Let 
 us never allow our Tory friends to assume that, because the 
 future belongs to us, the past is their inheritance. No, 
 Gentlemen, we claim the future, it is true ; but we claim the 
 past also. Modern Toryism the Toryism of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill and the Primrose League is but a thing of yester- 
 day, the invention of Lord Beaconsfield and a few clever 
 associates. To us Liberals, and not to our opponents, belong 
 all the glorious memories of English constitutional history, 
 from Magna Charta to the Reformation, from the Reforma- 
 tion to the Revolution, from the Revolution to the first 
 Reform Act, and from the first Reform Act to the last. Our 
 principles are still the same as ever; they are those for which 
 our forefathers lived and died the principle of Freedom, 
 civil and religious ; the principle of political, if not of social, 
 Equality ; the principle of Progress, the principle of Justice, 
 the principle of Humanity, the principle of Peace and Good- 
 will to men. These are not principles cunningly devised by 
 political wirepullers to serve political ends they are, in truth, 
 nothing but the principles of Christianity applied to modern 
 politics. They rise higher than electioneering cries, they lie 
 deeper than mere party motives. By the light of these prin- 
 ciples, we have made England the great model of order, based 
 on liberty, to all foreign nations, and braved in safety all the 
 storms which have desolated other countries of Europe. By 
 the light of these principles, we shall know how to deal with 
 the great social questions which now remain to be solved : 
 to organise Democracy without Communism ; to reconcile the 
 rights of property with the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number ; to hasten the advent of that brighter day reserved, 
 as Liberals believe, in the fulness of time, for the toiling and 
 suffering masses of mankind.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 517 
 
 SPEECH FROM THE CHAIR AFTER A BANQUET TO 
 Mb. F. W. MACLEAN, M.P., AT WOODSTOCK, ON 
 FEBRUARY 8, 1886. 1 
 
 The Chairman, who was heartily received, said this friendly 
 gathering of Woodstock Liberals reminded him of old times. 
 This was not the first time that he had addressed an audience 
 of Woodstock Liberals in that Hall ; it was not the first time 
 that he had occupied the chair ; but it was certainly the first 
 time that he had occupied it on so happy and auspicious an 
 occasion for the purpose of rejoicing with them, and welcom- 
 ing a Liberal Member for what was still called the Woodstock 
 Division of Oxfordshire. As he looked around him, and saw 
 so many familiar faces of Woodstock Liberals, little altered 
 by time, and when he also found himself supported by their 
 old friend, Mr. Mitchell Henry, whose name was once a 
 household word at Woodstock, his mind naturally travelled 
 back some twenty -one years, to a time when the young men 
 who had just come of age were in their cradles or perambu- 
 lators. Mr. Mitchell Henry then came forward in 1865 
 on the retirement of Lord Alfred Churchill, to maintain, not 
 only the Liberal cause, but the independence of their Borough. 
 He need not tell them that he did so manfully. In 1868, he 
 came forward himself, and he well remembered that at first 
 he was saluted with cheers for Mitchell Henry, just as if, 
 notwithstanding some little difference in their figures and 
 features, he must be the same person ; or, at all events, if he 
 was not Mitchell Henry, the electors believed and perhaps 
 they were not far wrong that he came in the spirit and 
 power of Mitchell Henry. 
 
 That was a memorable contest. It attracted attention, 
 not in this country only, but in foreign countries, and he, 
 for one, felt that he was fighting before the eyes of all his 
 countrymen. It was not that Woodstock was a large con- 
 stituency ; it was not that he was a candidate of great 
 political reputation : it was that great principles were at 
 1 Abridged Report from the " Oxford Chronicle."
 
 518 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 stake the right of electors to return a candidate of their 
 own choice, without consulting a great Duke whose place hap- 
 pened to be close by, and the capacity of agricultural labourers 
 to exercise the franchise. When he was about to come forward, 
 either then or in 1874, someone asked him casually whether 
 he was not going to become a candidate for Blenheim. That 
 was a very odd mistake to make at least, so he thought ; 
 but the worst of it was that he found half the world was 
 under the same impression they fancied that the member 
 for Woodstock was a representative of Blenheim Palace. 
 Well, Mr. Mitchell Henry, and he afterwards, and Mr. Hall, 
 and Mr. Corrie Grant, did their best to dispel that impression, 
 and on that occasion they all but succeeded. Indeed, he 
 could not help saying that if their good friend, Sir H. Dash- 
 wood, had not broken his arm, and if one or two other friends 
 of theirs, who should be nameless, had plucked up a little 
 more courage, instead of hanging back like those of whom 
 they read in Scripture, who, being harnessed and carrying 
 bows, turned themselves back in the day of battle if they 
 had plucked up a little more courage, and if they had then 
 had the Ballot, he would have been their member not 
 member for Blenheim and Mr. Barnett would have returned 
 to his business in the City and the bosom of his family. 
 
 Five or six years elapsed, and there came another election 
 in 1874. It took them all by surprise, and found the Wood- 
 stock Liberals without proper organisation, while the Conser- 
 vatives brought out a man then a young gentleman of little 
 experience, but who had since made his mark in politics, and 
 was the strongest possible candidate for Woodstock he 
 meant Lord Randolph Churchill. At first there was a pro- 
 posal to bring forward Mr. Joseph Arch against him, but 
 Mr. Arch withdrew in his favour, and he received an unani- 
 mous invitation to contest the seat. He believed they did as 
 much as mortal strength could do within ten days, but the 
 enemy was too strong for them ; there were some desertions 
 from their ranks, and they were defeated by a large majority. 
 The other day he was surprised to learn from the newspapers
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 519 
 
 an entirely new fact about that election. He found it stated, 
 on the high authority of Lord Eandolph Churchill, that they, 
 all of them, went about promising the agricultural labourers 
 nice slated houses, with boarded floors and fertile gardens 
 all for nothing if they would only vote for him. Of course, 
 Lord Eandolph was not serious, and only let his imagination 
 run away with him just to amuse his audience. But it so 
 happened, that in that election he was specially careful to 
 caution his village audiences, in every speech, against ex- 
 pectations of this kind ; and when he found that, in spite of 
 this, he was so grossly misrepresented, he knew how much to 
 believe of all those stories about ' three acres and a cow ' 
 studiously circulated by the Primrose League against Liberal 
 candidates at the last election. 
 
 But let them go back to the history of Woodstock. Then 
 came the election of 1880, when Mr. Hall stood for Wood- 
 stock ; and a very good fight he made, though he could not 
 dislodge Lord Eandolph. Four years later he thought in 
 1884 a little incident occurred which he could not pass over, 
 when their old member, Lord Alfred Churchill, volunteered 
 his services, and attended a meeting here. Perhaps the less 
 said of what followed the better. It was really like a conjur- 
 ing-trick. One sees an object on the table, and then by some 
 hocus-pocus it is gone, and no one knows what has become of 
 it. He could not explain the sudden disappearance of Lord 
 Alfred Churchill ; he could only suppose that it was all 
 arranged quietly behind the scenes in some back room of a 
 palace which he would not mention, where they and he were 
 not present. He should be very sorry to speak unkindly of 
 Lord Alfred, but he suspected that he had not quite realised 
 what a serious and earnest business it was to contest this 
 Borough of Woodstock : how many rough knocks one must 
 be prepared to receive, and that one must not be too much 
 afraid of offending Dukes or Duchesses either, but must 
 throw oneself heartily upon the people. However, it did not 
 much signify, as Woodstock was to be disfranchised ; but it so 
 happened that Lord Eandolph had to apply for re-election,
 
 520 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POUTICAi AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 and Mr. Corrie Grant bravely and honourably came forward 
 to oppose him. He had nothing to do with this last contest, 
 and perhaps he should not have advised it ; but he felt bound 
 to state publicly, what he had often stated privately, that he 
 considered it to have been perfectly legitimate and justifiable, 
 and that his sympathies were then, as ever, heartily with the 
 Liberal cause at Woodstock. 
 
 And this brought him to last November, when the Borough 
 of "Woodstock ceased to exist, but when Mid-Oxfordshire, of 
 which Woodstock was the heart and centre, was contested 
 and carried by his friend Mr. Maclean. In his own farewell 
 Address, issued in 1874, he used these words : ' I look hope- 
 fully to the progress of education, and especially of political 
 education, as the one efficacious antidote to such influences 
 as still predominate in the Borough. A few years hence, 
 when the labourers shall have learned to realise the value of 
 their political rights, and to organise themselves for political 
 action, the battle which I have twice fought may probably 
 be renewed with better prospects of success, and Woodstock 
 may at last be represented by a Liberal member.' Now, he 
 thought he might claim the credit of having been a true 
 prophet, for that prediction was verified that night. And 
 how had this result been achieved ? He would speak for his 
 friends, Mr. Mitchell Henry and Mr. Maclean, for he knew they 
 would support what he was going to say. It had chiefly been 
 accomplished by a small band of determined men and earnest 
 Liberals several of whom he now saw near him who, with 
 unshaken fidelity and undaunted courage, through evil report 
 and good report, through disaster and defeat, had carried 
 aloft the old Liberal flag, and never rested until they planted 
 it in the centre of the enemy's position. Their spirit and 
 example encouraged poor men, dependent on Conservative 
 landlords and Conservative employers, to sacrifice much for 
 the Liberal cause ; and he had always borne witness that 
 great sacrifices were made and great risks incurred by the 
 Liberal Woodstock labourers without the smallest hope of 
 reward. But they must not forget another very important
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 521 
 
 element of success he meant the energy and ability of the 
 candidate. It was no easy task to select a candidate for their 
 Division, and they all knew the immense labour which any 
 candidate for a county division must now undergo. In Mr. 
 Maclean they found a man who combined the qualities of 
 head and heart yes, and of bodily vigour required to com- 
 mand success. No doubt he possessed two great advantages 
 the active support of Sir Henry Dashwood, and the honour- 
 able neutrality of the Duke of Marlborough ; but the great 
 body of the country gentry and of the parochial clergy were 
 against him. He believed that still more would have been 
 against him if Mr. Maclean had mingled less discretion 
 with his political valour. Happily, they had in him a man 
 who knew how to measure his words to clothe reasonable 
 and moderate opinions in vigorous language and that is the 
 way to win and to deserve the confidence of the masses. And 
 so he won the seat, and so they were all there that night 
 to congratulate him. Perhaps Mr. Mitchell Henry and he 
 might envy him a little, but with no ungenerous jealousy ; 
 for they might well console themselves, as good soldiers 
 ought, with the conviction that they did something towards 
 paving the way for his success, and that, although they fell 
 in the breach, yet they did not fight in vain, for over their 
 prostrate bodies their comrades were steadily marching 
 forward to victory. 
 
 Now let him tell them that he was not going to make a 
 speech about politics. It was not an electioneering meeting. 
 Thank heaven ! their work was done, and if politics were to 
 be talked, it should rather be talked by the sitting member 
 and other members of Parliament. But he could not stand 
 before such an audience at such a time without saying a few 
 earnest words about Ireland a subject to which he had 
 devoted great attention, and which just now overshadowed all 
 other questions in politics. He could not pretend to speak 
 with the same authority as Mr. Mitchell Henry, who had 
 lived there so long, and done so much for the people ; but he 
 was connected by family with Ireland. He had some Irish
 
 522 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 blood in his veins just about as much as they like to have 
 in a horse. He had studied Irish history more carefully than 
 most Englishmen, and he had seen much of Irish govern- 
 ment. Let him, then, express the earnest hope without 
 presuming to advise Mr. Maclean that he would exercise 
 his own independent judgment on this question the question 
 of Home Rule and that they would leave him free to do so. 
 It had never been submitted to the country, the leaders of 
 the Liberal Party were notoriously divided upon it, and if he 
 was in Parliament, he would consider it his right and duty 
 to vote upon it according to his own conscience. He did not 
 say that he would refuse to consider any scheme of self- 
 government for Ireland that might be proposed that would 
 be wrong but he did say that he would firmly resist any 
 scheme amounting to what was now called Home Eule, being 
 convinced that Home Eule meant the severance of Ireland 
 from Great Britain, and that the severance of Ireland from 
 Great Britain meant little short of national ruin. Let them 
 not believe half what they were told about Ireland by persons 
 who knew nothing of Irish history and Irish character. It 
 was false that all the evils and faults of Ireland were the 
 result of English misgovernment. Those evils and faults 
 were rampant when Henry II. became nominal lord of Ireland, 
 and they continued to be rampant for three hundred or four 
 hundred years, when Ireland practically enjoyed Home Rule, 
 and the English Parliament never meddled with it. No 
 doubt, under the strongest provocation, after one of the most 
 brutal massacres recorded in history, tyrannical measures 
 were passed by the English Parliament some two centuries 
 ago ; but they were repealed a century ago, and since the 
 Union, in 1800, English policy towards Ireland had been 
 guided by the sincerest desire for the good of the country. 
 Whatever civilisation, whatever good institutions, Ireland 
 possessed, it owed to England, and, but for England, it would 
 be far more backward and disorderly than it actually was. 
 The fact was and it was vain to ignore it that Irishmen have 
 not yet learned the alphabet of political education, and that
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 523 
 
 Ireland is infinitely less fit for Home Rule than any other 
 portion of Her Majesty's dominions. If they wanted to know 
 what true Home Rule would be in Ireland, let them look at 
 the elective bodies which already existed there the Town 
 Councils and Boards of Guardians. He heartily congratulated 
 Woodstock on the prospect of obtaining a truly representative 
 Corporation, and no one doubted that it would manage their 
 affairs well and honestly, like other English Town Councils 
 and public bodies. In England, these bodies worked well, 
 because in Englishmen they could always rely on a spirit 
 of fair-play and public spirit and courage the great political 
 virtues. In Ireland these virtues were wanting, and the 
 consequence was, that Irish Town Councils and Boards of 
 Guardians were too often nests of jobbery, rowdyism, and 
 sedition. How could it then be wise, how could it be other- 
 wise than reckless, to establish Home Rule on a large scale, 
 when it had so utterly and disastrously failed on a small 
 scale ? He believed, on the contrary, that, quite apart from 
 English interests, no measure so fatal to Ireland could be 
 devised, and that if they granted it, at the dictation of the 
 conspiracy which now dominated Ireland and demoralised 
 the House of Commons, the next generation of Irishmen 
 would rise up and curse them and with much better reason 
 than ever before. 
 
 But he would not add another word on this subject, and 
 would not have ventured to speak of it at all if it were not so 
 urgent and engrossing, and if he were not addressing an 
 audience specially representing the new voters. It was true 
 that they had already had some political experience, and that 
 was why they should give an example of wisdom and modera- 
 tion to other constituencies of the same class which had had 
 no such experience. He confessed that he almost trembled 
 when he reflected that this great Imperial question the 
 greatest and most vital that had arisen in his lifetime would 
 have to be decided by the new Democracy, for he could hardly 
 believe that it could be finally decided without a fresh appeal 
 to the constituencies. If that were so, they would have to
 
 5'24 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 share with Mr. Maclean the guidance of national policy at 
 this great crisis. It was, indeed, a fearful responsibility, and 
 he would implore them to prepare themselves for it in a con- 
 scientious spirit ; for those were no true friends of the people 
 who were always speaking to them of their rights and of their 
 interests, but never spoke to them of their duties or of their 
 responsibilities. Some of those present might be veterans in 
 politics, and a little too much inclined to rest content with 
 past triumphs of Liberal policy ; while others might be young 
 recruits, and a little too much inclined to frame grand schemes 
 of future reform. To the one he would say, ' Do not look too 
 far forward ' ; to the other, ' Do not look too far back.' It 
 was with the present they had to deal. They could not recall 
 or undo the past, and they could not foresee the future ; but 
 the present time was theirs, and the character of England 
 was now in their keeping. It was theirs it was their highest 
 privilege and their bounden duty to understand and to 
 grapple with the difficulties of their own times, to guard the 
 destinies of this country and this Empire as a sacred birth- 
 right and a solemn trust so to labour in this their, day, and 
 so to improve the talent committed to them, that they might 
 hand down this precious inheritance to those who came after 
 them, whole and entire, with undimmed lustre and undying 
 renown. 
 
 SPEECH AT A JUBILEE COMMEMORATION MEETING 
 IN THE OXFORD TOWN-HALL, ON FEBRUARY 26, 
 
 1887. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is with great pleasure, 
 but with some diffidence, that I rise to support this resolution. 
 It is no light task to follow so eloquent a speaker as Mr. Hall, 
 especially when he has the advantage of being so well known 
 and so justly respected as an old citizen and as your member. 
 But let me tell you that I have one advantage over him, for 
 I am old enough to remember seeing the Queen as Princess 
 Victoria, and when the election took place on her accession, I
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 525 
 
 was decked out in Tory colours, and cheered the Tory candi- 
 dates with a vigour which I am sure would have gratified 
 Mr. Hall. No sovereign that has ascended the throne of 
 England was ever the object of so many bright hopes ; no 
 accession ever excited such a thrill of loyal expectations. 
 The generation then living remembered the horrors of the 
 French Eevolution, and the long reaction that followed it, 
 and the exhausting strain of the Great War, and the constant 
 increase of popular discontent up to the desperate crisis of 
 the Eeform Bill, and even for some years after it. They 
 remembered also the sad derangement of George III., and 
 the sad corruption of manners under George IY. : and the 
 whole nation looked forward to a Golden Age under its young 
 Queen, whose simple habits and conscientious devotion to 
 duty were appreciated, as they deserved, from the very first. 
 Perhaps they expected too much from her more than she 
 could have done if she had been endowed with all the wisdom 
 of Solomon, more than our Constitution allows any sovereign 
 to do. But, upon the whole, these fifty years of the Queen's 
 reign have been as glorious and as prosperous as any reason- 
 able man could have imagined. Our fathers were not far 
 wrong in their hopeful prediction. A good time was coming, 
 though it was not quite the good time for which they looked. 
 Other thrones have been overturned or shaken by revolution, 
 but ours has remained unshaken, firmly based on the affec- 
 tions of the people. Other countries of Europe have been 
 desolated by foreign invasions, but ours has never even been 
 threatened, unless once, and then hardly in earnest on the 
 occasion which gave the first impulse to the Volunteer move- 
 ment. But this is not all. With one exception I mean the 
 great age of the Beformation and Queen Elizabeth the reign 
 of Queen Victoria has been, in the best sense, the most pro- 
 gressive in the whole history of England. Our Colonial 
 Empire has immensely increased in extent while it has 
 increased far more in population. The whole of India has 
 been brought under the control, most of it under the direct 
 government, of the British Crown. The extension of railways
 
 520 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 and electric telegraphs, the introduction and development of 
 the Penny Post, the marvellous advance of science and the 
 industrial arts, the impulse given to education in all its 
 branches, the increased command of luxuries by the rich and 
 of comforts by the poor, which has been the result of Free 
 Trade, the growth of the Newspaper Press these are but a 
 few among the evidences of national progress which history 
 will record as distinctive of this memorable age. Other half- 
 centuries may have witnessed more signal triumphs of our 
 arms by sea and by land ; other half-centuries may have 
 produced rarer works of original genius, and more names of 
 enduring renown. But this is certain that no similar period 
 has ever witnessed an equal advance in that which, after all, 
 is the supreme end of Government," far above the highest 
 achievements of military glory or of literary fame I mean 
 the well-being of the people at large, the happiness of the 
 men, women, and children who compose the English nation. 
 With this great movement in popular civilisation, as I may 
 call it, the name of Queen Victoria will ever be associated. 
 She could not shape the course of national policy that is 
 forbidden by our Constitution but she has done what she 
 could, by her example and by her influence, to strengthen all 
 that is best in English society and in English character 
 Wearing the white flower of a blameless life 
 In that fierce light which beats upon a throne. 
 
 Though she has never courted popularity unworthily, it has 
 always been well known in every cottage of the land that the 
 Queen is a true woman a good wife, a good mother, and a 
 warm friend with boundless sympathy for the sorrows of 
 others ; and not only so, but with a special interest in the 
 relief and elevation of the toiling and suffering classes. That 
 is the secret of her popularity, and that is the highest kind 
 of popularity which a constitutional sovereign can desire. 
 And now, I suppose that we have all had our own notions 
 about the proper way of celebrating this Jubilee, and the 
 proper objects for a subscription. Perhaps I could have 
 drawn up a model scheme, and so could many of those whom
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 527 
 
 I address ; but I must say that I think the scheme before us, 
 which is that of the Town Council, is very well devised, 
 because it commemorates three of the greatest and most 
 beneficent features of the Queen/s reign the growth of our 
 Colonial Empire, the spread of education, and, as a conse- 
 quence of education, the gradual softening and disappearance 
 of class-distinctions and class-jealousy. Our proposed sub- 
 scription to the Imperial Institute will fitly represent our 
 desire not to weaken, but to strengthen the bond of union 
 between Great Britain and that Greater Britain whose shores 
 are washed by the northern and southern oceans, which 
 embraces at least one-fourth of the human race, and which 
 has been, not only vastly extended, but vastly consolidated 
 during the last fifty years. I know that some of our friends 
 look timidly on this Imperial rule ; they are nervously afraid 
 of our becoming too great. I do not share these fears. I 
 like to know that, while Great Britain itself is but a speck 
 upon the map of Europe, it was colonised and peopled by the 
 most warlike and energetic races that rose upon the ruins of 
 the Boman Empire. When I think of England, I think not 
 only of a weather-beaten island in the Atlantic Ocean I 
 think also of the mighty peoples who have issued from this 
 island, and are proud to own its supremacy. My eye travels 
 in fancy over the vast territories stretching across the American 
 continent far into the Arctic circle, over the British posses- 
 sions in the West Indies and South America, over the group 
 of British Colonies in South Africa, over the whole continent 
 of Australia, with New Zealand, and many a fertile island 
 in the Pacific Ocean ; I include in my estimate of British 
 dominions the swarming millions of India ; and I remember 
 that the same Power which holds all these splendid provinces 
 in the northern and southern hemispheres, holds also the 
 keys of the Mediterranean Sea. Such is our Colonial Empire, 
 and I welcome the Imperial Institute as an outward and 
 visible sign of that closer union with our Colonies which I 
 earnestly desire to promote. But I am not less interested in 
 the other objects as specified in this resolution. If I do not
 
 528 SPEECHES AND LETTEBS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 speak of the Radcliffe Infirmary, it is because its claims are 
 present to all of us, and far be it from me to say a word that 
 might divert contributions from it. But I will venture to 
 bespeak your consideration for the other two schemes here 
 recommended. These comprise a subscription to a Public 
 Library and Reading-room, as well as to a building for a 
 School of Science and Art. If that plan be adopted, it will 
 have a twofold connection with the Jubilee. It will mark 
 our sense of the national benefits which, have already resulted 
 from the great educational movement of our times, and it 
 will also mark our sense of the necessity for a great improve- 
 ment in technical education, if we are to hold our own in the 
 commercial race. But it will do more. It will, further, show 
 that we value that diffusion of knowledge and of ideas among 
 all classes that intellectual freemasonry, if I may call it so, 
 which, next to Christianity, is the best antidote to mistrust 
 and enmity between class and class. That is the experience 
 of our great Universities. Nowhere else is there so happy a 
 combination of true Aristocracy with true Democracy, nowhere 
 else does personal merit count for so much, and the flimsy 
 barriers of rank and wealth and position for so little. And 
 that is one reason why I am delighted to see University men 
 co-operating with townspeople on this memorable occasion. 
 I heartily support this resolution because I am a thorough- 
 going Unionist, and because it invites us to cultivate union 
 in several practical ways. I support the Imperial Institute 
 because it will help to unite the mother-country and Colonies. 
 I support the Public Library and School of Art because it will 
 help to unite persons of different classes, but of the same 
 tastes and aspirations. I support the principle of a joint 
 subscription because it will help to unite the City and Uni- 
 versity. And I now call upon you to support it, in the firm 
 belief that, if you do support it liberally, it will be a most 
 appropriate and enduring memorial of the Queen's Jubilee in 
 this old City of Oxford.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 529 
 
 THE REAL MEANING OF 'HOME RULE* AND 
 OF 'COERCION' 
 
 Abridged Report of a Speech delivered at Bath on November 4, 1887, and 
 republished by the Liberal Unionist Association 
 
 The Hon. Geoege Beodrick seconded a resolution in support 
 of the Government. It was a special pleasure to him to 
 invite them to pass a vote of thanks to Mr. Goschen, for no 
 man had more consistently opposed the policy of disruption 
 and lawlessness to which Mr. Gladstone and his followers 
 were now unhappily committed. No man had more con- 
 scientiously grappled with the difficulties and they were 
 enormous of this Irish Question. No man had more fear- 
 lessly confronted Mr. Gladstone himself in debate, or more 
 effectively opposed his specious fallacies. The speech they had 
 heard from him that night breathed the same spirit of calm 
 determination ; and it was in that spirit alone that the Union- 
 ists could hope to maintain the great interests entrusted to 
 their charge. The resolution before him committed the meet- 
 ing to support the Government ' in all measures requisite 
 for the safety of the Union.' But then Mr. Gladstone told 
 them that the Union was in no danger ; he even claimed to 
 be a Unionist only, he said, it must not be a paper Union, 
 but an union of hearts. An union of hearts, indeed ! As if 
 any union of hearts were possible between loyal subjects of 
 the Queen, cherishing the law of the land as a sacred inherit- 
 ance of Englishmen, and those whom Mr. Gladstone mistook 
 for the Irish nation the leaders and the agents of that 
 accursed conspiracy, supported and organised by the foreign 
 enemies of Great Britain, which had not shrunk from deeds 
 of bloodshed shocking to humanity, which even now threat- 
 ened us with fresh outrages and with foreign intervention, and 
 which had been only too successful in demoralising, not Irish 
 peasants only, but English statesmen. 
 
 M M
 
 530 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 The Dead Home Rule Bill 
 
 But let that pass, and let him fix their attention on one 
 point. It was this that whereas only about a year ago 
 they were assured that Mr. Gladstone considered his Home 
 Rule Bill as dead, and that he was quite free to entertain 
 suggestions from Liberal Unionists, they now learnt from 
 his Nottingham speeches, and from the more outspoken 
 utterances of Sir William Harcourt, that, on the contrary, 
 all the essential principles of that Bill were still alive, and 
 that he had not the smallest intention of modifying it to suit 
 the views of Liberal Unionists or any one else. Really there 
 was something comical in this attempt to resuscitate this 
 dead Home Rule Bill. It reminded one very forcibly of the 
 Irish gentleman who enjoyed himself so much at a funeral 
 feast that he was moved to get up and propose the health of 
 the corpse. 
 
 Where are the ' Concessions ' ? 
 
 The fact was, that Mr. Gladstone had made no concessions 
 whatever in any essential principle of his Bill. It was all 
 very well for Sir George Trevelyan to lecture them upon their 
 wickedness in not accepting the supposed concessions. All 
 he could say was, that you might search Mr. Gladstone's 
 own speeches in vain for any concession which could have 
 been accepted by any Unionist less pliable than Sir George 
 Trevelyan. It was, as the American said, like looking for a 
 black hat on a very dark night, when it was not there. As 
 Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen had pointed out, Mr. 
 Gladstone is as willing as ever to hand over the control of 
 the police and the whole administration of the law to those 
 very men whom it is the chief duty of the law to punish, and, 
 if need be, to crush. And that for the best of all reasons. 
 It is with these men that he has made his bargain, and they 
 will hold him to it; and these men are^themselves under the 
 orders of their paymasters in America, who will be content 
 with nothing short of national independence for Ireland, 
 which means, of course, Ireland's separation from England,
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 531 
 
 or, as they said, ' the harp without the crown.' Let them 
 read an important letter on this point which recently appeared 
 in the ' Times.' They would there find that, at the Chicago 
 meetings held last August, Mr. Gladstone's pretence of making 
 the Irish Parliament nominally subordinate to the Imperial 
 Parliament was repudiated with scorn. He must confess that, 
 looking at the matter from their point of view, he was dis- 
 posed to agree with them. Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule was 
 nothing but Separation by a lingering process ; and if they 
 were to have Home Rule at all which God forbid he would 
 rather have it out and out, under its own proper name. 
 
 Ireland's Debt to England 
 
 He would now say a very few words on the next point 
 mentioned in the resolution the maintenance of law and 
 order in Ireland which seemed to him directly connected 
 with the last point the promotion of necessary reform in 
 Ireland. He believed in his conscience that the restoration 
 of law and order was the most necessary, as it would be the 
 most beneficent, of all Irish reforms. He did not know how 
 many of his audience might have been in Ireland, or how 
 much they might have read of Irish history. He would 
 venture, however, to appeal to them, as one who had some 
 Irish blood in his veins just about as much as one likes to 
 have in a horse as one who began his Irish studies earlier 
 than Mr. Gladstone, and as one who had seen a great deal 
 of Ireland and Irish government, not to believe one-half of 
 what were called facts about Ireland, given by men who knew 
 nothing about the country or Irish character, and who seemed 
 incapable of seeing anything which did not serve their own 
 purpose. He ventured to assert that Ireland never was a 
 nation until we made her so, that every sound and liberal 
 institution which Ireland enjoyed was obtained from Great 
 Britain, and, what was more, that, with one exception, an 
 Irishman enjoyed almost exactly the same liberties as we 
 did in England. He defied any man to show him any liberty 
 (except one) enjoyed by Englishmen which was not also fully 
 
 M M 2
 
 532 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 enjoyed by Irishmen. Was it the right of voting? Why, 
 Irish householders had exactly the same franchise as English 
 householders ; not that any sane man thought them equally 
 fit for it, but that Parliament scrupled to refuse it simply 
 because Ireland was, and was to remain, an integral part of 
 the United Kingdom. Was it the right of public meeting? 
 Why, at this moment seditious meetings were being held all 
 over Ireland, and the speakers could say what they liked, 
 however outrageous, so long as they did not incite the people 
 to break the law. Was it the liberty of the Press ? Wiry, 
 the Nationalist Press of Ireland was the most audacious and 
 mendacious and scurrilous in all Europe, and articles appeared 
 in it every day which no other Government would tolerate. 
 Was it trial by jury ? Well, that no doubt had been restricted 
 not abolished in certain specified cases under the Crimes 
 Act. And why ? Because juries were intimidated out of doing 
 their duty by the National League, and because it was worse 
 than vain for men charged with agrarian outrages to be tried 
 before a jury of their own accomplices. An Irish judge used 
 to tell a story which put this in an amusing light. A petty 
 jury had been allowed to retire for lunch, and when they 
 returned he invited them to resume work, saying, 'Gentlemen, 
 take your places ' ; whereupon they all, with one consent, and 
 as if they were used to it, rushed into the prisoners' dock. 
 But there was one liberty, he admitted, which the Irish 
 Nationalists did not possess, and which he trusted they would 
 never obtain it was the liberty of exercising an unlimited 
 power of coercion. This word was often used as if it were 
 ' coercion ' to enforce the law, and to put men in prison who 
 defied it. Perhaps that was the opinion of all the rogues 
 ju id thieves in Somersetshire, but that was not the opinion 
 of honest men. 
 
 Irish Coercion 
 
 He would tell them what Irish coercion really meant. It 
 meant the organised assassination, not so much of rich men, 
 as of poor men following their lawful calling. It meant the
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 533 
 
 midnight visits of bloodthirsty ruffians to shoot down and 
 torture decent farmers, in the presence of their wives and 
 families, merely because they had paid their rent or held land 
 from an obnoxious landlord. It meant the ruin of poor shop- 
 keepers and small tradespeople, because they would not throw 
 over their best customers. In short, it meant a reign of terror, 
 disgraceful to a civilised land, which these gentlemen wanted 
 to establish under the name of Home Eule. When he saw 
 Mr. Gladstone the very man who imprisoned Mr. Parnell 
 when he saw the leaders of the Opposition denouncing officers 
 of the law whether they were Ministers, judges, or police- 
 constables, it did not signify, but all those who were engaged 
 in keeping the peace in Ireland ay, and in England also 
 he felt, with Mr. Goschen, that it was not only life and 
 property in Ireland which were at stake it was also security 
 of life and property in England that the Unionists had to 
 defend, and the character of English statesmen, and the very 
 existence of that Constitution which, in its admirable com- 
 bination of liberty and order, had been the marvel of modern 
 times. 
 
 England's Duty to Ireland 
 
 He protested against this ignoble surrender of Ireland 
 to Mr. Parnell, mainly because, instead of doing justice to 
 Ireland, it would be the most cruel injustice, and the very 
 worst wrong that could possibly be inflicted upon her. But 
 he protested against it also because it would deal a deadly 
 blow at the heart of Great Britain, and would lower England 
 from the position she had won for herself among the nations. 
 During this year of Jubilee, London had been crowded with 
 visitors from the Continent and from our own Colonies, every 
 one of which was proud of the mother-country, and of which 
 every Englishman might well be proud. He liked to know 
 and to realise that, travel where he might in Asia, in Africa, 
 in America, in Australia, or in the isles of the Pacific Ocean- 
 he could not travel far without seeing the Union Jack floating 
 over some peaceful and prosperous settlement of his country-
 
 531 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 men, with English faces, English manners, English ideas, 
 English religion, and English law, talking of England as their 
 home, cherishing equally the English sentiments of loyalty 
 and of liberty, and speaking that noble but familiar language 
 which is the glorious birthright of the English race. But all 
 this would be in vain; this great inheritance purchased by 
 the virtue and the courage of our forefathers would soon 
 crumble away, if we should begin dismembering and breaking 
 up the United Kingdom itself if we should resign, and that 
 out of mere cowardice, that duty which, of all others, lay 
 nearest home the duty of pacifying and regenerating Ireland 
 under the authority of the Imperial Crown. No ; it must not 
 be. This Irish Question is above party, greater than caucus- 
 politics, higher than popularity-hunting expediency. Let all 
 resolve to meet it in this spirit to repel attacks on the Union 
 as they would repel the attacks of a foreign enemy ; and may 
 God defend the right ! 
 
 SPEECH IN PROPOSING 'THE LIBERAL UNIONIST 
 CAUSE' AT A DINNER OF THE OXFORDSHIRE 
 LIBERAL UNIONIST ASSOCIATION ON JANUARY 
 25, 1888" 
 
 The Warden of Merton next rose to propose the toast of the 
 evening, and in doing so said he knew that he might rely on 
 their kind indulgence for he was speaking among friends 
 when he proposed to them the toast of the evening ' The 
 Liberal Unionist Cause ' and coupled with it the name of 
 their guest, Mr. Finlay, who had rendered such great services 
 to it. After the able speeches to which they had listened, he 
 felt that it would ill-become him, nor would it suit the occa- 
 sion, to dwell even for a moment on the merits or the history 
 of the Irish Question. It was enough for them to remember 
 that by Mr. Gladstone's ignoble surrender to Mr. Parnell the 
 great Liberal camp was suddenly broken up. Those whose 
 
 1 From the Oxford Chronicle.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 535 
 
 guiding-principle was party-spirit and a personal allegiance 
 followed Mr. Gladstone. Those who could not abandon their 
 convictions at his bidding ranged themselves under Lord 
 Hartington. Mr. Gladstone succeeded in carrying off most of 
 the regimental colours, which were now flaunting bravely in 
 the wind, and most of the regimental bands, including all the 
 largest and noisiest drums, which were still beating lustily. 
 But the steadiest officers, both commissioned and non-com- 
 missioned, stood firm, and were now among the staunchest 
 supporters of the Liberal Unionist cause. If they were right, 
 then, in adopting this position, assuredly they were more 
 right than ever now in maintaining it, for Mr. Gladstone's 
 party had drifted further and further away from the ancient 
 Liberal moorings. It was no longer only the Home Eule 
 Party ; it was also the party of Separation in all its forms. 
 Foiled in his first attempt to repeal the Union with Ireland, 
 Mr. Gladstone had shamelessly appealed to Separatist passions 
 in Scotland and Wales ; and not only so, but had deliberately 
 striven to poison the springs of public life by stirring up the 
 enmity of the ' masses ' against the ' classes.' He had heard 
 that, during the crisis of the Free Church Secession in Scot- 
 land, one of the seceding ministers publicly offered up a 
 prayer in the following words : ' Lord, pour out upon us 
 more abundantly the spirit of disruption.' That prayer was 
 quite worthy of Mr. Gladstone, who seemed to have adopted 
 it. But it was their business to see, if they could, that it 
 was not fulfilled. Even this was not all. By a kind of fatal 
 necessity, Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt, inspired 
 by Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Labouchere, and the ' Pall 
 Mall Gazette,' had been driven into something like an open 
 alliance with the forces of disorder and of anarchy, of law- 
 lessness and of crime. It was no longer a political question 
 only which divided them from Unionists it was also a moral 
 question. Not that they were Pharisaical enough to assume 
 that all the wisdom and goodness was on their side, but that, 
 by the profound immorality of the Gladstonian tactics, they 
 were literally compelled to come forward as the guardians of
 
 536 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 public virtue. It would not be right that they should speak 
 among themselves of the Liberal Unionist cause, as he 
 believed that history would speak of it. But he could not 
 forbear to avow his belief that the independent and patriotic 
 attitude taken up by Lord Hartington and the Liberal 
 Unionist party, both in and out of Parliament, was by far the 
 most honourable and hopeful feature of English politics with- 
 in his lifetime. In separating themselves from the majority 
 of Liberals, and in supporting the only possible Unionist 
 Government, they had acted gravely, calmly, and, he might 
 add, sorrowfully ; for many of them had made sacrifices which 
 he should be the last to magnify, but which it was right to 
 recognise sacrifices of political ambition, of social ties, of 
 long-cherished ideals, yes, and sacrifices of one other kind, 
 of which he was hardly able to speak in public the heart- 
 breaking sacrifice of personal friendship. On the other hand, 
 they had been inevitably led to form, not a coalition, but an 
 alliance, with their former political opponents, the Conserva- 
 tives. In speaking of this alliance, which he fully approved, 
 let him venture to express his strong conviction that for the 
 present, and for as long as they could foresee, they should 
 retain and cherish the name of Liberal Unionist. By all 
 means let them be Unionists that is, patriots first, and 
 Liberals afterwards but for all that let them not cease to 
 call themselves Liberals. 
 
 Hoc Ithacus velit et magno mercentur Atridre. 
 
 Let them co-operate loyally with the Conservatives by all 
 means in support of a truly national policy, but let them light 
 under their own flag, because they could thus render the best 
 service to the Unionist cause. They could not quite forget 
 the very questionable relations of the Conservative Party with 
 the Parnellites in 1885, nor could they quite ignore such 
 suspicious symptoms as the Fair Trade resolution carried by 
 a large majority at the Conservative Conference held in this 
 very city last year. Let them remember, too, the advantage 
 of having a name associated with all the beneficial reforms of
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 537 
 
 the last sixty years, and let them consider how much stronger 
 their position would be in the future let them hope a near 
 future when this tyranny should be overpast, if they had not 
 renounced a name of which all of them were proud, and if 
 they could then stand before the world . as the rightful heirs 
 and representatives of the great historical Liberal Party. 
 With regard to the cause in this county, he might say that 
 hitherto they had done little beyond the signature and pre- 
 sentation of a joint memorial to Lord Hartington from the 
 Liberal Unionists of Oxford and Cambridge. That memorial 
 attracted much attention in the country, and he had reason 
 to know that Lord Hartington felt it a great encouragement 
 and support to himself. The question was, whether they 
 could now take any practical action in the University or the 
 county with advantage to their cause ; for he need hardly say 
 that organisation was vain, except so far as it led to action. 
 He had given a great deal of thought to this question, and 
 in his opinion their main object should be to educate voters, 
 either by the circulation of Unionist Literature or by the 
 delivery of Unionist addresses. The latter plan involved 
 great difficulties, which, however, might perhaps be overcome 
 by energy. The former was quite practicable, and he thought 
 they should lose no time in invoking the assistance of the 
 Liberal Unionist Association in Great George Street towards 
 carrying it out without delay. In the meantime, let every 
 one of them seriously realise how practically the destiny and 
 character of the country were committed to their keeping. 
 They occupied the key of the position. They held the pass, 
 and their simple duty was to go on holding it until they were 
 fairly beaten or the enemy retired in confusion. When that 
 happened when the Separatist Party in this country was 
 numbered with the Secessionist Party in the United States, 
 let them abandon the title of Unionists then, and not before. 
 For the present, their duty was perfectly clear to rescue the 
 United Kingdom, and not only the United Kingdom, but the 
 British Empire, from the imminent risk of disintegration ; to 
 defend the supremacy of the law against men who usurped
 
 538 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 and outraged the great name of Liberty ; to raise the level of 
 British statesmanship once more above Opportunism, above 
 time-serving, above popularity-hunting. This was the mis- 
 sion of the Liberal Unionist Party, this was the Liberal 
 Unionist Cause to which he now invited them to drink ; and 
 it was a cause as sacred as ever inspired devotion in the 
 political heroes and martyrs of the olden time. 
 
 'IRELAND A NATION' 
 
 A Letter to Die Editor of the Spectator, April 14, 1888 
 
 Sir, Among the many groundless assumptions which con- 
 stitute the historical argument for Home Rule, there is none 
 so entirely delusive as the idea that Ireland was once a nation, 
 and was robbed of its national independence by its English 
 conquerors. I observe that Mr. Dillon, who proposed the 
 toast of ' Ireland a Nation ' on St. Patrick's Day, showed a 
 commendable prudence by appealing to aspirations rather 
 than to facts, and dwelling mainly, not on historical traditions, 
 but on the ' spirit of nationality ' inherent in the Irish race. 
 Others, however, are not so cautious ; nor is it only Home 
 Rulers who, idealising this past that was never present, think 
 and speak of Ireland as a disinherited nation. The idea 
 lingers in the minds, and perhaps affects the consciences, of 
 not a few loyal Unionists, who are fain to console themselves 
 with the plea that no such national title can avail against a 
 continuous prescription of seven centuries. This plea is 
 surely valid, if the original title be admitted. The Irish 
 Question of to-day is not historical, but practical; and even 
 if England had been guilty of crushing out the national life 
 of Ireland in the Middle Ages, it would be the worst possible 
 atonement to force upon Ireland a Home Rule which must 
 needs prove ruinous now to Irish prosperity. But, happily, 
 England was never guilty of this wrong, and those who in- 
 dulge in historical dreams of 'Ireland a Nation' would do
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, P0IJT1CAL AND OCCASIONAL 589 
 
 well to reflect on the emphatic testimony of Mr. Prendergast, 
 the eminent historian of ' The Cromwellian Settlement.' Mr. 
 Prendergast's Nationalist sympathies are avowed, but his 
 learning and research are of a kind extremely rare among 
 patriotic writers, and his authority will hardly he disputed by 
 Home Eulers versed in Irish history. 
 
 After justly ridiculing the exaggerated descriptions of ' the 
 Irish enemy ' by English settlers, he proceeds as follows : 
 
 ' Now, " the Irish enemy " was no nation in the modern 
 sense of the word, but a race divided into many nations or 
 tribes, separately defending their lands from the English barons 
 in their immediate neighbourhood. There had been no ancient 
 Government displaced, no national Dynasty overthrown : the 
 Irish had no national flag, nor any capital city as the metro- 
 polis of their common country, nor any common administra- 
 tion of law ; nor did they ever give a national opposition to 
 the English. All the notions of nationality and independent 
 empire are of a surprisingly modern date. The English, 
 coming in the name of the Pope, with the aid of the clergy, 
 and with a superior national organisation, which the Irish 
 easily recognised, were accepted by the Irish. Neither King 
 Henry II. nor King John ever fought a battle in Ireland.' 
 
 It may be added, that no foreign nation ever received an 
 embassy from Ireland, and that, Catholic as it was, it was 
 only known at Eome as a detached fragment of Christendom, 
 to be handed over at will to an English sovereign. 
 
 It is the entire absence of any historical basis for Irish 
 nationality which distinguishes the case of Ireland from that 
 of Hungary or Norway, and still more from that of Scotland. 
 The present Constitutions of Hungary and Norway are sur- 
 vivals or revivals of those which they possessed in past ages 
 as independent nations. The sturdy nationality which Scot- 
 land was content to merge in the Imperial unity of Great 
 Britain had rallied its clans under a separate monarchy, and 
 held at bay the power of England during centuries of border- 
 warfare. ' Scotland a Nation ' is a sentiment which awakens 
 glorious memories : but ' Ireland a Nation ' is simply an un-
 
 540 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 meaning phrase. The consolidation of the Irish provinces 
 and regions under one settled Government has been exclusively 
 the work of English monarchs and statesmen. The civil and 
 political liberties which Ireland now enjoys have been con- 
 ferred upon it by England, and by England alone. As I have 
 pointed out elsewhere 
 
 ' Neither trial by jury, nor Parliamentary representation, 
 nor the freedom of the Press, nor the Poor Law, nor popular 
 education, nor any privilege of citizenship now common to 
 Irishmen with Englishmen, is an institution of Irish origin. 
 They were all imported from England, and there is not one 
 of them which is not grossly abused, at this very moment," by 
 Irishmen who seem to consider an incapacity for the honest 
 exercise of civil rights a title and qualification for the duties 
 of national self-government.' 
 
 As for ' the spirit of nationality,' it is enough to say that, 
 in Mr. Dillon's sense, it is not shared by the Protestants of 
 Ulster or, indeed, of the other three Irish provinces while 
 it is shared by the mass of Irish Catholics in the United States. 
 If, then, 'Ireland a Nation' should ever be reconstructed 
 on this basis, it would include the very worst part of the 
 American population on the other side of the Atlantic, and 
 would exclude the very best part of the Irish population in- 
 habiting the one province of which Ireland has no reason to 
 be ashamed. 
 
 I am, Sir, &c. 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Athentcum Club, April 9. 
 
 THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS 
 
 A Letter to the Editor of the Times, S^t. 28, 1888 
 
 Sir, The treatment of prisoners sentenced for seditious 
 offences has lately attracted much attention, and I observe 
 tli at Mr. Dillon, in the first speech delivered by him since 
 his release, renewed his protest against prisoners like himself
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 541 
 
 being subjected to the same penal discipline as ordinary 
 criminals. He admits, indeed, that he ' fell into the care of 
 prison officials who knew how to discharge their duty with 
 humanity and honour.' But he contrasts their clemency 
 with the instructions which he supposes them to have received 
 from ' Dublin Castle,' and loudly denounces Mr. Balfour as 
 the author of a system under which he was ' treated like the 
 commonest pickpocket or the lowest of humanity.' 
 
 It has often been asserted, and never, I believe, denied, 
 that the system under which Mr. Dillon and his associates 
 have been treated as criminals is precisely the same as that 
 enforced by authority of Lord Spencer and Sir George Tre- 
 velyan while the Crimes Act of 1882 was in operation. But 
 it has not yet been noticed that it is, also, precisely the same 
 as that enforced by authority of Mr. Gladstone as Premier, 
 and Lord Aberdare as Home Secretary, in 1869 and 1870. 
 Then, as now, a considerable number of Irish Nationalists 
 were in prison for seditious offences graver in character, no 
 doubt, since nearly all had been convicted of treason-felony, 
 but, for that very reason, more essentially political in their 
 nature. Then, as now, the grossest charges of maltreatment 
 had been persistently reiterated both in and out of Parliament, 
 until Mr. Gladstone and the Home Office thought fit to ap- 
 point a Commission of Inquiry. Of this Commission Lord 
 Devon was chairman, and I myself was a member. 
 
 The form of the Commission was in itself a conclusive 
 proof of the view taken by the Government of that day with 
 respect to the proper treatment of political prisoners. We 
 were instructed to inquire not whether the governors and 
 other officials of English convict prisons had been guilty of 
 confounding the Fenian prisoners with ordinary convicts, 
 but, on the contrary, ' whether the treason-felony prisoners 
 have been subjected to any exceptional treatment in any way, 
 or have suffered any hardships beyond those incident to the 
 condition of a prisoner sentenced to penal servitude.' In 
 other words, it was assumed that a political convict, as such, 
 had no claim to exceptional privileges or indulgence, the only
 
 542 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 question being whether, as alleged, the Fenians, as such, had 
 been singled out in English convict prisons for exceptional 
 severities and indignities. 
 
 It is needless to state that all these allegations, though 
 published quite as confidently and recklessly as those against 
 Mr. Balfour, utterly broke down on examination. We reported 
 unanimously that, ' after a patient and minute investigation, 
 we do not find any ground for the belief that the treason- 
 felony prisoners in English prisons have, as a class, been 
 subjected to any exceptionally severe treatment, or have 
 suffered any hardships beyond those incidental to the condi- 
 tion of a prisoner sentenced to penal servitude.' ft appeared 
 that, in individual cases, governors or directors of convict 
 prisons had sanctioned certain mitigations of prison discipline 
 in their favour, where health or special circumstances might 
 afford grounds for such leniency. These mitigations were of 
 exactly the same character as those which have been sanctioned 
 by the Irish prison authorities, under the iron despotism of 
 Mr. Balfour, in favour of Mr. Dillon and others ; but the 
 reasons for them were far more cogent. It must always be 
 remembered, and is fully recognised in the Government regu- 
 lations, that prisoners confined for years cannot endure, 
 without risk of permanent injury to health, a system of treat- 
 ment so rigorous and inflexible as that which is habitually 
 undergone by prisoners confined only for weeks or months. 
 The considerate discretion of governors, by which Mr. Dillon 
 seems to have benefited, is equally consistent with the esta- 
 blished rules of prison discipline under which, as he tells us, 
 iie was compelled to wear ' the ordinary felon's dress.' For 
 instance, a group of juvenile convicts might be set to work 
 together, apart from their elder fellows ; while the same course 
 might be adopted in the case of specially dangerous prisoners, 
 likely to conspire with friends outside or disloyal warders, 
 and, therefore, requiring selected officers to watch them. 
 One privilege conceded to the Fenian convicts may serve as a 
 specimen of the spirit in which prison rules are, and ought
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 543 
 
 to be, administered. Every well-conducted prisoner under 
 sentence of penal servitude is entitled to occasional visits 
 from relations ; but as the Fenian convicts, being Irish, were 
 less accessible to relations in English convict prisons, they 
 were allowed greater latitude in letter- writing than would 
 otherwise have been permitted. This concession was surely 
 reasonable, but it did not extend to correspondence with 
 seditious newspapers, the prohibition of which is not the 
 least of prison grievances in Ireland. 
 
 The broad fact remains, that under Mr. Gladstone's Ad- 
 ministration the Fenian prisoners were classed with criminals, 
 and treated as ordinary convicts. Like Mr. Dillon, they were 
 rather favourites with the prison authorities ; but they wore 
 the ordinary convict dress, they had to put up with the 
 ordinary convict diet (unless under medical orders), and they 
 were compelled to clean out their own cells, as well as to 
 perform the other menial offices incidental to convict life. 
 This had gone on for several years under three Governments, 
 two of them Liberal, and I am not aware that Mr. Gladstone 
 and Mr. Bruce, any more than their Conservative predeces- 
 sors, ever doubted its justice or propriety, though it was 
 furiously reprobated by the prisoners themselves, and those 
 who sympathised with their crimes. Nor can it be said, even 
 by advocates who do not blush to adopt such a plea, that the 
 Fenians were men of low birth ; whereas Mr. Balfour's victims 
 are gentlemen of education and position. A list appended to 
 our report shows that above one-third of the Fenian convicts 
 belonged to what may be called the professional class, while 
 only five out of twenty-six are entered as imperfectly educated. 
 None of them, however, it is true, were members of Parlia- 
 ment, for members of Parliament had not then learned to 
 receive instructions and draw salaries from the foreign 
 enemies of this country. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be well to add that several of the Fenian 
 convicts evinced a familiar acquaintance with Mr. Gladstone's 
 famous letters on Neapolitan prisons, and criticised his treat-
 
 544 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 ment of themselves with no less warmth, but with more 
 relevance, than Mr. Gladstone has exhibited in his attacks on 
 Mr. Balfour. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 George C. Brodrick. 
 
 Merton College, Oxford, Sept. 28. 
 
 UNIONISM THE BASIS OF A NATIONAL PARTY 
 
 An Address delivered at Die first meeting of tlie Oxford University 
 Unionist League, on Dec. 1, 1888 
 
 Gentlemen, We are met this evening to found a League 
 which, I hope, may embrace Unionists of both parties, and of 
 all ages, in this University ; and I have been requested to 
 deliver a short address in explanation of the objects which its 
 promoters have in view, and of the spirit in which this enter- 
 prise has been undertaken. 
 
 And, first, I would point out that our main object is 
 defensive. That is more than our opponents can say. Their 
 policy and tactics are essentially afigressivc ; and this, strange 
 to say, gives them a great advantage, especially in appealing 
 to young Oxford minds. Some of you may remember the old 
 Parliamentary squib in which the Radical reformers are de- 
 scribed as framing a motion ' to abolish the sun and the moon ' ; 
 and if such a measure were proposed by Mr. Gladstone, I do 
 believe that it would be easier to get up an association in 
 Oxford to support the abolition of those ancient institutions, 
 than it would be to rouse enthusiasm in favour of maintaining 
 them. And so, we have not only a Home Rule League, which 
 Undergraduates' of advanced views have been earnestly pressed 
 to join ; but also, as I understand, an Oxford branch of the 
 National League, with a Nonconformist minister for its presi- 
 dent, which has not yet taken any very active part in organis- 
 ing outrage, so far as I know, but which may yet succeed in 
 attracting the attention of the Parnell Inquiry Commission. 
 We have also already had visits from Mr. H. George, Mr. 
 Hyndman, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Healy ; and my
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 545 
 
 impression is, that if the Whitechapel murderer could be 
 identified, he would be invited to lecture by an Oxford Club 
 which I could name, if I thought proper. 
 
 Well, now, I will tell you frankly that I have long hesi- 
 tated to do anything which might seem like encouraging 
 political agitation among the younger members of the Uni- 
 versity. This University, as a place of education and learn- 
 ing, is not a suitable arena for politics ; and, if it were, it 
 would not be well for many of its younger members to mix 
 themselves up with political controversy, and so to commit 
 themselves prematurely to a line which they might afterwards 
 see reason to abandon. When I was an Undergraduate my- 
 self, I would not declare myself a member of either party ; 
 and though I have since fought three pitched battles as a 
 Liberal candidate, I sometimes almost wish it were now 
 possible to resume the same attitude of self-complacent neu- 
 trality. But, after all, self-complacent neutrality is not 
 the highest or the noblest attitude for a patriotic citizen to 
 adopt in a great national crisis. At such a time it is the 
 supreme duty of loyal and true-hearted Englishmen, whatever 
 their age, and whether they be Liberals or Conservatives, 
 to stand together shoulder to shoulder, and to forget their old 
 differences which are vanishing every day in presence of a 
 common enemy and of an overwhelming danger. It is this 
 deep conviction which makes me, Liberal as I am, an Unionist 
 first and a Liberal afterwards ; it is this conviction which has 
 impelled and compelled me to overcome any scruples which 
 I may have felt about meddling with undergraduate politics, 
 and to invite all, whether Graduates or Undergraduates, who 
 value either the unity of the Empire or the first principles 
 of political morality, to rally themselves, without distinction 
 of party, under the Unionist flag. It is not we that have 
 practised the arts of political seduction ; it is not we, but our 
 opponents, who have compassed sea and land to enlist recruits, 
 who scarcely knew their right hands from their left, in the 
 service of the National League a body which is now on its 
 trial for crimes which shock humanity. Perhaps it did not 
 
 N N
 
 546 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 strike our opponents that proselytism was a game which two 
 could play. Still, it was not until I understood that a spon- 
 taneous disposition existed among Undergraduates to organise 
 themselves against this unscrupulous propagandism, that I 
 decided to cross the Rubicon, and join heartily with them in 
 forming an Unionist League. I, for one, am not prepared to 
 stand by with folded arms while young and generous minds 
 are being entrapped by appeals to their sympathies, or per- 
 haps to their self-importance perhaps even to their love of 
 ' a lark ' into complicity with that infamous conspiracy 
 which has gone far to demoralise, not Irish peasants only, 
 but English statesmen. The Irish Question has ceased to be a 
 question of mere party politics it has ceased to be a merely 
 political question, and has become mainly a moral question. 
 The Liberals, headed by Mr. Gladstone, have entered into an 
 open alliance with men who receive their instructions and 
 draw their pay from the foreign enemies of Great Britain, 
 who have declared war against civil government itself, and 
 who defy the supremacy of the law. We Unionist Liberals 
 might almost say of them, in the language of Scripture, 
 ' Our princes are rebellious, and have become the companions 
 of thieves.' There is but one answer to such an alliance. It 
 is the formation of a counter-alliance that is, of a National 
 Party and I know no reason why the formation of such a 
 party, embracing Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, should 
 not begin at Oxford. 
 
 I have spoken of ignorance as a powerful influence on the 
 side of the Home Rulers, and it is my firm belief that what 
 are called Home Rule opinions are very largely grounded 
 upon ignorance gross ignorance of Irish history and Irish 
 character. Considering how long this question has been 
 before the public, and how much has been said and written 
 upon it, it is to me amazing that nine out of ten Home Rulers 
 do not know the very alphabet of the subject. They do not 
 know, for instance, that no Irish nation ever existed ; that 
 Ireland was a mere ' geographical expression,' comprising a 
 group of hostile and barbarous tribes, when Henry II. con-
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 547 
 
 quered it not that he ever did really conquer it ; that it 
 never had one king or one central government ; that whatever 
 national unity Ireland now seems to possess has been im- 
 pressed upon it by England ; and that if Irish nationality were 
 now established, it would be a new creation, of purely English 
 manufacture. They do not know that for three centuries, at 
 least, after the so-called English conquest, the whole of Ireland, 
 except a very few counties, practically enjoyed the blessings of 
 Home Eule, and, as a natural consequence, relapsed into bar- 
 barism. They do not know that every civil and political 
 liberty which Ireland enjoys and abuses it owes to England, 
 and to England alone. They do not know that Grattan's 
 Parliament, which Mr. Gladstone idealises and idolises, was 
 exclusively composed of Protestants, and mostly composed of 
 placemen, and that, if corruption was employed to abolish it, 
 corruption had always been the life and soul of its existence. 
 They do not know or, at least, they do not realise that 
 Ireland is no more governed by England now than Scotland, 
 or Lancashire, or London, but that all the United Kingdom is 
 governed by one Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland happens 
 to be somewhat over-represented. They do not know that 
 Home Eule, as distinct from agrarian spoliation, has no real 
 hold on the popular mind in Ireland, and that it is accepted, 
 even by the Nationalist leaders, only as a step to complete 
 Separation. They do not know that, if ' Coercion ' has failed 
 in Ireland, so has Conciliation, and that every remedial mea- 
 sure has been followed by a fresh outbreak of revolutionary 
 violence. They do not know that Irish tenants, instead of 
 being a downtrodden and defenceless class, are now more 
 carefully protected by the law than any tenants in the civilised 
 world, and enjoy privileges which are shared by no tenants on 
 the Continent of Europe or in the United States of America. 
 When such elementary facts as these are unknown to many 
 educated people who talk glibly of Home Rule, it is no wonder 
 that gross and barefaced misrepresentations find ready cre- 
 dence, and that young converts are easily made by designing 
 politicians who practise on their ignorance. 
 
 K N 2
 
 548 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 But the Home Rule policy is not only grounded on ignor- 
 ance; it is also founded on despair. No one can impute 
 ignorance of Ireland to Lord Spencer, whom I know intimately 
 and respect highly ; and I observe that Lord Granville and 
 Lord Kimberley, by their own showing, were converted to Home 
 Eule by Lord Spencer. No ; Lord Spencer's adoption of 
 Home Eule does not proceed from ignorance ; but I believe in 
 my conscience that it proceeds from despair. It is not that he 
 deceives himself by imagining that Ireland would prosper 
 under Home Eule he is too well informed for that or that he 
 places the slightest confidence in those Nationalist leaders 
 whom he feels officially bound to whitewash. It is that he 
 despairs of governing Ireland wisely, firmly, justly, and con- 
 sistently, under the Union, so long as time-serving and 
 popularity-hunting cripple the hands of Prime Ministers and 
 Lords-Lieutenant ; and that he is ready to risk a leap in the 
 dark, rather than continue the experiment under such condi- 
 tions. Perhaps, if he had foreseen that a new spirit would be 
 roused among his countrymen superior to popularity-hunting 
 and time-serving, and that a body of men called Liberal 
 Unionists would actually prefer being in power to being in 
 office, he would have come to a different conclusion, and 
 would not have staked his own high character on so desperate 
 a venture, in company with such unworthy associates. At all 
 events, those of us Liberal Unionists who do not share his 
 despair those of us who believe that Home Eule is not inevi- 
 table, if only we have the wisdom and the courage of our 
 fathers yes, and of Lord Spencer himself in his better days 
 I say, we can never again trust leaders who lose heart 
 suddenly in the midst of a battle, and make ignoble terms 
 with the enemy. I fear it is too late for reconciliation now, 
 and our feeling must be that expressed so pathetically in a 
 poem familiar to many of us : 
 
 Life's night draws on ; let them never come back to us ; 
 There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain, 
 Forced praise on our part, the glimmer of twilight ; 
 Never glad, confident morning again.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 549 
 
 But I must not be led into dwelling further on this sad 
 aspect of the Irish Question. Let me now say a few words on 
 the character of our own Unionist League, and on the pro- 
 ceedings of this evening. The name ' League ' was not chosen 
 at haphazard ; it was deliberately adopted, in order to show 
 that we never for a moment intended to found a new Club, of 
 the same nature as the Palmerston or the Kussell, the Canning 
 or the Chatham. There are quite enough clubs in Oxford 
 already, and there are those who think that, what with clubs, 
 and what with musical and other societies, the demands upon 
 the quiet hours of the evening are already too excessive. The 
 rules to be submitted to you are, therefore, extremely simple, 
 and impose the lightest possible tax on your time and on your 
 money. They provide for only one general meeting in the 
 year, though it will be in the discretion of the Executive 
 Committee to call other occasional meetings if, for instance, 
 they can induce some eminent speaker from London or from 
 Ireland to come down and address us ; and I am not without 
 hope that we may do so in the course of next Term. The 
 pecuniary liability of membership is reduced to a shilling 
 entrance-fee, and as our Treasurer will deal only with these 
 small coins, or stamps, there is the less fear of his absconding 
 with the balance. But I hope that men who have once joined 
 the League will feel that a real bond of union exists between 
 us, which may be called into active operation at any moment 
 in the event, for instance, of a general election. And, as no 
 one can say how soon occasion for action may arise, the last 
 clause in our rules provides that any member of the League 
 who may be willing to aid the Unionist cause, if required, by 
 speaking or otherwise, should communicate with the General 
 Secretary. 
 
 These rules, I may tell you, have been prepared and well 
 considered by a Provisional Committee, and I hope will meet 
 with general acceptance. But I will put them one by one, 
 and it will of course be open to any member to suggest any 
 improvement ; only, as our time is short, we shall probably all 
 feel that it would not be well to exercise this right too freely.
 
 550 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 When the rules have been passed, we shall proceed to elect a 
 President, a few Vice-Presidents, a General Secretary, and an 
 Executive Committee. I believe members of the Provisional 
 Committee will be prepared to propose names for these offices ; 
 and I may say, with reference to the Vice-Presidents and Exe- 
 cutive Committee, that it has been the wish of the Provisional 
 Committee to have a judicious mixture of Conservatives and 
 Liberal Unionists. 
 
 And this brings us round once more to the point from 
 which we started I mean the fusion of Conservative and 
 Liberal Unionists in one Unionist Association. I believe that 
 ours is one of the first examples of such an association, and 
 is therefore likely to become memorable. No doubt, Conser- 
 vatives and Liberal Unionists worked together in many con- 
 stituencies at the last election, but they worked together as 
 separate contingents of the same army, and they never adopted 
 the common name of ' Unionist ' ; indeed, I know that many 
 people in this University still fancy that an Unionist must be 
 a Liberal Unionist. Depend upon it, we shall all of us have 
 to encounter some ridicule from our Home Ptule friends before 
 we have done with it ; some of you will be taunted with turn- 
 ing Liberals, while I shall be taunted with turning Tory. 
 Gentlemen, I can assure you that I shall not be careful to 
 answer such taunts, and I hope you will be equally indifferent 
 to them. To borrow an expression from Mr. Parnell, I should 
 not have cared to take off my coat unless I had regarded the 
 formation of an Unionist League in the University as an 
 event of serious importance, and I expect that it will be a long 
 time before I am able to put it on again. 
 
 For do not for a moment imagine that Home Rule is dead 
 because Mr. Gladstone's Bill is rejected on all sides, or that 
 the revolutionary spirit which Mr. Gladstone has roused will 
 perish with its author. In the first place, Mr. Gladstone's 
 Home Piule Bill is not dead. It is like the Irishman knocked 
 down in a drunken row whose friend culled to him : 'Are ye 
 dead, Pat ? if ye are, spake ' ; and who replied : ' No, I'm not 
 dead, Mick, I'm only spachclnss.'' I have never been able to
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 551 
 
 agree with those who say that they do not object to Home Rule 
 in itself, but only to Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule. 
 On the contrary, I consider that Mr. Gladstone's was about as 
 good a Home Rule Bill as could be devised, and, if it was open 
 to numerous fatal objections, that was because Home Rule is 
 a disastrous and impracticable policy. But the Gladstonian 
 policy is now developed so as to include principles borrowed 
 from the French Jacobins, and it is forced on by methods 
 borrowed from the Plan of Campaign. Mr. Gladstone may 
 die, but the evil spirits which he has called up will not die 
 with him, for, as the Scotch proverb says, ' It's hard to kill the 
 de'il ' ; and, while they survive, honest and patriotic men must 
 league themselves to resist them. This coalition or alliance 
 call it what you will between moderate Conservatives and 
 Liberal Unionists has already made itself profoundly felt in 
 the councils of both, and, so far as human foresight goes, it 
 promises to be lasting at least, for the rest of my lifetime. 
 If our own Unionist League shall have contributed in some 
 degree to promote this beneficent end if it shall encourage 
 young men, entering on political life, to rise once more above 
 the shifts of mere-party interests and temporary expediency, 
 to a pure and far-sighted patriotism if it shall lead the Con- 
 servatives of the future to recognise the necessity of adopting 
 Liberal measures, and the Liberals of the future to realise that 
 such measures should be framed in a Conservative spirit 
 then, indeed, the aims of its founders will have been amply 
 fulfilled, and the meeting of this evening will not have been 
 held in vain. 
 
 SPEECH FROM THE CHAIR AT THE LIBERAL UNION 
 CLUB, MAY 8, 1889 
 
 The Chairman, in proposing the toast of the evening ' The 
 Health of Our Guest ' (the Earl of Derby) said that it would 
 ill become him to enlarge upon any of the ephemeral or sensa- 
 tional incidents of the Irish Question, which occupied such an
 
 552 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 exorbitant space both in the newspapers and in the popular 
 mind. He did not hold with those who imagined that the 
 arguments in favour of the Union were exhausted ; they were 
 not exhausted, because they were simply inexhaustible. Their 
 guest, Lord Derby, never spoke without throwing some fresh 
 light upon the subject, and he was quite sure that, if he were 
 consulted, he could supply the texts for many powerful speeches 
 to be delivered by members of the Union Club on subjects which 
 had hitherto been almost overlooked. He would only mention 
 one of those neglected subjects. ' The Case of England 
 against Home Rule ' had been most ably stated by their friend, 
 Professor Dicey, and he had waited for a long time to see the 
 case of Ireland against Home Eule stated, as it might be, 
 with equal force and potency. For if Home Rule would not 
 be a blessing to Ireland, or if, on the contrary, it would be 
 the most ruinous curse, surely it was vain, and worse than 
 vain, to be considering how that curse could be permanently 
 imposed upon Ireland by Act of Parliament. He would very 
 much like to hear the opinion of Mr. Parnell himself on that 
 particular question, because, as far as he was aware, Mr. 
 Parnell had never attempted to forecast or to foretell the 
 consequence of that Home Rule which he demanded. Instead 
 of that he preferred to dwell, and had dwelt especially in 
 recent speeches, on the disastrous failure of past experiments 
 in conciliation a failure which he professed to deplore, but 
 which, strange to say, he twisted into arguments in favour of 
 making another experiment, which was called Home Rule. 
 That seemed to him a very strange method of reasoning ; for, 
 after all, who was mainly responsible for those past failures 
 of remedial measures passed by successive Governments for 
 the benefit of Ireland ? Really, when those who had devoted 
 their whole influence to vilifying such a remedial policy, 
 marring, if they could, its healing effects, and putting poison 
 into the minds of the Irish people, turned round and conjured 
 that very Legislature to aid them in cementing what they 
 called the union of hearts by a fresh experiment in concilia- 
 tion, he was forcibly reminded of that model Irishman in the
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTEES, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 553 
 
 well-known story who, having murdered both his father and 
 his mother, went about begging for alms in the character of 
 a poor orphan. He would give full credit to Mr. Parnell for 
 sincerity in his present mood, when he advocated a moderate 
 measure of Home Eule, which could not be possibly converted 
 into national independence. He would go further, and assume 
 that Mr. Parnell was really prepared to support a moderate 
 land settlement, and to re-establish the authority of the Ten 
 Commandments in Ireland, and aid Mr. Balfour in restoring 
 the supremacy of the law. What then ? Was Mr. Parnell 
 competent to perform any of those pledges ? Was he as 
 powerful for good as he had, unhappily, been powerful for 
 evil ? Had he ever persuaded the National League to pass 
 a resolution adopting Home Eule and repudiating Separation, 
 and to allay the wild spirit of rebellion and agrarian plunder 
 which had been raised in support of the Home Eule move- 
 ment, and to which it owed any vitality which it might possess ? 
 Could he control his American allies, who had supplied the 
 sinews of war to the National League, whose ideal was an 
 Irish republic the harp without the crown and who relied 
 upon him to sever the last link which bound Ireland to Great 
 Britain ? Could he control his Irish followers, who eagerly 
 swallowed his ' No-rent ' manifesto, who had organised the 
 Plan of Campaign in spite of him, and who cared nothing for 
 Home Eule, except so far as it meant wholesale spoliation ? 
 If not, was it not more than a mockery to amuse ourselves 
 with patent schemes of statutory Home Eule, which must 
 inevitably be converted, by a shorter or a longer process, not 
 only into Separation, but into anarchy ? 
 
 And this brought him by a natural transition to his last 
 and most agreeable topic the health of Lord Derby because 
 no man had seen more clearly through all these illusions than 
 Lord Derby had, or had done more to place the national 
 aspects of the Irish question before the public in their true 
 light, and in their true proportions. He trusted he would 
 not shock a Liberal audience, and he was sure he would not 
 offend Lord Derby, if he mentioned it as one of his best
 
 554 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 claims to their confidence at a crisis like this, that, being a 
 staunch Liberal, he was brought up in the school of Con- 
 servatism. It was not so much that all of them had some- 
 thing to learn from their Conservative friends ; it was rather 
 that a Liberal who has not inherited his principles, but 
 thought them out for himself, is sure to hold them by a 
 stronger tenure, and is not so liable to be swayed by hero- 
 worship or traditional partisanship as those who have never 
 gone through a process of conviction. Now, it was just this 
 independence of judgment and character which constituted the 
 strength of the Liberal Unionist party. 
 
 Among the leaders of that party, Lord Derby held a place 
 second to none unless it were to their President, Lord 
 Hartington that pure-minded and true-hearted man, without 
 fear and without reproach, whose one fault was that he scarcely 
 appreciated his own powers and influence in the country. Others 
 might have spoken oftener than Lord Derby none had spoken 
 more weightily ; others might have carried the war more boldly 
 into the enemy's country none had more tenaciously defended 
 the centre of the Unionist position ; others might have dealt 
 as skilfully with the shifting tactics of the present none had 
 realised more fully, or set forth more impressively, the graver 
 issues of the future. The Liberal Unionist party could ill 
 have spared his great political experience, his firm grasp of 
 the essential facts, or his masterly refutation of specious 
 fallacies all the more effective because embodied in the dis- 
 passionate words of truth and soberness. When the history 
 of this memorable drama came to be written, and posterity 
 should pass judgment upon the leading actors in it, the 
 meed of honour would be reserved for those who had striven 
 to lift the Irish Question above personalities, above party 
 spirit, above opportunism, above time-serving, above popu- 
 larity-hunting, to a higher level of patriotic statesmanship : 
 and of those who should be thus rewarded, few, indeed, would 
 be as worthy of historical gratitude as their guest, Lord 
 Derby.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 555 
 
 SPEECH FEOM THE CHAIR, AT THE DINNER OP 
 THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY UNIONIST LEAGUE, ON 
 NOVEMBER 19, 1889 
 
 The Chairman, in proposing * The Unionist Cause,' said that, 
 in giving them the chief toast of the evening the Unionist 
 Cause he did not intend to detain them more than a few 
 minutes, while he congratulated them on the vitality of that 
 great Unionist Party which their opponents told them had 
 practically ceased to exist. He confessed that such reports 
 of their extinction, proceeding from such quarters, had no 
 terrors for him. No doubt it would be very distressing to see 
 one's own death gazetted in the newspapers, to have one's 
 own funeral conducted before one's own eyes, and to read 
 obituary notices of oneself, written in a tone anything but 
 nattering to one's vanity. But, after all, the nerves of sensible 
 men ought to be strong enough to resist such a trial, espe- 
 cially if the report were circulated by someone selfishly 
 interested in one's disappearance from the scene. And, 
 therefore, he would not dwell upon the palpable fact that 
 Unionism was a living reality, and that loyal men of both 
 parties in the State had been content to put aside their old 
 differences for the sake of the Unionist Cause. He would 
 rather ask them to consider what was the meaning of this 
 Unionist Cause, which marked a new and auspicious departure 
 in English politics. Of course, the first meaning of the 
 Unionist Cause, and the primary duty of Unionists, was in- 
 flexible resistance to Home Rule not only to Mr. Gladstone's 
 Home Rule scheme, but to any Home Rule scheme which 
 would establish an Irish Parliament in Dublin. He had 
 often said, and he said again, that if they were to have 
 Home Rule, Mr. Gladstone's was about as good a Home Rule 
 Bill as the perverse ingenuity of man could devise. Whatever 
 may be said against Mr. Gladstone, he was no bungler, and 
 if his Bill was open to a dozen, or a hundred fatal objections, 
 that was because Home Rule was utterly impracticable or 
 indefensible as a policy, however attractive it might be as an
 
 556 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 idea. They opposed Home Rule, not only because it would 
 be ruinous to the interests of England, but also because, under 
 the name of justice to Ireland, it would involve the worst 
 injustice and the deadliest wrong to Ireland which Great 
 Britain could possibly inflict upon her. Unionists knew that 
 this Home Rule movement had no basis in Irish history or 
 Irish character ; that it was a spurious offshoot of American 
 Fenianism, and owed its popularity among Irish peasants to 
 unscrupulous promises of wholesale agrarian plunder ; that it 
 could not be established without civil war ; that, if it were 
 established, it would plunge Ireland into anarchy and 
 pauperism ; and that the next generation of Irishmen might 
 well turn round and curse England, with far more reason 
 than ever, for her cowardly surrender of Irish destinies, now 
 under the guardianship of an Imperial Parliament. But 
 this was not the only meaning of the Unionist Cause. Sir 
 William Harcourt told them that Home Rule for Ireland was 
 only the first chapter in the Separatist programme. He 
 dared say it was, and he might rejoin that resistance to 
 Home Rule was only the first article in the Unionist pro- 
 gramme. They were opposed to that general policy of disin- 
 tegration which Mr. Gladstone seemed to have borrowed from 
 the age of the Heptarchy a policy which aimed at reviving 
 separate nationalities in Scotland, in Wales, in India ; which 
 sowed discord between classes, and which emphasised those 
 sectional interests which must exist in every community 
 still more in every great Empire but which it was the chief 
 object of true statesmanship to unite and to consolidate. It 
 was the proud boast of an Athenian statesman that, while 
 he had little knowledge of music, he knew how to convert 
 a small State into a great one. The foremost of English 
 statesmen might well reverse this boast, for he believed he 
 possessed a considerable knowledge of music, while, unless 
 he were restrained by the Unionist Party, he would prove a 
 perfect master in the art of converting a great State into a 
 small one. There was yet another meaning of the Unionist 
 Cause. It had come to represent a standing protest against
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 557 
 
 the popularity-hunting and time-serving which now passed 
 for statesmanship. They had to combat, not only the con- 
 scientious sophistry of Mr. Gladstone, but the barefaced 
 Opportunism of Mr. Labouchere and his ultra-Radical fol- 
 lowers. The Unionist Party was nothing at all if it was not 
 a party of principle and of conviction, and though it was 
 their duty no less than their interest to carry popular opinion 
 with them, they did not seek inspiration from popular 
 opinion as from an oracle. They did not, for instance, make 
 light of bye-elections as indicating the drift of political senti- 
 ment among the masses, but they would not accept such 
 guidance as indicating the line of their own duty. He might 
 go further, and contend that their opponents, by adopting the 
 Plan of Campaign and carrying its methods into English 
 politics, had forced them into the position of guarding and 
 upholding the fundamental principles of public morality. He 
 did not, indeed, claim for Unionists that they had a higher 
 code of political ethics than Home Rulers, but he did venture 
 to submit that their code of political ethics was in closer 
 accordance with the Ten Commandments. They did not palliate 
 agrarian murder ; they did not admire agrarian theft ; they 
 did not instigate people to covet their neighbours' goods ; and 
 they were old-fashioned enough to hold that the maintenance 
 of law and order was the first duty of a Government. But 
 he was reminded by that meeting that Unionism meant even 
 more than all this. It meant, not, perhaps, a coalition or a 
 fusion, but a firm and loyal alliance between Moderate 
 Liberals and Moderate Conservatives between the Right and 
 Left Centre, as the French would call it which might end in 
 the formation of a great central party. For a long time past, 
 men of this type, sitting on both sides of the House, had re- 
 gretted that party lines had separated and compelled them 
 night after night to go into opposite lobbies, however much 
 they might have in common, and have longed for a Govern- 
 ment which might initiate Liberal measures in a Conserva- 
 tive spirit. Well, these hopes had now been more or less 
 realised, and such a bond of union had now been formed ; but
 
 558 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 it had not been formed without great sacrifices of personal 
 ambition and personal feeling. Perhaps the Liberal Unionists 
 were apt to forget how great a sacrifice of pride and party- 
 spirit was made when Lord Salisbury practically offered to 
 serve under Lord Hartington, and when Conservatives under- 
 took to support Liberal Unionists for seats which, a year 
 before, had been wrested by Liberal candidates from Conser- 
 vatives. Of the sacrifices made by Liberal Unionists it would 
 hardly become him to speak. He would only say that, in 
 his opinion, loss of office is the least of them, and that no 
 such painful rupture of social ties had taken place since the 
 great Civil War, when the best friends sometimes felt com- 
 pelled to cross swords on the battle-field. He had great 
 pleasure in coupling this toast with the names of Lord Jersey 
 and Lord Wantage, both of them Conservative Unionists. 
 Lord Jersey was known to all of them, not only as a Univer- 
 sity man, but as a neighbour, as Lord-Lieutenant of the 
 County, and as High Steward of the City. He believed he 
 was elected to that office by the consent of both parties, and 
 that he was recommended to it by a singular courtesy, im- 
 partiality of mind, and independence of judgment, which he 
 had shown both in Parliament and in county politics, and 
 which rendered him an eminently worthy representative of 
 the Unionist Cause. Lord Wantage was a man who had in- 
 curred the mild censure recorded against those of whom all 
 men speak well, for when he represented Berkshire he con- 
 ciliated all parties, and in his connection with the Volunteer 
 movement he had rendered services to the nation which all 
 his countrymen appreciated. But he could not help remind- 
 ing his hearers also, that Lord Wantage was among the first 
 to win the Victoria Cross for personal bravery on the field ; 
 and if they only stuck to their principles as he did to his 
 regimental colours at the battle of the Alma, the Unionist 
 Cause would never be in danger.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 5. r )9 
 
 SPEECH FROM THE CHAIR, INTRODUCING THE 
 RIGHT HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN TO A MEETING 
 OF THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY UNIONIST LEAGUE, 
 IN THE CORN EXCHANGE, OXFORD, MAY 7, 1890 
 
 My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, There is a time for all 
 things, and assuredly the present occasion is not a time for a 
 long speech from the Chair. We are all impatient to hear 
 Mr. Chamberlain, and it would ill become me, nor will you 
 expect me, to detain you by reviewing the Political Situation, 
 by discussing the present aspect of the Drink Question, by 
 commenting on the verdict of the Special Commission, or 
 even by condoling with our political opponents on the painful 
 state of discord and perplexity into which they have evidently 
 been thrown by Mr. Balfour's Land-Purchase Bill. My duty 
 is, happily, very simple. It is to explain the object of this 
 meeting, to introduce this Oxford audience to Mr. Chamberlain, 
 and to introduce Mr. Chamberlain I believe, for the first 
 time to an Oxford audience. Now, this is a meeting of the 
 Oxford University Unionist League, and, like other meetings 
 of that League, would naturally have been limited to its own 
 members now more than eight hundred in number and 
 held in a smaller room. But having succeeded in inducing 
 Mr. Chamberlain to address us, we knew that many outside 
 the circle of our League would be anxious to hear him, and 
 it was strongly represented to us especially by the Earl of 
 Jersey, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Maclean that an important service 
 might be rendered to the Unionist cause by giving Mr. 
 Chamberlain the opportunity of speaking, not only to Uni- 
 versity men, but to citizens, and not only to Unionists, but 
 to political waverers, and even to candid and fair-minded 
 opponents ; for though some ardent partisans can hardly 
 imagine it, there are such beings as political waverers, and 
 it is possible for our political opponents to be candid and 
 fair-minded. Well, we felt that we could not resist this 
 appeal ; we enlarged our plans, we extended our invitations, 
 and the result is the great meeting of this evening. It would
 
 5G0 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 be almost impertinent for me to assure Mr. Chamberlain, 
 who knows the Midland counties so well, that Unionism is 
 strong in Oxfordshire. We hold two out of three county 
 seats, we hold the seat for the City ; and as for the two Uni- 
 versity seats, no Gladstonian candidate would have the 
 smallest chance for them. But we must not be too confident. 
 Our opponents are working day and night to beat us ; like 
 the Pharisees of old, they are compassing sea and land to 
 make one proselyte, and when they have got hold of one 
 why, I leave it to others to describe what they are likely to 
 make of him. The Home Eulers are active in the University ; 
 indeed, it was their reckless activity which called this League 
 into existence. Far be it from me to blame them : let us 
 rather imitate their zeal and energy, and what is more 
 let us give them full credit for motives as pure and honour- 
 able as our own. We are specially bound to do so here in 
 Oxford. I speak as a University man, with some experience 
 of politics, to an audience largely composed of University 
 men, and 1 say deliberately, that I know no constituency and 
 no community in England where political views are more 
 honestly formed and more conscientiously held. We stand 
 outside the great world of politics, we are not under the 
 dictation of local wirepullers or Parliamentary Whips, we are 
 hampered by no electioneering pledges, we have no personal 
 interests to serve by joining the one party or the other. 
 Political opinion among University men, such as I see before 
 me, may be visionary, it may be coloured by the optimism of 
 youth, but it has the supreme merit of being founded on 
 honest conviction. And when I claim this merit for the 
 opinions of my Unionist friends, I claim it equally for the 
 opinions of my Home llule friends. We Unionists know well 
 and we know it to our sorrow that some of the brightest 
 intellects and some of the truest hearts in this University, 
 both among seniors and among juniors, have been led to 
 espouse the cause of Home Rule. We may, and we must, 
 regard them as the victims of an error of a delusion which 
 seems to us most perilous ; but I for one shall never shrink
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 5G1 
 
 from admitting that, if it be an error, it is a generous error 
 on their part, and one deserving of serious refutation. And 
 that is why I am gratified to know that some of our Home 
 Rule friends are present here to-night, because opinions 
 which are founded on conviction are always open to be modi- 
 fied by conviction, and it will do them no harm to hear the 
 views of one who has as good a right to command their 
 attention as any speaker that has ever appeared in this hall. 
 I am not going to give you a political biography of Mr. 
 Chamberlain, whose character requires no testimonial from 
 me. I will only remind you that for the last twenty years 
 he has been known to his countrymen, not as a Tory though 
 we now hear something of Tory Democrats ; not as a Whig 
 though I hold it no shame to be a Whig but as a Eadical 
 of the most robust type. Then why is he now a Unionist ? 
 That you will probably gather from his own speech to-night. 
 One thing only I will venture to say for him. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain is no stranger to America indeed, he has lately given 
 it the greatest proof of good-will that lay in his power and, 
 knowing America, he sees clearly, as a true-hearted English- 
 man, what his colleague, John Bright, also saw that Home 
 Eule means for us what Secession meant for the Americans 
 a question of national life or death. But do not let us imagine 
 that Mr. Chamberlain, or Lord Hartington, or any Liberal- 
 Unionist leader, has adopted his present attitude without a 
 great moral effort, or without great personal sacrifices. Ah ! 
 Gentlemen, it is an easy thing to float with the stream, and 
 to sail with the wind, and to repeat the shibboleths of party, 
 and to mistake second-hand prejudices for conscientious 
 beliefs, and to support a popular cause amidst the plaudits 
 of admiring comrades. But I will tell you what is hard : it 
 is hard, it is heart-breaking, for a statesman in the prime of 
 life to part company with political friends whom he has loved 
 and trusted, to withdraw from them, first confidence, and then 
 perhaps respect ; to forfeit popularity for a while ; to see the 
 working classes drifting away from honest leadership under 
 the influence of false guides ; to face the prospect of lifelong 
 

 
 5f)2 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 exclusion from office, even though he be consoled by the 
 knowledge that it is one thing to be in office, and another 
 thing to be in power. This is no light trial for political 
 virtue, and there are those who have flinched under the ordeal. 
 But Mr. Chamberlain was not one of them, and it is chiefly 
 because he stands before you to-night as a consistent man, 
 without fear and without reproach, a staunch Unionist though 
 a staunch Radical, that I now claim for him, and promise 
 him on your behalf, a most hearty welcome and a most 
 respectful hearing. 
 
 SPEECH IN PROPOSING LITERATURE ' AT THE 
 GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY'S DINNER TO MR. H. M. 
 STANLEY, JULY 8, 1890 
 
 Mr. President, my Lords, and Gentlemen, A toast has 
 been entrusted to me which at first sight may appear some- 
 what foreign to the object of our present gathering, but 
 which, in truth, is as closely related to it as that which has 
 just been drunk. I give you the toast of ' Literature,' and I 
 couple with it the names of Mr. Lecky and Professor Jebb 
 of Cambridge. The connection between Literature and Geo- 
 graphy is no remote or fanciful connection. Not only is 
 Mr. Stanley himself a prolific and successful author ; not 
 only have earlier travellers, from Herodotus downwards, 
 enriched literature with graphic descriptions of their experi- 
 ences but the resources of literature itself, in all its branches, 
 have been vastly increased by the progress of geographical 
 discovery. I think we hardly realise how contracted was the 
 horizon, and therefore how narrow I might almost say, how 
 provincial were the sympathies of those great writers in 
 olden times whose masterpieces are still justly regarded as 
 perfect models of style, proving, as they do, what the human 
 mind is capable of constructing out of the scantiest possible 
 materials. And let us remember that for more than 1,000 
 years after the fall of the Roman Empire this horizon was 
 
 1 From the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, July 3, 1800.
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 503 
 
 not sensibly widened, and no important addition was made 
 to the geographical knowledge of mankind. To Dante and 
 Chaucer, to Eoger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas, no less than 
 to Homer and Demosthenes, Virgil and Cicero, the earth was 
 practically the Orbis Veteribm Notus, an irregular block of 
 countries curtained in by a veil of mystery, and mostly 
 grouped around the Mediterranean Sea. Under such limita- 
 tions, that larger conception of human nature which inspires 
 modern literature was just as impossible as that larger con- 
 ception of natural science which has been set forth by the 
 President of the Royal Society. And so, in spite of their 
 matchless form, the poetical and other literary works of the 
 ages before Columbus are not to be compared in range of 
 thought, or in breadth of human sympathy, with the literary 
 works of the last three centuries. The discovery of America 
 was immediately followed by a marvellous literary revival, 
 the expansion of literature has kept pace ever since with the 
 expansion of geography, and the humblest newspaper-writer 
 of to-day has at his command a stock of ideas, directly or 
 indirectly derived from geography, which neither Plato, nor 
 Aristotle, nor any other philosopher, could ever have evolved 
 from the recesses of his own mind. 
 
 But the gentlemen whose healths I couple with this toast 
 do not belong to the class of newspaper- writers. Having long 
 been a member of that class myself, I should be the last to 
 disparage the art of journalism especially in the presence of 
 Mr. Stanley ; but I am glad that on this great occasion both 
 ancient and modern literature are worthily represented by 
 men of the genuine scholarlike type, who study form as well 
 as substance, and have left a permanent mark on the subjects 
 which they have treated. Professor Jebb is known far beyond 
 the bounds of his own University, and even of his own 
 country, as the learned editor of several Greek poets and 
 orators ; a scholar of scholars, yet deeply imbued with modern 
 culture; as the leading spirit among our modern English 
 Hellenists, and as the biographer of Bentley, one of the 
 greatest among many great Cambridge scholars. As for
 
 564 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Mr. Lecky, we all know that his numerous historical works 
 are already standard works, and that, as the phrase goes, no 
 library is complete without them. I am sure he will forgive 
 me when I add that, as I peruse the last of these his excel- 
 lent and monumental ' History of the Eighteenth Century ' 
 and as I follow him through the mazes 6f Parliamentary 
 intrigue, and the dreary waste of Irish politics in the reign 
 of George III., I feel that he must have been endowed with a 
 patience almost equal to that of Mr. Stanley in forcing his 
 way through that dismal forest of Central Africa. 
 
 However, we may congratulate him, like Mr. Stanley, on 
 having come out, safe and sound, on the other side, and I 
 know you will all agree with me that we are doing justice to 
 Literature when we associate its interests with such names 
 as those of Professor Jebb and Mr. Lecky. 
 
 SPEECH IN PROPOSING 'THE BISHOP AND CLERGY 
 OF THE DIOCESE ' AT THE OXFORD DINNER TO 
 LORD JERSEY, OCTOBER 15, 1890 
 
 The Warden of Merton said he felt the more diffidence in 
 proposing the next toast ' The Bishop and Clergy of the 
 Diocese ' because he must appear to be trespassing on the 
 special province of their good friend, Alderman Deazeley, 
 who had proved himself a perfect master in the difficult art 
 of proposing this toast appropriately. And yet, perhaps, as 
 the son of a true-hearted and devoted clergyman, long-since 
 dead, he might have some right to speak from experience 
 and from conviction of the virtues of our parochial clergy. 
 Whatever might be said against the principles of an Esta- 
 blished Church, it had at least this merit that it placed in 
 every parish, however poor or remote, an educated .and 
 generally a pious man, whose duty it was to exercise a 
 pastoral care over all who would accept his ministrations, to 
 promote education, to visit the sick, comfort the dying, and 
 to befriend all his parishioners who stood in need of aid,
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 505 
 
 either spiritual or temporal. All this was his duty, and most, 
 if not all, of our clergy did their best to fulfil it ; but it was 
 their moral duty, not their legal duty it was written in no 
 law either of the Church or of the State, and, if it were, the 
 bishop himself had no means of enforcing it. Well, then, 
 he claimed for the clergy of our Church that no other class of 
 public servants in this or any other country did so much as 
 they did outside and beyond their official duty, and that under 
 the influence of the highest motives that could animate human 
 nature. Yes, as the Bishop well reminded them in his Ad- 
 dress to the Diocesan Conference, the parish, and not the 
 platform, was the proper sphere of the clergyman, and they 
 must all agree with him that it would be an evil day for the 
 Church when its clergy took to agitation and popularity- 
 hunting, instead of attending to their parish duties. A shrewd 
 old French ecclesiastic strongly advised the Emperor Napoleon 
 not to summon a Grand Synod of the French Church, adding 
 this remark : ' The wine is an excellent one, but much better 
 in bottle than in cask.' He confessed that he was very much 
 of that opinion : at all events, the parochial clergy, with few 
 exceptions, set an example of godliness and benevolence to all 
 their parishioners which did honour to Christianity ; and if 
 this were true of the clergy in other dioceses, it was certainly 
 true of the clergy in the diocese, and especially in the City, of 
 Oxford. They were well supplied with clergymen in Oxford. 
 With a population of about 50,000, they had some fifty 
 ministers of the Established Church, a good many of whom 
 were men of high culture, appointed by the Colleges, and he 
 did not know one of whom they had reason to be ashamed. 
 They might disagree with the politics of one, or the ritual of 
 another, but they lived amongst them, they knew their going 
 out and their coming in, and he said deliberately, in the 
 presence of the Archdeacon and the Kural Dean, that he did 
 not believe a more hardworking, blameless, and exemplary 
 body of men was to be found in the country. He was sure, if 
 their parochial activity was to be measured by the frequency 
 and urgency of their appeals for subscriptions to Heads of
 
 566 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Colleges, the Bishop had every reason to be satisfied ; but 
 then, as they all knew, they subscribed themselves, out of 
 their own slender incomes, on a scale which very few laymen 
 would care to imitate. Of the Bishop himself he would only 
 say that he seemed to combine almost all the qualities which 
 could be desired in the chief pastor of this diocese. He must 
 not say much in his presence of his great historical learning, 
 which enabled him to understand, as few men could, the 
 constitutional relations of the Church and State the depth 
 and the continuity of the organic connection between the life 
 of the English Church and the life of the English nation- 
 The historical infallibility of our Bishop was one of the few 
 truths which were universally received, even by the critics of 
 our Oxford Common-rooms, almost satisfying that old test 
 of Catholicity quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. 
 But our Bishop was not merely a man of books. As he said 
 in his first Charge, he succeeded two men very dim cult to 
 follow : the one, who could make everyone do what he wanted ; 
 the other, who made a point of doing everything himself. 
 But perhaps his successor would have a like complaint to 
 make against him, and feel how difficult it was to rival, not 
 only the learning, but the prompt attention to business, the 
 earnest sympathy in the discharge of his episcopal functions, 
 and the natural geniality of disposition, which were the gifts 
 of our present Bishop. These were days in which no bishop 
 could afford to be what rowing-men call a duffer ' he was 
 sure the Bishop would pardon the expression. He knew of 
 no ' duffers ' on the Episcopal Bench ; everyone felt that he 
 must pull his weight in the boat, and show practical capacity 
 in contact with the world. No one knew this better than our 
 Bishop. It had been suspected that he sometimes regretted 
 his banishment to Cuddesdon, and would like to reside a little 
 nearer his Cathedral Church and the Bodleian Library. But 
 he was not sure that he was not safer at Cuddesdon just far 
 enough away to save him from being incessantly consulted 
 and worried about trifles, yet near enough to admit of his 
 being present with them for every purpose of real importance,
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 5G7 
 
 and even of his taking part in social gatherings on occasions 
 of special interest, such as that which had brought them all 
 there that evening. 
 
 ADDEESS ON DISTRIBUTING THE PRIZES AT THE 
 OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL, NOVEMBER 26, 1890 
 
 Before I proceed to distribute the prizes, I have been asked 
 to say a few words on the occasion which brings us here to- 
 day an occasion which reminds me of old times, and which 
 has a great interest to all of us, whether as parents, or as 
 boys, or as masters, or as citizens of Oxford and well-wishers 
 of the High School. I will not follow the Mayor into the 
 past history of the School, on which he is able to speak with 
 much fuller knowledge than I possess ; but I entirely agree 
 with him that it has amply justified the hopes of its founders. 
 This last year has not been a specially eventful one and no 
 school can expect to produce Jolliffes every year but the 
 testimony of both the examiners, and the results obtained in 
 the local examinations, show that solid and sound teaching 
 continues to be characteristic of the Oxford High School. 
 The Classical Examiner particularly notices, as evidence of 
 such teaching, the evenness of work in each class, the accu- 
 rate knowledge of Latin syntax, and the readiness of the 
 boys under viva voce examination. Now, I am accustomed to 
 read examiners' reports on the work done in one of our 
 greatest public schools, and I can assure you that such praise 
 from a competent examiner is the more valuable because it is- 
 rare. Then we have a very creditable list of honours won in 
 the Junior Local Examinations, including the second and 
 fourth places in the first class. And though no boy has won 
 a college scholarship direct from the School during the past 
 twelve months, I must say that I think Mr. Cave deserves the 
 larger part of the credit for the success of Underhill in winning 
 a mathematical scholarship at Balliol, after several years' 
 training at this School, from which he migrated only a year 
 1 From the Oxford Chronicle.
 
 568 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 ago. Upon the whole, considering the numbers of the School, 
 I think we have every reason to be satisfied with its public 
 running ' if I may borrow the expression from the sporting 
 world. I heartily wish that its numbers were larger ; I 
 believe that, if its advantages were fully understood by the 
 parents of Oxford, they would be larger, and I look forward 
 to a growing feeling in favour of higher day-schools like this, 
 as compared with higher boarding-schools ; but we must 
 remember that not even the most famous of our public schools 
 can dispense with the aid of permanent endowments, and 
 with these we are by no means so w r ell provided as could be 
 wished. The Corporation, it is true, has granted three 
 entrance-scholarships annually, open to competition among 
 the public elementary schools of Oxford. Moreover, one ex- 
 hibition, tenable in the University, is awarded annually out 
 of private benefactions. But the free scholarships open to 
 competition among boys already in the School are mostly 
 derived from the temporary subscriptions of Colleges or indi- 
 viduals, and this is a great source of weakness. However, it 
 has already been mentioned that our old friend, Alderman 
 Hughes, who has done so much for the School, has founded a 
 permanent scholarship of this kind for boys under fifteen, and 
 I have just heard that Mrs. Green has given a further dona- 
 tion of 10L for the library. But let us never forget that all 
 schools, however well endowed, and, most of all, new schools, 
 mainly depend for their reputation on the character of the 
 masters, the parents, and the boys for the time being. Now 
 I will say nothing by way of advice to masters, because it is 
 obviously their interest to do their best for the School, and 
 because, whatever their failings may be, they are, as a body, 
 one of the most capable and hard-working classes of men to 
 be found in the country. The elevation of the educational 
 profession is among the most remarkable and salutary reforms 
 that has occurred in my lifetime, and here in Oxford we are 
 specially fortunate in obtaining the services of able teachers, 
 including our excellent Head Master, at very moderate salaries, 
 ut I will venture, though not a parent myself, to offer a
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 569 
 
 few remarks for the consideration of parents. The educa- 
 tional duties of parents do not cease with the act of sending 
 their children to a good school especially if it be a day- 
 school. It is home influence which inspires the earliest efforts 
 of boys, which sustains their flagging resolution, and which 
 fortifies them against the manifold temptations of boyhood. 
 If I may be allowed to speak for a moment from personal 
 experience, it was the desire to please my parents which first 
 disposed me to industry, long before the fire of ambition was 
 lighted within me ; and it was the remembrance of their 
 warnings which often deterred me from following a multitude 
 to do evil. What is the secret of efficiency in those Scotch 
 parochial schools which set England an example of national 
 education ? Why, that Scotch parents take an active interest 
 in the studies of their children, and instead of encouraging 
 them to be idle at home, urge them on to do their utmost. 
 Depend upon it, the parent is the schoolmaster's best ally, 
 and where the discipline of the home is defective the discipline 
 of the school will be of little avail. And now, let me address 
 a few words to the boys of the High School not as a Don or 
 as an Alderman, but as one who was once an Eton boy not 
 so very long ago, though I have now got to a time of life 
 when one is said to be of the same age as everybody else. I 
 will not remind those who have won prizes that school-prizes 
 are chiefly valuable as incentives to further efforts, especially 
 when one is discouraged by the disappointments which come 
 to all of us, and when the memory of past successes may help 
 to revive in us a proper self-confidence. I will not remind 
 those who have failed that honest work is its own best reward, 
 and that, although people remember the fact of your having 
 gained a prize, no one remembers the fact of your not having 
 gained a prize. All this you know as well as I do, and I 
 cannot undertake to assure you, as some would assure you, 
 that ability and industry are certain to command success in 
 after-life. I wish this were true ; I wish promotion by merit 
 were the general rule of this world : but it is nbt always so 
 the race is not always to the swift, or the battle to the strong. 
 
 P P
 
 570 SPEECHES AND TETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 
 
 Favour and influence, which never enter into school- compe- 
 titions, have a good deal to do with the competitions of after- 
 life, and it is, perhaps, easier to deserve what you get than it 
 is to get what you deserve. But though all cannot secure 
 great wealth or high positions, the chances of success are 
 assuredly increased hy conscientious industry, and, in the 
 meantime, all can win by merit the respect of neighbours and 
 friends, and that is one of the greatest blessings and treasures 
 of human life. Let me earnestly impress upon you the im- 
 portance of cultivating two virtues the habit of energy and 
 the sense of duty. And when I speak of duty, I mean duty 
 to your parents, whose happiness largely depends on your 
 conduct at school and at home, duty to your schoolfellows, 
 and duty even to your masters, who, after all, are men of like 
 passions with yourselves, who need kindly sympathy, and 
 who can do far more for your benefit if they see that you 
 appreciate it. But perhaps the highest of earthly duties is 
 your duty to yourselves. Self-respect, in the best sense, is 
 one of the strongest outworks of Virtue. Remember that 
 every one of us is the guardian of his own powers, and of his 
 own soul ; that life, as well as death, is a very serious affair 
 quite as serious as the Bible tells us ; that school is the pre- 
 paration for life, and that, whether you realise it or not, you 
 are now moulding your own characters into a form which 
 may probably last as long as you live. And this brings me 
 to one other subject on which I should like to say a word. 
 It may be said, and it has been said, that examinations test 
 nothing but cleverness, and that it is only the sharpest boys, 
 and not the best, who are rewarded by prizes. A few days 
 ago I was glad to read a vigorous protest against that notion 
 from the present Bishop of London, whose educational ex- 
 perience enables him to speak with an authority to which I 
 cannot pretend. The Bishop pointed out, what every teacher 
 knows, that not only intellectual qualities, but moral qualities, 
 such as self-control, and self-denial, and patience, and gene- 
 rosity, are developed by examinations, and that, for this 
 reason, boys of weak or vicious character very seldom excel
 
 SPEECHES AND LETTERS, POLITICAL AND OCCASIONAL 571 
 
 in them. And as for the other objection to examinations 
 that they sometimes injure youthful constitutions I confess 
 that I have very little patience with it. Of course, there is a 
 danger of overwork, and parents should guard against it ; but 
 overwork is a rare and trifling danger compared with those 
 which spring from idleness, and I have yet to learn that the 
 worst tempter of English youth is not the world, or the flesh, 
 or the devil, but an excessive desire of literary distinction, 
 and an extreme devotion to study, which, after all, is the 
 main duty of boys and young men during the age of educa- 
 tion. 
 
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