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IDOLA FORI
IDOLA FORI
BEING
AN EXAMINATION OF SEVEN QUESTIONS
OF THE DAY
BY
WILLIAM SAMUEL LILLY
HONORARY FELLOW OP PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE
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— Plato.
London : Chapman & Hall, Ld.
St. Louis, Mo.
B. Herder, 17, South Broadway.
191 1
TO
WILLIAM LEONARD COURTNEY
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
EDITOR OF THE "FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW."
My Dear Courtney,
With your kind consent I give
myself the pleasure of writing your name
upon the first page of this book. Portions
of it which have appeared in the Fortnightly
Review I reclaim, for my present purpose, by
the obliging permission of Messrs. Chapman
and Hall. And I take advantage of this
opportunity to express my sense of deep in-
debtedness to you, during many years, for
your constant courtesy and consideration as
an editor, and for your sustaining sympathy
and sincerity as a friend.
VI
There is yet another reason which leads
me to dedicate to you this book. Careful
perusal of your philosophical writings brings
me to the conclusion, that the fundamental
principles and beliefs upon which it is based,
have the sanction of your authority. My
object has been to consider certain important
public questions in the light of those principles
and beliefs. I hope I have addressed myself
to that task in the spirit indicated by the
words of Plato quoted on the title page.
Indeed, if I know myself at all, I may truly
claim to be " one of those who are very will-
ing to be refuted if I say anything which is
not true, and very willing to refute any one
else who says what is not true: and just as
ready to be refuted as to refute : " while if I
have, at times, written with any warmth, the
cause is my deep conviction — to continue in
Plato's words — that " there is no evil which
a man can endure so great as an erroneous
opinion about the matters whereof we are
speaking."
I am sure you will agree with me that in
VI 1
those matters are involved the spiritual life
and death of nations, as of individuals : and
I do not understand how any one, realising
this, can discuss them with an "air of mild
indifference." I remember a remark made at
Cambridge years ago that the late Professor
Sidgwick's lecture-room, like the Court of
Chancery in Lord Eldon's time, might be
called Doubting Castle. Surely it was true.
What, for example, did that highly gifted
man teach about Conscience, but that it
might be the voice of eternal law within us,
in which case we ought evidently to obey it ;
or that it might be the voice of man com-
manding us to work for man, in which case
there might be a reason, not yet discovered,
why we should obey it ? What did he teach
concerning Right and Wrong but that there
might, possibly, be an immutable distinction
between them, or that, possibly, Right might
turn out to mean the pleasurable, and
Wrong the unpleasant? When we reflect
upon teaching of this sort, may we not well
say, " Back to Kant ? "
Vlll
I think you would say so. I think that,
with me, you would recognise in that feeble
old Professor the man to whom it was given
to do, for these latter times, a work like that
which Plato did for his day and generation.
Plato and Kant ! The collocation is strange :
for surely more diversely endowed natures
never existed. A witty friend of mine whim-
sically remarked to me that whereas when we
read Plato we seem to be listening to the
very voice of the creative Demiurgus, the
utterances of Kant might well be those of a
ghost with a cold in his head. Well, " I'll
take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds."
There are diversities of operation, but the
same spirit. The dialect which Kant employs
is ordinarily repellent, though here and there
he gives us flashes of inspiration which might
have come out of the depths of eternity. But,
to quote what I must take leave to call some
admirable words from your Constructive
Ethics : " The Kantian system, despite its
abstract terminology and its bristling array
of technicalities," is based upon "the ordinary
IX
and commonplace experiences of the moral
life," " the Categorical Imperative, the Law of
Duty, the Autonomous Will." Plato grounds
virtue on Reason : he combats the Utili-
tarian morality of the Sophists by his
emphatic insistence on the unconditioned
nature of ethical good : he scornfully de-
clares that the question whether justice or
injustice is better for man, is as inane as the
question whether it is better for man to be
sick or sound, to have a soul corrupted or a
clean soul. And is not this the substance of
Kant's moral philosophy ? You will doubtless
remember the pregnant words of Goethe
in one of his conversations with Chancellor
Miiller : " Die Moral ist ein ewiger Frie-
densversuch zwischen unseren personlichen
Anforderungen und den Gesetzen jenes
unsichtbaren Reiches. Sie war gegen das
Ende des letzten Jahrhunderts schlaff und
knechtisch geworden, als man sie dem
schwankenden Calcul einer blossen Gliick-
seligkeitstheorie unterwerfen wollte. Kant
fasste sie zuerst in ihrer iibersinnlichen
Bedeutung auf, und wie iiberstreng er sie
auch in seinem kategorischen Imperativ
auspragen wollte, so hat er doch das unster-
bliche Verdienst, uns von jener Weichlichkeit,
in die wir versunken waren, zuriickgebracht
zu haben."
Yes : Goethe was indeed well warranted
in regarding the vindication of the transcen-
dental character of the moral law as Kant's
" undying merit." And it is notable that, in
going back to Kant, we go back to a still
greater teacher, the foremost master of the
medieval school, with whom he is at one in
the chief positions of his ethical philosophy.
It is notable, but surely not curious, since
the true data of ethics are from everlasting
to everlasting. What Aquinas did for the
medieval period, Kant did for the age into
which he was born. And what an age ! An
age in which an outworn world fell in ruins,
in which the foundations of ordered human
life were overthrown. Is it too much to
say that the mission of Kant was to seek
and to find the true basic principles whereon
XI
the commonwealth of men might be securely
established? He realised the truth of the
ancient dictum " philosophia dux vitae," and
beginning, in early manhood, with the theo-
retic explanation of things, he went on, as
years went on, to apply practically for the
needs of human society, the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge amassed during his
life of study and meditation. His Rechts-
lehre — Science of Right I suppose is the
English equivalent — bears the date on which
he ceased from his professorial labours.
May it not well be that he regarded it as
crowning his philosophical edifice ? Am I in
error in accounting this, his last great gift
to the world, as, in some respects, the most
considerable of his writings? Not if, as I
judge, it rescues from Utilitarianism and
Eudaemonism the essential principles of
Right, establishes jurisprudence upon the
everlasting rock of the Practical Reason, and
lays down the true doctrine of the liberty
of man, as an ethical agent in an ethical
organism — the State.
Xll
How fruitful the influence of this treatise
has been, in countries where juridical and
political problems are studied scientifically
— England can hardly be regarded as one
of them — we both know. In the present un-
pretending volume I have sought ever to
keep in view the principles which it embodies.
Kant has observed that although " formal
Metaphysic, as such, can never be popular,
its results may be made quite intelligible to
the common reason, which is tinconscioiisly
metaphysical." Writing not for professed
students, but for intelligent and thoughtful
men of the world — the two adjectives are
not synonymous — I have endeavoured to
avoid, as far as possible, technical expres-
sions and Academical dialectics. Moreover,
I have aimed at making each Chapter as
complete as I could in itself, even at the
cost of repetitions — all repetitions are not
vain. And I have not hesitated, when
the occasion seemed to invite it, to avail
myself of a phrase or a sentence in my
earlier writings, trusting to the excuse so
Xlll
felicitously urged by Lord Morley of Black-
burn : " A man may once say a thing as
he would have it said, Sis Se ovk eVSex eTat —
he can hardly say it twice."
I am, my dear Courtney,
Very truly yours,
— W. S. LILLY.
Athenaeum Club,
October 4, 19 10.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
Apologia pro hoc libro
I. The Question of Popular Government
II. The Social Question .
III. The Question of Parental Right
IV. The Irish Question
V. The Indian Question .
VI. The Question of Cheapness
VII. The Criminal Question
Index
PAGE
I
25
48
93
"3
148
186
224
2 53
SUMMARY
APOLOGIA PRO HOC LIBRO
PAGE
The author's reason for writing the present volume is his belief
that the Seven Topics with which it deals should be con-
sidered in the light of a ruling principle of action ... i
Namely, the principle to which the words " right " and " duty "
bear witness 2
The words are occasionally employed, indeed, when those Topics
are discussed, but they are usually emptied of the meaning
which they bore for earlier generations 2
The conception of the moral law as an order of verities absolute
and eternal, seems to have been supplanted in the public
mind by the doctrine that our notions of right and wrong,
of justice and injustice, are purely the result of convention 3
That is, in effect, the doctrine of Hobbes, Bentham, John Stuart
Mill and Herbert Spencer 3
These teachers make an end of the imperative of duty .... 4
And regard freewill as an objective and subjective delusion . . 7
The doctrine of the Utilitarian School, almost completely ascen-
dant in England, during the last century, though never of
much account elsewhere, is precisely the doctrine of the
Sophists confuted by Plato 8
The contrary doctrine which informs this book, is that there is
an objective element in morality : that the idea of duty
differs by the whole diameter of existence from the con-
ception of agreeable feeling : that man because of his
distinctive endowment of reason — the faculty of perceiving
self-evident truth — can discern the true law of his being, the
law of virtue that we are born under, the moral law : that
the rule of ethics is the natural and permanent revelation
of the reason, whereof conscience is the practical judgment
or dictate — the entering into the individual of the objective
law of Right 9
b
xviii Summary
PAGE
Morality is, in its own sphere, autonomous, independent both of
theologies and theogonies, and of the facts and fallacies of
physicists, and claims obedience as a thing absolutely
good, and an end in itself 10
In willing obedience to it consists the goodness of man ... n
The faculty of the will to choose that which reason, indepen-
dently of natural inclination, declares to be practically
necessary or good, is the very foundation of moral science 12
The objection considered that, as a matter of fact, the moral
judgments which have obtained among men are diverse
and irreconcilable 13
Growth of the idea of right in the human conscience .... 16
Kant's precept for testing the ethical worth of our conduct . . 19
The office of causistry 20
Point of view from which the following Chapters are written :
that the moral law, as an ideal order of right, ruling
throughout all worlds, should dominate the whole field
of human action : that to it should be the ultimate appeal
in all causes 21
CHAPTER I
The Question of Popular Government
General acceptance of the phrase " The Will of the People " . . 26
Object of the present Chapter : to consider first, what that which
passes for " The Will of the People " really is : and
secondly to indicate what The Will of the People should
be 26
The " People " of the formula in question are, roughly speaking,
the adult male population of the country considered as
equivalent voting animals 26
As all the sovereign individuals will not be of the same mind, the
effective " Will " must be that of a portion of them ... 28
Of the possessors of votes in Parliamentary elections, almost all
are attached to a political party, and are constant to it . 29
But there are a few in every constituency who habitually vacillate,
and who are sometimes called " balancing electors " and
sometimes "wobblers," which latter appellation seems
more accurately descriptive 29
It is on the votes of the " wobblers " that an election turns : the
Will of the People really means their Will : it is they
whom our representative institutions represent .... 29
Summary xix
PAGE
That is how a majority in a Parliamentary election is made up
— by the changing caprice of the wobblers : but even a
real majority could not claim to represent the People . . 30
The effect of universal or of quasi-universal suffrage is to place
preponderating power in the hands of the most ignorant
and poorest class: the class ofunanual labourers : and,
we are told, that this " army of toilers " is the people
whose Will should be decisive of all political and social
problems 31
The word Will in this phrase is utterly misleading. Will, in the
proper sense of the word, is individual : and in strictness
there can be no such thing as a general will. Moreover,
Will is in its essence rational : but the vast majority of
"the People," as the word is popularly understood, are
no more capable of reasoning than they are of flying :
nor does the mob orator or electioneering agent appeal
to their reason, but to their passions, in order to get their
votes 32
The new democracy — described by Mill as "falsely called
democracy " — is but old despotism differently spelt ... 33
The sovereignty of the masses and monarchical absolutism
represent one and the same principle : the domination not
of the moral idea which is law, reason, but of the indi-
vidual cravings and caprices 33
A parable from Plato 34
The current conception of " The Will of the People " is a fiction
derived from Rousseau, and having no more actuality
than his Social Contract 35
It is not true that "the great army of toilers" is the People.
Human society is made up of vastly varying individuals,
of a number of classes, of interests, diverse but dependent
upon one another, and all necessary for the perfection of
the body politic 36
A Representative Government should reproduce all the elements
of the country in due proportion, and when such a system
exists, we may regard it as entitled to express the com-
munis sensus of the body politic, or, if we must have the
phrase, The Will of the People, upon questions of general
import 37
The present system of atomism represents only one element of the
social organism and that by no means the most important —
numbers : it reckons all men equivalent whatever their
capacity or incapacity, and as entitled to the same influence
in the government 38
xx Summary
PAGE
But thus to dispense equality to equals and unequals is to found
the public order on a lie 38
This will seem mere midsummer madness to professional vote-
catchers, and to their patrons, the players of the party
game in Parliament, who can see nothing in the
mechanisnfof politics but a sum in addition, and nothing
as the end of politics but place and power 38
But there are signs that the day of party government among us
is drawing to a close 39
The players of the party game, bidding against one another for
the favour of the populace, have transferred prepondera-
ting political power to the masses 39
Who are beginning to be sick of the part of counters which they
have played in the party game, and are realising their
power, and are inquiring whether they may not use it for
their own benefit 4°
The very foundation of Socialism is the doctrine of the absolute
power of numerical majorities 4 1
And Socialism — or Social Democracy if the term be preferred —
is the goal to which the ochlocratic movement is tending
in England, and throughout the civilised world .... 42
Its demand is that a democratically organised State shall bring
about the transformation from private appropriation and
exchange, to public ownership and public service in a
co-operative commonwealth 43
It is by the truth latent in any doctrine, however pernicious,
that it succeeds among men. Socialism is, in some sort,
a protest for the organic nature of civil society : and
Socialists are right in insisting that work is a Social
function, and property a Social trust 44
The antimonies of our existing Social order 45
CHAPTER II
The Social Question
The debates in Parliament, and especially in the House of
Commons, exhibit few traces of that " art of seeing " which
has been described as "the whole art of politics "... 48
The cause being that the dust of party politics gets into the eyes
of our legislators and mars their intellectual vision . . 49
An illustration of this truth was supplied by the proceedings
in the House of Commons when discussing Mr. Lloyd
Summary xxi
PAGE
George's famous Budget. Its significance, as a sign ot
the times, received scant recognition 49
But Mr. Lloyd George's financial policy, apart from any question
concerning him personally, may rightly be regarded as
an outward visible manifestation of the spirit of the age :
it means that the Condition of England Question is at
length claiming to be of paramount importance, and can
no longer be shelved by the players of the party game . . 5 r
Figures regarding the wealth and income of the United Kingdom,
and what they mean 52
The economical condition of the United States of America . . 54
Over the United States as over England is spread " the shame
of mixed luxury and misery" and no country of the
civilised world is wholly exempt from it. "Wealth
accumulates, and men decay '' 55
This state of things is the outcome of the economical doctrines
unquestioningly received and believed in the civilised
world for well nigh a century from Adam Smith's time . 56
The old orthodox political economy, with its system of " free
competition working by supply and demand," arrayed
Capital and Labour against one another : and in the
struggle, labour went to the wall 57
Trade Unions helped the cause of Labour. Their benefits . . 59
But combination among workmen has been followed by com-
bination among Capitalists. Hence have arisen Rings
and Trusts 60
These organisations of Capital are of American origin, and are
best judged of if surveyed as they exist in the United
States of America 61
Mr. Byron C. Mathews' account of them 62
They give to Capital the control of the wealth material, and the
non-owning wage-earners are economically in the power
of those who possess that control, as truly as were the
coloured slaves in the power of their owners before their
emancipation 63
Mr. Mathews indicates as a solution of the labour problem such
a readjustment of the relation of the labourer to the pro-
duct of his labour as will allow him to earn a living for
himself, without first being compelled to contribute to
the living of capitalists and landlords 69
And looks to the ballot-box to give that solution 69
Doubtless the conviction has taken deep root in poor men's
minds that they may as well keep in their own hands the
xxii Summary
PAGE
distribution of the means of life which they produce : and
they now possess preponderating political power .... 69
Mill's inquiry : " Even supposing them to be sufficiently en-
lightened to be aware that it is not to their advantage to
weaken the security of property by acts of arbitrary
spoliation, is there not a considerable danger that they
should throw upon the possessors of realised property,
and upon the larger incomes, an unfair share of the
burden of taxation ? " 7 1
The adjectives " arbitrary " and " unfair " in this passage of
Mill deserve consideration. What is the criterion of just
dealing in the matter? 71
The appeal is to reason, with which what is arbitrary and unfair
is irreconcilable : to the concepts of right which reason
reveals : to justice 7 2
The right to property is an innate right, belonging to every one
by nature, independent of all juridical experience ... 75
That is the true account of the right to property generally : but
ownership of property in land must be considered as being
of a more limited and restricted kind than ownership of
property in chattels 76
Property is rightful if justly gained and properly employed . . 78
How much of the wealth of our richest classes can be said to
have been justly gained ? 78
And how much is properly employed ? As we look around us,
can we say that the duty attaching to the right of private
property — namely, that it be made a common good for
the community which validates and protects it — is ade-
quately fulfilled ? 80
Most of the economical evils from which we suffer may be traced
to the loss of the conception that the State is an ethical
organism, rooted and grounded in those eternal principles
of right which constitute the moral law 82
The present industrial chaos is due to the lack of organic
unity. The task which lies before us is the restoration of
that unity 84
Six ways in which the State may and should work for this end . 85
CHAPTER III
The Question of Parental Right
Denial by able writers of the right of the parent to say what
religious teaching shall be given to his child 93
Summary xxiii
PAGE
But this right is emphatically recognised by the law of
England 94
Has it no deeper foundation ? Let us consider this question in
the light of first principles 96
What is a right? Being something beyond the grasp of the
senses, something immaterial, it must necessarily be
described as a metaphysical entity : it is a moral power
residing in a person in virtue of which he calls anything
his own 97
Personality — the ethical idea and psychological being of man —
is the source and fount of those rights of man which are
commonly termed natural, as derived from a man's innate
prerogative to himself determine the use of his faculties,
mental and physical, which is personal liberty .... 99
They are subjective expressions of Right, possessing universal
necessity : they belong to an ideal order which should be
maintained by law, whether it is or is not : and may
properly be called natural 100
This is what the " law of nature " really means : not a state of
nature which had once been regulated by natural law,
but an objective law of righteousness, an order or standard
of Right not made by man, whose dictates are the body of
rights the obligatoriness of which can be recognised by
the^rational faculty a pribri 102
From this law of nature the authority of the father derives its
highest and most august sanction : family and household
rights do not arise from the existence of the State but are
antecedent to it 104
It is not from the merely animal function of generation that the
patria potestas arises : but from the moral and spiritual
ground of man's moral and spiritual nature 105
And this right, which is accompanied by the duty of bringing up
the children as ethical beings, is the very first principle
and root of the family, which is the true foundation of the
State 105
That is a truth which cannot be too strongly insisted upon in
this age of dissolvent individualism. The Jacobinism, of
which Rousseau is the ultimate author, has done its best
to destroy the family 106
Its latest victory has been to transfer to the State, in France, the
most sacred of parental rights and prerogatives in respect
of the education of children. Those who bear rule in
France have laid their unclean hands upon the children
xxiv Summary
PAGE
of that country with the avowed intention of rearing a
nation of Atheists 107
It is by no means asserted that such is the intention of those in
this country who deny the right of the father 108
The " Biblical teaching " which they, for the most part, are
willing to allow in elementary schools, is something con-
siderable as compared with no religious teaching at all 109
It is not the duty of the State to be the schoolmaster of a
nation's children : but the father's right and prerogatives
fall into a kind of abeyance if he is unable to fulfil the
duties correlative with them : and the State, as the
expanded family, has a duty in respect of children who
without it would receive no education at all 109
The present position in this country is that from being the tutor
and foster-father of waifs and strays, the State has
acquired the general control of popular education . . . ill,
But that control should be exercised subject to the just claims
of parents who have never forfeited or abdicated their
paternal rights. To force upon such parents, directly or
indirectly, a religious teaching of which they disapprove,
is a gross invasion of those rights 112
CHAPTER IV
The Irish Question
Prevailing ignorance in both Houses of Parliament regarding
the Irish Question 113
The reason being that to politicians intent on the party game,
votes, not facts, are of importance 115
And votes have to be paid for 115
But the party point of view interests little, and is daily interesting
less, the great majority of sensible and just Englishmen . 115
They ask themselves what is the real significance of the Nation-
alist party, and what is the goal at which that party
aims 116
The leaders of the Nationalist party are the proper persons to
reply to this question : and whatever differences may be
found in their utterances, there can be no doubt that they
aim at the national independence of Ireland 116
The history of Ireland offers a sufficient explanation why this
is so 119
Summary xxv
PAGE
As to the contemporary Home Rule Movement, the key to it is
in national resentment — a composite result of antecedents
and occurrences all centred in the Act of Union as the
source or object of their existence 124
What fanned that resentment into a flame was the policy of
the British Government during the Black Famine of
1845-1847 125
The British Government did nothing to help Ireland in that
overwhelming calamity. Its hands were tied by the
teachings of the Orthodox Political Economists specially
dear to the middle-class Philistines whom Lord Grey's
Reform Act had placed in supreme power 126
The quarter-acre clause 127
From one and a half to two millions of Irish people perished
in the Black Famine or through its effects 128
Nearly two millions more were lost to Ireland by the emigra-
tion to the United States of America 129
To the horrible policy of the British Government during the
Black Famine, the several ultra-national or anti-English
movements in Ireland, from the middle of the nineteenth
century down to the present time, are traceable . . . . 131
Meanwhile, the dealings of England with Ireland have been
marked by ignorance and ineptitude for which it would
be difficult to find a parallel 131
The sentiment of nationality which is at the root of Irish dis-
content has been ignored, and so-called concessions and
measures of conciliatory policy have but served to give
the Home Rule Movement a greater impetus 132
Testimony of Cardinal Newman to the apparently ineradicable
hostility of Celtic Ireland to England 133
And of Matthew Arnold 135
If after the Union was brought about, a series of really healing
measures had been skilfully devised and speedily carried
out, might not the relations between England and Ireland
be now very different ? 138
John Stuart Mill thought so 138
However that may be, what once was the indignation of Celtic
Ireland against particular wrongs, has now hardened
into a passionate determination to be no longer ruled
by England on any terms 138
While English political parties are in a state of bewilderment,
the Nationalists know what they want. Will they get it ? 139
From the point of view of party, their position is strong . . . 139
xxvi Summary
PAGE
From the point of view of principle, it is stronger. The absurd
political doctrine in possession of the public mind is that
of government by counting heads. Now unquestionably
the majority of Irish adult males, represented by three-
fourths of the Irish members, desire Home Rule . . . 140
Retributive justice rules in history : and whatever may be the
eventual issue of Irish disaffection, we must recognise
that it is the legitimate outcome of England's misgovern-
ment of Ireland ; the penalty earned by long generations
of British wrong-doing 146
CHAPTER V
The Indian Question
Great expectations aroused when the Crown assumed the direct
rule of India 148
John Stuart Mill's doubts whether a government carried on by
a Parliamentary system was likely to grapple satisfactorily
with the complex problems of policy and administration
in a vast Oriental Dependency 148
The event has justified those doubts 149
Utter incompetence of the House of Commons for governing
India. On the whole, indeed, the House of Commons has
let India alone ; but recently the unrest prevailing in that
country has elicited the sympathy of certain Members
who are fomenters of unrest at home 149
They have raised the cry of " India for the Indians" . . . . 151
The phrase is good, but what Indians ? India is inhabited by
well-nigh three hundred millions of people, speaking five
hundred and thirty-nine different languages and dialects ;
widely differing in race, religion, customs ; united by no
national feeling, the only homogeneous community being
the well-nigh sixty millions of Mohammedans 151
If we examine the matter, the cry " India for the Indians" will
be found to mean India — that is, place and power and
pelf in India — for an extremely small section of the
community calling themselves " educated " 153
The unrest in India has been originated, and is directed by the
Bengali Babus, in whose hands is a great deal of the
vernacular Press, and many of whom are lawyers with
little or no practice J S3
Summary xxvii
PAGE
They are the most unpopular class in Hindustan, but the most
powerful ; and their great desire is to increase their power ;
to shake off all restrictions upon it 156
Of the 625,000 literates in English found in India, some 100,000,
it is calculated, form the Babu class : and these claim to
speak as the representatives of India ! 157
M. Maindron's account of them 158
These Babus are the outcome of our persistent attempt to
Anglicise India 160
Or, as Mill puts it, " to force English ideas down the throats of
the natives " 162
The practical result of English education, so-called, on the vast
majority of the natives of India who have received it, has
been to indoctrinate them with a hard-and-fast materialism 162
On which has been engrafted Jacobinism 166
The outcome is Anarchism 166
The English education bestowed on natives of India is simply
worthless : ethical culture has no place in it ; it does not
form — it deforms — the character ; and unfits the student
for the discharge of his duties in life 168
Another manifestation of the Anglicising movement in India
is the introduction of what is called representative
government 170
Which is a fraud and a folly 171
It is not too much to say that the existing unrest in India is
largely, if not altogether, the work of doctrinaires . . . 172
Certainly the seditious vernacular newspapers in India, almost
wholly written by Babu B.A.'s and M.A.'s unable to obtain
government employment, are the result of the existing
higher education in that country 175
A wise ruler would suppress these newspapers utterly .... 176
But can any ruler be truly wise who is dependent for his
official existence upon votes in the House of Commons ? . 176
Stern treatment of sedition in India is a far better policy than
the half toleration of it which has hitherto been practised 177
In the Providential ordering of the world, this task of ruling
India has been assigned to us — we did not seek it. We
are the rulers of the country by the right divine that we
rule it best ; and we could not abandon our work there
without the grossest dereliction of duty 180
The Indian ruling Princes, the faithful vassals of the British Raj,
who know their countrymen, are of opinion that sedition
should be rooted out mercilessly 183
xxviii Summary
CHAPTER VI
The Question of Cheapness
TAGE
Popular belief that the existing cheapness of commodities is one
of the glories of the age 186
In the present Chapter the inquiry will be pursued whether this
cheapness is such an unmixed gain as is popularly sup-
posed — whether it does not cost too much 187
Some details of the prices paid to seamstresses and to shop-girls 187
One item of the cost of cheapness is the chastity of young
women 192
Another is the appalling degradation of the English home by
the operations of the sweater 198
A third, the physical deterioration of our race 199
A fourth, the gradual impairment of health, often terminating in
premature death ; the numerous accidents, frequently very
grave, experienced by those who work in dangerous trades
— accidents due to the withholding of various approved
contrivances for the protection of life and limb and health,
because the expense of production would be increased by
providing them 200
A fifth, the production of inferior goods. British manufacturers
have become so accustomed to make goods merely for sale,
as to have almost forgotten that they are wanted for use . 202
These items of the cost of cheapness — to present the complete
account would require a volume— are enough to make us
ask, " Ought these things so to be ? " 204
An indispensable preliminary to the application of any remedy
to a mischief is to trace it to its cause. What is the
doctrine in which this frantic race for cheapness finds
its justification ? 205
It is, unquestionably, the doctrine of the sect of Political
Economists called Orthodox, whose fundamental principle
is covetousness, disguised, usually, under a less ill-sounding
name 205
To buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the dearest, is the
Orthodox Political Economist's first and great command-
ment, upon which hang all his law and his prophets . . 206
So, one of them in a work addressed ad populum ; " The employer
is generally right in getting work done at the lowest
possible cost : it is a question of supply and demand " . 208
Summary xxix
TAGE
This is " a return to the brutish point of view : to the doctrine of
the right of might : to the concealed or expressed opinion
that it is justifiable for the strong to go as far as they can
by way of pushing the weak and unfortunate over the
wall" 209
This doctrine is utterly unethical. It is directly opposed to the
moral law which transforms life from a warfare of all against
all into an ordered community founded on justice . . . 213
Justice, which means the constant and ever-present will to give
to each his due, should rule in all relations of life. There
is a justum pretium, a fair wage of labour, even un-
skilled labour, which is due to the worker : which is his
right 213
And the measure of that justum pretium, that fair wage, is the
means of living a human life : which includes not merely
house and home, but leisure and spiritual cultivation : not
merely bona natures necessaria, but bona statui necessaria 214
And if the labourer is poor and needy, his destitution does not
make it right to underpay him. To underpay him is to
steal from him, a form of theft which is most common
and most disgraceful 214
But the very notion of a justum pretium, or fair wage, has died
out of the popular mind, taught to regard human labour
as mere merchandise 214
It will have to be brought back. The question how a fair wage is
to be secured for workers is of vital importance to national
well-being 215
The weapon of combination can be wielded only by the aristo-
cracy of labour 216
For unskilled labourers " a national minimum wage " should be
fixed by legislation 218
The British Legislature may reasonably be expected to attend
continually upon a question so vitally important. But
what the British Legislature may reasonably be expected
to do, is one thing : what it is likely to do, is quite another 220
Anyhow, the first step towards the redress of this great evil of
underpayment is the clear exhibition of the two facts that
it exists and that it is wrong 221
The shame of mixed luxury and misery which is spread over this
land of England is unjust : it cannot last 223
xxx Summary
CHAPTER VII
The Criminal Question
PAGE
In dealing with the Criminal Question the Utilitarian School
eviscerates moral language of all its meaning 224
It accounts of crime as the misfortune, not the fault, of the
criminal ; of punishment as merely an educative process
designed to lead him, by calculations of self-interest, to
cease from conduct generally destructive of agreeable feel-
ing ; while the idea of justice, in any intelligible sense
of the word, disappears altogether, the tribunals which
are supposed to administer it being regarded merely as
preventive checks on abnormality 225
This new theory rests upon the position that a prison is a
" repairing shop for humanity " 228
That position is in the highest degree absurd. How can the denial
of personal liberty and the companionship of outcasts, or
even the torture of solitary confinement, be reformatory ?
Reformation means — this is its only intelligible meaning
— the conversion of the will from bad to good .... 228
But a sentence of imprisonment weakens the will and impairs —
very often hopelessly shatters — the power of self-control.
The personality of the prisoner is well-nigh annihilated
among his contaminating surroundings : and personality
alone supplies the foundation on which character can be
built up 229
A prison is rather a criminal factory than a moral hospital, as
is sufficiently proved by the fact that at least three-fourths
of those who have been there return thither 231
Moreover, the newspapers and magazines with which a prisoner
is sometimes permitted to solace his confinement, have, for
the most part, a very deteriorating effect upon him. The
mealy-mouthed philanthropies which find expression in
them teach him to regard himself as a mere victim of cir-
cumstances. And it is clear that he must be so regarded
if — as the hypothesis of determinism, now so widely
accepted, alleges — he had no power to refuse the evil and
to choose the good 231
That he is justly expiating his offence against Society seldom
occurs to him. How should it ? 231
Summary xxxi
PAGE
Let us turn from the new theory of punishment to the old, which
teaches that the primary foundation of the right to punish
'^justice 233
Justice is the constant and perpetual will to give to each his
right {jtts swum), and punishment is the right of the
criminal : it is what is due to him ; what is merited by
his wrongful act ; the wages of his criminous deed ; it is
fully warranted, nay is persistently demanded, by the
great instinct of retribution implanted in our conscience.
" The law of nature proclaims that he who offends should
be punished " 233
This instinct of retribution is universal — common to the rudest
and the most highly cultured of our race 234
Plato's doctrine of retributive justice 235
And Kant's 237
Punishment then is first and beyond all things vindictive : no
doubt it is also deterrent 240
One species of it — capital punishment — is also reformatory, in
many cases 240
And next to capital punishment as a reformatory agent may be
reckoned the punishment of flogging, to the employment
of which in a certain class of cases Reason itself points 241
An objection to the punishment of flogging considered .... 243
Two blots upon the existing administration of criminal law.
One the great inequality of sentences 246
The other the toleration of a class of habitual criminals whose
perpetual seclusion is demanded by common sense, to say
nothing of elementary justice 248
The Psycopath 249
Juvenile offenders. Admirable work done by the Borstal
Association 250
APOLOGIA PRO HOC LIBRO
It was required among the ancient Locrians, as
we learn from Demosthenes,* that any one pro-
posing a new law should wear round his neck a
halter, which was drawn tight if his proposition
failed to command the assent of his fellow- citizens.
Doubtless this severe ordinance proved an effective
check upon unnecessary legislation. I have often
thought that some deterrent device, of indeed a
less ruthless character, might with advantage be
employed in these days as a check upon unne-
cessary literature. If, as the old Greek proverb
alleges, " a great book is a great evil/' what is to be
said of the exceedingly great multitude of books
vomited forth, week after week, by the printing
presses of every civilised country ? At all events,
it may be safely said that no one is warranted in
swelling their number unless he has a valid reason
for writing. Archbishop Whateley, upon one
* In Timocratem, § 139.
1 B
2 Apologia pro hoc Libro
occasion, when asked the difference between a
good and a bad preacher, replied, " Oh, it is very-
simple : the one preaches because he has some-
thing to say ; the other because he has to say
something/' I suppose this criterion is not in-
applicable to books.
Anyhow, my apology for this present volume
is that I believe I have something to say. The
seven topics with which it is concerned are hack-
neyed enough. The way in which I approach
them — and which I believe to be the only true
way — is seldom followed in England : there seems,
indeed, to be a well-nigh general consent in this
country that it is out of date. My contention is
that they should be considered in the light of a
ruling principle of action, the principle to which
the words " right " and " duty " bear witness.
But if we take up a newspaper or magazine, or
listen to or peruse a Parliamentary debate, in
which they are dealt with, we very rarely find any
reference to such a principle, or even any recogni-
tion, however tacit, that such a principle exists.
Right and duty no doubt are occasionally men-
tioned. But the words are emptied of the meaning
which they bore in earlier generations. The very
conception of the moral law as order of verities
The New Ethics 3
absolute and eternal, seems to have vanished from
the general mind. " La morale de nos jours," the
late M. Caro once remarked to me, " est une morale
de commis voyageur." The appeal is ever to the
commercial traveller's standards of profit and loss,
to the " business " ideals of the bagman. I
suppose it was Hobbes who initiated this change
in our own country with his doctrine that our
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice,
are purely the result of convention. But of
course, the great teacher of the new morality, in
these latter days, is Bentham, inculcating what he
calls " the principle of utility " — " that principle
which approves or disapproves of every action
whatever, according to the tendency which it
appears to have to augment or diminish the
happiness of the party whose interest is in ques-
tion." The two chief continuators of his doctrine
— they are at one with him as to its essence, what-
ever their variances from him in their methods —
were John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.
Mill's teaching is, in substance, this : that what
we call duty is merely a fusion of various elements,
such as the instinctive desire to be in harmony
with our fellows ; the conception of human
solidarity ; the more or less clear conviction that
4 Apologia pro hoc Libro
regard for the interests of others is an essential
condition of human society ; the perception,
engendered by the habit of working with others,
that to co-operate for the common good is to
promote our own good ; while the influence of
civilisation gives a sacred and august character
to the necessity of social feeling. Thus does he
explain the purely subjective sentiment which, as
he teaches, becomes an integral part of con-
sciousness, leading us, nay, enforcing us, to con-
sider the good of others. Right and duty he
regards, in short, as deriving their sanction from
general utility, as being merely rules of experience
relating to certain primordial elements of human
happiness. And justice, he holds to be, in the
last analysis, merely the most imperative part of
utility — although, in common with every writer
of his school, he fails to explain how utility can
be imperative.
I have said that Mill's ethical doctrine does not
essentially differ from Bentham's. And the same
may be said of Herbert Spencer's. I do not
propose to examine it here in detail ; I have done
that elsewhere.* But I may observe that he too,
* Namely, in my works On Right and Wrong and The Great
Enigma. As regards Herbert Spencer's position quoad Bentham
Moral Obligation 5
like Mill, derives " the feeling of moral obligation "
from experience — the accumulated experiences, as
he opines, of the race — which he asserts to have
produced the consciousness that guidance by
feelings referring to remote and general results,
is more conducive to welfare than guidance by
feelings to be immediately gratified. This is his
explanation of the idea of authoritativeness in
" the feeling of moral obligation." The element
of coerciveness he ascribes to the effect of punish-
ment inflicted by law and public opinion on conduct
of certain kinds. Inbred selfishness plus the fear
of the policeman is the account of " the sense of
duty or moral obligation," which Mr. Spencer, in
his character of philosopher, offers to us. But
that is not the whole of his message to the world
upon this important matter. " Rapt into future
times," he delivers the prediction, " The sense of
duty or moral obligation is transitory and will
diminish as fast as moralisation increases. . . .
and Mill, it is true that he has severely criticised both those philo-
sophers. He insists that he adopts neither experience nor expedi-
ency as his foundation. No doubt he does not confine himself to the
experience of the individual, or adopt the bald empiricism which sums
up morality as enlightened self-interest. Still "to experience and
expediency he comes at last, be the process ever so complicated.
That fact all his dexterity in evolving laws of conduct from tribal
selfishness cannot conceal, and will not abolish." See the Chapter
" Evolutionary Ethics " in On Right and Wrong.
6 Apologia pro hoc Libro
With complete adaptation to the social state, the
element in the moral consciousness which is
expressed by the word ' obligation' will dis-
appear."
What will happen in that golden, or rather,
perhaps, brazen age when, according to this seer,
the sense of duty or moral obligation has dis-
appeared from among men, is an interesting
question which, however, need not detain us here.
A far more practically important inquiry is, what
is the true account of the obligation to right
conduct for us in the world which we know and
inhabit. To that inquiry, as I venture to think,
neither Mr. Spencer, nor the whole tribe of Utili-
tarian philosophers, has given a rational answer.
To show that such conduct is likely to result in
" agreeable feeling " to the individual, is not to
invest it with an ethical obligation. To show that
it is likely to result in agreeable feeling to others —
the tribe, the race, posterity — is not to invest it
with an ethical obligation. These are mere
motives, the strength of which will vary indefi-
nitely, as characters or circumstances vary. They
can be nothing more than motives. They may
invite. They cannot command. The desirable
* Data of Ethics, §46.
Physiological Fatality 7
is one thing: the obligatory is another. If any
fact is certain it is this — that in Utilitarian ethics
obligation has no place. Indeed, that seems to
have been recognised by Darwin's strong common-
sense. He thought that " the imperious word
' ought ' seems merely to imply the existence of
persistent instinct : that a man ought to speak
the truth in the same sense that a pointer ought
to point, a retriever to retrieve, a hound to hunt."
Could the process of emptying a word of its mean-
ing be carried further ? Moreover, we must not
forget that for Herbert Spencer and for the whole
school of physical moralists, ethical obligation, if
it did exist, would be unavailing, as they do not
allow to man any real power of choice. In their
system of physiological fatality, our volitions are
accounted as merely facts of a certain order,
absolutely governed by certain laws of matter
which we cannot help obeying. Their doctrine
is wholly fatal to the moral person endowed,
consciously endowed, with the power of choosing
a better or a worse, both equally possible, and
responsible for his choice. Free will, they tell us,
is an objective and subjective delusion.*
* See Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology, §§ 219, 220.
8 Apologia pro hoc Libro
II
It is a fine and true saying of Seneca — one of his
many fine and true sayings with a distinctly modern
ring — that no one who reckons virtue among mere
utilities adequately understands what it is : " Virtus
non satis intelligitur ab eo a quo inter utilia
numeratur." That is the fundamental, the fatal
fault of the school of philosophers of which I have
been speaking — that Utilitarian school which,
during the last century, obtained almost complete
ascendency in England ; it was never of much
account elsewhere.* Like the Sophists confuted
by Plato, they all — whatever their speculative
differences — " measure the good by the standard
of pleasure or utility." They do not know,
or they ignore, that profound distinction of the
Schoolmen between bonum honestum and bonum
delectabile, between right and enjoyment. They do
not recognise the objective element in morality.
They do not see that the idea of duty differs,
by the whole diameter of existence, from the
* Austin is generally regarded as the most considerable writer of
this school, but he has received from the great masters of jurisprudence
in Germany no consideration at all. They ignore him. In truth his
metaphysical attainments were of the slightest, as has been well
pointed out in Dr. Hutchison Sterling's Lectures on the Philosophy
of Law.
Right and Reason 9
conception of agreeable feeling. They do not
understand Aristotle's definition of man as "an
ethical animal, having perception of justice and
injustice, of right and wrong, and the like."
They do not comprehend that it is because of
his distinctive endowment of reason, the faculty
of perceiving self-evident truth, that he, alone
of animals, can discern the true law of his being,
" the law of virtue that we are born under," as
Butler puts it — the moral law. Yes : the rule of
ethics is the natural and permanent revelation
of Reason, of which conscience is, in the words
of Aquinas, "the practical judgment or dictate,"
for it is the entering into the individual of the
objective law of Right. The ideas and principles
of that law are the intellectual heritage of the
human race ; the intuitions of right and wrong,
apprehended by our moral nature, are anterior to
all systems philosophical or religious, just as are
the intuitions of existence and of number. And
it is precisely because Right is founded on objective
reason that it is universal — I speak of Right, not
of rights, which are its subjective expressions.
Right is not created by the experience of the human
race : it belongs, like the verities of mathematics,
to the world of eternal and immutable ideas : it
io Apologia pro hoc Libro
is part of the nature of things : and it rules, by its
mandates and its penalties, throughout the universe
over all rational beings, individually and collec-
tively, the necessity which it imposes being
denoted by the word " ought," just as mathe-
matical necessity is expressed by the word "is,"
and physical necessity by the word " must."
Ethical science — I use the word " science ' ad-
visedly — starts from these self-evident intuitions
and categorical assertions. Its conclusions, indeed,
will have to do with the concrete, the con-
ditioned, for it is the science of human life ;
but its principles are, in the strictest sense,
transcendental, for it finds them beyond the
phenomena of sense, by means of our imaginative
faculty, in the inner world of consciousness, of
volition, of finality. There are the ultimate
bases of right and duty. It is only in the light
of the ideal atmosphere whereby our spiritual
being lives, that we can discern the sources of
ethics. The Categorical (absolute or uncon-
ditioned) Imperative " Thou oughtest," appeals
not to experience, individual or racial, but to the
reason of things. And so morality is, in its own
sphere, autonomous. Independent both of theo-
logies and theogonies, and of the facts and fallacies
Acts properly called Human 1 1
of physicists, it claims obedience, not as an instru-
ment of happiness or agreeable feeling, but as a
thing absolutely good, and an end in itself. And in
willing obedience to it consists the goodness of
man: "Voluntas est qua peccatur et qua bene
vivitur." * Acts properly called human are volun-
tary as proceeding from a man's will with a know-
ledge of the end to which they tend : they are acts
which under the same antecedent conditions might
or might not have proceeded. " Thought is free,"
says a proverb quoted by Shakespeare ; and so it
is, within limits. There are things which a man
endowed with reason is not free to think : for
example, that he does not exist : that space and
time do not exist for him : that space is internal
and time external. But thought does enjoy a
restricted and conditioned freedom. So does the
will, for the will is thought with a reference to
superadded action : and its " faculty " — in the
words of Kant, " of choosing that which reason,
* The hegemonic quality of which St. Augustine thus speaks, Kant
esteemed the primary fact of consciousness ; he calls it die Mensch-
heit. As there is an immense amount of confusion among physical
philosophers as to what is meant by free will, it may not be amiss to
quote here the commonplace of the Schools : " Liberum arbitrium
habetur quando positis ad agendum requisitis potest quis agere vel non
agere." There are cases of non-physical necessity, e.g. of a single
determining motive, of a spiritual instinct, of a knowledge exhibiting
the object as omni ex parte bontim, where free will does not exist.
12 Apologia pro hoc Libro
independently of natural inclination, declares to
be practically necessary or good," is the very
foundation of moral science.*
Such is the moral law, as the school in ethics
which commands my assent accounts of it : and
being such we may well contemplate it with no
less wonder and reverence than the starry heavens
— nay, with more. This ideal rule of right, enter-
ing into the human intellect, guides man onwards
and upwards on the path of ethical progress. In
it all human rights which are really such, and not
wrongs usurping that august name, find their
highest and ultimate sanction. So Hooker, sum-
ming up the scholastic teaching on this high
matter: " Law rational, which men commonly use
to call the law of nature, comprehendeth all things
* How the moral law can directly determine the will ; or in other
words, how a free will is possible, is, of course, an insoluble problem
for human reason. It transcends the grasp of speculative philosophy.
But — to quote the words of Kant in the Metaphysic of Morals
— " The reality of this idea of freedom is evinced by certain practical
principles which, as Laws, prove a causality of the Pure Reason, in the
process of determining the activity of the Will, that is independent of
its empirical and sensible conditions : and thus there is established
the fact of a Pure Will existing in us as the source of all moral concep-
tions and laws." To which may be added the following pregnant
sentence from the Critique of the Practical Reason : " Could we have
so deep an insight into a man's act of thinking as it exhibits itself
inwardly and outwardly, could we know his every spring of action,
however small, and every external circumstance impinging upon such
spring, and so calculate his future conduct as exactly as we calculate
an eclipse — we might still affirm that the man was free."
Diversity of Moral Judgments 13
which men, by the light of their natural under-
standing, evidently know, or leastwise may know,
to be beseeming or unbeseeming, virtuous or
vicious, good or evil for them to do." " The several
grand mandates which, being imposed by the
understanding faculty, must be obeyed by the will
of men, are such that it is not easy to find men
ignorant of them." * No ; it is not easy. The
savage who does not, in some way or other, dis-
tinguish between right and wrong, does not exist —
and if he did he would not be man, but something
lower.
Ill
Are we here met with an objection that, as a
matter of fact, the moral judgments which have
obtained among men, are diverse and irrecon-
cilable ? The objection is not a novel one, and,
as Hooker goes on to observe, it was sufficiently
answered by St. Augustine a thousand years ago ;
" Do as thou wouldst be done to, is a sentence
which all nations under heaven are agreed upon ; "
and here is the sufficient germ of a complete ethical
* Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I., c. 8. Compare Aquinas, " Lex
naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis asternal in rationali
creatura." — Summa Theologica, I, 2, q. 91, a. 2.
14 Apologia pro hoc Libro
code. The sense of duty is a form of the mind
itself, although it may be said to exist as a blank
formula, which is filled up in a variety of ways.
"The altruistic instinct," as the physical moralists
of the day call it, is as much a fact of human nature
as " the egoistic instinct. " The sense of duty is
universal ; it is an essential attribute of our nature,
inseparable from the consciousness of self and non-
self ; not a complete revelation, but the revelation
of an idea, bound to develop according to its laws,
like the idea, say, of geometry. The ethical
ignorance of barbarous tribes is no more an
argument against the moral law, than their
ignorance of the complex and recondite properties
of lines and figures is an argument against geo-
metrical law. It is the function of the intellect,
here as elsewhere, to evolve abstract truths from
the seemingly chaotic mass of appearances and
events, and to clothe them in propositions which
shall serve as current coin. That very word, " con-
science," by which we now designate consciousness
considered as a moral judge, is of comparatively
late origin. It was unknown to the writers of the
Hebrew Sacred Books.* They speak of " heart "
* It is found in the Book of Wisdom (ch. xvii.), as might of course
be expected.
Conscience 15
instead. It does not occur in the Gospels, except
in the story of the woman taken in adultery,
which the most authoritative critics of our own
day — whether rightly or wrongly, I do not under-
take to say — regard as an interpolation. It was
only after nascent Christianity appealed to the
Gentiles and to the Jews scattered abroad, that
the word was, so to speak, naturalised in it. And
then it was a new word in the Hellenic world : it
seems not to have come into use until after the
Peloponesian War. So much as to the history
of the term by which we commonly describe the
subjective organ of ethical knowledge. Herbert
Spencer tells us that both that subjective organ
and the moral law are in a permanent state of
becoming. I do not doubt — I shall indeed have
occasion, presently, to insist — that our insight into
the moral law grows deeper in successive ages.
But that does not deprive either conscience, or the
moral law, of their imperative character for each
particular act recognised by me as obligatory, any
more than it implies the destruction of ethical
liberty, properly understood. What I discern as
my duty is binding upon me hie et nunc, whether
my mental vision be true or false. The point upon
which my conscience never varies is, that duty
1 6 Apologia pro hoc Libro
exists. It is in vain for Montaigne to assert, " les
lois de la conscience, que nous disons naitre de la
justice, ne sont qu'une mer flottante d'opinions."
Montaigne confounds the idea of duty in general
with men's notions of their particular duties.
In that record of man's action which we call
history, Right and Wrong are the most important
words. Human progress means, before all things,
the education of conscience ; the widening of the
circle of ethical obligation ; the deeper apprehen-
sion of the moral law, that is of justice, wherein,
according to the fine verse of the Hellenic poet,
adopted by Aristotle, " lies the whole of virtue's
sum." And justice, as Ulpian defines it, is " the
constant and never-failing will to render to each
man his right." This " right," it is sometimes said,
arises from the primordial idea of the person in
himself. It is well said ; but the statement re-
quires to be guarded, for only in society is per-
sonality realised ; " Unus homo, nullus homo."
Hence that other dictum, which must be received
with even greater caution, that right is the off-
spring of civilisation. True it is that right is not the
attribute of our rudimentary, prehistoric ancestors.
The pre-civilised epoch to which Rousseau ignorantly
turned for his noble savage was, in fact, an epoch of
The Idea of Right 17
chaotic violence, of ferocious cruelty, of hideous
cannibalism, of dirt unspeakable, of sexual pro-
miscuity, of lying and hypocrisy. And such is the
state which Rousseau's doctrines tend tobring back.
Unquestionably, it is society alone that gives
validity to right, for man is, in Aristotle's phrase,
" a political animal." If we follow the historical
method only, we must pronounce the birthplace
of right to have been the family, from which civil
polity has been developed. But if we view the
matter ideally, we must say that the experience
of the race is here merely an occasion, not a cause ;
it does not create, it merely reveals right. The
social organism exhibits that which lies in the
nature of man, deep down in the inmost recesses
of his being, but which could never have come
out of him in isolation. The idea of right un-
folds itself in history as the vivifying principle of
those public ordinances and political institutions
whereby we live as civilised men ; as the justifica-
tion of the common might which, without it,
would be mere brute force. And as that idea is
ever increasingly realised in the ethical fellowship
of successive generations, as the moral tone of the
social organism rises, so do individual conceptions
of right become clearer and more adequate. For
1 8 Apologia pro hoc Libro
man is not only " a political animal." He is also
a historical animal. And this it is, as well as
the Aristotelian criterion, which marks him off
from the rest of sentient existence. Consider, on
the one hand, the savage warrior torturing his
enemy, his untutored mind not suspecting that he
is acting unrighteously ; and on the other, con-
template John Howard on his " circumnavigation
of charity/' not counting his life dear so that he
may redress injustice done to criminals. Thus
has the idea of right grown in the human conscience.
But an idea, in the true sense of the word, it is.
The great legists to whom we owe the majestic
fabric of Roman jurisprudence, knew this well.
Hence their emphatic recognition of the tran-
scendental foundation of private right. It was an
expression of the august doctrine, which they had
learnt from the philosophers of the Porch, that
universal reason governs the world ; that the lives
of men should be regulated by that supreme order
which is justice in the soul, beauty in the body,
and harmony in the spheres. But it is to the
Founder of Christianity and the doctors of His
religion — conspicuous among them the masters of
the medieval School — that the world owes the
clearest, the most prevailing, the most cogent
The Universality of Right 19
teaching as to the universality of right and the
solidarity of mankind. Now this characteristic
of universality is an essential note of ethics. The
theory of the moral law must be founded on reason.
To make of it a mere deduction from experience, is
to perform a mortal operation upon it, is to reduce
right and wrong to a question of temperament,
of environment, of cuisine, of latitude and longi-
tude. Hence the precept which Kant lays down
for our conduct, the rule by which he bids us try
and test its ethical worth : " Act so that the
motive of thy will may always be equally valid
as a principle of universal legislation." I do not
say that this maxim is alone adequate as the funda-
mental thought of ethics. It may be open to the
criticism that it is rather the uniform view of a
criterion than the pregnant principle of morals.
But, at all events, in its recognition of universality,
it builds upon the everlasting rock.*
One more point may be noticed in passing — the
fewest words will suffice for it. It may be asked,
Do we, then, who with Plato and the philosophers
of the Porch, with Aquinas and Suarez, with
Butler and Kant, follow the transcendental method
* I take this, and the three immediately preceding paragraphs, from
the Chapter entitled " Rational Ethics," in my book On Eight and
Wrong.
20 Apologia pro hoc Libro
in ethics, and account it the only method — Do we
propose to set forth a complete theory of human
duty ? Of course we do not. All we profess to do
is to indicate as the true rule of human action, the
dictates of reason speaking through conscience.*
We are well aware that in ethical inquiries we
must guard against losing sight of history and
circumstances, or we shall resolve morality into
a species of mathematics. Here, as elsewhere,
the normal admits of exceptions and derogations.
The moral law does not change. But how can it
be applied except in the concrete ? And has not
every case its own formula, so to speak ? To give
a familiar instance. Polygamy in a Mormon must
surely be condemned. Polygamy in a Moslem
* It must not be supposed that we hold the moral law to be an
immediate datum of empirical consciousness : a ready-made law, so
to speak, which reflection discovers in us. No ; as Kant tells us in the
Critique of Pure Reason, " We have consciousness of pure practical
laws as we have consciousness of pure theoretical principles, by-
observing the necessity with which reason imposes them, and by
making abstraction of all empirical conditions." In the moral order
the empirical consciousness lays hold of ethical judgments and senti-
ments in the experience of practical life, but does not discover their
law save by a transcendental analysis of the a priori conditions which
render those judgments and sentiments possible. And so in the
Metaphysic of Morals Kant observes, "We know our own Freedom —
from which all Moral Laws and consequently all Rights as well as all
Duties arise— only through the Moral Imperative which is an immediate
Injunction of Duty : whereas the conception of Right, as a ground of
putting others under obligation, has afterwards to be developed out
of it."
Casuistry 21
may be tolerated, nay, may, conceivably, be
approved. On what principles do we thus dis-
criminate ? Those principles exist, but they are
not evident at first sight. To find them is the
office of casuistry, which " is neither a science
nor a part of any science," but is still a most
necessary, nay, indispensable supplement to ethics,
however, at times, misapplied and abused.
Casuistry is the application of general rules to
particular cases, and has been well called by
Kant " a dialectic of conscience."
IV
To sum up, then. I claim for the moral law,
as an ideal order of right ruling throughout all
worlds, that it should dominate the whole field of
human action, that to it should be the ultimate
appeal in all causes. That is the point of view
from which the following Chapters are written.
The primary fact about man is that he is under
that law. And this is the primary fact, too, about
communities of men. Human society rests upon
an ethical basis. The State is, in Hegel's admirable
phrase, " Reason manifesting itself as Right : '
and its highest function is to recognise, sanction
22 Apologia pro hoc Libro
and enforce, for the members of the common-
wealth, that system of correlative rights and duties
which Reason itself reveals. It is a community
of persons, that is of moral beings, for moral
ends. It is an ethical entity, the realised order
of right. As the organised manifestation of the
personality of a people, it may properly be called
an organism or a person. It is a person, for rights
and duties, the distinctive notes of personality,
attach to it. It is an organism, for it is " a great
body capable of taking up to itself the feelings of
a people, of uttering them in laws, of realising them
in facts." * But, as Heraclitus pointed out two
thousand years ago, " All human laws receive their
life from the one Divine Law " — that ideal Law
of Right whereof we have been speaking. And
so Aquinas, in words which may serve to conclude
this Chapter : " A human law bears the character
of law so far as it is in conformity with right
reason : and, in that point of view, it is manifestly
derived from the Eternal Law. But inasmuch as
any human law recedes from reason, it is called a
wicked law ; and, to that extent, it bears not the
character of law, but rather of an act of violence." f
* Bluntschli, Allgemeine Staatslehre, p. 22.
t Summa Theologica, i, 2, q. 93, a. 3, ad. 2.
Human Law and Eternal Law 23
Or, as he elsewhere puts it, " Laws enacted by-
men are either just or unjust. If they are just,
they have a binding force in the court of conscience,
from the Eternal Law whence they are derived. . . .
Unjust laws are not binding in the court of con-
science, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of
scandal or turmoil." *
* Ibid., q. 96, a. 4. Carlyle, in a different dialect indeed, teaches
the same lesson. " Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is
that of poor creatures on platforms, in parliaments and other situations,
making and unmaking ' Laws,' in whose soul, full of mere vacant
hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law ;
whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the Earth
could not have what kind of Law you pleased ! Human Statute
books accordingly are growing horrible to think of. An impiety and
poisonous futility every Law of them that is so made ; all Nature is
against it ; it will and can do nothing but mischief wheresoever it
shows itself in Nature : and such Laws lie now like an incubus over
this Earth, so innumerable are they." — Latter Day Pamphlets, p. 83.
IDOLA FORI
_ CHAPTER I
THE QUESTION OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT
I suppose no phrase is more commonly employed,
and more unquestionably accepted, than that of
"The Will of the People." It is a sort of
sacrosanct formula, like the " Allah Akbar " of
Islam, the " All and One " (h /ecu irav) of Panthe-
ists. Politicians of all types and grades, from the
Honourable Felix Parvulus and the Right Honour-
able Felicissimus Zero down to the writers in the
half-penny newspapers and the orators at " de-
monstrations " in the Park, vie with one another
in doing it lip service. The " Will of the People,"
expressed by universal or quasi-universal suffrage,
is taken to be the supreme authority for policy,
the sufficient ground of action, above reason and
superior to that natural rule of right and wrong
25
26 The Question of Popular Government
which rests on reason : " Ce que le peuple veut
est juste." I propose briefly to examine this
shibboleth, even at the risk of distressing some
who claim for themselves what George Eliot
called " the unlimited right of private haziness."
Things may be regarded either as they are, or as
they ought to be. I shall first ask my readers to
consider what that which passes among us as
" The Will of the People " really is. I shall then
endeavour to indicate what " The Will of the
People " should mean. And since I wish to avoid
an unpractical discussion of a practical subject,
I shall end this Chapter by presenting a few
reflections, suggested by the topic, as to the pros-
pect before us in the public order.
II
Who then are, in fact, " The People " of the
formula before us ? They are, roughly speaking,*
the adult male population of the country con-
sidered as equivalent voting animals. I remember
* To be precise, of the ten millions of adult males inhabiting the
United Kingdom rather more than seven and a half millions are
endowed with the Parliamentary franchise. It is an approximation to
that equal and universal suffrage, vaunted as the great modern dis-
covery in the public order, which would solve all problems of statecraft
by the simple method of counting heads.
One Man, One Vote 27
the late M. Taine once observing to me that every
age had its idee fixe", and that the idie fixe of this
age of ours is the dogma, which it has learnt
from Rousseau, of the sovereignty of the individual :
a dogma which finds expression in the phrases,
" Manhood Suffrage ; " " One Man, One Vote," or,
as is sometimes said, "One Value;" " Every
one to count for one, and no one for more than
one"; or, as Carlyle puts it, " Any man equal to
any other : Quashee Nigger to Socrates or Shake-
speare : Judas Iscariot to Jesus Christ." This
is the essence of what passes among us as Demo-
cracy.* A multitude of human units, equal and
sovereign, is the prevalent conception of " The
People." " Do you not know," asked a Jacobin
mob orator of his sansculottic audience, " that
you are Kings and more than Kings ? Do you
not feel the sovereignty which runs through your
veins ? " More than a century has elapsed since
that appeal was made, and the doctrine thus ex-
pounded has slowly sunk into the popular mind
throughout Europe. It is now the corner-stone
on which the democratic or pseudo-democratic
edifice is based.
* Or, as Mill puts it, "of the falsely-called democracies which now
prevail, and from which the current idea of democracy is exclusively
derived." — Representative Government, p. 155.
28 The Question of Popular Government
That is what is meant by " The People " in
the phrase which we are examining, and it is
to " The Will " of this " People " that appeal is
made, as the ultimate authority and supreme
oracle in the State. But as, manifestly, all the
sovereign individuals will not be of the same
mind, the effective " Will " must be that of only
a portion of them. In rude stages of society this
" Will " was arrived at by the process of breaking
heads — a process now happily superseded by the
more pacific method of counting them. So that
" The Will of the People " virtually means the
" Will " of a majority of the sovereign units, or
of those of them who get themselves accepted as a
majority. We have long lived in this country
under a system of party government, and what
really happens at a General Election is that the
two great political parties, called Liberal and
Conservative — I put aside the Home Rule Party,
and, for the present, the Labour Party * — endea-
vour to secure for the candidates run by them, in
each constituency, a majority of votes, in order to
secure, in the House of Commons, a like majority,
and the office and spoils of office which fall to the
* I shall have to speak of the Labour Party later on in this Chapter,
and of the Home Rule Party in Chapter IV.
The Will of the Wobblers 29
victors. Of the possessors of votes in Parlia-
mentary elections, almost all are, or at all events
have hitherto been, attached to one or other of
these two great political parties. They are con-
stant to the Conservative or Liberal faith which
is in them, although they would, in most cases,
be sorely puzzled to give a reason for it. But
there are a few in every constituency who habi-
tually vacillate, and who are sometimes called
" balancing electors," and sometimes, less cour-
teously, but perhaps more truly, " wobblers " :
men who possess vacant, or if the adjective be
thought offensive, let me say open minds, and
who cling loosely, if at all, to the recognised party
organisations. It is really on the votes of these
that an election turns. To capture them is the
supreme triumph of electioneering, and the chief
instruments for effecting the capture are speeches,
pamphlets, newspaper articles, handbills, and
posters * not usually characterised by nice scruples
about veracity. So that " The Will of the People "
really means the " will " of the wobblers. They
it is whom our representative institutions represent.
The " will ' of the minority, or of the vast and
# " Fraudulent electioneering posters," is the phrase of a recent
orator.
30 The Question of Popular Government
ever-increasing number who disdain to vote at
all, does not count. It is not, as we are some-
times told, by sweeping changes in " the opinion
of the country " that elections are decided : no :
but by the changing caprice of the wobblers, who
have just as much claim to represent the people
of England as had the three tailors of Tooley
Street.
This is the truth about the way in which a
Parliamentary election is won. It is won by the
votes of a very small number of the least stable
and most impressionable voters : men blown
about by every wind of doctrine, or led by every
mean interest, personal or sectarian : the pre-
destined prey of the demagogue. That is how a
majority is made up. But, further, it is, of
course, obvious that even a real majority is not
The People. " We are so little affected," wrote
Burke, in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,
" by things which are habitual, that we consider
the decision of a majority as if it were a law of
our original nature. But such constructive whole,
residing in a part only, is one of the most violent
fictions of positive law that has ever been,
or can be, made on the principles of artificial
incorporation."
"This is the People" 31
Without, however, dwelling on that point,
let us consider for a moment what manner of
men are the greater part of the sovereign units
who compose the People. The effect of equal
and universal or quasi-universal suffrage is neces-
sarily to place preponderating political power in
the hands of the most ignorant and poorest class.
Manual labourers constitute, and must constitute,
the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of
any country. These are virtually The People.
And we are told, on high authority, that this is
right, and ought so to be. For example, Lord
Morley of Blackburn, in an early work, emphati-
cally insists on what he calls " the great truth "
that a nation " consists " (the word is his) of
" the great body of its members, the army of
toilers; " that "all institutions " — all, note, without
exception — " ought to have for their aim the
physical, intellectual, and moral amelioration of
the poorest and most numerous class. " This
(he adds) is the People " (the capital P is his).*
Such, then, is the prevailing conception of
The People whose " Will " is to be decisive of all
political and social problems. I use the word
" will " under protest. Will, in the proper sense
* Rousseau, Vol. II., p. 194.
32 The Question of Popular Government
of the word, is individual. How can it be attri-
buted to a multitude of men, to all the adult males
of a country, or to that " constructive whole
residing in a part only " (to quote Burke) which
gets itself accepted for the whole ? At most, the
expression " general will " is merely a metaphor.
There is, in fact, no such thing as a general will,
not only because, as I have just observed, will is
in the proper sense individual, but also because it
is in its essence rational. It is, in Aristotle's
phrase, opefts /^era \6yov, impulse with reason.
But assuredly it is to impulse without reason that
the mob orator, the electioneering agent, the party
newspaper writer or pamphleteer appeals. He
addresses himself to what the Schoolmen described
as " intense excitations of the merely appetitive
faculty," and which they divide into two classes :
"passiones concupiscibiles," and " passiones ira-
scibiles " : the passions of desire and the passions
of anger. It never occurs to him to appeal to that
rational appetite alone properly called Will,
whereby we incline towards, or strive after,
some object intellectually apprehended as good.
And he is right. He knows perfectly well that he
would appeal in vain. What we call The Will of
the People is, at the most, purpose, vague and
The New Democracy 33
amorphous ; it is, more commonly, mere aspiration
or whim. Professor von Sybel observes in his
History of the Revolutionary Period, that the
Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen
raised to the throne, not the reason which is
common to all men, but the aggregate of universal
passions.
The truth is, as Herbert Spencer has noted in
his Study of Sociology, that " new democracy is but
old despotism differently spelt." The sovereignty
of the masses and monarchical absolutism repre-
sent one and the same principle : the domination
not of the moral idea which is law, reason, but of
the individual cravings and caprices : not of will,
but of wilfulness, or, to use a more exact German
phrase, die Particularity des Individuums. I
am, indeed, far from asserting that ratiocination
is the sole and all-sufficient guide of life, either
for the individual or for the body politic which is
made up of individuals. There are motives which,
though a man may not be able to give syllogistic
form to them, or even to present them in a defini-
tion, are as legitimately active in the microcosm
of the mind as are the obscure rays of the spectrum
in the macrocosm of the physical world. I do
not doubt that the unreasoning instinct of the
34 The Question of Popular Government
masses has a true function in public affairs ; that
it may be sometimes right when the logic of pro-
fessional politicians is wrong. My present point
is that, as a rule, the Sovereign People, like the
Sovereign Autocrat, is the natural prey of flatterers.
The demagogue is the courtier of the masses, whose
voice he declares to be the voice of a God. To
adulate them, in order to trade upon them, is the
universal practice of the discounters and jugglers
of universal suffrage. And the idol of the masses
is the charlatan who knows all their prepossessions,
prejudices, passions : who tells them that they
are light and leading, reason and revelation, the
all-sufficient judges of grave political problems,
the very elements of which infinitesimally few of
them can so much as understand, and who presents
the results of his operations as " the Will of the
People." Plato has drawn his portrait in colours
which are as fresh now as they were two thousand
years ago.
All those mercenary adventurers, who are called
sophists by the multitude . . . really teach nothing
but the opinions of the majority to which expression
is given when large masses are collected, and dignify
them with the title of wisdom. As well might a person
investigate the caprices and desires of some huge and
powerful monster in his keeping, studying how it is to
be approached and how handled — at what time and
A Parable from Plato 35
under what circumstance it becomes most dangerous
or most gentle — on what occasions it is in the habit of
uttering its various cries, and further, what sounds
uttered by another person soothe or exasperate it —
and when he has mastered all these particulars by long
continuous intercourse, as well might he call his results
wisdom, systematise them into an art, and open a school,
though in reality he is wholly ignorant which of these
humours and desires is fair and which foul, which good
and which evil, which just and which unjust, and, there-
fore, is content to affix all these names to the fancies of
the huge animal, calling what it likes good, and what it
dislikes evil, without being able to render any account
of them — nay, giving the title of " just ,: and " fair "
to things done under compulsion, because he has not
discerned himself, and therefore cannot point out to
others, that wide distinction which really holds between
the compulsory and the good. Tell me, in heaven's
name, do you not think that such a person would make
a strange instructor ? *
III
So much, then, regarding what passes among
us for " The Will of the People." It is a fiction
derived from the archsophist Rousseau, and having
no more actuality than his Social Contract.
Green well points out that " the practical result
of Rousseau's theory, which has won its way into
general acceptance, has been a vague exaltation
* Republic, Book VI., 493. I avail myself of Messrs. Davies and
Vaughan's excellent translation.
36 The Question of Popular Government
of the will of the people, regardless of what ' the
people ' ought to mean." " The justifiability of
laws and acts of Government, and of the rights
which these confer, comes to be sought simply in
the fact that the people wills them, not in the fact
that they represent a true volonU ghierale, an
impartial and disinterested will for the general
good. Thus the way is prepared ... for the
sophistries of modern political management,
for manipulating electoral bodies, for influencing
elected bodies, and for procuring plebiscites." *
Note the words "general good." It is not true
that the " army of toilers is the people," and that
" all institutions ought to have for their aim the
physical, intellectual, and moral amelioration of
the poorest and most numerous class." Human
society is an organism. It is not a fortuitous
congeries of sovereign and equivalent human units.
In a civilised country we find vastly varying
individualities, and the more civilised it is, the
greater is the variation which it develops. We
find, also, as the result of these vastly varying
individualities, a number of classes, of interests,
* Works, Vol. II., p. xxxi. and 389. " Law as the system of rules
by which rights are maintained " appears to be what Green inclined to
think might best be considered as " the expression of a general will."
— Ibid., p. 410.
Political Atomism 37
diverse but dependent upon one another, and all
necessary for the perfection of the body politic.
Mirabeau, who almost alone kept his head in the
Revolutionary delirium, said truly, " Representa-
tive Governments may be compared to maps
which should reproduce all the elements of the
country, in due proportion." And when such a
system exists, truly reproducing, according to
their real value, the various factors of the com-
munity, the groups, classes, institutions, sorts and
conditions, which constitute the subordination and
co-ordination of civil life, we may regard it as
entitled to express the communis sensus of the
body politic, or, if we must have the phrase, The
Will of the People, upon questions of general
import. That is the veritable ideal, nay, it is
the very meaning of representative Government.
But in the prevailing system of political atomism,
which gives every man an equal share of political
power, only one element of the social organism is
represented, and that by no means the most im-
portant : " C'est Telement confus et aveugle :
c'est le nombre." All political power is centred
in the hands least fitted to exercise it, the hands
of the operative classes : wisdom, wealth, culture,
experience — all the most vital forces of society —
38 The Question of Popular Government
are virtually ostracised. In a true democracy
every man is master of his right, and exercises,
directly or indirectly, an influence in the State
proportionate to his personality. In the " falsely
called democracy " (to use Mill's phrase) of these
days, all men are reckoned equivalent, whatever
their capacity or incapacity, and are entitled to the
same influence in the government.* But thus to
dispense equality to equals and unequals is to
found the public order upon a lie ; it is contrary
to the elementary principles of human society which
rests upon the natural fact of inequality of value ;
and unless a remedy be found, it must issue in
" red ruin and the breaking up of laws." All
which will seem mere midsummer madness to
professional votecatchers, and to their patrons,
the players of the party game in Parliament, who
can see nothing in the mechanism of politics
but a sum in addition, and nothing as the end
of politics but place and power. And I am well
aware that this is their hour and the power of
darkness.
* We must not forget that, commonly, when universal suffrage is
spoken of, what is meant is equal and universal suffrage. Rationally
graduated and wisely organised universal suffrage is a very different
thing, and, if held in check by a strong Second Chamber, might, very
possibly, be the best instrument of government for most civilised
countries in this age of the world.
A Delightful Pastime 39
IV
But I think their hour is well-nigh done. There
are signs, clear enough as it seems to me, that
the day of party government * among us is
drawing to an end. The most rudimentary appre-
hension of political ethics would have made an
end of it long ago, for is not its gist the distortion
of truth by advocacy for electioneering purposes ?
No doubt it has long provided a delightful pastime
for six hundred and odd gentlemen at West-
minster ; they have found it more exhilarating
than golf, more exciting than champagne, more
rapturous than the hysterics of a revivalist meeting
or the transports of illicit love ; but their reckless
playing of the game has brought it near its close.
In their mad bidding against one another for the
favour of the populace, which they needed in order
to win, they have, bit by bit, transferred pre-
ponderating political power to the masses. Neither
* Of its working in the House of Commons an amusing account
was given by Mr. F.'E. Smith in a speech at Liverpool, a short time
ago : " If you stand in the Division Lobby, when the will of the
people is going to be expressed, you will see one Liberal Member after
another trooping in from the Smoking Room, the Terrace, and the
Lobby, and asking, not even what is the subject, but ' Which are
we ? ' The Liberal Whip gives the desired information ; and the will
of the people is expressed." I quoteMr. Smith's words as I find them in
the newspaper report ; but I suppose they are not wholly inapplicable
to the party with which he is connected.
40 The Question of Popular Government
side has been restrained by fear of the mischiefs
which might result from subjecting the supreme
control of public affairs to the unbridled passions
of the multitude. Nay, the worst and most
baneful of the so-called reforms, the clear sweep
made in 1884 of the ancient constituencies, and the
close approximation to equal electoral districts,
was, in very large measure, the work of so-called
Conservatives. A secret logic rules in human
affairs, in virtue of which deeds often produce
effects most alien from the minds of the doer.
And there is now no rational ground on which
either of the two great parties can resist the cry
for One Man, One Vote, equal electoral districts,
and universal inorganic suffrage. Well, the masses
are beginning to be weary of the part which
they have hitherto played of mere counters in the
party game ; they are gradually realising their
power, and are inquiring whether they may not
effectively use it for their own benefit. The
abstract principle of the absolute right of majorities
tends — that is the way of principles — to realise
itself in concrete fact. Political equality ! It is
a barren notion unless it be wedded with life.
Lazarus now dominates the public order, as
Dives recognises when soliciting his vote in
Lazarus in Power 41
elections. The party game interests him not at
all ; the struggle for existence much. He is sick
of the evil things which have hitherto been his
lot, and is beginning to discern that the vote,
which places him in a position of overwhelming
superiority to Dives, may serve as an instrument
for procuring a portion of the good things which
he has as yet merely beheld from afar, at the rich
man's gate. And will he now be content with
the crumbs from that well-spread table which
were once the object of his unsatisfied desire ?
I think not. Will he not rather demand to parti-
cipate in the banquet, and, in fact, help himself
to a share of it — conceivably the lion's share ?
Experience testifies to the truth of Grattan's
saying : "If you transfer the power in the State
to those who have nothing in the country, they
will afterwards transfer the property." Certain
it is that the very foundation of Socialism is the
doctrine of the absolute power of numerical
majorities. " Its essential law," as one of its
chief exponents at the Namur Congress, a certain
" Citizen " Volders, declared, "is to ensure the
free exercise of the force of numbers." *
* Quoted by Desjardins, De la liberie politique dans VEtat moderne,
p. 238.
42 The Question of Popular Government
And it seems to me that what is vaguely
called Socialism is the great sign of the times,
in the public order. I say " vaguely," for the
word covers a variety of doctrines, and is freely
applied — why not ? — to any Utopia which any
one likes to conjure up. Perhaps Social Demo-
cracy is a better term, as indicating more precisely
the goal to which the ochlocratic movement is
tending everywhere throughout the civilised world.
In this respect our country has lagged behind
France, Germany, and Italy, but the rise and
growing strength of the Labour Party sufficiently
indicate the progress which it is now^ making. And
is there not reason for the belief that it has the
promise of the future ? It has something tangible
to offer to the masses as the object for which they
should use their overwhelming political power :
it has a distinct ideal to put before them, a
definite goal to point out to them. It starts with
the position that the present system of distribu-
tion of wealth is wrong: that the "owners' of
the soil, the machinery, the railways, and otiose
capitalists in general — especially the class pun-
gently described by Mill who " grow richer, as it
The Ideal of Socialism 43
were, in their sleep, without working, risking or
economising " * — receive an undue share of the
surplus created by labour, while neither the
exceptional ability to which much of the product
may be fairly ascribed, nor the mass of the in-
dustrial army, receives anything like an adequate
share. It points to the indubitable fact that in
these latter days the world's wealth has increased
much faster than the world's population, and it
asks what is the final end of wealth, sale being
admittedly but a means. It insists on the equally
indubitable fact that famine and crises arise not
from a deficiency of wealth, but from a super-
fluity, owing to the unrestricted competition of
individual firms and companies for profit, and of
the rank and file of workers for subsistence wages.
It contends that the existing economic conditions
are really anarchical, and inconsistent with social
well-being, and it demands that a democratically
organised State shall bring about the transforma-
tion from private appropriation and exchange, to
public ownership and public service in a co-opera-
tive commonwealth.
All this is, of course, extremely disagreeable
to the possessors of property, especially to those
* Political Economy, p. 547.
44 The Question of Popular Government
who, in Burke's phrase, " hold large portions of
wealth without any apparent merit of their own."
I was reading, not long ago, a speech by a noble
Duke in which the opinion was expressed that
" the Socialistic programme is one of undiluted
Atheism, Theft, and Immorality." But, as I
observed just now, Socialism is a vague and com-
prehensive term. There are doubtless schools of
it which are open to this impeachment. People
may, however, be Socialists without being atheists,
thieves, or adulterers — I have the pleasure of
reckoning such among my personal acquaintances.
And, after all, hard words break no bones. In-
stead of pouring forth unmeasured invective
against Socialism, it were surely better to inquire
what truth there may be in it. For it is by the
truth latent in any doctrine, however pernicious,
that it succeeds among men. Thus the old
" orthodox " political economy, now dead and
never to rise again, under whose dull dogmatism
the last century groaned, was, in some sort, a
vindication of the rights of individual freedom.
Socialism is, in some sort, a protest for the organic
nature of civil society. Nor is the organisation
of industry necessarily a violation of freedom.
The atomism issuing from the dissolvent laissez-
Socialism and Ethics 45
/aire doctrine should rather be so described :
" Freiheit ist keine Losung." From the point
of view of ethics, Socialists are quite right in
insisting that work is a social function, that
property is a social trust. This truth — I shall
have to insist upon it in the next Chapter — has
largely faded from the general mind, through
causes which are obvious enough. There can be
no doubt that the effect of the French Revolution,
with its anarchic individualism, was to render
property harder and less human by emancipating
it from social obligation. As little doubt can
there be that machinery has tended to brutalise
and pauperise the masses. The old fellowship of
labour has disappeared in the modern manufactory ;
the workman is a mere animated tool : a " hand,"
as the expressive phrase is : not better to the
employer than his dog, not dearer than his horse :
quite the contrary. Facts — most palpable facts,
and most ugly ones — are the antinomies of our
existing social order. It has been described — with
only too good reason — as " a cancerous formation
of luxury growing out of a root of pauperism."
On the one hand, many thousands rich beyond
the dreams of avarice. On the other hand, a
million odd dependent upon poor-law relief and
46 The Question of Popular Government
— the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is my
authority for the statement — " twelve millions
underfed and on the verge of hunger."
This is the outcome of our Mammon worship :
of the doctrine still preached in our midst by
those who are regarded as men of light and leading
— you may read it every day in their speeches as
reported in the public prints — that production is
the criterion of a nation's prosperity, that the
accumulation of wealth, no matter in what hands,
is the test of its progress. " Progress and Poverty! "
Henry George would have replied. Certain it is —
apart from Henry George's theories — that the
ampler the abundance in our cities, the direr, too
often, is the destitution. Sir John Byles observes,
with great sagacity, that the only sort of abundance
by which a nation really profits is ''an abundance
at once absolute and accessible " ; where there
is as much as the masses want combined with
accessibility ; where there is enough for the
multitude, and the multitude can get at it and
enjoy it, and that " this is the sort of plenty at
which Governments should aim." *
Many years ago Engel formulated the demand
* Sophisms of Free Trade and Popular Political Ecoitomy, edited
by Lilly and Devas, p. 144.
The Results of Combination 47
of Socialism as being " that men should emerge
from merely animal conditions into human ones."
It is for this end that the workers are largely
abandoning competition among themselves for
combination — with results that have already
largely benefited them and, through them, the
community. Capitalists are following this example
with results of which some — trusts, corners, com-
bines, for example — no doubt benefit the few by
drawing wealth from the many, but which most
certainly do not benefit the community ; and
State intervention — a century, nay, half a century,
ago the bugbear of " orthodox " political econo-
mists — is invoked to restrain them. But this
will be dealt with in the next Chapter.
CHAPTER II
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
" The whole art of politics is the art of seeing."
It is one of the many pregnant sayings attributed,
rightly or wrongly, to Talleyrand ; and, at all
events, it is not unworthy of him. The debates
in the British Parliament, and especially in the
House of Commons, seldom exhibit many traces
of this art. The true significance of the questions
discussed, does not appear to be discerned ade-
quately by those, on whatever side, who talk about
them most copiously. No doubt there are noble
lords, and honourable or right honourable gentle-
men, who do not desire that the real import of the
measures which they support, or oppose, should
be too plainly visible. In many instances, how-
ever, it would seem as if the disputants might be
characterised in the words employed by Carlyle
4 8
The Game of In and Outs 49
to describe Mr. Gladstone : " incapable of seeing
veritably any fact whatever."
Now what is the cause of this incapacity ? If
my memory is not at fault, Mr. Balfour told the
House of Commons, upon one occasion, that party
is the very breath of their nostrils. With all
deference to so great a Parliamentary authority,
I would rather describe party as the dust which
gets into the eyes of their understanding and mars
their intellectual vision. The House of Commons is
an assembly of well-nigh seven hundred gentlemen
engaged in playing the game of Ins and Outs —
gentlemen the vast majority of whom, as was
observed in the last Chapter, vote at the bidding
of the party whip in absolute indifference to, often
in absolute ignorance of, the issues involved in
the questions which their votes decide. I venture
to think that this account of them was strikingly
illustrated by the proceedings in the House of
Commons, when discussing Mr. Lloyd George's
famous Budget. The majority who voted
docilely in favour of it, were Ins who want to
stay in : the minority who voted against it, Outs
tired of staying out. Its real significance, as
a sign of the times, received small recognition
from honourable members. I suppose no one
50 The Social Question
attaches much importance to Mr. Lloyd George
himself, from the point of view of statecraft. It
was well pointed out by Mr. Mallock * that his
favourite arguments rest on fallacies of the most
astounding character which are put forward as
facts. " One of these is that the rent of land
forms the principal portion of the income assessed
to income-tax. Another is that the rent or the
selling value of the land of this country, as a whole,
exhibits a rate of continuous increase not exhibited
by incomes derived from any other source. The
third is that, of the land rent of this country, the
whole is virtually taken by great proprietors — he
sometimes seems to think by dukes." Mr. Mallock
correctly observes that every one of these sup-
positions is a ludicrous inversion of the truth. f Of
* In a letter published in the Times on the 7th of August, 1909.
f Mr. Mallock proceeds: "Of the gross income reviewed for
purposes of assessment, the gross rental of agricultural and urban
land together amounts to-day to but one-tenth of the total.
"The agricultural rent of the country is less by ;£ 18,000,000 than it
was twenty-eight years ago. The net rental of agricultural land,
urban land, and the actual structures of houses is less by ,£5,000,000
than it was fifteen years ago ; whilst the income taxed under Schedule
D has increased by .£105,000,000. The selling or capital value of
estates of over 30 acres averaged in the years 1893-6 more than ^5
per acre less than it did between the years 1780 and 1800.
" Lastly, the owners of land, instead of consisting virtually of a small
body of great landlords, were shown so long ago as 1876 to amount to
more than 1,000,000 persons, and the rental of those who owned under
one acre each was more than a third of the rental of the entire body,
and exceeded the rental of those who owned upwards of 1,000 acres.
An Occult Force 51
course I do not impugn Mr. Lloyd George's honesty.
He is a keen combatant in the Parliamentary arena,
and his intellectual vision has doubtless been
blinded by its dust. My concern with him and
his Budget, however, has nothing to do with his
ethical merit or demerit. There is an occult force
which drives the generations of mortal men before
it, as irresistibly as the wind drives the leaves to
which Homer has likened them. Call it the
Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, or what you will ;
the name matters little : the fact is undeniable.
Of such a force Mr. Lloyd George's financial policy
is an outward visible manifestation. It really
means that what Carlyle called " The Condition
of England Question " is at last claiming to be of
paramount importance, and can no longer be
shelved by the players of the party game.
II
Let us look a little at this question. The
population of the United Kingdom is 44,538,718.
The wealth of the United Kingdom has been
recently estimated by Mr. Chiozza Money — a very
In Scotland the proportion to the whole borne by the rental of the
owners of less than an acre was as 58 to 180, and in England as
29 to 65."
52 The Social Question
competent authority — at £11,500,000,000. Of that
vast sum, 95 per cent, is owned by one-ninth of the
population : five millions of people are the pro-
prietors of £10,900,000,000. Let us go on from
capital to income. We may roughly estimate the
income of the country at £1,800,000,000 a year —
the figures are still Mr. Chiozza Money's. There are
about five million persons who take one-half of it,
while thirty-nine millions take the other half. And
of the five millions of persons who take nine
hundred millions of income, about one and a
quarter million persons, or two hundred and fifty
thousand families, take six hundred millions.
These two hundred and fifty thousand families are
at the top of the social scale. At the bottom are
two millions of families earning less than £1 per
week. Forty-three per cent, of the population,
however hard they may work, however thrifty
they may be, are not able to command an income
sufficient to provide for a standard of workhouse
subsistence. Further, there are always over a
million of unemployed and over a million of
paupers. It is a significant fact that the rise of
pauperism has been continuous since 1901. There
are now one hundred and eighteen thousand more
paupers than there were then. Moreover, it should
A Contrast 53
be added that while the capital wealth of the
country is increasing yearly by £200,000,000,
wages are going down, and the cost of living is
going up.
And now let us turn from figures to actual life.
In a book written more than half a century ago^
and long fallen into unmerited oblivion — Dr.
Channing's Duty of Free States — I find the following
words, which are as true to-day as they were
then : —
To a man who looks with sympathy and brotherly
regard on the mass of the people, who is chiefly interested
in the " lower classes," England must present much that
is repulsive. . . . The condition of the lower classes at
the present moment is a mournful comment on English
institutions and civilisation. The multitude are depressed
in that country to a degree of ignorance, want, and misery,
which must touch every heart not made of stone. In
the civilised world there are few sadder spectacles than
the present contrast in Great Britain of unbounded
wealth and luxury with the starvation of thousands
and tens of thousands, crowded into cellars and dens,
without ventilation or light, compared with which the
wigwam of the Indian is a palace. Misery, famine,
brutal degradation, in the neighbourhood and presence
of stately mansions, which ring with gaiety, and dazzle
with pomp and unbounded profusion, shock us as no
other wretchedness does.
I should observe that when Dr. Channing
wrote these words, the United States of America
presented a cheering contrast to the picture which
54 The Social Question
he draws. They no longer present such a contrast.
The economical condition of that country has
changed — and changed immeasurably for the worse
— since the Civil War. Enormous riches are con-
centrated in the hands of a very few, while the
great bulk of the population have become more and
more impoverished. It is calculated that one per
cent, of the families of the United States own more
than one-half of the national wealth, while nearly
one-half of the families are virtually propertyless.
We know what are the splendours of the New
York millionaires and multimillionaires — there are,
as it appears, some two thousand of them. Well,
in this same City of New York, men are crowded
four thousand, and even more, to the acre, and are
living in conditions as filthy, as wretched, as in-
human as can be found in any London slum. An
Occasional Correspondent of the Times, who in the
years 1907-8 contributed a most interesting series
of articles to that journal, under the title of A
Year Among Americans, writes as follows, founding
himself on official reports : — " In New York two-
thirds of the inhabitants live in tenement houses
that have over 350,000 living rooms into which,
because they are windowless, no ray of sunlight
ever comes. In fairly prosperous years there are
Wealth and Men 55
at least 10,000,000 — some careful statisticians say
from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 — people in America
who are always underfed and poorly housed, and of
these 4,000,000 are public paupers. Little chil-
dren, to the number of 1,700,000, who should be
at school, and about 5,000,000 women, are wage-
earners in America. ... A Report of the ■ Depart-
ment of Correction ' shows that one person in every
ten who dies in New York has a pauper's burial ;
that at the present ratio of deaths from tuber-
culosis, 10,000,000 persons now living will succumb
to that disease, which is largely due to insufficiency
of food and light and air : and that 60,463 families,
in the borough of Manhattan, New York, were
evicted from their homes in the year 1903." Such
is " the shame of mixed luxury and misery " which
is spread over the United States, as over England,
and from which no country of the civilised world
is wholly exempt. " Wealth accumulates, and
men decay."
Ill
But why is this so ? That is the next step in
our inquiry. There can be no doubt that this
state of things is the outcome of the economical
56 The Social Question
doctrines unquestioningly received and believed
in the civilised world for well-nigh a century from
Adam Smith's time. It was in 1776 that in his
Wealth of Nations he laid down the doctrine of
laissez-faire* which is the corner-stone, elect,
precious, of the old Political Economy long revered
as " Orthodox." When he wrote, the law imposed
many restrictions upon industries. He advocated
their total abolition, under the plea that labour
and capital should be free to seek their own
interests, and with the prophecy that general
happiness would result from this economical free-
dom. He was penetrated, as has been pointed out
in Toynbee's Industrial Revolution, by " the belief
in the supreme value of individual liberty, and the
conviction that man's self-love is God's providence ;
that the individual in pushing his own interest is
promoting the interests of all." He forgot that
parity of condition is an essential of freedom of
contract ; and the generation to which he appealed
did not happen to remember it. His doctrine was
# The full phrase, laissez-faire, laissez-aller, which originated with
Quesnay, may be taken in the sense of " a fair field and no favour." We
should be unjust to Adam Smith if we did not distinguish between his
doctrine and the developments of it due to his followers. At the same
time it must be acknowledged that dubiety exists as to what his
doctrine really was, whence prolonged controversy in Germany con-
cerning " Das Adam Smith Problem."
" The System of Natural Liberty " 57
soon everywhere received and believed as a new
economic gospel — with the consequences which
we all know.
One chief result was to dissolve the old fellow-
ship of industry, and to array capital and labour
against one another in two hostile camps. It was
a most unequal struggle — a struggle in which,
naturally, the weakest went to the wall. This
was the result of what Adam Smith called " the
obvious and simple system of natural liberty/'
the essence of which, as he goes on to tell us, is to
leave " every man, so long as he does not violate
the laws of justice" — he means thereby the
criminal law — " perfectly free to pursue his own
interest his own way, and to both bring his in-
dustry and his capital into competition with
those of any other man or order of men."*
Adam Smith proceeded upon the assumption
that all men are perfectly free and economically
equal — an astonishing assumption. The replete
capitalist and the starving labourer econo-
mically equal ! Freedom of contract between
the man who owns land, mines, machinery, and
the man who owns only his ten fingers, skilled
or unskilled — " lord of himself, that heritage of
* Wealth of Nations, Book IV. c. 9.
58 The Social Question
woe " ! It was under this system, described
as " free competition working by demand and
supply," that colossal fortunes were built up in
England in the nineteenth century. This " free
competition " was really a most atrocious tyranny
of capital. If I may quote words which I have
written elsewhere : —
I know of no more shameful page in human history
than that whereon is recorded the condition of the
English working classes in coal mines, woollen factories,
and cotton factories during the first three decades of
that century. The victims of over-work, of under-pay,
of frauds and extortions of all kinds, notably those
practised through the truck system, their condition was
worse than that of overburdened and overdriven horses :
because those human faculties, those human needs which
marked them off from the brute beasts, were utterly
ignored and unprovided for. Not only grown-up men
and women, but little children were offered up in sacrifice
to " Gain the master-idol of this realm." The story
revealed in the Parliamentary Reports of 1842 and 1843,
of general deliberate and systematic cruelty practised
on girls and boys of tender age, cannot be read without
sickening horror.*
Well, those atrocities have largely disappeared,
thanks to a long series of legislative measures,
passed in the teeth of most strenuous opposition
from the old school of Utilitarian Radicals
and the Orthodox Political Economists, their
* First Principles in Politics, p. 98.
Trade Unions 59
instructors in politics. Another great step for
the amelioration of the condition of the workers
was made by the institution of Trade Unions,
which, as Brentano has pointed out, originated
with the non-observance of the Statutes fixing
wages and regulating apprenticeships. They were
originally regarded as wicked combinations for
the ruin of capitalists : and for long years the
Courts of Law so treated them. Gradually
they won their way, first into toleration, and
then into recognition : and now they are, we
may say, established factors in our industrial
system. I am far from asserting that Trade
Unions have been an unmixed benefit. What is ?
The end which they are by way of promoting — the
advancement of the interests, real or supposed, of
the workmen — by no means justifies all the means
which they have employed. But when every just
allowance is made for their errors — or their crimes
— it remains true, as the late Mr. Devas admirably
said, that " the benefits which Trade Unions have
conferred, or helped to confer, on the English
artisans, are many ; higher wages, shorter hours
of work, removal of middlemen (out-contractors
or sweaters), removal of many oppressive fines or
penalties, checks on brutality of foremen, support
60 The Social Question
to members out of work." * It would be easy,
but it is not necessary, to continue this catalogue
of their good works. But there is one thing which
they have wrought, of such transcendent impor-
tance that it must be set down here. By vindi-
cating the advantage of collective bargaining
over individual bargaining with employers of
labour, of combination over competition, they
did much to bring about real freedom of con-
tract, or something more or less nearly approach-
ing to it.
But combination among workmen has been
followed by combination among capitalists. They,
too, have discerned that union among themselves
is a much better thing for them than war among
themselves, seeing that they may thereby more
or less completely control production, barter, and
commerce. Hence have arisen Rings and Trusts —
combinations both against the public which con-
sumes commodities, and against the workers who
produce them. These gigantic monopolies aim at
regulating, on their own terms, production and
distribution, and, in many instances, they have
largely succeeded in so doing.
Such organisations of capital are of American
# Manual of Political Eco?io?ny ) p. 422.
Trusts 6 1
origin, and it is to the United States of America
that we must go if we would rightly judge of them.
It is worth while for us to make the expedition,
for there can be no doubt that England, and the
Old World generally, will follow the example thus
set by the New. As I have before noted, up to
the time of the American Civil War there were few,
if indeed any, millionaires in the United States,
there was no serious poverty problem. Now all
that is changed. During the few decades which
have elapsed since the termination of the Civil
War there has been a perfectly marvellous de-
velopment of industry in the country, resulting,
on the one hand, in a vast and rapidly increas-
ing concentration of wealth among capitalists,
and, on the other, in vast and rapidly increasing
poverty among the wage-earning classes employed
by them. By means of Trusts, capital has
largely secured the control of natural resources
in the United States — a control which involves
absolute power over the division of the product of
industry. There lies a book before me by Mr.
Byron C. Mathews,* which is worth citing in this
connection : —
* I know nothing of the author save what the title-page of his
work informs me, viz., that he is " of the Department of Economics,
High School, Newark, N.J."
62 The Social Question
The monopolistic power of many of these combina-
tions, he writes, is secured, in whole or in part through
their control of the sources of supply of raw material.
The organisers of the Steel Trust understood this well
when, in securing their charter, they inserted among
the many objects for which the Corporation was formed :
" To acquire, own, lease, occupy, use or develop, any
land containing coal, iron, manganese, stone, or other
ores, or oil, and any wood lands, or other land, for the
use of the Company." In pursuance of this power they
have acquired extensive iron ore deposits covering great
sections of three States, and immense acreages of coal
and coke deposits covering great sections of five other
States. With the exception of two of the smaller sections,
all these deposits, located in eight different States, some
of them a thousand miles apart, are connected by a net-
work of railroads and steamboats, lines owned and
operated by the Trust. . . . Ownership of all these by
the Steel Trust carries with it absolute control of the
sources of supply of all their material, and hence it makes
them masters of all the processes carried on by their
hundreds of plants located in fifteen different States,
and masters of all their products, including control over
the distribution of their values. The Trust controls
something over seventy per cent, of all the steel and iron
products made in the country. Assuming that the
owners of the other thirty per cent, have a like control
over their source of supply, the conclusion we reach is
that ... to capital invested in natural resources and
in the means of their transportation, control of all iron
and steel products made in this country is secured. As in
the steel and iron industry, so in all manufacturing
industries. In agriculture, another great foundational
industry, the same control over products is secured by
the same . . . use of capital. . . . The same situation
exists in all lumbering operations. ... So in mining
the man who owns the mines has control over everything
taken out of them. . . . This control may under certain
circumstances be just as effectual if secured through the
A Giant's Strength 63
control of the means of transportation, as in the case of
the anthracite coal mines. . . . Through this power the
railroad owners have become owners of the anthracite
coal fields . . . [the actual] owners of most of them, and
the de facto owners of them all. In the early history
of the petroleum industry the concern now known as
the Standard Oil Trust, through its league with railroads,
secured control of the oilfields, and in this manner built
up that gigantic combination. It matters not how the
control of the material is secured — whether through
ownership, or through the means of transportation, or
some other way ; the important thing is the control.*
This control of the wealth material, and thereby
of the labour operating thereon, of course gives a
giant's strength to those who possess it ; and they
have of late years used it tyrannously like a giant ;
indeed, their encroachments have been so severely
felt by the middle class, as to arouse a general feeling
that something is rotten in the state of a country
where such abuses are possible. The condition of
the non-owning wage-earners is becoming little
better than it was in the days of that free and un-
restricted competition from which Trade Unions
to some extent delivered them. Mr. Mathews puts
it in his powerful, not to say passionate, way : —
They are economically in the power of those who own
and control the material, as truly as were the coloured
slaves legally in the power of their owners before their
* Our Irrational Distribtdion of Wealth, by Byron C. Mathews,
pp. 25-32.
64 The Social Question
emancipation. There is absolutely nothing in this world
for them to do except to operate upon material, changing
its form and place. If the material is withheld from
them by the owners of it, they and their families may
beg or starve. Their privilege of earning their bread,
even by the sweat of their brows, has been denied them.
All talk about free labour is prattle, if it is meant that
a labourer is free to earn bread without asking the privilege
of doing so from some other man. His freedom is limited
to the privilege of asking. He is absolutely free to keep
on asking for a job for ever, but never free to get it. The
plain name for this situation is slavery. It is legalised
slavery. These economic conditions are the result of
law. They are the logical outcome of our irrational
laws of ownership, especially of land-ownership. Non-
owning wage-earners have no legal right to live except
in the almshouses. If they beg, the laws jail them. If
they starve, the taxpayers bury them. In the potter's
fields of the world are the victims of our cruel industrial
organisation to be counted by the ten thousand.*
But, of course, there is more than that in the
economical question now forcing itself on the atten-
tion of the world — the question, we may call it,
of the distribution of social income. It is a
favourite maxim that such distribution should be
on the basis of service which, Mr. Mathews observes,
seems to imply distribution according to merit.
But he finds, he tells us, " everywhere a sort of
service without sacrifice, hence without merit, and
compensation for such meritless service." And he
continues : —
* p. 96.
The True Rule of Distribution 65
Unrestricted inheritance privileges and stock-watering
processes are two illustrations of many that might be
named of the methods employed in securing unearned
and undeserved portions of social income. Others are
stock-market gambling, use of monopolistic power,
municipal franchises, certain insurance practices, and
many questionable business methods. When through
any of these methods a man secures a portion of social
income without sacrifice on his part commensurate with
the amount received, he is getting something for nothing,
something which belongs to somebody else, hence does
not belong to him. There can be no production of
values without sacrifice. All wealth produced by the
deliberate action of men should be divided among those
who make the necessary sacrifice, and as nearly as
possible in proportion to the sacrifice made. The nearer
we approach to this, the nearer we shall approximate
justice. Distribution on the basis of service which
involves sacrifice would cut out from any share in the
products of industry all social parasites, both the idle
rich and tramps, and would set them to work, or give
them an opportunity to fast. The world owes no man
a living, but it does owe to every man an opportunity
to earn a living. Our method of dividing social income
gives to a large and growing class of idle rich a living
without the least return to society on their part. If
this class could be eliminated, a long stride towards the
solution of the problem of distribution would be taken.*
Does Mr. Mathews, then, deny the right of all
capitalists to any share of the produce which their
capital has assisted labour to produce ? No : he
distinguishes. " Those whose only part in pro-
duction is ownership of capital," he holds, " have
* P. 44-
66 The Social Question
no right to any part of the products of industry
unless their capital is the result of their own
exertions, or the exertions of those upon whom,
through family relationships, they are dependent,
and not the product of some other man's labour."
He distinguishes, in fact, between capital rightfully
earned and capital wrongfully earned. And his
complaint is that this distinction is not recognised.
But let us hear him once more.
At present it makes absolutely no difference whether
a man inherited his capital or earned it as a motorman
on a street car, whether he secured it in legitimate
business or in an Amalgamated Copper Gamble — in
short, whether he produced it or stole it. The laws of
the country say to every man who owns capital, " We
will protect you in the possession of your capital, and
in the right to the possession of all interest that may
be paid for its use. It makes no difference to us whether
you earned it or not. That is a matter of slight import-
ance. What we want to know is that you've got it.
We are interested in the fellow that has something :
even if some other fellow did produce it, that does not
change our attitude towards you. You need our pro-
tection because you've got something. If the fellow
who produced it wasn't able to establish a title to it
and keep it, that is none of our business. He simply
doesn't need our protection, because he hasn't anything
to be protected. Even if he was compelled by hunger,
for the sake of bread to eat, to relinquish all claim to the
wealth he's produced, that is not a matter with which
we are concerned, that is his look-out. You may be
well assured that so long as you possess the capital, we,
the laws, are your friends. And not only so : you may
Rightfully and Wrongfully Earned Capital 67
be assured of this also : that you have other friends
standing behind us ready for action on your behalf,
whenever necessary. These other friends are the military
forces of the nation. With such friends, be at ease ;
invest your capital, however obtained ; we will see to
it that you are protected in the transaction.*
No doubt there is much truth in this vigorous
diatribe, although it is far from being the whole
truth on the question with which it deals. But
if we ask Mr. Mathews how the laws are, in
practice, to distinguish between capital rightly
and capital wrongfully earned, his trumpet gives
an uncertain sound.
It is impossible to say what portion of the capital
employed in the country belongs to those who have
contributed to its production. When we remember
that one per cent, of the families of the country possess
a greater amount of wealth than the other ninety-
nine per cent. ; that this same one per cent, of our
richest families receive a larger portion of the products of
industry than the poorest fifty per cent. ; that they
receive from property alone as large an income as half
of the nation's inhabitants receive from property and
labour together ; when we recall the prevailing code
of " business ethics," the laws of inheritance, the passing
of millions of wealth from hand to hand among those
who have never contributed the least use of muscle or
grey matter to social welfare — when we think of all these
things we are compelled to conclude that a very large
portion of social capital is owned by those who can set
up no moral claim whatsoever to it, and that all interest
* P. 88.
68 The Social Question
which is paid on such capital is so much taken out of the
total social income, taken away from the producers, and
paid over to non-producers.*
The practical measures to which Mr. Mathews
looks for a remedy of the evils which he bewails,
are apparently a large extension of public owner-
ship, the curtailment of inheritance, and the
introduction of co-operation in industrial con-
cerns. On this last-mentioned point he writes as
follows : —
Owners and managers have learned in recent years
that the workers must be reckoned with. Through
organisation these classes have secured recognition, but
they have not secured all their rights. For this end we
fear they are on the wrong track. They never will secure
their rights in full so long as they recognise the wage
system as the means of determining their share of social
income. For fifty years they have been striking for higher
wages, all the time recognising the wage system as the
proper and legitimate agency for determining their
portion. Whereas the wage system is only their first
step towards economic freedom. The next step appears
to be a voice in control, some form of co-operation. As
has been repeatedly pointed out, the power to dictate
the terms of division lies with the man who owns the
material and the tools. So long as this power remains
completely in the hands of those who are outside of the
wage-earning classes, many of whom are antagonistic to
these classes rather than in sympathy with them, so long
the wage system cannot be relied upon to determine the
wage-earner's fair share of the products of industry.
So long as control is left where it is, the labour problem
will be with us. The solution of this problem will be
* P. 99=
A Solution 69
such a readjustment of the relation of the labourer to
the product of his labour as will allow him to earn a
living for himself without first being compelled to con-
tribute to the living of capitalists and landlords, which
he is now compelled to do. This problem will be solved
speedily, easily, completely, and permanently, when
all labouring people unite at the ballot box.*
These last words of Mr. Mathews' are worth
pondering. It is to the ballot box, he tells us, that
the toiling millions look for the redress of the evils
which he so vigorously sets forth. Some half a
century ago Ruskin wrote in his Arrows of the
Chace : " The labouring poor produce the means
of life by their labour. Rich persons possess
themselves, by various expedients, of a right to
dispense these means of life ; and, keeping as much
as they want of it for themselves, or rather more,
dispense the rest, usually in return for more labour
from the poor expended in providing various
delights for the rich dispensers. The idea is now
gradually entering poor men's minds that they
may as well keep in their own hands the right of
distributing the means of life they produce, and
employ themselves, so far as they need extra
occupation, for their own entertainment and benefit
rather than that of other people." During the
decades which have elapsed since these words were
* P. no.
70 The Social Question
written, the idea which Ruskin spoke of as " gradu-
ally entering poor men's minds " has taken deep
root there. During the same decades, too, pre-
ponderating political power has passed into their
hands. That, as I pointed out in the last Chapter,
is the issue of the reckless bidding of party against
party for place and power. Leading politicians
have preached the utterly unethical doctrine of
the absolute right of numerical majorities ; nay,
more, not a few of them have used every rhetorical
artifice to split up our national solidarity, and to
array " the masses " against the " classes " — to
use Mr. Gladstone's phrase. But political power
is only a means. One of the clearest sighted of
French publicists, M. Ledru Rollin, pointed out
more than half a century ago that the goal of the
democratic movement was economical, its course
being " de passer par la question politique pour
arriver a r amelioration sociale." You tell Lazarus
that he is equal in rights to Dives. He naturally
inquires, Where, then, are my purple and fine
linen ? Between him and Dives there is what
Mill euphemistically calls " complete opposition
of apparent interest " ; and he, in his millions, is
now master of the situation. Well may Mill
inquire : " Even supposing the ruling majority
"A Considerable Danger" 71
of poor sufficiently enlightened to be aware that it
is not for their advantage to weaken the security of
property, and that it would be weakened by any
act of arbitrary spoliation, is there not a con-
siderable danger lest they should throw upon the
possessors of what is called realised property, and
upon the larger incomes, an unfair share, or even
the whole of the burden of taxation, and, having
done so, add to the amount without scruple, ex-
pending the proceeds in modes supposed to con-
duce to the profit and advantage of the labouring
classes ? " *
IV
There are two adjectives in this passage of Mill
which deserve consideration ; they are " arbit-
rary " and " unfair." What is the criterion of
just dealing in the matter ? Let us pursue, for
a little, that inquiry. To do so effectively we
shall have to go back to first principles too gene-
rally overlooked both by the classes and by
the masses, by landlords and by labourers, by
manufacturers and by their " hands," and usually
quite unrecognised by the legislature.
* Considerations on Representative Government, p. 120.
72 The Social Ouestion
I observe that Mr. Mathews calls his book, from
which I have more than once quoted, Our Irrational
Distribution of Wealth. I welcome the title. The
appeal really is to reason, with which what is
" arbitrary " and " unfair " is irreconcilable. It
is by reason that we distinguish between right and
wrong ; and the true function of the lawgiver is
to formulate, for the guidance of human society,
the concepts of right which reason reveals ; hence
Aquinas has admirably characterised law as " a
function of reason." * Those concepts of right
we call rights. The two terms are, in their ultimate
source, one. And it is the office of that branch of
philosophy which the scientific jurisprudents of
Germany call " Naturrecht," "so to deduce the
multiplicity of rights from the self-same fount,
that they may be exhibited as governed by the
unity of an inherent co-ordinating thought." f
The basis of all rights — whether of nations or of
the individual persons who make up a nation — is
ethical. Hence the ancient and most wise maxim
that justice is the foundation of the State —
* So the well-known passage in the Ninth Book of Paradise
Lost : —
" We live
Law to ourselves : our Reason is our Law."
t Trendelenburg : Naturrecht auf devi Crimde der Ethik, p. i.
Justitia Fundamentum Regni 73
" Justitia fundamentum regni " ; and what is
justice but, as the Roman jurisprudent defined it,
" the constant and perpetual will to give to every
one his right " ? As the State is founded on
justice, so its chief function is to do justice. That,
indeed, is not the view generally held on this
important matter. Lord Macaulay, in his essay
on Gladstone's Church and State, tells us that the
primary end of government is " the protection of
the persons and property of men." Assuredly
this proposition is not true. If Macaulay meant
" the rights of persons and property," it is a pity
that he did not say so. Equally indefensible is
the maxim that the end of the State is " to pro-
mote the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." Happiness, indeed, is a question-begging
word. If we take it in the Spencerian sense of
" agreeable feeling " — which is, as I suppose, the
sense it bears in the foolish dictum just quoted —
assuredly it is not the end of the State to provide
as much happiness as possible for the numerical
majority. Their interests, real or ostensible, are
not necessarily the interest of the body politic, as
a whole, but are often opposed to it. No ; the
end of the State is not to manufacture " happi-
ness," but to define, maintain, amplify, and secure
74 The Social Question
its own rights and the rights of its subjects. This
has been well put by " the master of those who
know." The end of the State, Aristotle tells us,
is ev gfjv : noble or worthy life, which, too, is the
end of the individual : an existence in accordance
with the dignity of human nature : a complete and
self-sufficient existence : the development of its
own personality, and of the personality of its
subjects, under the law of right.
For the State has a true personality, and, like
the individuals of whom it is composed, is invested
with all the rights flowing from personality ; rights
springing from the ethical idea and psychological
being of man, but realised only in civil society,
which — and not the savage Utopia vainly imagined
by Rousseau — is man's natural state : Unus homo,
nullus homo. Now, according to all the great
masters of ethics from Plato and Aristotle down
to Spinoza and Kant, man, as man, possesses
certain rights,* which are not derived from positive
law, but are anterior to it, though it guarantees
and secures them, and which may properly be
* The French Revolution doubtless did the great service of pro-
claiming the august verity, obscured and almost forgotten in the age
of Renaissance Caesarism, that man, as man, possesses natural and
imprescriptible rights. Unfortunately, its leaders, their heads crammed
with the sophisms of Rousseau, and unversed in real political philo-
sophy, had no rational conception of those rights.
The Right to Property 75
called innate, as " belonging," in the words of
Kant, " to every one by nature, independent of
all juridical experience : " * rights which are ethical
entities — that is to say, subject to the moral law :
rights which are conditioned by duties and are
strictly fiduciary in their character. One of these
is the right to existence — liberty to live ; one the
right to personal liberty — to the self-determined
use of a man's faculties, mental and physical.
Another right, which may properly be called
natural, is the right to property. It is, however,
referred by the Schoolmen to the secondary
sphere of natural rights, because, as Aquinas
explains, " the marking off of separate possessions
is done not according to natural law, but rather
according to human convention." " Hence,"
he continues, " private property is not against
the natural law, but is added thereto by the
discovery (adinventionem) of human reason." f
Like all rights, it is indissolubly linked to
* Kant, in his Science of Right, allows only one Innate Right,
(angeborne Recht) Freedom. He goes on to explain : " Freedom is
independence of the compulsory will of another : and in so far as it
can coexist with the freedom of all, according to a universal law, it
is the one sole original inborn Right belonging to every person in
virtue of his humanity." All the rights properly called natural are,
as he observes, " included in the Principle of Innate Freedom " : are,
we may say, aspects of it.
t Sum/na Thcologica, 2, 2, q. 66, a. 2, ad 1.
y6 The Social Question
obligations ; it is held for the benefit, not merely
of the proprietor, but of the community in which
it acquires validity and coerciveness. It is, in its
original idea, the guarantee to a man, by the State,
of the fruits of his own labour and abstinence —
that is, of the ethical exercise of his personality.
The philosophical justification of this right is that
private property is necessary for the explication
of personality in this work-a-day world. A desire
to appropriate things external to ourselves, to
convert them into lasting instruments of our will,
is one of the elements of our being. We cannot
picture to ourselves a state of existence in which
man does not exclusively possess what is necessary
for self-preservation. We may say that it is an
attribute of man, although we find in the lower
animals the foreshadowings of it : counterfeits —
if we may so translate /u^u^ara — Aristotle calls
them, of man's life.
Such is the true account of the right to pro-
perty generally. But ownership of property in
land must be considered as being of a more
limited and restricted kind than ownership of
property in chattels. There is this great differ-
ence between the soil and other subjects of
property, that its quantity cannot be multiplied.
Property in Land 77
The principle, underlying the feudal system, that
the soil of a country is the common heritage of
the country, is a true principle. And the philo-
sophical justification of private property in land
is, that, as a matter of fact, it is for the general
benefit. This has been formulated, with his ac-
customed clearness and succinctness, by Aquinas :
" If this field be considered absolutely," he writes,
" there is no reason why it should belong to one
man rather than to another. But if it be con-
sidered relatively to the opportunity of cultivating
it, and to the peaceful user of the land, that pre-
sents a certain fitness why it should belong to one
man rather than to another." * That is to say,
that private property in land is just, according to
the jus naturale, not in se and absolutely considered,
but relatively to the effects which flow from it.
So much as to the right to property in general,
and to property in land in particular. In itself,
property is not theft, as Proudhon declares, f To
* Summa Theologica, 2, 2, q. 57, a. 3. The doctrine of Kant is
similar. In his Science of Right he asserts, " the innate right of
common possession of the surface of the earth," and adds, " This
original community of the soil, and of the things upon it {communio
ftmdi originarid), is an idea which has objective (practical — juridical)
reality, and is altogether different from the idea of a primitive com-
munity of things (communio firimceva), which is a fiction." § 6.
f " La propridtd c'est le vol." The original form of the dictum
was " La proprie'te' exclusive est le vol," and it is due to Brissot de
78 The Social Question
quote once more the greatest master of ethics, as
I must account him : " The possession of riches,"
Aquinas writes, " is not in itself unlawful if the
order of reason be observed : that is to say, that
a man possess justly what he owns, and that he
use it in a proper manner for himself and others." *
In other words, property is rightful if justly gained
and duly employed. If not — well, if not, regarded
from the point of view of ethics, it falls under
the condemnation too sweepingly pronounced by
Proudhon. And as a matter of fact, how much
of the wealth of our richest classes can be said to
have been justly gained ? Unquestionably there
are large landholders who owe their broad acres to
wrong and robbery ; those of them, for example,
whose ancestors were enriched at the time of the
Protestant Reformation from the spoils of religious
foundations. But a still heavier indictment lies
against a multitude of rich men of another order,
the possessors of property iniquitously acquired in
trade or commerce, or in financial gambling — "the
wealthy criminal classes," Mr. Roosevelt has called
Warville. It will be found in his book, Recherches sur la Proprietc et
le Vol, whence Proudhon borrowed it without acknowledgment.
There is a pungent saying of St. Jerome which has in some sort
anticipated it : " Omnis dives aut iniquus est, aut hasres iniqui."
• Contra Gentes^ lib. 3, 123.
" The Wealthy Criminal Classes ,: 79
them. How many of these owe their opulence to
dreadful deeds of cruelty and extortion in the
eighteenth century when the gospel of laissez-faire
had free course and was glorified. And, to come
to our own days, Sir George Lewis — than whom it
would be difficult to find a better authority —
writes : * " Many of the large fortunes which have
been amassed by ' mushroom ' financiers and pro-
moters, during the last decades, have been built
upon foundations of trickery, deceit, and fraud, and
if we examine the means employed, we find them
little different from those of the racecourse
thimble-rigger." No doubt the men who have
thus heaped up riches have, as a rule, kept " o' the
windy side " of the criminal law. But as assuredly,
they have defied the moral law, whose penal
sanctions are not less real than those embodied
in Acts of Parliament. Nor will the plea of
" exceptional ability " avail them. The ability
which they have manifested is chiefly that of which
Falstaff speaks : ability to steal well.
But further. To render the possession of
riches lawful from an ethical standpoint, they must
not only be justly acquired, but rightly used. A
man speaks of his land, his goods, his money.
* In the anniversary number of the Financial News,
80 The Social Question
They are his in a qualified sense. Absolute owner-
ship springs only from creation. We are not
absolute owners : we are stewards, usufructuaries,
trustees. The right of private property is con-
ditioned by the duty that it should be made a
common good for the community which validates
and protects it. Can we say, as we look around us,
that this duty is adequately fulfilled ? I confess
that the peans raised in the newspapers and else-
where over the prosperity of England, fill me with
a feeling akin to despair. England a prosperous
country ? Ah, no ! The true test of a country's
prosperity is not the superabounding opulence of
the few, but the substantial and rational comfort
of the many. A man is prosperous when he pos-
sesses the means, not of bare subsistence, but of
leading his life in security and comfort, according
to his position ; of developing soul and body ; of
bringing up his family decently. And a prosperous
country is a country in which this is the true
account of the people as a whole. The most
prosperous nation is not the nation which has
most manufactures, most millionaires, the largest
imports and exports. The most prosperous coun-
try is the country which has the least pauperism.
The rational distribution of wealth is of far
The Order of Reason 81
more importance than its accumulation. The
conviction is deep and widespread in England, as
well as in the United States of America, that the
existing distribution of wealth is, to a large extent,
what Mr. Mathews calls it — irrational.
And it is a true conviction. Socialists are well
warranted in holding it and in preaching it. But
their remedy is futile. Acts of " arbitrary "
spoliation, the throwing upon the owners of
realised property, and upon the larger incomes, an
" unfair " share of the burden of taxation (to go
back to Mill's adjectives) are utterly inexpedient
because they are sovereignly unjust. The order
of reason must be observed if we would make
things better instead of worse.
For man consists in reason. He alone of all
the animals has perception of justice and injustice ;
he is, in Aristotle's phrase, an ethical animal ; and
by ethics I mean the science of natural morality,
indicating what is right and wrong, as befitting or
unbefitting a rational creature. And as man con-
sists in reason, so also does the State : " the inner
ground for its existence," Lasson has well said,*
" is man's endowment of reason, which is the most
distinctive part of his manhood." Now assuredly
* System der Rechtsphilosofihie, p. 296.
82 The Social Question
it is not reasonable that the relation of the wage-
earner to the wealth which he helps to produce
should be such as to give him no recognised right
of any kind in the product of his own labour. It
is not reasonable that we should find boundless
luxury at one end of the social organism and hope-
less pauperism at the other. It is not reasonable
that great corporations should dominate whole
fields of industry, holding the workers in economic
slavery, and the consumers in a thraldom hardly
less galling. All this is contrary to the true con-
ception of the State as an ethical organism, rooted
and grounded in those eternal principles of right
which constitute the moral law. And to the
general loss of that conception many — indeed most
— of the economical evils from which we suffer are
due. They are the result of that political atomism
which the French Revolution introduced into the
world : a doctrine substituting the individual for
the family as the social unit : self-interest for self-
sacrifice as the law of action : the will, or rather
whim, of a numerical majority for the rule of
eternal justice. In the elimination of this essential
principle of the French Revolution lies the best
hope — it is a far-off hope — of remedying the eco-
nomic woes of the civilised world, of the healing
The Merit and Demerit of Socialism 83
of the nations from their grievous wound. The
great merit of Socialism is this : that in some
fashion — in a most blind and distorted fashion —
it witnesses to the organic nature of Society. Its
great demerit lies in its not recognising that in-
equality is the universal law of life and the universal
condition of well-being : that the very idea of the
State, as of the family, which is its unit and of
which it is the expansion, implies the diversity of
its members : that in attacking the wrongs of
individualism it attacks the inalienable right of the
individual to live out his own life and to make the
highest and best of himself, subject of course to
the condition that he does not infringe the like
right of others : that for the economic slavery of
some, it would substitute the economic slavery
of all.
V
Dr. Ingram has somewhere remarked : " The
social destination of property in land, and of every
species of wealth, will be increasingly acknowledged
and recognised in the future, but the result will
be brought about not through legal institutions,
84 The Social Question
but by the establishment and diffusion of moral
convictions." I believe this to be a true prophecy
so far as regards the increasing acknowledgment
and recognition of the social destination of pro-
perty. I believe, too, that moral convictions
will have much to do with its realisation. But
I feel convinced that those moral convictions
will have to be largely embodied in legal institu-
tions. The present industrial chaos is due to the
lack of organic unity. The task which lies before
us is the restoration of that unity. Assuredly the
State may, by apt legislation, do much for such
restoration. Professor Menger well observes that
it is a function of Government to " extract from
the interminable popular and philanthropic utter-
ances constituting Socialistic literature the under-
lying ideas, and to translate them into scientific
concepts of right."* The State is vitally inter-
ested in the well-ordering of economical relations ;
it is an ethical organism, and as such is bound to
maintain the conditions without which a free
exercise of the human faculties is impossible —
conditions to which both the anarchic individualism
of the old Political Economists, and the enforced
* Das Recht anf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher
Darstellung, p. 3.
Interdependence 85
equality of Socialism, are alike fatal. Let me
indicate, in the barest outline, and as if by a few
strokes of a pencil, some ways in which the State
may and should work for this end.
First, then, as to capital and labour. It has
been admirably remarked by Mill that " for any
radical improvement in the social and economical
relations between labour and capital, we have
chiefly to look to the regular participation of
the labourers in the profits derived from their
labour." * For independence we must substitute
interdependence : for competition, co-operation.
The State should actively encourage, and by
wise legislation aid, the systematic organisation
of industrial society — organisation based on com-
mon pursuits, common aims, common duties,
common interests.
Secondly the State should effectively interfere
in industrial contracts for the protection of those
who are unable to protect themselves. This is
now so generally recognised that fewest words
about it may suffice. The Anglican Bishop of
Southwark, in a recent speech in the House of
Lords, said — most truly — that the classes of labour
which are unorganised and unprotected by
* Principles of Political Economy, Book V., ch. x., p. 5.
86 The Social Question
legislation make the greatest contribution to the
ranks of the unemployed. He told their lordships
of women in his diocese who were working from
6 a.m. to ii p.m. daily for seven shillings a week,
" nominally " ; for, he added, " there are cases
where the wage is only half that sum ; some-
times large deductions are made from the sixpence
per shirt." One thinks of the profoundly true
dictum of Carlyle : " A fair day's wage for a fair
day's work is as just a demand as governed men
ever made of governing : it is the everlasting right
of man."
Thirdly, as to monopolies. The text-books
tell us that the law of England abhors them for
three reasons : " the raising of the prices, the
deterioration of the commodity, the impoverish-
ment of poor artificers." These are quite suffi-
cient reasons why the law should control them.
How ? Ten years ago Professor Ashley, in an
address on American Trusts,* which deservedly
attracted much attention, said : "I see nothing
for it but that in countries where the mono-
polising movement is well under way the Govern-
ment should assume the duty, in some way, of
regulating prices." This might be done by
* It will be found in his book, Surveys Historic and Economic.
Taxation 87
means of a Board formed in the same manner
as the Railway Commission.
What are sometimes called public utilities are
also monopolies, though of a different kind. Mill
has remarked, " A road, a canal, a railway are
always in a great degree practical monopolies, and
a Government which concedes such monopoly
unreservedly to a private company, does much
the same thing as if it allowed an individual or
an association to levy any tax they chose for their
own benefit on all the malt produced in the country
or on all the cotton imported into it." * We may
add to Mill's list telegraphs, telephones, water-
works, and gas or electric lighting. It seems to
me that the case for public ownership of all these
public utilities is overwhelming. It would cer-
tainly mean for the community at large better
service and lower charges, and for employees
improved conditions.
Fourthly, as to taxation. There can be no
question that at present the public revenue is
raised by a system — if system it can be called —
which is irrational and unjust. The ideal of a
fair impost is an ad valorem tax on property : not
merely on land, but on the whole bounty of nature
* Principles of Political Economy, Book V., ch. xi., p. u.
88 The Social Question
— the earth and all that therein is, except man
himself, whether it exists in a natural or trans-
muted state. But in existing industrial and com-
mercial conditions, this ideal cannot be realised ;
the tax intended to be imposed on all property-
would turn into a tax on real property. There
are two great fundamental principles which should
underlie all fiscal systems, and which at present
are adequately realised in none : the principle of
equality of sacrifice and the principle that indirect
taxation, if resorted to at all, should fall not on
necessaries, but on luxuries. Two imposts much
debated just now are the income tax and the death
duties. Who can rationally doubt that these
imposts should be progressive ? The principle
of equality of sacrifice absolutely demands it.
The details of just graduation* cannot be here
* Mr. Carnegie, whose modesty is as striking as his munificence —
not long ago, speaking in the New York Steel Institute, he ranked
himself among " those who do a great work, and who really feel and
know that they have received more than ten times more recognition
than they were entitled to " — is fully conscious that large properties
owe ransom to the community, and would levy death duties at the
rate of fifty per cent, on the largest of them. As regards the income
tax, its incidence in this country is manifestly and flagrantly unjust.
On an income of .£200 it is fifteen shillings per cent. ; on an income of
,£400, forty-five shillings per cent ; on an income of ,£800, seventy-five
shillings per cent. ; on an income of twice ^800 it is just the same ;
but if the income is from .£2000 to ^5000 it is a hundred and sixteen
shillings per cent. ; while at ^5000 the rate rises to a hundred and
thirty-six shillings, at ^10,000 to a hundred and fifty-one shillings,
Unearned Increment 89
discussed ; the subject is too great and too
intricate. The object of such graduation is, of
course, to transfer the burden of taxation from
classes now over-taxed — among them is the great
middle class in this country — to classes that are
under-taxed, in order to realise distributive
justice, both as to public burdens and public
benefits.
Fifthly, as to the unearned increment, especially
in the case of land, virtually the only form of
property which increases in value without the
expenditure of labour — or, at all events, the only
form which need be noticed here. It is unques-
tionable that this increase in land values is created
by the community. It seems just that at all
events a considerable portion of it should be taken
by the community. What portion is a question
to be considered from the point of view not only
of abstract justice, but also of equity and expedi-
ency. Let us glance at New York — that will be
less invidious than to take an example from our
own country. During the ten years from 1890
and at ,£20,000 to a hundred and fifty-nine shillings. A man with an
income of a million a year would pay not quite a hundred and sixty-
six shillings per cent. The larger the income, the smaller is the
charge due to proportionate ability to pay. It is obviously an arrange-
ment devised in the interest of plutocrats, in which the true principle
is absolutely inverted.
90 The Social Question
to 1900,* according to the official returns, the net
increase in land values was $1,000,000,000, which
vast sum went into the pockets of the owners of
the land on which New York' City stands. " The
Astor family," writes Mr. Mathews, " is an oft-
given illustration of the manner in which it is
possible to roll up millions by simply getting
possession of the values produced by the growth
of a community, without engaging in any pro-
ductive industry, or without necessarily making
any return whatever to Society. Soon after John
Jacob Astor came to this country he began to
buy land, and his family have faithfully followed
his example until to-day, when their wealth is
estimated at about $5,000,000,000, chiefly the
increase in land values because of the growth of
New York City."f Meanwhile, a considerable
portion of the inhabitants of New York, whose
labours have gone to produce that enhanced
value, are housed and nourished as we have seen
in a former page of this Chapter. These facts are
more eloquent than any tropes.
Lastly, speculation in stocks and shares is
not the least important matter in which the State
* The increase of a single year 1908 has been estimated at
$284,000,000.
t P. 18.
The Predatory Financier 91
should interfere by stringent legislation, on eco-
nomic as well as on ethical grounds. To get
possession of wealth without earning it, without
producing the values represented by it — wealth,
be it remembered, which really belongs to some
one else — is morally wrong, and should be branded
as legally wrong. The utterly unfruitful and
unprofitable " operations " with stocks, shares,
bonds, and in recent years even with produce
like cotton and wheat, are gambling of the worst
kind ; nay, more, are essentially usurious, and
should be rewarded not with a " pile," but with
the pillory. Usury has been defined by the
Fourth Lateran Council as " the attempt to draw
profit and increment without labour, without cost,
and without risk, from the use of a thing which
does not fructify." It would be impossible to
describe better the proceedings of the predatory
financier who purchases a thing with no intention
of getting possession of it, but merely to make
a profit from its changes in price. The repression,
under severe penalties, of these utterly unpro-
ductive operations, this wholly unfruitful mani-
pulation — often flagrantly dishonest — of existing
wealth, should certainly have a prominent place
in our programme of social reform.
92 The Social Question
" Our Programme of Social Reform." As-
suredly such a programme, thoroughly well thought
out, and unflinchingly carried through, is the one
thing needful to preserve the existing framework
of Society. The only way of maintaining the
rights of property is to redress the wrongs of
poverty. " Justitia fundamentum regni." Other
foundation can no man lay. " The moral laws
of nature and of nations " reign everywhere, by
their mandates and by their penalties. And a
people which transgresses them inevitably incurs
the retribution which is the other half of crime.
CHAPTER III
THE QUESTION OF PARENTAL RIGHT
A short time ago, when a Parliamentary election
was pending in one of the London boroughs, I
came upon a statement which I will proceed to
quote, in a journal of name : —
We notice that Mr. (the Unionist candidate)
has issued an account of the " Radical Record," in which
we find the following : — " The Radical Government has
now been in power for over two years, with the following
results ... (4) The right of the parent to say what
religious teaching shall be given to his child is seriously
threatened." As we have often pointed out, the parent
has no such right as the Liberal Government is here
depicted as robbing him of.
The newspaper from which I cite these words
is, as a rule, one of the most ably written of our
public prints, although the ability of the writers
is chiefly directed to persuade their readers that
all is for the best when the political party which
93
94 The Question of Parental Right
they support is in power. With that thesis I
am not concerned. I propose to consider the
denial of the right of the parent to say what
religious education should be given to his children.
II
The glorious uncertainty of the law is pro-
verbial. But if there is any point upon which
it is unmistakably clear and beyond doubt, it is
this of parental right. By the law of England
the father is entitled to the custody and control
of his children, nor can he divest himself of this
right by any agreement however solemn. That
was signally illustrated in the Agar-Ellis v. Lascelles
cases, where the Court refused to enforce an ante-
nuptial agreement to bring up the children as
Catholics, and affirmed the well-settled principle
that " a father cannot bind himself conclusively
by contract to exercise, at all events in a particular
way, rights which the law gives him for the
benefit of his children and not for his own/' And
so Lord O'Hagan, in re Meade's Minors, laid it
down that " the authority of a father to guide
and govern the education of his children is a very
A Fundamental Doctrine of Law 95
sacred thing bestowed by the Almighty, and to
be sustained to the utmost by human law ; it is
not to be abrogated or abridged without the
most coercive reason." Of course this right, like
other rights, may be forfeited. The Courts would
deprive a father of it for gross moral turpitude,
or if he has by his conduct abdicated his paternal
authority : and various Statutes have provided
against the abuse of it. But the general principle
remains unquestioned and unquestionable. It is
a fundamental doctrine of our law, affecting
equally all classes of the community. In prisons,
in workhouses, in industrial schools, provision is
most carefully made by statute that children are
to be brought up in their father's religion. Take,
for example, the following section of the Reforma-
tory Schools Act, 1866 : —
In choosing a certified reformatory school, the Court,
justices, magistrate, or visiting justice shall endeavour
to ascertain the religious persuasion to which the youthful
offender belongs, and, so far as is possible, a selection
shall be made of a school conducted in accordance with
the religious persuasion to which the youthful offender
appears to the Court, justices, magistrate, or visiting
justice to belong, which persuasion shall be specified by
the Court, justices, magistrate, or visiting justice.
The right of the father, then, so confidently and
so ignorantly denied, is emphatically recognised
96 The Question of Parental Right
by English law. Has it no deeper foundation,
no auguster sanction ? I am well aware that the
great majority of publicists in this country would
answer that question in the negative. Matthew
Arnold was not in error in calling the doctrine
that "all rights " {all, observe, without exception)
" are created by law, and are based on expediency,
and are alterable as the public advantage may
require," "the English doctrine." Nay, he blesses
and approves it as the " sound " English doctrine,
and, what is more, as his own : " that orthodox
doctrine is mine." * I wonder whether the accom-
plished scholar who thus wrote, remembered that
the doctrine so glorified is precisely the doctrine
of the Sophists which Plato refuted by arguments
as valid now as they were two thousand years
ago. But let us consider this " sound English
doctrine " a little in the light of first principles.
And I must ask the reader's pardon if, in proceed-
ing to do this, I dwell again on certain considera-
tions which I have urged in previous pages. My
excuse must be my desire that each of the
Chapters of this book should, as far as possible, be
whole in itself. I may cite too a very just observa-
tion of Herbert Spencer, with whom it is always
* Mixed Essays, p. 62.
"Moral " and "Person" 97
a pleasure to agree: "Only by varied iteration
can the truth be impressed on reluctant minds."
Ill
What, then, is a right ? It is evidently some-
thing which cannot be seen, touched, tasted, or
smelt : something beyond the grasp of the senses :
something immaterial. Physical science knows
nothing of rights ; it is concerned only with facts.
For the very notion of a right we must go to an
order of verities transcending the visible and tan-
gible universe : to what Aristotle has taught us
to call metaphysics, to supersensuous realities.
Yes, I am afraid a right must be described — there
is no help for it — as that thing so deeply detested
by an influential school at the present day, a
metaphysical entity ; nor do I think that we can
improve upon the old definition of it as "a moral
power residing in a person, in virtue of which he
calls anything his own." Note, please, the words
" moral " and " person." My dog's collar happens
to lie before me on the table as I write. It belongs
to me. Why ? In virtue of my right to property
as a person. I have bought it ; that is to say, I
H
98 The Question of Parental Right
have obtained it from another, with his free
consent, in exchange for something else which was
mine : the power by virtue of which I call it my
own, rests upon the ethical exercise of my per-
sonality. It would not belong to a thief who
stole it ; he is a person indeed, but he would have
obtained it by an unethical exercise of his per-
sonality : his power over it would not be moral.
It cannot belong to my dog who wears it, because
he is not a person : he does not even belong to
himself, but to me. Personality — the ethical
idea and psychological being of man — is the source
and fount of that moral power termed a right in
virtue of which we call anything our own. Man
alone of all the animals, as Aristotle puts it, is
free ; he exists for himself and not for another.
He has an indefeasible right to live out his own
life : he has an indefeasible right to what is
necessary to enable him to do that. And pro-
perty is necessary — necessary to the true idea of
human personality in this workaday world, to
its full explication, its complete development.
Hence it belongs to the moral realm, the realm
of rights : it is one of the natural rights of man.*
* But it belongs, as was noted in the last Chapter (p. 76),
to the secondary sphere of such rights, and not, like the right of
Man's Natural Prerogative 99
It is, in its original idea, the fruit of a man's labour
and abstinence, that is, of the ethical exercise
of his personality : it is realised liberty. It is
not the creation of the State. What its relation
to the State is we shall see presently.
I have touched upon property as a familiar
example to illustrate the meaning of the word
"right." The right to property really flows
from a man's natural prerogative to himself
determine the use of his faculties, mental and
physical, which is personal liberty. And that
is the true account of another manifestation of
man's aboriginal right to freedom — his right
of existence, liberty to live. And of yet another
—his right to political liberty, the right to be
considered in the legislation and government
of the commonwealth, for he is not a thing, an
instrument for the use of other men, but a
person. These are among the rights of men
which may properly be called natural, as issuing
from the nature of things, as attaching to that
existence, to the primary sphere. And so it has to give way to that
higher right, if the two come into conflict. It is the common teaching
of the greatest masters of ethical science, and has been for the last
thousand years, that extreme necessity makes all things common ; so
that a man, who through no fault of his own, is in danger of perishing
by hunger, may without moral culpability, take from another, even
against the other's wish, what is necessary for the sustentation of life.
ioo The Question of Parental Right
attribute of personality which is the very ground
of human nature. But these innate rights of
the individual are not, of course, absolute. They
are conditioned by duties, and if the duties are
disdained, they may lose their character and
become wrongs ; they are strictly fiduciary and
are subject to that eternal rule of justice which
we call the moral law, and which is a natural
and permanent revelation of Reason.
For these rights, as I insisted in the last Chapter,
are but the subjective expressions of Right. We
may say of them, in the words of the tragic poet,
that " they live for ever, and no one knows their
birthtide." They are anterior to positive law
and human convention. Surely this is evident.
Imagine a number of settlers in a new country
outside the jurisdiction of a State, before they
have had time to frame a polity. Are they, then,
devoid of these rights ? Has the individual man
no personal prerogatives which should prevail
against the passion or caprice of his fellow ? But
we are told that all rights arise from a contract,
express or implied. As a matter of fact, human
society is not founded upon a contract, although
I allow a virtual compact whence is derived the
binding obligation of laws regarding things in
The Law of Nature 101
themselves indifferent. But if the rights of which
I have been speaking exist at all — and, in practice,
every one admits their existence — they possess
universal necessity. A contract may or may not
be : it is contingent. But these rights must be :
they are absolute. What is necessary and im-
mutable cannot proceed from the accidental and
changeable.
We may demur — every scientific jurisprudent
must demur — to some, I might say to many pro-
positions in the famous Declaration of the Rights
of the Man and the Citizen which served as the
manifesto of the French Revolution. But, as I ob-
served in the last Chapter, it is correct in asserting
that man has " natural, inalienable and sacred
rights." Green, indeed, more accurately puts it
that there is " a system of rights and obligations
which should be maintained by law, whether it
is or is not, and which may properly be called
natural." * This is what " the law of nature "
meant for the great Roman jurists ; this is what
the phrase means for the illustrious jurisprudents
of Germany who follow in their footsteps. Curi-
ously enough, their teaching has been much mis-
conceived by a distinguished English writer whose
* Works, Vol. II., p. 339.
102 The Question of Parental Right
work for ancient law and early institutions I
should be the last to undervalue. Sir Henry
Maine tells us, " The law of nature," as the Roman
jurisconsults conceived of it, " confused the past
and the present " ; "it implied a state of nature
which once had been regulated by natural law,"
while " for all practical purposes it was something
belonging to the present, something entwined
with existing institutions, something which could
be distinguished from them by a competent
observer." * I believe that for the Roman juris-
consults the law of nature did not imply " a state
of nature which once had been regulated by natural
law." They regarded it as belonging to the domain
of the ideal, as the type to which positive law
should endeavour, as far as may be, to approxi-
mate ; but they were well aware that the approxi-
mation must vary, indefinitely, according to social
conditions. Following the teaching of the philo-
sophers of the Porch, they deemed of the law of
nature as an objective law of righteousness,
embodied in, and learnt from, the highest part of
nature — Reason. And they identified this jus
naturale with the jus gentium, because it is found
in all countries, and is applicable to all men on
* See Ancient Law, c. iv.
An Objective Law of Righteousness 103
whose hearts and consciences it is written. Its
dictates are the body of rights, " the obligatoriness
of which," to quote the words of Kant, " can be
recognised by the rational faculty a priori." This
is, in Burke's magnificent language, " that great
immutable, pre-existent law, prior to our devices
and prior to all our sensations, antecedent to our
very existence, by which we are knit and connected
in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which
we cannot stir." " This law," Cicero declared two
thousand years before, " no nation can overthrow
or annul ; neither a senate nor a whole people
can relieve us from its injunctions. It is the
same in Athens and in Rome ; the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever." This is the law of which
Hooker majestically proclaims, " Her seat is
the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the
world : all things in heaven and earth do her
homage ; the very least as feeling her care,
and the greatest as not exempted from her
power."
When we speak, then, of the law of nature,
we mean an order or standard of Right not
made by man, the obligatoriness of which, to
use the words just cited from Kant, which we
shall not better, " can be recognised by the
104 The Question of Parental Right
rational faculty, a priori." * It is the ideal
type to which positive law should ever more and
more approximate, though it can neve*\ be wholly
realised in human enactments. ^ stive law,
ft
we may say, does not make right, t- merely
declares it. The office of positive law is ,;ir > clothe
right with might, to give to right validity in civil
society, to convert " ought " into "is." Human
law, properly considered, is not what Mirabeau
called it, " a caprice " : it is the rational or
ethical will — the two adjectives mean the same —
of the commonwealth ; or, to quote the well-
known dictum of Kant, " the expression of the
reason (Vernunft) common to all."
IV
And now to return to the immediate subject
of this Chapter. I say that the authority of the
father, rightly recognised and enforced by the law
of England, has a 3^et higher sanction : the sanction
of those " moral laws of nature and of nations "
whence our jurisprudence derives its light and
life. " Family and household rights," Green
* Cicero, in the De Officiis, calls it, very happily, " ipsa naturae
ratio qua? est lex divina et humana."
A Very Sacred Thing. 105
admirably points out, " do not arise from the
existence of the State, but are antecedent to it." *
The authority of the father is a natural right, or,
in the words quoted from Lord O'Hagan, " a very
sacred thing bestowed by the Almighty, and to
be sustained to the utmost by human law." It
is not, of course, from the merely animal function
of generation that the patria potestas arises : no,
but, as Trendelenburg forcibly insists, from the
spiritual and moral ground of man's spiritual and
moral nature, f It is in virtue of the moral power
residing in the father as a person that he calls
his children his own, although as they too are
persons, they can never be his property ; they
can only belong to him, as Kant puts it, " by
way of being in his possession." J Trendelenburg
adds — what, of course, is incontrovertible — that
the right of the father is accompanied by the
duty of labouring for the ethical good of the
* Works, Vol. II., p. 536.
t Naturrecht anf dem Grunde der Ethik, § 136.
X He continues, " The Right of the Parents is not a purely Real
Right : consequently it is not alienable (jus fiersonalissimuni). But
neither is it a merely Personal Right : it is a Personal Right of a real
kind: nicht ein bios personliches, sondern ein auf dingliche Art
personliches Recht." See the profoundly interesting discussion in his
Science of Right (sections 28 and 29), where — as he expresses it — the
investigation of the relation of Parent and Child is " carried back to
the ultimate principles of the Transcendental Philosophy."
106 The Question of Parental Right
family of which he is the head, of bringing up
his children as ethical beings, that is, as men.
Moreover, the authority of the father manifestly
exists not only for his own sake and the sake of
his children, but for the sake of the community
as well. It is the very first principle and root of
the family : and the family is the true foundation
of the State.
That is a truth upon which we cannot too
emphatically insist in this age. It is an age of
dissolvent individualism — that is part of the legacy
which has oeen left to us by the French Revolution.
Whatever the French Revolution was or was not,
no one can doubt that it was an attempt to trans-
late into fact the political and social sophisms of
Rousseau. The underlying doctrine of that great
Anarch was that the individual — the abstract man,
who is the unit of the Rousseauan speculations
— is the true Sovereign, that the State exercises
his sovereignty by delegation through an imagi-
nary social contract in virtue of which each, while
uniting himself to all, obeys only himself ; and that
the popular will is the supreme source of justice
and the organon of right and wrong. But the
true unit of human society is not the abstract
man ; it is the concrete family. The Jacobinism,
The Example of Rousseau 107
of which Rousseau is the ultimate author, has
done its best to destroy the family. A great
French writer, whom I must account not only
the supreme artist in romantic fiction but also
the most clear-sighted of publicists, judged " En
coupant la tete a Louis XVI. , la Revolution a
coupe la tete a tous les peres de families. II n'y
a plus de famille aujourd'hui." In the more
than half-century which has elapsed since Balzac
wrote these words, Jacobinism has pursued success-
fully in France its work of destruction by undoing
the sanctity and continuity of marriage upon
which the family rests. Its latest victory has
been to transfer to the State the most sacred of
paternal rights and prerogatives in respect of the
education of children. Of course, in thus setting
up the State as a sort of foster-father, the present
masters of France may plead the direct authority
of Rousseau, who sent his new-born children, one
after another, to the Foundling Hospital, claim-
ing, as his biographer tells us,* for this pro-
cedure " the merit of self-denial and high moral
courage." His Jacobin successors have, indeed,
bettered the instruction thus given them by the
example of their spiritual father. He had every
* Morley's Rousseau, Vol. I., p. 127.
108 The Question of Parental Right
reason to believe that his offspring would, at all
events, receive Christian education. They lay
their unclean hands upon the little ones of the
French people with the avowed intention of
rearing a nation of Atheists.
That such is the intention of those in this
country who deny the right of the father, I by no
means affirm. Comte, unless my memory is at
fault, tells us that the logical issue of Protestantism
is Atheism. It appears to me that Agnosticism
would be a more truly descriptive word. But
logic is not the guide of life. And I believe that
most of those who oppose what is called " sectarian
religious teaching " * in our public primary schools,
are as little open as I am to the charge whether
of Atheism or Agnosticism. Nay, I think that
the vast majority of them would agree with me
in holding that it is for the father to determine in
what religion his children should be brought up.
And I take it that for most Protestant Non-
conformists, and for a large number reckoned
among the adherents of the Established Church,
the School Board version of Christianity supplies
all the religious instruction which they think
* The phrase is somewhat absurd ; confessional would be a better
adjective.
" Biblical Teaching " 109
needful. I am by no means inclined to under-
value this " Biblical teaching/' as it is called. I
suppose its practical effect is to instil into the
minds of children that sense of Divine Providence,
and that habit of endeavouring to look upward,
which are distinctive of the Hebrew Scriptures, and
to familiarise them with the sacred scenes and
pregnant precepts of the Evangelical history.
Doubtless it brings home, more or less effectively,
to many who receive it, the highest and most
operative ideals. Those august lessons from
beyond the grave, uttered, as it were, from the
realms of eternity, can hardly fail to infuse an
element of poetry and morality into many lives.
As compared with no religious teaching at all,
it is something considerable ; and it is more than
a State which has ceased to be distinctively
Christian, if acting within its logic, could fairly
be expected to give to the children whose educa-
tion it undertakes or supervises.
And this brings us to the question : What
has the State to do with the education of children ?
Why should it interfere in a matter which belongs
to parental prerogatives, a matter which is the
right of the father ? Assuredly it is not the duty
of the State to be the schoolmaster of a nation's
no The Question of Parental Right
children. The true principle has been excellently
stated by John Stuart Mill in his Political Economy :
— " A Government is justified in requiring from
all the people that they shall possess instruction
in certain things, but not in prescribing to them
how, or from whom, they shall obtain it." And so
in his book On Liberty : — " When society in
general is in so backward a state that it could not
or would not provide for itself any proper institu-
tions of education unless the Government under-
took the task, then, indeed, the Government may,
as the less of two evils, take upon itself the business
of schools or universities.' ' Well, I, for one, can-
not deny that the actual situation in this country
does warrant the State in interfering in education.
We live under a system of what is called Popular
Government. And I suppose no one will demur
to Lord Sherbrooke's dictum that we must educate
our masters — whatever misgivings we may feel
regarding the power of such education as they are
capable of receiving, to fit them for swaying the
rod of empire. But how is it possible, in the
existing condition of society, for fathers in a very
large — nay, in the largest — number of cases to
attend to this matter ? Consider the ordinary
mechanic, or rural labourer, or factory hand, or
The State and Primary Education in
small shopkeeper ; or go through street after
street, alley after alley, in the East End of London,
or in the poorer quarters of any of our great
cities ; and you cannot but realise what a mockery
it would be to ask the fathers — or the mothers
— to charge themselves with their children's
education. The father's right and prerogatives
fall into a kind of abeyance if he is unable to
fulfil the duties correlative with them. And
assuredly the State has an obligation in respect
of children who without it would receive no
education at all : for the State is the expanded
family.
Necessity is laid upon the State in this matter,
and that was the consideration which originally
led to the formation of School Boards. But to
say, as is justly said, that the State has a duty
to children whose parents cannot see to their
education, is a very different thing from saying
that the whole or a large part of popular education
should be in the hands of the State. That is,
however, the present position — and we must
make the best of it. From being the tutor and
foster-father of waifs and strays, the State has
acquired what is virtually the general control
of popular education. But assuredly that control
ii2 The Question of Parental Right
should be exercised subject to the just claims
of parents who have never forfeited or abdicated
their parental rights. To force upon such parents,
directly or indirectly, for their children, a religious
teaching of which they disapprove, is a gross
invasion of those rights. The proper attitude
of the State to religions in this age is an attitude
of benevolent neutrality towards all : to favour
none unduly, and certainly not to compete with
them on behalf of a new religion of its own making.
Such seems to me the true principle upon which
legislation concerning this grave matter should
be based. And to build on any but a true principle
is but lost labour. An edifice so reared will rest
upon a foundation of sand. It will fall, and great
will be the fall of it.
CHAPTER IV
THE IRISH QUESTION
I
Mr. Birrell, in a letter to The Times, published
in that journal on the 14th of October, 1909,
lamented " the incurable ignorance prevailing in
both Houses of Parliament as to the principles,
details, and past history of the Irish Land Question,
and as to its present position." I am quite sure
that the lament was well founded. But the
ignorance which Mr. Birrell rightly bewailed is not
confined to the Irish Land Question. It extends
to the Irish Question generally, of which arrange-
ments for land purchase form only part. How
dense that ignorance is, may be inferred from a
confession made by Mr. Lloyd George that he has
never even read the Act of Union. If so diligent
a politician as Mr. Lloyd George has not thus far
pursued his researches on the Irish Question, it is
113 1
ii4 The Irish Question
hardly probable that most members of either House
are more advanced in its study. Can we reason-
ably suppose that among the English and Scotch
representatives who legislate for Ireland, there
shall be found fifty righteous who have taken the
trouble to qualify themselves in any degree for
that duty ? Or is it not much more likely that, as
in the case of Sodom, not even ten shall be found ?
Anyhow, it gives rise to unspeakable reflections
that, while no one can practice the law, or medicine,
or even dispense drugs, in this country, without
some guarantee of his fitness, the most momen-
tous, the most far-reaching, the most delicate
problems of statecraft are entrusted to persons
destitute of the quite elementary knowledge needed
for even comprehending them. Mr. John Red-
mond was well warranted in writing : " It is much
to be feared that not only the bulk of Englishmen,
but many English statesmen, do not yet clearly
understand the nature of the Irish demand, or the
grounds on which it rests. I venture to say that
there are many even intelligent Englishmen who
do not know that there ever was a Parliament in
Ireland ; while the number who are aware that the
old Irish Parliament was almost coeval, and
actually co-ordinate with the English Parliament,
Incurable Ignorance 115
might be counted on the fingers of one's hand." *
No ; British politicians don't know and they don't
want to know about that. Absorbed in the
struggle for place and power, they are of those
whose eyes the god of this world has blinded.
Their energies are devoted to playing the party
game. Not facts but votes are of importance to
them. The history of Ireland, the aspirations of
Ireland, the needs of Ireland, are matters which
do not enter their minds. Irish votes — the votes,
I mean, of the Nationalist members — are quite
another matter. They are sometimes wanted :
and they have to be paid for. Of course, this
is quite in accordance with the rules of the party
game. With two exceptions, the Liberal party
has held office, since the first Reform Bill, by the
support, or the sufferance, of the Irish represen-
tatives. Nor, if we are to credit a curious chapter
in Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone — and I do
not know why we should not — are the Liberals
the only party which has been prepared to make
a deal with them. But really the party point
of view interests little, and is daily interesting
less, the great majority of " sensible and just
* Introduction to Mr. Barry O'Brien's A Hundred Years of Irish
History, p. 25.
n6 The Irish Question
Englishmen," to use Cobbett's phrase. They ask
themselves a question not often asked by the
players of the party game, for whom, indeed, it is
an inconvenient question. They ask what is the
real significance of the Nationalist party, what is
the goal at which that party aims ? Let us see
what the true answer to this question is.
II
The leaders of the Nationalist party are the
proper persons to reply to it. Mr. Butcher, speak-
ing " on behalf of the Unionist Associations of
Ireland," is reported to have said, " Home Rule
is a shifty, shuffling affair, which varies according
to the audience, the country, and the climate."
No doubt justification may be found for these
words. Mr. John Redmond, for example, when
addressing his American paymasters, speaks with
a truculence not found in the speeches which
he delivers in England. Still, I do not think
that, on the whole, the leaders of the Home
Rule party are open to the charge of uncandour.
Let us go back to Mr. Parnell : that will suffice for
the present moment : we will go back further later
The Demand of the Nationalist Party 117
on. He entered Parliament in 1875. In four
years he was a power in the country ; and the
Home Rule movement still bears the impress which
he gave it. It was at Mayo, on November 5th,
1885, that he made his famous declaration of
principles : " Speaking for myself, and, I believe,
for the Irish people * and for all my colleagues in
Parliament, I have to declare that we will never
accept, either expressly or impliedly, anything but
the full and complete right to arrange our own
affairs, to make our land a nation, to secure for her,
free from outside control, the right to direct her
own course among the peoples of the world." And
now we will turn to the present leader of the Home
Rule party. At the Mansion House, Dublin, on
September 4th, 1907, Mr. John Redmond said :
" The Irish National party stands to-day in exactly
the same position that Parnell stood. We have
not changed our demand. Our demand remains
to-day absolutely as it was when Parnell accepted
the statutory Parliament, with an Executive
responsible for it." Three months before he had
said at Newry : "I remember when Parnell was
asked whether he would, on behalf of the united
* The reader will observe that Mr. Parnell, claiming to speak on
behalf of the majority of adult males in Ireland, identified that majority
with " the Irish people."
n8 The Irish Question
Nationalist nation that he represented, accept as
a final settlement the Home Rule compromise
proposed by Gladstone — I remember his answer.
He said, ' I believe in the policy of taking from
England anything we can wring from her which
will strengthen our arms to go on for more. I will
accept the Home Rule compromise of Gladstone
as an instalment of our rights, but I refuse to say
that it is a final settlement of the national question,
and I declare that no man shall set a boundary to
the onward march of the nation.'" This is quite in
accordance with Mr. John Redmond's earlier utter-
ances. Thus at Kanturk, on November 17th, 1895,
he declared : " Ireland for the Irish is our motto,
and the consummation of all our hopes and aspi-
rations is, in one word, to drive English rule, sooner
or later, bag and baggage, from our country."
And at Cork, on October 23rd, 1901, he ex-
plained : " This United Irish League is not merely
an agrarian movement. It is first, last, and all the
time, a national movement ; and those of us who
are endeavouring to rouse the farmers of Ireland,
as we endeavoured twenty years ago, in the days
of the Land League, to rouse them, are doing so,
not merely to obtain the removal of their particular
grievances, but because we believe that by rousing
The Outcome of the Past 119
them we will be strengthening the national
movement, and helping us to obtain our end,
which is after all, the national independence of
Ireland." *
Now what are we to say to these declarations ?
The present is the outcome of the past. Let us
look at the history of Ireland — the briefest glance
at the dismal, the ghastly story, will suffice. The
Irish are a Celtic people. The whole of their
country has been confiscated three times over for
the benefit of an alien race. The Irish are a
Catholic people. From the accession of Elizabeth
till towards the close of the eighteenth century the
endeavour of England has been to force upon them,
by every manner of tyranny, Protestantism, their
sacred edifices and religious endowments being
conferred upon an alien Church. And under the
Tudors began the commercial invasion of Ireland.
The scheme (writes Mrs. Green) was fully mapped out
under Henry VIII. The whole of the inhabitants were
to be exiled, and the countries made vacant and waste
for English peopling ; " then the King might say Ireland
was clearly won, and after that he would be at little cost
and receive great profits, and men and money and
pleasure." There would be no such difficulty, Henry's
* I do not think it necessary to encumber my pages with the
references — they are before me— to the sources whence I derive these
pronouncements.
120 The Irish Question
advisors said, to " subdue or exile them as hath been
thought," for lands settled by the English would be
centres from which the plantations could be spread into
the surrounding territories, and the Irishry steadily
pushed back at last into the sea. Henceforth the English
never wavered from their intention to " exterminate and
exile the country people of the Irishry." . . . Troops
were poured into the country ; themselves fed by the
corn of Danzic and the fish of Newfoundland, they were
charged to exterminate a people by famine, and "reform
Ireland by replenishing it with English inhabitants." The
soldiers prepared the way for speculators, who held royal
licences to seize all the yarn and wool of the country, to
engross all its corn, to capture all the carrying trade. While
the Continental trade of Ireland was destroyed, a debased
system of coinage was found useful in drawing to London
the profits of her English trade. So thorough was the work
of " reformation," that before it was complete the flourish-
ing towns of Ireland sank into ruins, the people lay dead
in thousands upon the fields, and the new planters used
even the former chiefs " to bear and draw with their
fellows." For complete subjection it was also held that
the mind of the people must be atrophied — and the
destruction of their law, history, language, poetry,
followed as a matter of course. How easily literature
is disturbed, we may see from the effects of the Norman
invasion in England for a century and a half. In Ireland
there was more annihilation. Schools in town and
country were broken up, books destroyed, professors of
learning slain or turned out to beggary. No Irish
University was allowed : Irishmen were permitted or
forbidden to study at Oxford as it suited the Imperial
policy. There was no attempt to replace the old learning,
which had been destroyed, by any new study. The
printing press, when it had issued some treason pro-
clamations, a Protestant catechism, a Bible, lay idle.
The education offered to the Irish by England, was the
same as that offered to Greece at that time by the Turks —
a tribute of children to be separated from every tie of
Hell and Bedlam 121
country and of race, trained in the Imperial conqueror's
religion, and enrolled in the Imperial service.*
It is not necessary to follow the sickening story
of Irish wrongs during the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries. There is a dictum of
Kant's that " law should be the passionless ex-
pression of right." The law by which Ireland was
governed, during those three centuries, was the
passionate expression of wrong. Mr. Gladstone
was well warranted when, in his famous speech on
the second reading of his first Home Rule Bill, he
asserted : "Go into the length and breadth of the
world, ransack the literature of all countries, find
if you can a single voice, a single book, in which
the conduct of England towards Ireland is any-
where treated except with bitter and profound
condemnation." It is a saying attributed to
Grattan : "To find a worse government than the
government of the English in Ireland, you must
go to Hell for your policy and to Bedlam for your
discretion." Towards the end of the eighteenth
century, indeed, a gleam of hope visited the
unhappy country. In 1778 the movement of the
Irish Volunteers began among the Protestants of
* The Making and Unmaking of Ireland, pp. 464-467.
122 The Irish Question
the north to protect the town of Belfast against
French invasion ; and quickly it spread — to quote
the words of Mr. Lecky — " to other parts of the
island, and [though] Catholics were not yet en-
rolled they showed warm sympathy with it, and
subscribed liberally towards its expense."* The
Volunteers soon numbered forty thousand men,
well disciplined and appointed, and then in 1782
the boon of legislative independence was con-
ceded to their demands, the English Statute ex-
plicitly providing that " the right of the Irish
Parliament to make laws for the Irish people shall
at no time be questioned or questionable " —
words which read strangely in the light of subse-
quent events. In the next decade came the con-
spiracy of the United Irishmen, culminating in the
mad rebellion of 1798 and the abominable atro-
cities of its repression. Then followed the legis-
lative Union, concerning which I see no reason for
dissenting from the judgment passed by Mr.
Goldwin Smith : " The Union may be said to have
been carried by political necessity combined with
the exhaustion and panic following upon a civil
war. . . . The Catholic bishops, the best judges,
perhaps, of the interests of their people, were
* Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland., Vol. I., p. 56.
tl
The Influence of Terror' 123
for the measure, and the chief of them took an
active part in its favour." * But it must always
be remembered that England virtually promised
Catholic emancipation as the condition of the
Union. For twenty-eight years that promise re-
mained unfulfilled ; and when at last it was ful-
filled, the fulfilment was due to fear. The Duke
of Wellington frankly confessed that it was con-
ceded to avoid civil war. That was the one great
measure of justice granted to Ireland for forty
years after the legislative Union. And the various
other measures of justice which she has obtained
since have been given grudgingly and as of neces-
sity, the hand of Protestantism being ever out-
stretched to arrest, if possible, and, if not, to maim
and mutilate them. " Nothing," said John Bright,
" has been done for Ireland except under the
influence of terror." The disestablishment and
most incomplete disendowment of that gigantic
iniquity, the Irish Protestant Church — a measure
accompanied by colossal jobbery — came in 1869,
and in 1870 what purported to be a measure of
Land Reform : but both were extorted by Fenian-
ism. Mr. Gladstone thought, as we learn from
* The United Kingdom: A Political History, Vol. II., p. 294. I
agree also with Mr. Goldwin Smith that too much fuss has been made
124 The Irish Question
Lord Morley's work, that these two Acts would
settle the Irish difficulty. As a matter of fact they
still more unsettled it. No real measure of land
reform came until 1881. The Act of that year was
due to one of the most lawless and most violent
associations which the world has ever seen — the
Land League. And it was precisely because of
its lawlessness and violence that the Land League
succeeded. But what was it which called the Land
League into existence ? To answer that question
we must glance at the economical history of Ireland
during the nineteenth century.
Ill
Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, in his most interesting
and most illuminating History of the Irish Par-
liamentary Party* tells us that the key to the
Home Rule movement is in " national resentment/'
which he describes as "a composite result of
antecedents and occurrences all centred in the
about the means whereby the Union was carried. Votes were on sale
— they often are — and they were bought. From the ethical point of
view, the way in which they were bought does not matter much.
* I borrow here a few sentences from an article of mine, founded
on Mr. O'DonnelPs book, and published in the Nineteenth Century
and After, of May, 1910, to which I would refer the reader.
The Black Famine 125
Act of Union as the source or object of their
existence." No doubt this is true. O'Connell's
Repeal Agitation was the outcome of that resent-
ment. But what fanned Irish discontent — and
justly — into a flame, was the policy of the British
Government during the Black Famine of 1845-
1847. The potato, which was the staple sub-
sistence of the toiling people of Ireland, failed ;
and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and
tender children were left to starve. The vast
acreage of corn had not failed : but the masses
had no money wherewith to buy it, and the food
which might have kept them alive went to foreign
purchasers. In the year 1845 there were exported
to England 3,250,000 quarters of wheat, besides
cattle, making a total value of £17,000,000. The
Government did nothing. The Irish landlords —
let this ever be remembered — called for help for
the perishing people, and called in vain. On
January 14th, 1847, they assembled in Dublin —
eighteen peers, seven hundred county gentlemen,
and thirty-seven members of Parliament — and
passed resolutions imploring, among other things,
the suspension of all laws impeding the advent of
food, the employment of all means, regardless of
cost, required to save the people, and the use
126 The Irish Question
of the Royal Navy to carry food. They implored
in vain. The British Government did nothing.
Its hands were tied by the teachings of the old
school of political economists, termed " orthodox,"
specially dear to the " middle-class Philistines/'
as Matthew Arnold called them, whom the narrow-
ing and disastrous policy of Lord Grey's Reform
Act had placed in supreme power. The same
doctrine of devils which issued in the horrors of
English manufactories and mines, glanced at in
a former Chapter,* condemned the starving Irish —
to starve. Proposals that the export of food from
Ireland should be stopped, were contumeliously
dismissed. As Lord John Manners, afterwards
Duke of Rutland, expressed it, " Lord George
Bentinck and I tried to keep the corn in Ireland
while the Irish were starving, but the Free Traders
wanted the hocus-pocus of Supply and Demand."
Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, even
refused the use of the Queen's ships for the con-
veyance of food on the ground that it would inter-
fere with the profits of private enterprise, or to
quote his own words — that " it would be a great
discouragement to individual shipowners." At
last an Act of Parliament was passed for outdoor
* See p. 58.
The Quarter-acre Clause 127
Relief ; but it contained the astonishing, the
almost incredible provision that " no applicant
should be entitled to benefit by it who possessed
more than a quarter of an acre of land." Yes : to
give up their farms, in order to get for their wives
and children some of the yellow porridge provided
at the public expense, was the condition imposed
on all Irish farmers who possessed more than a
quarter of an acre. As Mr. O'Donnell writes, "There
were scores of thousands of Irish families with ten,
twenty acres of land, who now had no more crop
and no more food, than the quarter-acre man or the
roadside beggar without a cubic foot of any soil
whatever. Clearly the first and indispensable step
to be taken in any failure of crops, in an agricultural
population, is to help to keep the tillers in life and
work upon their holdings until the temporary crisis
has been passed. But the British Parliament in
the Black Famine of Ireland decreed that the entire
population must quit their holdings, must become
homeless and houseless paupers, under pain of
stern and strict denial of a morsel of relief for man,
and wife, and child. ' I have a farm of twenty
acres, sir, and a good house upon it, and my
tables and chairs, and beds, and all my farming
things. For God's sake, sir, help me to live on it,
128 The Irish Ouestion
and to till it against the next harvest. Do not
turn us out on the cold road for being only un-
fortunate by the visitation of God.' So pleaded
hundreds of thousands of Irish agricultural men
in 1845 and 1846 to the representatives of British
Government — the Government which had taken
the place of the Irish Legislature ; and the reply
of English law was invariably and inexorably :
* You must quit your holding, you must go on
the road with wife and child ; or not even a hand-
ful of India meal shall you have for your hunger
and the hunger of your little ones. You shall not
be helped to till your farms. Go work upon our
relief roads, which are not wanted, which lead
nowhere, but which are our economic test that you
Irish are really destitute and are not shamming.'
On March 6th, 1847, there were 730,000 Irish
heads of families on the Government relief works,
representing at least five times as many human
beings, and 730,000 Irish farms had for ever been
put out of the way of being of use to the perishing
people." *
It is computed that from one and a half to
two millions of Irish people — men, women,
and children — perished in the Black Famine
* O'Donnell, Vol. I., p. 33.
"What an Emigration!" 129
or through its effects. Nearly two millions more
were lost to Ireland by that vast tide of emigration
to the United States which set in. And what an
emigration !
" I have spoken," writes Mr. O'Donnell, " to scores
of Irishmen and Irish-women who had lived through
that journey in the foul emigrant ships of the period.
There never was such a flitting of a miserable folk. The
fugitives were packed like sardines in fetid steerages.
Starvation and sickness held them prostrate. Brutal
and immoral crews dominated them. Hundreds of
pure Irish girls, faint and helpless in their desolate con-
dition, were outraged by brutish ruffians. Much was
done by the best part of the American public to lessen the
wretchedness of the incoming multitudes. Uprooted
from their agricultural occupations, without a cent to
secure the rural homesteads of the Republic, the famishing
men and women took any kind, and necessarily the coarsest
kind, of labour for daily bread. Vast numbers of the
immigrants knew nothing or little of the English language.
There were not even priests who could speak Gaelic to
these displanted Irish, and the refugees lost their remnant
of Catholic religion by hundreds of thousands. Not for
thirty-four years after the famine, not till the marble
Cathedral of St. Patrick had risen on Fifth Avenue, was
there any Catholic organisation to meet and counsel the
innocent women and girls who stepped upon strange
cosmopolitan quays infested with every species of human
shark and reptile. The Irish had received no education
in Ireland. Generations must pass before they could
get much benefit from education in America. Never
was such an unshepherded flock, never was such an
unchieftained and leaderless race, cast upon a foreign
shore, unfriended and resourceless." *
* O'Donnell, Vol. II., p. 395
K
130 The Irish Question
The memory of all this has dwelt with the Irish
Americans, and still dwells with them : and what
wonder ? It is the root of a fierce ineradic-
able hatred of England, not confined to the poor,
to the scantily educated among them, but equally
strong among the rich and prosperous. The fruits
of that root of bitterness have been disastrous
enough for our country, but they are by no means
all gathered in as yet. Mr. O'Donnell tells us of
an American Fenian, " a man of the highest
culture and reputation," who expressed himself
thus : " See here, Mr. O'Donnell, if I could see
England go down alive into Vesuvius or Hecla, I
should say it was quite right ; and the day that
Ireland is reconciled on any terms with England,
she will be no longer Ireland for me." * It is
said that at the present day over 40,000,000
inhabitants of the United States have a share of
Irish blood from one parent or another. And it
is certain that " large numbers of American Irish-
men, usually men of high education and dis-
tinguished position, are bent on combining the
advance of American power with the vindication
and restoration of Irish independence. ... A
most serious gravity and importance can be
* O'Donnell, Vol. II., p. 53.
"Hostility flavoured with Contempt' 131
attributed to this latest development of the Irish
idea beyond the Atlantic/' *
Mr. O'Donnell traces to the Black Famine, or
rather, to the horrible policy of the British Govern-
ment during the Black Famine, the several ultra-
national or anti-English movements in Ireland
from the middle of the nineteenth century down to
the present time. I must refer to his volumes
those of my readers who desire to follow his
argument in detail. Certainly it was at the close
of the great Civil War that the Irish in the United
States awoke to a sense of power and a hope
of vengeance. Fenianism was unquestionably of
American origin. It was the long-delayed reply
of the Irish exiles to that English rule, which with
its quarter-acre clause, had driven their parents and
kindred on the roadside. And from that day to
this, American dollars have been pouring in —
though of late with diminished volume — to support
the Home Rule movement. Meanwhile, the deal-
ings of England with Ireland have been marked by
ignorance and ineptitude for which it would be
difficult to find a parallel ; nay, worse still,
they manifest that " inveterate sentiment of
hostility flavoured with contempt," to quote the
* O'Donnell, Vol. II., p. 405
132 The Irish Question
words of Mr. Gladstone, which " has from time
immemorial, formed the basis of English tradi-
tion."* English statesmen do not seem to have
realised that throughout the nineteenth century
the national feeling among the Catholic Irish was
steadily growing — that " sentiment of nationality '
which, as Mr. Lecky observes, "is at the root of
Irish discontent/' Nationality! It is an element
for which the English rulers of Ireland had no eyes :
they ignored it as completely as it was ignored by
the Congress of Vienna. They thought that what
they called " concessions to Hibernian ideas," a
" conciliatory policy " and the like, should allay
what they designated by the mild term of " Irish
discontent." The average member of Parliament
thinks so still. He is surprised that we have not
been able to " kill Home Rule by kindness," that
our concessions and our conciliatory policy have
but served to give the movement a greater
impetus.
Now let us turn from these purblind politicians
to two men of genius, belonging to very different
schools of thought, but both signally gifted with
that power of vision which is not the least of the
attributes of genius. A curious and striking
* Morley's Life oj Gladstone, Vol. III., p. 291.
What Cardinal Newman saw 133
episode in the career of Cardinal Newman was his
seven years' sojourn in Ireland, for the abortive
task, undertaken at the bidding of authority, of
founding a Catholic University in impossible con-
ditions. As I know from many conversations
with him, nothing struck him more forcibly, or
distressed him more poignantly, during those years,
than the evidence which he everywhere found of
" the hostility, deep-rooted, apparently ineradic-
able " (those were the words he used) of Celtic
Ireland towards England. The following passage
from one of his Historical Sketches may fitly be
quoted here — the more so as I believe that it is
not so generally known as it ought to be. Every
word of it is like a groan wrung from his lacerated
heart : —
[An English visitor to Ireland], if he happens to be
a Catholic, has, in consequence, a trial to sustain of his
own, of which the Continental tourist has no experience
from Austrian police, or Russian douane, or Turkish
quarantine. He has turned his eyes to a country bound
to him by the ties of a common faith ; and when he
lands at Cork or Kingstown, he breathes more freely from
the thought that he has left a Protestant people behind
him, and is among his co-religionists. He has but this
one imagination before his mind, that he is in the midst
of those who will not despise him for his faith's sake,
who name the same sacred names, and utter the same
prayers, and use the same devotions, as he does himself ;
whose churches are the houses of his God, and whose
134 The Irish Question
numerous clergy are the physicians of his soul. He pene-
trates into the heart of the country ; and he recognises
an innocence in the young face, and a piety and patience
in the aged voice, which strikingly and sadly contrast
with the habits of his own rural population. Scattered
over these masses of peasantry, and peasants themselves,
he hears of a number of lay persons who have dedicated
themselves to a religious celibate, and who, by their
superior knowledge as well as sanctity, are the natural
and ready guides of their humble brethren. He finds
the population as munificent as it is pious, and doing
greater works for God out of their poverty, than the rich
and noble elsewhere accomplish in their abundance. He
finds them characterised by a love of kindred so tender
and faithful as to lead them, on their compulsory expa-
triation, to send back from their first earnings in another
hemisphere incredible sums, with the purpose of bringing
over to it those dear ones whom they have left in the
old country. And he finds himself received with that
warmth of hospitality which ever has been Ireland's
boast ; and, as far as he is personally concerned, his
blood is forgotten in his baptism. How shall he not,
under such circumstances, exult in his new friends, and
feel words deficient to express both his deep reverence
for their virtues, and his strong sympathy in their heavy
trials ? But alas, feelings which are so just and so
natural in themselves, which are so congruous in the
breast of Frenchman or Italian, are impertinent in him.
He does not at first recollect, as he ought to recollect,
that he comes among the Irish people as the representa-
tive of persons, and actions, and catastrophes, which it
is not pleasant to any one to think about ; that he is
responsible for the deeds of his forefathers, and of his
contemporary Parliaments and Executive ; that he is one
of a strong, unscrupulous, tyrannous race standing upon
the soil of the injured. He does not bear in mind that
it is as easy to forget injuring, as it is difficult to forget
being injured. He does not admit, even in his imagina-
tion, the judgment and the sentence which the past
Matthew Arnold's Testimony 135
history of Erin sternly pronounces upon him. He has
to be recalled to himself, and to be taught by what he
hears around him, that an Englishman has no right to
open his heart, and indulge his honest affection towards
the Irish race, as if nothing had happened between him
and them. The voices, so full of blessings for their Maker
and their own kindred, adopt a very different strain and
cadence when the name of England is mentioned ; and,
even when he is most warmly and generously received
by those whom he falls in with, he will be repudiated by
those who are at a distance. Natural amiableness, reli-
gious principle, education, reading, knowledge of the
world and the charities of civilisation, repress or eradi-
cate these bitter feelings in the class in which he finds
his friends ; but as to the population, one sentiment of
hatred against the oppressor " manet alta mente repos-
tum." The wrongs which England has inflicted are faith-
fully remembered ; her services are viewed with incredulity
or resentment ; her name and fellowship are abominated ;
the news of her prosperity heard with disgust ; the
anticipation of her possible reverses nursed and cherished
as the best of consolations. The success of France and
Russia over her armies, of Yankee or Hindoo, is fervently
desired, as the first instalment of a debt accumulated
through seven centuries ; and that even though those
armies are in so large a proportion recruited from the
Irish soil. If he ventures at least to ask for prayers for
England, he receives one answer — a prayer that she may
receive her due. It is as if the air rang with the old
Jewish words, " O daughter of Babylon, blessed shall he
be who shall repay thee as thou hast paid to us ! "*
Next, let us consider the testimony of another
and very dissimilar man of genius, Matthew
Arnold, who gave much thought to Ireland and
* Historical Sketches, Vol. III., p. 257.
136 The Irish Question
her grievances. Thus does he write in his Mixed
Essays : —
Our nation is not deficient in self-esteem, and certainly
there is much in our achievements and prospects to give
us satisfaction. But even to the most self-satisfied
Englishman, Ireland must be an occasion, one would
think, from time to time, of mortifying thoughts. We
may be conscious of nothing but the best intentions
towards Ireland, the justest dealings with her. But how
little she seems to appreciate them ! We may talk with
the Daily Telegraph, of our " great and genial policy of
conciliation " towards Ireland ; we may say with Mr.
Lowe, that by their Irish policy in 1868 the Liberal
Ministry, of whom he was one, " resolved to knit the
hearts of the Empire into one harmonious concord, and
knitted they were accordingly." Only, unfortunately,
the Irish themselves do not see the matter as we do. All
that by our genial policy we seem to have succeeded in
inspiring in the Irish themselves is an aversion to us so
violent, that for England to incline one way is a sufficient
reason to make Ireland to incline another ; and the
obstruction offered by the Irish members in Parliament
is really an expression, above all, of this uncontrollable
antipathy. . . . For my part, I have never affected to
be either surprised or indignant at the antipathy of the
Irish to us. What they have had to suffer from us in
past times, all the world knows. And now, when we
profess to practice " a great and genial policy of con-
ciliation " towards them, they are really governed by us
in deference to the opinion and sentiment of the British
middle class, and of the strongest part of this class, the
Puritan community. . . . Our Puritan middle class pre-
sents a defective type of religion, a narrow range of
intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low
standard of manners. And yet it is in deference to the
opinion and sentiment of such a class that we shape our
Why should Ireland be Loyal? 137
policy towards Ireland. And we wonder at Ireland's
antipathy to us ! " *
" If Ireland were only loyal," sadly ingeminated
Lord Rosebery, in a notable speech. But why
should Ireland be loyal ? The contention of
the Celtic people of Ireland is that they owe no
moral allegiance to a domination which began
in invasion and conquest, and which, for seven
centuries, has been equally cruel and callous.
IV
As a rule, there are no speculations more melan-
choly than those which deal with what might have
been ; and the worst of it is that they are, for the
most part, fruitless. Sometimes, indeed, they have
their uses — uses, it may be, of terror and amaze-
ment. The enactments wrung from a reluctant
Parliament during the nineteenth century for the
conciliation of Ireland have been ineffectual. They
have estranged the Protestant Irish without win-
ning the Catholic. Might it not have been other-
wise ? If, after the Union was brought about, a
series of really " healing measures," to use Burke's
* Mixed Essay 's, p. 98.
138 The Irish Question
phrase, had been skilfully devised and speedily
carried out, would not the relations of England
and Ireland be now very different ? John Stuart
Mill thought so.
That this desperate form of disaffection (he writes),
which does not demand to be better governed, which asks
us for no benefit, no redress of grievances, not even any
reparation for injuries, but simply to take ourselves off
and rid the country of our presence — that this revolt of
mere nationality has been so long in coming, proves that
it might have been prevented from coming at all. More
than a generation has elapsed since we renounced the
desire to govern Ireland for the English ; if at that epoch
we had begun to know how to govern her for herself, the
two nations would by this time have been one. . . . What
seems to us the causelessness of the Irish repugnance to
our rule, is the proof that we have almost let pass the
last opportunity we are ever likely to have of setting it
right. We have allowed what once was indignation
against particular wrongs, to harden into a passionate
determination to be no longer ruled, on any terms, by
those to whom they ascribe all their evils. Rebellions
are never really unconquerable until they have become
rebellions for an idea. Revolt against practical ill-usage
may be quelled by concessions ; but wait till all practical
grievances have merged in the demand for independence,
and there is no knowing that any concession, short of
independence, will appease the quarrel.*
This seems to me as true as it is sad. When
we turn to the scroll, written, within and without,
with lamentations and mourning and woe, which
* England and Ireland^ pp. 7 and 8.
My name is — " Might have Been!" 139
forms the history of Ireland, a pale phantom ever
rises to upbraid us :
Look in my face : my name is — Might have been :
I am also called — Too late : No more : Farewell.
Yes : " things are what they are, and their
consequences will be what they will be. Why,
then, should we desire to be deceived ? ' Mr.
John Redmond, in the document from which I have
already quoted, tells us : " The Irish members
have one advantage over English parties : they
know what they want. The present Government
is in a state of bewilderment in Ireland. His
Majesty's Opposition is in a state of bewilderment
everywhere. Ireland has faith neither in Govern-
ment nor in Opposition. She is watching the
political situation in England with keenness, and
she will not fail, when the opportunity offers, to
turn it to good account." These words are as true
now as they were when they were written ; and they
are worthy of being pondered. The Nationalists
know what they want. Will they get it ? What
is to prevent them ? From the point of view of
party, their position is often strong, nay, command-
ing ; occasions arise when they are able to say to
the faction in power — to quote Mr. Gladstone's
well-remembered words — " If you don't do this,
140 The Irish Question
and if you don't do that, we will turn you out
to-morrow." * But let us look at the matter from
the point of view of principle — and principles, we
should remember, are the strongest things in the
world, binding with links of iron the politicians
who, intent on the party game, try to play fast and
loose with them. The political doctrine in posses-
sion of the public mind is the doctrine of govern-
ment by counting heads, expressed succinctly in
the familiar formula, " One man, one vote." This
doctrine seems absurd to those who hold — as I do
— that the true basis of the State is not numerical
but dynamical ; that a representative government
should represent all the elements of national life,
all the living forces of society, in due proportion (I
beg the reader's attention to the words which I have
put in italics), of which forces, number is neither
* Lord Morley of Blackburn calls it " a charitable suggestion "
that Mr. Gladstone " picked up Home Rule after the election had
placed it in the power of the Irish either to put him into office or to
keep him out of office" {Life, Vol. III., p. 235) ; and shows, by docu-
mentary evidence, that the question was in his thoughts for some
months before the General Election of 1885. Next year he came into
office, but, as Lord Morley owns, his Government " could subsist only
by Irish support " {Ibid., p. 295). His adoption of Home Rule brought
him that support. Mr. Lowell's epigram on him may be recalled in
this connection : —
" His greatness not so much in genius lies
As in adroitness, when occasions rise,
Lifelong convictions to extemporise."
The Point of View of Principle 141
the first nor the most considerable. I know that
in thus writing I shall be branded by many, pro-
bably by most people, as an obscurantist or a
reactionary, whatever may be the precise meaning
of those words. I console myself with the reflection
that, however small the minority in which I am,
it is a minority which includes such thinkers as
Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and Sir Henry
Maine among ourselves ; as Hegel, Trendelenburg,
and Ranke among the Germans ; as Taine, Fustel
de Coulanges, and Renan among the French.
However, certain it is that the question of Home
Rule will be popularly judged not by my doctrine
but by that other which Mill has aptly called
" False Democracy " * : the doctrine embodied
in the shibboleth just now quoted of " One man,
one vote," and in the other kindred sophism of
" Every man to count for one, and no man for
more than one." It seems equally certain that
the majority of Irishmen desire Home Rule — that
is, as we have seen, an Irish legislature and an
Irish executive, to begin with, as a stepping-stone
* See Considerations on Representative Govermnent, p. 146. Of
course in countries where, as in Switzerland, something very like
equality of fact prevails among the electors, a democracy resting on
equal and universal suffrage may be not a wholly false, but an ap-
proximately true democracy. I may be permitted, with regard to
this matter, to refer to my First Principles in Politics, c. vi.
142 The Irish Question
to such further development of Irish autonomy as
may prove possible. Can we, on the principle of
" False Democracy " — the " One man, one vote "
principle — justify our ruling Ireland, if rule it can
be called, from Westminster, in defiance of the
wishes of this majority of her adult males, ex-
pressed by three-fourths of their Parliamentary
representatives ?
But the minority ? it may be asked. Well,
no doubt it is true that the minority — consisting,
in Mr. Bright 's phrase, of " all that is loyal
in Ireland " — will not like it. How should a
minority, so long accustomed to the position of
top dog, like to see that elevation occupied by an
adversary with such a score to pay off ? It was
sympathy with this minority, zealous for the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion, and rich
in all the qualities of " the great middle class,"
whose merits Mr. Bright was so fond of extolling,
which chiefly caused that statesman's opposition
to Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. "I
cannot consent," he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, " to
a measure which is so offensive to the whole
Protestant population of Ireland and to the whole
sentiment of the province of Ulster, so far as its
loyal and Protestant people are concerned : I
Protestant Protests 143
cannot consent to exclude them from the pro-
tection of the Imperial Parliament." * So, as we
all know, when the first Home Rule Bill was intro-
duced into Parliament, the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and the
General Synod of the Protestant Episcopal Church,
protested strongly against it, and the Orangemen
drew up a Solemn League and Covenant to resist
it. I have no information as to what has become
of the Orange Solemn League and Covenant ; but
there is abundant evidence that the spirit which
inspired its founders is still strong. Thus, to give
only one instance, which may suffice, at a gathering
of which I spoke in a former page, Mr. Butcher
proposed, on behalf of the Unionist Associations
of Ireland, the following Resolution, which was
carried unanimously : " This Conference desires
to express its determined and unabated hostility
to any legislative proposals which may tend to
the eventual granting of Home Rule, or which are
calculated to weaken the Imperial tie between
Great Britain and Ireland. It does so, with the
more emphasis, in view of the fact that the leader
of the Nationalist Party in Ireland has recently
declared that, however different may be their
* Morley's Life of Gladstone, Vol. III., p. 327.
144 The Irish Question
methods, the principles of the party are the same
as those of the Fenian rebels of 1867."
V
One wonders whether Mr. Butcher, and the
Unionist Associations which have found in him
so able a mouthpiece, suppose that their Resolu-
tions will have even the smallest practical effect.
Is Home Rule, then, " the consummation coming
past escape " ? I may be asked. I do not know.
I am no prophet. But it is a significant sign of
the times that one finds some * cultivated Irish
Protestants — perhaps it would be better to say
non-Catholics — preparing, if not exactly to ac-
quiesce in it, yet at all events to make the best of
it. In conversation with one such the other day,
I ventured to inquire, " Now, frankly, would you
and your friends really like your country to be
under the control of gentlemen such as those who
compose the present Nationalist Parliamentary
* Some : but I have before me a letter from one — a man of great
cultivation and of high position and by no means a fanatic — who
writes : " We are more than a third of the population, we control
most of the industries of the country, and we will face civil war rather
than submit to an Irish Parliament. Are you going to crush us by
the British Army?" It is a pregnant question.
The Prospect 145
Party ? " He replied, " Well, no ; but I think
that under Home Rule the best men would come
to the front." I rejoined, " What warrant have
you for thinking so ? It is certain that under
Home Rule you would have equal and universal
suffrage : and, where that prevails, do the best men
come to the front ? Are M. Briand and M. Viviani,
who are quite to the front in France, types of the
best men to be found in that country ? Are the
gentlemen who have come to the front in the
Liberal Party, and who dominate Mr. Asquith and
his Cabinet, to be reckoned among the best men of
England ? Do the best men come to the front in
the United States of America, or is it not as true
now as when John Stuart Mill wrote the words, that
' the first minds of that country are as effectually
shut out from the national representation as if
they were under a formal disqualification ' ? *
Look at your own country. The Irish Local
Government Act has been regarded — it seems to
me rightly — as a sort of preliminary to Home Rule,
or even as an instalment of it : certainly it has
broken down completely the influence of the land-
lords, and has put all power in the boroughs and
counties into the hands of the numerical majority.
* Considerations on Representative Government, p. 157.
L
146 The Irish Question
Has the result been to bring the best men to the
front ? " My friend did not reply to these inter-
rogatories but observed : " Anyhow, England can
hardly leave Ireland to itself, if for no other reason
— and there are plenty of other reasons — because
the Imperial Parliament has invested so many
millions in creating a peasant proprietary here."
To that I had no answer ready — nor have I as yet
succeeded in finding one.
These are not cheerful thoughts with which to
confront the second decade of this new century —
a century which seems big with " storms of sad
confusion." Our fathers have sown the wind, we
shall reap the whirlwind : " Delicta majorum
immeritus lues." It seems hard upon us. But
it is the law which rules in history. For history
is under law — " the moral laws of nature and of
nations." A people is not a mere fortuitous
congeries of atomistic individuals : it is an ethical
entity, governed by retributive justice, subject
to the punishment which is law's penal sanction,
which is " the other half of crime." The history
of the world is the judgment of the world — " Die
Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." It would
have no rational meaning for us if this were not
true : it would be " a tale of sound and fury
Sowing and Reaping 147
signifying nothing." The first fact about the
individual man is his concept of duty : " Thou
Oughtest ; it is thy supreme good to follow this
Categorical Imperative, thy supreme evil to dis-
obey it." And that is the first fact, too, about
the aggregation of men which we call a people. In
loyalty to truth, to right, to justice, is the highest
law of collective human life. It is fenced about
with terrible penalties which are the natural
sequence of its violation. And the longer the
penalty is deferred, the worse for the people which
has to pay it ; for it accumulates at compound
interest.
CHAPTER V
THE INDIAN QUESTION
I
I am old enough to remember the great expecta-
tions which were aroused when the Crown assumed
the direct rule of India. Many people, perhaps
most, imagined that a sort of Saturnia regna was
about to begin for Hindustan. One very con-
siderable thinker, singularly well qualified to
judge of this matter, did not share those antici-
pations. Mr. Mill doubted strongly whether a
Government carried on, as it is in this country,
by a Parliamentary system, was likely to grapple
satisfactorily with the complex problems of policjr
and administration in a vast Oriental Depend-
ency.* Mill's political forecasts were generally
right. To put India under Parliamentary Govern-
ment — " the despotism of those who neither hear
* See the Chapter on " The Government of Dependencies " in his
Representative Government.
148
John Stuart Mill's Forecast 149
nor see nor know anything about their subjects '
— appeared to him an egregious mistake, fraught
with the utmost danger to that country and to
this. And now, after the lapse of so many decades,
is it possible to say that he was wrong ?
Consider the House of Commons — an assembly
of nearly seven hundred gentlemen chosen on the
lines of party politics : elected, for the most part,
through the influence of the shibboleths, catch-
words and commonplaces — largely false — which
influence so strongly " the Yea and No of general
ignorance." How many of these legislators possess
the remotest acquaintance with the history, the
institutions, the modes of thought of the peoples,
belonging to so many different races, speaking so
many different languages, professing so many
different religions, who inhabit the vast tract which
we call India ? And yet of the destiny of those
peoples they are, in the event, the supreme
arbiters. However, thanks to the kindly dis-
positions of Fate, they have, for the most part,
let Hindustan alone. Their energies have been
absorbed in the party game, and Indian affairs
have, by a sort of tacit understanding, been left
outside its sphere.
But recently a small section of the House of
150 The Indian Question
Commons has displayed regarding those affairs a
zeal which, assuredly, has seldom been according to
knowledge. What is called " the unrest in India,"
has appealed to the fomenters of unrest at
home. Some of the leaders of what is denominated
the Labour Party have paid flying visits to that
country, and have returned, after fraternising
with the leaders of sedition there, to sound their
own trumpets in a particularly brazen manner.
Of Mr. Keir Hardie's exploits I need not speak.
But I am tempted to say a word about Mr. J. R.
Macdonald, who, after a tour of six weeks in
India, declared that " whether it was in the great
industrial centres, like Bombay, or in little out-of-
the-way villages, the people took a lively interest
in the progress of the Labour Party and appeared
to regard Labour Members of Parliament who
went among them as old and tried friends." Now,
I am far from impugning the veracity of Mr.
Macdonald. But I am perfectly certain — as every
one will be who has even the smallest knowledge
of India — that when he assured his hearers of the
interest excited by the British Labour Party " in
little out-of-the-way villages ' in that country,
he said the thing that is not. I understand that
he is as ignorant of the Indian vernacular spoken
"India for the Indians' 151
in the little out-of-the-way villages which he visited
as their inhabitants are of the English tongue in
which his oratory was clothed. Doubtless he was
misled by the astute native gentlemen who ran
him — for ulterior purposes of their own.
Mr. Macdonald ended his oration by expressing
his conviction that " there was still in this country
a very important section of political opinion that
was determined to give justice and fair play to
the people of India." That he is well warranted
in this conviction, I do not for one moment doubt.
The question is, " What do justice and fair play
for the people of India " demand ? I suppose
Mr. Macdonald would reply — it is the common
catchword of these extemporised sages — " India
for the Indians." Mr. Macdonald reminds me of
a definition of a Radical orator which I came upon
not long ago, in one of Donnay's plays : " Un
Monsieur qui dit des choses vagues avec la derniere
violence." I agree with him that " India for the
Indians " is a good phrase, and I have no objection
to accept it. But I am led to inquire, What
Indians ? The word — which, by the way, is
English, and has no Hindu equivalent — is in the
highest degree vague. India is a vast tract of
country — we may almost call it a continent. It
152 The Indian Question
is inhabited by well-nigh three hundred millions
of people, speaking five hundred and thirty-nine
different languages or dialects. Of these nearly
sixty millions are Mohammedans, on the whole a
homogeneous community. The rest comprises
various nationalities very widely differing in race,
in religion, in customs, in traditions, in manners, in
aspirations. They are united by no national
feeling — how should such a feeling exist between
Pathans and Tamulians, Sikhs and Burmese,
Rajputs and Mahrattas ? They care for nothing,
as a rule, outside of their own family or caste.
The great majority of them are Pagans — I use the
word in no offensive sense, and for want of a better
— of one kind or another. Some three millions
— that appears to be the outside estimate— are
Christians of sorts. And there are not quite a
hundred thousand Parsis. To talk of the inhabi-
tants of India as a nation, is the greatest of
absurdities. The various classes of the population
have nothing in common, except, as in the case of
Hindus and Mohammedans, hatred against one
another. This is of course the natural, the
inevitable, outcome of the history of India. The
present of that country, as of all countries, is
made and moulded of things past.
The Babu 153
II
That India should be ruled in the interest of
these numerous and jarring elements of its popu-
lation, no rational man would deny. If the shib-
boleth, " India for the Indians," be taken in this
sense, who could reasonably refuse assent to it ?
But that is by no means the sense which it
bears for those who have invented it. There is an
admirable bit in Sardou's excellent comedy Rabagas.
Chaffion inquires : " Qu'est-ce que le peuple veut
apres tout ? II ne veut que des garanties, ce
pauvre peuple." "Quelles garanties?" Rabagas
demands ; and Camerlin replies : " Quelque chose
pour nous." So, if we come to examine the matter,
the cry, " India for the Indians," realty means
India — that is, place and power and pelf in
India — for a certain small section of the com-
munity who call themselves " educated." What
warrant they have for so calling themselves we
will inquire later on.
The word Babu is an honorific title which Ben-
gali Indians of a certain standing have taken to
themselves : and it has now come to denominate
a class which has originated and directed the
present unrest in India. " The Bengalis," Sir
154 The Indian Question
John Rees observes, "are not, in the English
sense of the word, a nation, and such solidarity or
nationality as they now possess is mainly the result
of British education and British Government.*
The Bengali Babus are the typical representatives
of the landlord class — of the Zemindars, who owe
their position to Lord Cornwallis's most ill-judged
Permanent Settlement : and whose tenants have
to look to the British Government for protection
against their excesses. They are quick-witted,
ambitious, vain, and unscrupulous. A great deal
of the vernacular Press is in their hands — not only
in Bengal, but in the Punjaub and in other parts of
India. Perhaps the most active fomenters of the
agitation and unrest are Indian lawyers with little
or no practice. They profess to desire a united
India — or, as Babu Chandra Pal puts it, ' a
Republic with an Upper Chamber of feudatory
Chiefs and a Lower Chamber of the common
people* — than which," Sir John Rees well remarks,
" no greater nonsense could well have been con-
* The Real India, by Sir J. D. Rees, K.C.I. E., C.V.O., M.P., p.
203. Sir John Rees, with whom I am not personally acquainted, has
rendered a great public service by the publication of this most valuable
work. I may be permitted to express my satisfaction that, writing as
he does, with much more recent and much longer experience of India
than myself, he confirms — I believe in every particular — the views
which I have expressed in my volume, India and its Problems.
The Bande Mataram's Demand 155
ceived." * The Bande Mataram, of which this
Babu was part editor and part proprietor, states :
" Our British friends should be distinctly told
that their point of view is not ours. They desire
to make the government of India popular without
ceasing in any sense to be essentially British. We
desire to make it autonomous and absolutely free
of British control. We must go to the hamlets."
" And," Sir John Rees observes, by way of com-
ment upon this pronouncement, " they have gone
to the hamlets, to debauch the loyalty of the
peasants, and they are endeavouring, with as
small prospect of success, to capture the Congress
caucus, the chief obstacle being the opposition of
the moderate men of means, who supply the
sinews of war, and have no idea of generally
running amok and losing all that they have in the
resulting disorder. Then the peasants, and the
masses generally, have no sympathy and no
concern with the movement, nor have the old-
fashioned Hindus, nor, of course, the Mohamme-
dans, who have publicly recorded their disagreement
whenever opportunity has offered. They have,
indeed, recently started a Congress of their own,
called the All India Moslem League, as a protest
* The Real India, p. 195.
156 The Indian Question
against the assumption by the Hindu Congress
of the epithets " Indian " and " National."
Among the objects of this League are the
promotion of loyalty to England and of an
attitude of readiness to fight for the British
Government." *
Such, then, are the Babus, the originators and
the fomenters of the present agitation in India.
They are the most unpopular class in Hindustan,
but they are the most powerful, and their great
desire is further to increase their power : to shake
off, in fact, all restrictions upon it. In Sir John
Rees' well-weighed words, " Brahmins, and other
high castes in sympathy with them, who even now
have an immense and preponderating influence
in the government of the country, would fain be
rid of the impartial supervision of British officers,
who refuse to let them plant their heels upon the
necks of the lower castes and classes." f And,
as this extremely competent authority observes in
another page : " The peculiar irony of the situa-
tion is that the Bengali Press, and a few travelled
and English-educated Bengalis, who no longer
represent the feelings of the Indian people, succeed
in persuading the electorate in England, and their
* The Real India, p. 221. t Ibid., p. 48.
The Irony of the Situation 157
representatives in a democratic Parliament, to
take the side of the classes against the masses, of
the higher castes against the low castes, of a small
denationalised group against the uneducated and
unsympathising multitudes . . . whose manners,
customs, feelings, religions, social prejudices, and
prepossessions they have abandoned. The Indian
masses care as little for these orators and agitators
as they do for representative government, of
which they have never heard, but for which, by
monumental misrepresentations on the part of
the Congress, they are said to be raising vain cries
to unanswering heaven." * We should always
remember that of 226,000,000 persons of all classes
and creeds in British India, only a little more than
625,000 are literates in English and only about
8,500,000 are literates in the vernaculars. Of the
625,000 literates in English, some 100,000, it is
calculated, form the Babu class. Exact figures
are, of course, impossible here. A hundred thou-
sand may be an under-estimate. Make it two
hundred thousand if you will : and consider how
impudent is their claim to speak as the representa-
tives of India ! To quote Sir John Rees once more :
" They represent their own caste, the most exclusive
* The Real India, p. 206.
158 The Indian Question
and aristocratic in the world, the pretensions of
which they have persuaded Socialists and demo-
crats in England to champion, a proof that the
Brahmin's right hand has not lost its cunning." *
And here it might be well to note how " lookers-on "
who, according to the proverb, see most of the
game, regard the Babu. The testimony of one
may suffice. Thus does an extremely com-
petent French gentleman, M. Maindron, express
himself in his most interesting work on the
Carnatic :
A Babu ! What friend of India can hear the name
without trembling with anger ? . . . The Babus are a
canaille which the feebleness of a humanitarian adminis-
tration forms in the schools of the great centres of India.
Pretended anarchists (anarchistes de facade) and shameful
traditionalists, repudiating the civilisation of their own
country for the nonce, in the hope of rendering it per-
manent after the cataclysms which they invoke, these
Babus are the partisans of " India for the Indians."
They have made use of British teaching to learn the
means of ruining their educators. And pending the ex-
pulsion of the English, they live on the administration of
England. They copy the English clubs, they ape English
customs. They become writers, journalists, and clerks, f
for nothing manly in the Englishman attracts them. They
dread English sports, from which their effeminacy and
cowardice keep them aloof. Like Panurge, whom they
resemble in more than one point, they have a natural
fear of hard knocks. Their weapon is the pen : a weapon
* The Real India, p. 191.
f " Ronds-de-cuir " is M. Maindron's contemptuous expression.
The Real Cause of Unrest 159
poisoned by delation, duplicity, calumny, and in-
trigue." *
But if we accept, as I believe we may, in the
main, this as a substantially true indictment of
the leaders of the Indian agitation, it by no means
follows that the unrest in India is not a grave
matter. The greatest upheavals in the world's
history have been the work of minorities, and of
minorities which at first seemed contemptible ;
for example, the overthrow of the Monarchy in
this country by the Puritans, and in France by
the philosophes. No one who knows anything of
India can doubt the existence there of a strong
undercurrent of dislike to the British Raj extend-
ing, in some cases, even to the poor ryots who
find in it their best protection. This dislike is,
for the most part, unreasoned : but that makes it
not the less, but the more dangerous. What is
its real cause ?
Ill
I believe the answer to that question is simple.
It is that for well-nigh a century we have
* Dans Plnde du Sud, Vol. II., p. 236.
160 The Indian Question
persistently attempted to Anglicise India. There
are those who describe this process as conferring
upon that country the benefits of Western
civilisation. Lord Curzon, it would seem, is one
of them, and in an address at the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institute he devoted to this theme
much eloquence. He claimed that we have be-
stowed " moral and intellectual benefits on the
Indian community," " that we have educated their
character and emancipated their intelligence " ;
that "all that is best in their thought and writings,"
and especially " the rising standards of morality,"
" have been fostered by the education which,
with perhaps imperfect discrimination, we have
placed at their disposal " ; and that " the English
language has proved the solvent of venerable pre-
judices." Now, with all respect for Lord Curzon,
I venture to think that this proud boasting exhibits
a very incomplete and a very misleading picture of
the results of the Anglicising process. I believe
that what is called " the education " which, not
with imperfect discrimination, but with no dis-
crimination at all, we have bestowed upon India,
is an almost unmixed evil ; and that, as we shall
see presently, is the opinion of Indians well quali-
fied to judge. It was in the early decades of the
Missionaries and Philanthropists 161
last century that the agitation in favour of it was
first raised by missionaries and then caught up
by philanthropists. What happened has been
succinctly described by Mr. Law, to whose very
valuable work * I would call special attention.
" The missionary societies," he writes, " tacked on to
Christianity a cheap English education. Hundreds nibbled
at the bait, but did not swallow the hook. And then the
Government stepped in, and gave them a cheap English
education without religious instruction or moral training.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India (new edition) tells us that
when the English went to India all education given there
was connected with the religions of the country. The
Christian j missionaries, often at great cost to themselves
— and others — and with the best intentions, tried to make
converts by means of a Western education given with,
or without, instruction in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
This was the thin edge of the wedge ; and the Govern-
ment sent the wedge in deeper by offering a cheap English
education without any religion at all." %
It is not necessary to dwell here upon the con-
flict of opinion between the Anglicists and the
Orientalists. The Anglicists, who had at their
* Glimpses of Hidden India, by John Law. This little book of,
I must confess, no great literary merit, has a note of straightforward-
ness and sincerity about it which gives it a peculiar claim on us. The
author evidently went to India with open eyes desiring the truth ; and
he has honestly set down, to the best of his ability, the result of his
inquiries and observations. He was especially fortunate in making
the acquaintance of intelligent Parsis, who, of all the denizens of India,
are perhaps in the best position for forming a correct judgment of the
affairs of that country.
t He means the Protestant missionaries. % Ibid., p. 244.
M
162 The Indian Question
back the Protestant Missionaries and the philan-
thropists, found a powerful ally in Lord — then
Mr. — Macaulay. He knew nothing of the philo-
sophy, poetry, religions and civilisation of Hindu-
stan, and his contempt for these things was
as great as his ignorance. His brilliant rhetoric
easily triumphed, and on March 7th, 1835, the
Governor-General (Lord William Bentinck) decided
that " the great object of the British Government
ought to be the promotion of European literature
and science among the natives of India." The
result was what was called " the higher educa-
tion " in India — a purely secular system of in-
struction in English. During the better part of
a century which has since elapsed, we have
been endeavouring — in Mill's graphic words —
" to force English ideas down the throats of the
natives." M. Maindron has profoundly remarked
that "it is a mania of Western people to refer
everything to the categories of their own under-
standing " : that " we are incapable of compre-
hending the mentality of the Hindus." * The
chief result of the English education — so-called
— which we have given to the natives of India has
certainly been to " emancipate their intelligence,"
* Dans Vlnde du Siui, Vol. II., p. 9.
The Result of English Education 163
in a different sense from that in which Lord
Curzon used the words. The young Indian who
has passed through the Government Colleges,
leaves them, as a rule, utterly sceptical and dis-
contented, void of settled beliefs, religious or ethical.
The net result of his years of study has really been
to denationalise him. " That mass (bloc) of facts,
sentiments, and ideas which constitute Western
civilisation, forms (as M. Filon quaintly expresses
it) a second, and quite artificial soul, altogether
external, which, superposed on the first, hides
and envelopes it. No fusion is possible. The
notions which have been acquired are deeply
impregnated with Christianity. Monotheism and
monogamy, liberty, justice, equality between
classes, between the sexes, between man and man,
love of woman, respect for maternity, adoration
of children, every line, every word of the authors
he has read, conceals (recele) and presupposes all
that. Then he returns home, he enters within
himself. All that surrounds him — his true Ego
— gives the lie to what he has been taught, to what
he has tried to assimilate." * Unquestionably
the English tongue proves to be for the Hindu
youth what Lord Curzon euphemistically calls
* Revue des Deux Monties, Vol. 156, p. 597.
164 The Indian Question
" the solvent of venerable prejudices." It strips
him of his hereditary beliefs and rules of conduct,
and gives him nothing in their place but a smatter-
ing of an alien language and an alien literature.
The authors he chiefly reads are those who have
most influenced his preceptors, who have formed
their ideals in this new time. Mr. Law writes :
" Not seldom have I been told by Indians, ' The
present Secretary of State for India has done
more by his writings to bring about the present
state of affairs in India than any one else.' " *
My own information would not lead me to this
conclusion. I have no wish to underrate the
influence upon young Indians of Lord Morley's
fascinating works. I know that it has been, and
is, very considerable. But the teacher specially
dear to the young Hindu is Herbert Spencer, f
whose books afford a much more powerful
" solvent " — to keep to Lord Curzon's word — of
the moral ideas, convictions, rules, and practices
in which he has been reared, leading him to regard
them as " venerable prejudices," and indoctrinat-
ing him with " a hard-and-fast materialism." J
* Glimpses of Hidden India, p. 141.
t It appears that this is so in China also. See the Quarterly
Review of October, 1907, p. 376.
% Mr. Law writes : " An intelligent Parsi explained to me that the
Herbert Spencer and the Young Hindu 165
What wonder ? For Mr. Spencer's speculations
are fatal to ethics, in any intelligible sense of the
word. He dethrones conscience — their creative
principle — and enthrones in its place cupidity.
He makes an end of the Categorical Imperative
of duty : in what he holds out as his " fitter
regulative system," obligation has no place, not
even the provisional and transitory place which
he attempts to provide for it. He denies the
august doctrine, common to the great Eastern
and Western philosophers, of the unconditioned
authority of the moral law ruling throughout
the universe, and substitutes for it a spurious
probabilism compared with which the excesses
of the casuists damned by Pascal to everlasting
fame, are sane and wholesome. The young
Hindu learns from Mr. Spencer that the sole
recommendation of right action is derived from
the calculation that it will result in agreeable
feeling, whether for the individual or the race ;
that, indeed, it is only in virtue of this calcu-
lation, that right is right.* And the young
Hindu hears him gladly. Then other teachers
last generation sat at the feet of Spencer, Huxley, Tyndal, and Morley,
and the result was a hard-and-fast materialism," p. 135.
* " Conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are
pleasurable or painful." — Data of Ethics, § 10.
1 66 The Indian Ouestion
come to sow their seed in the fallow ground
thus prepared for it : the prophets of what Mill
called " False Democracy," with their doctrine
that all men are born and continue equal in rights
and other dogmas of the great Anarch, to whose
inspiration is chiefly due the famous " Declara-
tion of 1789 " — that tissue of shibboleths and
sophisms which was the manifesto of the French
Revolution, and is still the creed of Jacobinism.
He is not slow to apply this teaching. " If I am
equal in rights to the Indian civilian, why should
he hold the highly-paid offices while I am un-
able even to gain a Government clerkship ?
Moreover, he is an intruder on Indian soil. My
discontent is patriotism." And this " patriotism,"
which fills his perfervid brain, finds expression,
among other ways, in bombs. It may be well
to hear on this subject the views of an Indian
journal, The Antiseptic, edited by a Hindu phy-
sician of repute :
The official mind sums up the causes of anarchism in
India in one word " Unrest." And " Unrest," accord-
ing to the official, is synonymous with Sedition. That
may be the official way of looking at anarchism. It
certainly is not the scientific way. The growth of anar-
chism on this continent of Asia is a comparatively recent
growth. We are inclined to think that the modern
anarchist is the product of present-day civilisation. One
The Anarchist's Mind 167
striking feature of modern civilised life is the rapid in-
crease in the number of insane people. And in this
essentially neuropathic age, anarchism has shown itself
as one variety of mental derangement. As a rule, anar-
chists are men of acute sensibility and disordered imagina-
tion. They have been influenced to an enormous degree
by the sophisms spread by the writers on property,
religion, government, and capital. One of the most
noticeable features of the anarchist's mind is its general
exaltation. The anarchist considers that the avenging
of offences and the preventing of iniquitous acts are his
special province, and he acts on the insane idea that the
citizen is entitled to substitute himself for the State, as
the dispenser of justice and the avenger of the oppressed.
But it is a mistake to suppose that his insane actions
have any foundation in altruistic ideas. The dominant
desires in the anarchist mind are the longing for absolute
equality and the thirst for material satisfaction. The
desire for absolute equality has been noticed in anarchists
of all countries. And the Bengal anarchists appear to
be no exception to the rule. Political equality seems to
be their object too. But with them political equality is
inextricably mixed up with racial equality.*
IV
So much as to the practical issue of what is called
English " education " in India. It is this " educa-
tion " which has formed the Bengali Babus.
And now let us look at it in itself : let us see what
it really is. The true end of education is not to
* Quoted by Mr. Law, p. 138.
1 68 The Indian Question
stuff its recipient with knowledge for the examiner
to extract, but to form the character — to fit a
man, in Milton's majestic words, " to perform
justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices,
both public and private, of peace and war." But
this English " education " which the Hindu re-
ceives in the Government Colleges in India simply
unfits him for the discharge of his duties. Ethical
culture — the very keystone of real education — has
no place in it. It is — I speak from personal
knowledge acquired as an examiner for the
University of Madras — a gigantic system of cram-
ming, absolutely void of any moral or spiritual
worth. It does not form — it deforms — the char-
acter, emptying the student of reverence and
respect, of modesty, of self-restraint, of good
sense, and filling him with presumptuous vanity
and unrestrained aggressiveness. There are many
Orientalists of repute, well versed in the literature
and sincerely attached to the faith and manners
of their race — it has been my privilege to know
not a few — who are more truly educated than
these denationalised materialists. The claim of
the Babu to be " educated," merely because he
has had some instruction in English, is as absurd
as his claim to represent the people of India. Nay,
An Absurd Claim 169
he does not represent even a small minority of
the English-speaking Indians. Of the 685,000
of them who know or are learning English,
certainly three-fourths have no sort of sympathy
with the Babu movement. Many of the most
considerable — this is especially true of the
Rajputs — are utterly averse to it as being quite
opposed to their Conservative instincts. There
are over a hundred thousand English-speaking
Mohammedans, almost all of whom view it with
deep detestation. We may say the same of the
million and a half of Indian Christians in British
India, of the Buddhists, the Jains, the Parsis and
the Sikhs, of whom no small number are more or
less acquainted with the English tongue. Still,
it would be a great error to under-estimate the
mischief which the Babu is working — thanks to
us, we must always remember, for it is we who have
made him what he is. Political, like other plagues,
spread with a rapidity which is as unaccountable
as it is astonishing. Sir William Lee Warner, in
the concluding paragraph of his curiously opti-
mistic little book, The Citizen of India, remarks :
" The process of education is going on in Indian
society among millions who have never been
inside a schoolroom or desire to enter one." No
170 The Indian Question
doubt a process of education is going on, widely,
but it is of a very different kind from that which
Sir William Lee Warner desired to glorify : it is
an education in sedition spread through the
country by vernacular journals. They are morally
and intellectually of the most contemptible cha-
racter. And it is precisely on that account that
they are deadly.
But this greatly vaunted boon of English
education is by no means the only outcome of
the Anglicising movement in India. Cardinal
Newman somewhere speaks, with the gentle irony
of which he was a master, of " those benevolent
persons who, with right intentions, but yet, I
think narrow views, wish to introduce the British
Constitution and British ideas into every nation
and tribe under heaven." These " benevolent
persons " have introduced what is called repre-
sentative government into India — very much to
the disgust of publicists, perhaps not less bene-
volent but endowed in ampler measure with intel-
lectual vision. Thus Sir Henry Maine told the
Legislative Council of India that " it would be
matter of surprise to him if municipal institutions
should flourish at all in Hindustan, and that it
would be still more wonderful that they should
Sir H. Maine on Indian Municipalities 171
in any case be based upon a system of popular
representation." Municipal institutions, he re-
marked, had had in Europe " an almost unbroken
career of two thousand years " ; and in India it
was proposed to " create " them. Surely, he
added, " this might be asserted, on the strength
of English experience, that it was a most difficult
if not insoluble, problem, to create a constituency,
or set of constituencies, in which one class should
not have the power to oppress the others, or to
protect itself at their expense : and considering
how native society is divided into castes and
sects and religions and races, it would be sur-
prising that there should be practicable, anywhere,
a system of municipal election at once free and
fair." * But Sir Henry Maine's dehortation was
unheeded. His colleagues — obsessed, I suppose, by
a power not themselves — were like " the deaf adder
that stoppeth her ears, and refuseth to hear the
voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely."
The result, however, has fully vindicated Sir
Henry Maine's wisdom. Sir John Rees, who
speaks with an experience possessed by few, tells
us, in a striking passage, of the " dislike and
distrust " felt by the masses for this local
* Life and Speeches of Sir Henry Maine, p. 264.
172 The Indian Question
self-government, and particularly for " that very
representative principle which is regarded as its
glory by its founders and admirers/ ' * The truth
is that the vast bulk of the people of India do not
want to be Anglicised. They prefer Oriental
customs, Oriental faiths, and Oriental principles
of administration. And in our mad endeavour to
transform them into our image and likeness, we
merely alienate them from a rule the excellence of
which the more intelligent of them recognise.
Sir Evelyn Wood — a good authority — in his recent
very striking book, has put on record his opinion
that one of the causes of the Indian Mutiny was
" the well-meant but mistaken attempt to govern
in accordance with systems prevailing in the
United Kingdom, millions of Asiatics, as numerous
as the people of Europe, and of as many different
religions." f And yet in the more than half a
century which has elapsed since the Mutiny, we
have persisted in that attempt. It is time that
we gave it up — which, indeed, is easier said than
done. A necessary preliminary is, in Dr. John-
son's words, to clear our minds of cant. The
existing unrest in India is largely — -we might say
altogether — the work of doctrinaires, or, as Lord
* The Real India, p. 106. t The Revolt in Hindustan, p. 351.
''The English System of Education" 173
Morley euphemistically calls them, " impatient
idealists."* They believe in abstractions — mostly
of the Jacobin order — which they suppose to govern
the world. But we must view things as they are
and must be, not as they are not and cannot be.
V
And surely the first step for us is to realise the
need of radical reform in " the corrupt and faulty
education " — to use Milton's words — which we
have established in India. The most authori-
tative Indians clearly discern this necessity. Mr.
Law tells us of a Parsi gentleman who said, in con-
versation with him : " Now, we want our children
to receive religious instruction and moral training.
The English system of education f does not suit
the Oriental mind. Cramming and examinations
may be all right for the West, but in the East
they make boys like parrots. We want our boys
* " The impatient idealist — you know him. I know him. I like
him, I have been one myself. . . . Whether he is an Indian idealist or
a British idealist, I sympathise with him. Ah, gentlemen, how many
of the most tragic miscarriages in human history have been due to the
impatience of the idealist ! " — Indian Speeches, p. 37.
t I quote the words as I find them, at p. 135 of Mr. Law's book.
But " the English system of education " !
174 The Indian Question
to think, not to shine in the Examination Hall and
then to forget all that they have learnt. We don't
blame the Government of India. All the great
religions of the world have adherents here : and
the Government must treat all alike. So the
Government cannot give a religious education.
It is the bounden duty of Parsis to follow the ex-
ample set by the Mohammedans at Aligarthand the
Hindus at the Central Hindu College at Benares.
A Western education without religion is fatal to
Indians. You have but to look around and see
the consequences of such an education to-day. "
These are not idle words. The little Parsi com-
munity is about to spend Rs. 2,500,000 on a
Parsi Central College. There can be no doubt
that the feeling thus exhibited, prevails widely
among the better classes of Indians, and that it is
rapidly gaming ground. A significant indication
of it was given recently when the Mysore Govern-
ment declared its profound dissatisfaction with
the educational system — modelled on that of
British India — hitherto prevailing in the schools
and colleges of that State, and ordered the intro-
duction into them of moral and religious instruction
based on the Hindu Sacred Books. There would
appear to be some reason for supposing that the
The Vernacular Press 175
Government of India intends to follow this excel-
lent example. Lord Minto is stated to have
declared * * " The moral training of the rising
generation our duty will no longer allow us to
neglect."
One fruit of the existing higher education in
India is the seditious vernacular Press, largely
the work of Babu B.A.'s and M.A.'s unable to
obtain the Government employment for which
they long. Freedom of the Press is so popular a
shibboleth that to hint a doubt of its applicability,
semper, ubique et ab omnibus, is commonly regarded
as a sort of blasphemy. Still, I must confess that,
for my part, I do not entertain unbounded admira-
tion for journalism in any country. In the West,
however, it is supposed to appeal to, and to repre-
sent, public opinion. In India, public opinion
does not exist ; and the end and aim of vernacular
newspapers is to preach sedition, to carry on, in
the emphatic language of Lord Curzon, " the cam-
paign of vilification which is the real spawning
ground of crime in India — the vilification of British
officers." f They are written — I have seen a good
many of them — with a degree of impudence nearly
* See The Times of January 26th, 1910.
f Speech at Bath on December 30th, 1900.
176 The Indian Question
approaching the sublime. They display a per-
fectly astounding unacquaintance with the history,
whether of India or any other country, and an
utter ignorance of elementary economics. Their
logic is as bad as bad can be. Their rhetoric is
not much better : it is a tissue of foolish common-
places, far-fetched metaphors, absurd hyperboles,
and base personalities. And they are doing their
best to undermine the basis of British rule in
Hindustan. We are assured that the Govern-
ment of India will " no longer tolerate the pro-
ceedings of the revolutionary Press," that it is
" determined to bridle literary licence." * Whether
the measure passed for that end is adequate,
appears to me very doubtful. There can be no
question that a wise ruler would utterly suppress
these vernacular prints. But can any ruler be
truly wise if he has to suffer fools — I beg pardon !
I mean " impatient idealists " — gladly, because
their votes may be wanted by the players of the
party game in the House of Commons ? One
thinks of General Gordon's mournful vaticination :
II The British Empire was made by adventurers
and will be ruined by politicians."
Prevention, the proverb tells us, is better than
* See The Times of January 26th, 19 10.
A Drastic Remedy 177
cure ; but assuredly cure — radical cure — is neces-
sary for the outbreak of lawless sedition under
which India is suffering. It is that festering sore
which, as the Roman poet admonishes us, must
be subjected to the surgeon's knife lest the sound
part should be infected : immedicabile vulnus
ense reddendum est ne pars sincera trahatur.
A Mohammedan gentleman of Hyderabad, in
conversation with Mr. Law, gave a somewhat
crude expression to this opinion. " Lord
Minto," he observed, " is weak. He should cut
off a hand and a foot of each man and boy
connected with bombs ; that would very quickly
put a stop to outrages for the future." *
Possibly this drastic remedy might have com-
mended itself to our Moslem predecessors in
the Indian Empire. But as now it is clearly out
of date, it need not be discussed here. We may,
however, rest assured that stern treatment
of sedition is a far better policy in India than
the half toleration of it which has been hitherto
practised, and which is imputed by Indians to
weakness. I remember a story of Lord Hertford
receiving, on one occasion, in Paris, where he
chiefly abode, a deputation of his Irish tenants,
* Glimpses of Hidden India, p. 78.
N
178 The Indian Question
who hinted, not ambiguously, that unless their
demands were complied with, it would be the worse
for his agents ; to whom he blandly replied :
" Gentlemen, you won't intimidate me by shooting
my agents." The Bengali assassin believes that
he will intimidate the British Government by
shooting its agents. He ought to be undeceived.
Heavy sentences on all who are proved to be, in
any degree, implicated in sedition, and the plentiful
deportation, not followed by the speedy repatria-
tion, of those who are reasonably suspected of
fomenting it, are absolutely necessary if the Pax
Britannica is to be maintained in Hindustan.
True is that word of Spinoza : Terret valgus nisi
metuat.
VI
But it may be objected that I have not said
one word about the " healing measures " recently
introduced into India. That is true, and the
reason is that I do not greatly believe in those
healing measures. Assuredly they will not satisfy
the Bengali Babus— that has already been pretty
clearly shown— whose cry of " India for the
Indians " means India for themselves. Nothing
"That Tiger will be Mohammedan" 179
will satisfy them but that. And if anything is
absolutely certain, it is that they might just as
well cry for the moon — to borrow an expression
of Lord Morley's.* The haughty Moslems, the
chivalrous and truth-loving Rajputs, the warlike
Sikhs, even the Eurasians and the native Christians,
would disdain the ignominious yoke of the babbling
Babu. In the incredible event of our quitting the
country, most assuredly it is not the Babus who
would rule it. There is a striking passage in Baron
von Hubner's most interesting work. He tells
us of a well-known Brahmin in Benares, a man in
high position and not specially well affected to
us, who said : " Do you know what would happen
if the English should leave India ? Suppose we
went down into our parks and opened the cages
of our wild beasts. In a few minutes they would
have devoured us and one another, except the
tiger who would survive, his mouth and claws
stained with blood. That tiger will be Moham-
medan." f I incline to think this true. The
Mohammedans are dynamically the most con-
siderable of the jarring elements of the population
* " Some of them are angry with me. Why ? Because I have not
been able to give them the moon. I have got no moon : and if I had,
I would not part with it." — Indiati Speeches, p. 40.
f A travers PE?npire Britannique, par M. le Baron von Hiibner,
Vol. II., p. 241.
180 The Indian Question
of India. They are a homogeneous people, closely
united by their religion. They have the traditions
of a ruling race, for long centuries established in
the seat of power, and they are quite capable of
holding their own in it again. If the formula,
" India for the Indians," is ever translated into
fact, it will probably mean India for the Moham-
medans. But it will not be translated into fact.
We are sometimes told that our acquisition of
India was the result of accident. For my part, I
do not believe in accident : " es gibt kein Zufall."*
In the Providential ordering of the world, this
task of ruling India has been assigned to us — we
did not seek it. We have fulfilled the task, as
all impartial men will allow, with a rectitude of
purpose — whatever our errors of judgment — merit-
ing the success which we have achieved. The
peace and order and material prosperity which
we have introduced into a country where we
found war and confusion and misery, are a most
just title to empire. We are the rulers of
India by the right divine that we rule it best ;
and we could not abandon our work there without
* " Es gibt kein Zufall ;
Und was uns blindes Ohngefahr nur diinkt,
Gerade das steigt aus den tiefsten Ouellen."
Wallenstem's Tod,
England's Duty 181
the grossest dereliction of duty. M. Maindron
remarks : " Les Anglais prisent l'lnde parce
qu'ils etaient capables de la prendre et surtout
de la garder." * That is so. Our rights in
that country rest, most legitimately, upon our
mights. True it is, however much the sick sen-
timentalism of the day may dislike the truth,
that, as we won India by the sword, so we hold
it by the sword. Lord Curzon said some time
ago that the Mutiny is forgotten there. We may
hope that it is not, for the stern experiences of its
repression should have taught, for all time, the
lesson that the Englishman beareth not the sword
in vain.
One great danger in paltering with sedition is
that it may induce a state of things in which this
fact will require to be put again in evidence.
Another danger of it is that in the futile attempts
to conciliate the enemies of the British Raj, we
may alienate our best friends. The Hindu masses
— those ninety per cent, of the population who live
by agriculture — are loyal to us. They appeal for
our protection with the wistful trustfulness of
dumb creatures. It would be an ill return for
their loyalty to deliver them unto the will of
* Dans TTnde du Sud, Vol. II., p. 276.
182 The Indian Ouestion
their enemies — those Congress agitators who seek
to make the Government abandon the taxes to
which it is immemorially entitled, levied from
wealthy landlords, and spent, in a great measure,
on the wretched cultivators, with the resulting
necessity of exacting, in some way, from the poor
toilers and tillers, the amount remitted.* Then,
again, not a few of the Mohammedans — they num-
ber nearly sixty millions, be it remembered —
almost all sincerely attached to our rule, regard
the recent so-called " reforms " as wrung from the
Government by Babu agitators, whose hostility to
them is manifested on every possible occasion,
and whose disgust at the endeavours made by
Lord Morley and Lord Minto to protect, at all
events to some extent, their rights, has, as we all
know, been loudly expressed. Sir John Rees
observes : " The opinion is widespread that agita-
tion pays, and the writer has frequently heard
the Honours List discussed by Indian gentlemen
with the remark, ' Only the natives who worry
and oppose the Government are remembered
* The Times, in a leading article on 17th November, 1909, truly
observes that these poor people " owe to British officials, too frequently
in the teeth of violent opposition from the Hindu politician, every
measure which has been hitherto passed to promote the interest of
agriculture, and to abate the rapacity of the usurer and the land-
grabber."
The Native Princes and Babudom 183
by it on these occasions. Loyalty does not
pay. *
Naturally, this policy does not commend
itself to the Indian ruling Princes, who are the
faithful vassals of the British Raj. They are
utterly out of sympathy with Babudom, and
view with great dislike the unrest which it has
fomented. They may well do so. " Tua res
agitur paries quum proximus ardet." " Sedition,"
the most considerable of them — the Nizam —
wrote to the Viceroy, " should be localised and
rooted out mercilessly." f They know their coun-
trymen and, without exception, regard the extem-
porised representative local government in India
as a house of cards raised on a foundation of sand
— an edifice as combustible as unstable. But such
knowledge as the native Princes of India possess
of the people is rarely found among Indian officials.
There are, of course, conspicuous exceptions ;
* P. 217. A very competent special correspondent of The Times ;
who has contributed to that journal a series of articles on Indian Un-
rest, observes in its issue of August 19th, 1910:
" It would be an evil day for the internal peace of India if a people
still so proud of their history, so jealous of their religion and so
conscious of their virile superiority as the Mahomedans, came to
believe that they could only trust to their own right hand, and no
longer to the authority and sense of justice of the British raj, to avert
the dangers which they foresee in the future, from the establishment of
an overt or covert Hindu ascendency."
t See The Times of January 24th, 1910.
184 The Indian Question
but it is not too much to say that few of them
speak any vernacular with fluency,* that hardly
any possess real acquaintance with the " men-
tality " of the Indians over whom they rule. The
average Civil Servant of these days takes no root
in the country. He lives in a little English world
of his own, quite remote from the thoughts, habits,
traditions of the Indian races. Moreover, he has
not the authority possessed by the elder race of
civilians ; and, consequently, he has not the same
sense of responsibility. He does his duty honestly
according to his lights. But he is not sympathetic.
There is a native saying : " The English are just,
but they are not kind." My own experience
certainly tallies with that of M. Maindron,f that
a man who wishes to know India could not do better
than put himself, for a time, in the hands of the
Catholic missionaries. J These devoted men, who
come to the country to live and die, really make it
their home, conforming largely to the native way
of life, speaking with absolute ease the vernacular
• In a great number of cases this is not their fault. It is caused
by the administrative nomadism so largely prevailing in India.
t P. 116.
X When I say Catholic missionaries I have no wish to disparage
the Protestant, who are, as a rule, blameless and worthy men, and
many of whom have done good service in providing aids to the study
of the Indian vernaculars.
"Impatient Idealists!" 185
of the region where they labour, wholly familiar
with the manners, customs, modes of thought
of their flock. The ordinary tourists, passing a
few weeks in hotels or in the houses of Europeans,
see nothing of the real Hindustan. They live in an
utterly different environment. And on the strength
of this brief and wholly uninstructive sojourn,
they profess to settle Indian problems in the House
of Commons offhand. " Impatient idealists " !
Rather, blind guides leading the blind — those who
have eyes know whither.
CHAPTER VI
THE QUESTION OF CHEAPNESS
I
Among the many glories of this enlightened age,
which inspire the British Philistine with the
conviction that we are " much superior to our
forefathers," one of the most loudly-trumpeted
is its cheapness. The columns of the news-
papers are full of advertisements setting forth
the exceedingly low prices of the wares offered,
on all sides, to a discerning public. The goods
exposed in the shop windows bear tickets
indicative of the desire of the vendors to cut
down their profits to the uttermost farthing.
Placards announcing that " unparalleled value "
may be obtained at this or that store, are borne
through our streets by ambulatory men-machines.
I need not enlarge upon what is so familiar. But
I will ask my readers to consider whether this
1 86
A Curious and Pathetic Experience 187
much-vaunted cheapness of commodities is such
an unmixed gain as is popularly supposed. Is
there not reason to believe that very often it costs
too much ? We will proceed to pursue that
inquiry in the present Chapter.
II
This subject was brought home to me in a
curious and pathetic way. One afternoon I
chanced to meet in Regent Street three lady friends
who had come up to Town for shopping, and I
remember their surprise and delight at finding in
one of the establishments which they visited, shirt
blouses, of a dainty kind, on sale at half a crown
each. They purchased a dozen, and evidently
regarded this cheapness as simply miraculous.
They were so good as to invite me to dine with
them that evening at a restaurant of which I will
not mention the name, for I have no desire to
advertise it. Nor indeed is that necessary. The
perfection of its cuisine and the excellence of its
wines have deservedly won for it a world-wide
reputation. It is as deservedly celebrated for its
high charges. I could not help noticing that upon
1 88 The Question of Cheapness
the occasion of which I speak my kind hostess
received very little change from the Five Pound
Note which she tendered in payment for our
dinner. The evening was fine : and after taking
leave of my friends I set out to walk to South
Kensington. When I reached Hyde Park Corner
a young girl, who chanced to be just in front of me,
was almost run over by a carriage which dashed
rapidly out of the Park. Apparently she had not
noticed it : fortunately I had seized her by the
arm and pulled her back in time. She seemed a
good deal frightened and inclined to be hysterical.
A constable came up, and I looked at him inter-
rogatively, wondering whether she was quite sober.
He caught my meaning, and after giving a swift
glance at her, said : " No, sir, it's not drink : it's
hunger. If she sits down for a bit she will pull
herself together." He helped her to a seat just
inside the Park and left her there, after a minute,
murmuring something which I did not quite catch
about sending some one to her. The girl said to
me, " Thank you for saving me ; I was nearly
killed, I think " ; and she shuddered. She was
a slight, delicate-looking creature, of plaintively
prepossessing appearance, neatly dressed, and
quiet in manner. I replied : " Yes, you had a
"To Earn a little Money" 189
narrow escape : now that you have recovered from
your fright, shall I put you into a cab and send you
home ? " " Thank you," she answered, " but I
mustn't go back yet : I have come out to try to
earn a little money ; I spent my last shillings in
buying these shoes to come out in, and I owe my
landlady a fortnight's rent. I haven't been able
to get any work lately." I inquired what she
worked at. She told me she made ladies' shirt
blouses, but could not live on what she earned in
that way ; she was paid four shillings for making
a dozen : it was the usual rate ; she worked for
Messrs. , mentioning the tradesmen whose
shop my fair friends had visited that afternoon.
It is a dictum of Renan that the miraculous is the
unexplained ; and this was the explanation of
those miracles of cheapness at which my friends
had marvelled. Two benevolent-looking women
connected, as I judged from their garb, with the
Salvation Army, now came up, sent doubtless by
the constable, and spoke gently to the girl. I
said : "I will leave you to these kind ladies, who
I am sure, will be willing to help you " ; and,
putting money in her hand, I went my way.
The incident set me thinking. The amount
which the girl told me she received for making
190 The Question of Cheapness
shirt blouses seemed so incredibly small, that I
inclined to doubt her word. But I found that
what she had said was true. I was led to make
further inquiries, in the course of which I learnt
some ugly facts. These are some of them. Young
women are paid three shillings and sixpence per
dozen for making ulsters ; from fivepence to
sevenpence per dozen for making children's pina-
fores, and they have to find their own cotton ; one
shilling and fourpence per dozen for nainsook
chemises trimmed with lace or embroidery — these
are sold at one shilling and fourpence each; from two
shillings to two shillings and sixpence per dozen
for night-dresses with toby frills ; two shillings
and ninepence per dozen for making workmen's
shirts ; ninepence each for covering umbrellas,
including the cutting out ; one shilling and three-
pence each for blouses which a skilled workman
could not finish in less than a day ; one shilling
and twopence for making a lined skirt with striped
flounce and stitching : a good worker, it is cal-
culated, working at high pressure, would turn out
eight of these in a week ; two shillings and three-
pence for a bell-shaped skirt with seven seams,
lined, and strapped with thirty-six yards of satin
strapping ; and a penny a pair for " golf knickers,
" How do they manage?'' 191
complete." Is it any wonder, human nature
being what it is, that many girls find this life of
such hard toil and scanty remuneration intolerable,
especially when we remember that the employment
is precarious ?
" Young men will do't :
If they come to't,
By cock they are to blame,"
we are admonished in poor Ophelia's song. " To
blame." But how much ? The wonder to me
is not that some of our poor seamstresses yield to
temptation, but that so many resist it.
Again. The shops which vend these wares
are carried on at great cost. Rents are high, rates
are high, and returns are uncertain. Shopkeepers
are naturally anxious to keep down their expenses.
Young women, fair to see, and quite capable of the
not very arduous function of selling their goods,
are to be obtained in abundance ; and it is notorious
that the salaries received by these damsels, in
some West End establishments, are inadequate
even for the purchase of the raiment which
adorns them. " How do they manage ? " Madame
Logerais, the shop proprietress, asks Marguerite,
the shop-girl, in a suggestive passage of Brieux's
pathetic play, La Petite Amie ; and she replies,
192 The Question of Cheapness
quietly, " Madame, you know very well how they
manage." But the passage is worth quoting, for
it is as applicable to London as to Paris.
Madame Logerais: Mon petit chat il faut etre un peu plus
coquet. Nos clientes aiment a voir des vendeuses gentiment
habille'es.
Marguerite : Oui, Madame
Madame Logerais : Tres gentiment habillees !
Marguerite : Madame, avec ce que je gagne-
Madame Logerais : Comment avec ce que vous gagnez ! Mais,
mon enfant, a. ce prix-la j'en aurai tant que je voudrais et bien attifdes,
je vous en reponds. Comment font-elles celles-la ?
Marguerite {avec douceur') : Madame, vous le savez bien comme
elles font."
Ill
One item, then, of the cost of cheapness is the
chastity of young girls. Another is the unspeak-
able degradation of family life. The foul hand
of the sweater has been laid upon the English home
with appalling consequences. But let me explain
what I mean by a sweater. And I cannot give a
better explanation than the one which I find in the
Report drafted * by Lord Dunraven for the
Committee of the House of Lords on Sweating,
over which he presided.
* And not adopted by the Committee, who preferred a somewhat
tamer document from the pen of Lord Thring.
"Sweating" 193
" Sweating " has somewhat different significations in
different trades, and there is much controversy as to the
persons to whom it can be rightly applied ; but putting
aside these verbal distinctions, when we come to deal
with the facts, we find that there exists in London, and
other large cities, a considerable class of workers who
are unable to deal directly with a bona fide employer,
and who are compelled to accept whatever terms may be
offered by a middleman or sub-contractor. The middle-
man soon discovers that, as a general rule, he has at his
disposal an overcrowded labour market, and that a large
proportion of the persons who fill it are without friends,
organisation, or the means of obtaining help. Some of
them are in positions of extreme emergency. Many are
in total ignorance of, and most of them have but an im-
perfect dexterity in, the trades which they profess to
practise. By taking advantage of these circumstances,
the sweater, who may be either a mere go-between,
possessing no knowledge of the trade by which he lives,
or a workman little better off in any respect than the
person he employs, is enabled to get this class entirely
into his power, and the usual result is that he works them
as many hours, and for whatever wages, he may think
proper to fix. He has nothing to fear from combination
against him, as the ranks of the sweated class are con-
tinually enlarged by foreign immigration.*
* On the subject of foreign immigration, the following extract from
the Pall Mall Gazette of December 8th, 1904, may be worth reading.
It is by no means out of date :
" Major Evans-Gordon, M.P., was the guest at dinner last night of
the United Wards at Cannon Street Hotel. After dinner, in the course
of an address upon the Alien Immigration question, he said it was
among the unskilled labourers that the competition of the alien was
chiefly felt in London. Forty per cent, of the aliens landing in this
country were completely destitute, while many of the remainder pos-
sessed less than a sovereign apiece. The result was a lowering of the
rate of wages, and also of the standard of living. Girls of seventeen
or twenty were known to work in tailors' shops for is. a week and some-
where to sleep. During the last two years wages in the tailoring
O
194 The Question of Cheapness
Such, then, is sweating. And now let me put
before my readers a typical instance of its work-
ing, which came before the Lords' Committee.
I am again quoting from Lord Dunraven's draft
Report.
One of the victims of the system told her own story
to the Committee. She had worked at trouser-fmishing
about twenty-two years. It was impossible for her to
do more than four pairs a day, and she was paid from
4^d. to 6d. for each pair. She had to provide her own
materials, as well as her fire and lighting ; and in the
end she found herself unable to clear more than is. a
day. " I have," she said, " to work many hours to do
that ; I am up at six o'clock every morning, and never
done till eight at night." She was obliged to pay 2s. a
week for rent, and had three children to support, the
eldest ten years of age. For three years her husband
had been unable to work. We shall have to refer to other
cases equally sorrowful when we review the various trades,
but we mention this one here, because the poor woman,
with her twenty-two years' experience, had a true per-
ception of one of the causes of her misery. Prices, she
business, boot-machining, and cabinet-making had been reduced 50
per cent, owing to the competition of foreign sweated labour.
" Legislation on the subject should ensure the following objects : —
(1) That in giving hospitality to foreigners, no hardship or
suffering should be inflicted upon our own people.
(2) That asylum should be given to no one who, by reason of
bad character, bad health, or lack of visible or probable
means of subsistence, was unsuited for the privilege.
(3) That those who, after admission, proved themselves unfit or
unworthy should be expelled from the country.
The only serious argument against such legislation was the difficulty
of carrying it out. But the success which had attended the efforts of
other countries, and notably America, showed that this difficulty was
greatly exaggerated."
In the Criminal Dock 195
said, had been steadily declining for the past ten years.
Her household anxieties and troubles had given her a
date by which she could fix the exact period. " I can
put it to ten years, for it is my eldest boy's age." She
was asked if she could account for the decline, and her
answer was, " There are so many of these foreign Jews,
who come and take it one against the other ; one will
go in and put it so much cheaper than another, and that
is how the work is brought down as it is ; that is how
the trade is brought down." The result upon her own
life could not be misunderstood. Asked what food she
got, she replied, " Chiefly I get a herring and a cup of
tea ; that is the chief of my living, with the rent to pay,
and three children eating very hearty. As for meat, I do
not expect it ; I get meat once in six months."
Occasionally, of course, the victims of this
system find their way into the criminal dock. I
have before me a bundle of reports of cases which are
sickening reading. I will here briefly present two
of them — they are not the worst, but perhaps they
are the most typical. The first is that of a widow,
fifty-four years of age, described by trustworthy
witnesses as " honest and hardworking," who was
charged before the Alderman sitting at Guild-
hall with stealing, from a Jew clothier, certain
vests which she had pawned. She pleaded guilty,
adding — and the truth of her statement was not
impugned — " I had to make forty coats for ten
shillings, and I can make a coat for you, sir, for
threepence. I got three shillings a dozen, and
196 The Question of Cheapness
had to pay a girl something for pressing them.
When I paid my rent I had scarcely anything left ;
I am sorry." Another poor woman was charged at
Worship Street with stealing a quantity of boys'
suits. She had worked for the prosecuting firm,
off and on, for twenty years, and they were in the
habit of sending her, in considerable quantities,
materials cut and prepared for making up. On
the occasion in question, she received from them
a bundle of boys' reefing jackets which she was to
finish at sixpence each, but before she and her
daughter could do them, a quantity of boys' suits
was sent her ; these she agreed to make up for
fivepence farthing each suit. Being in dire need
of money just then, she pawned some of them.
Hence the prosecution. The poor woman was
committed for trial, and at the trial it appeared in
evidence that she, her daughter, and her husband
lived together in one room, the rent of which was
four shillings and threepence a week ; and that
they paid weekly one and sixpence for the hire of
a sewing machine, eightpence for soap for pressing,
sixpence for sewing cotton, sixpence for oil for
lamp, and two shillings for coal. It appeared also
that the three of them, working fourteen hours
daily, and sometimes all night long, could earn
"Poverty" 197
only two shillings and ninepence a day, or sixteen
and sixpence a week, so that when expenses were
paid, they had seven shillings a week to live on.
Father, mother, and daughter living together
in one small room, and toiling incessantly to earn
a shilling a day between them, wherewith to eat
and drink and be clothed ! Thousands upon thou-
sands of such homes exist among us. They are a
notable item in the cost of cheapness. But if we
ascend a little higher in the scale of workers, we
find a condition of things very slightly better.
Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's book Poverty is probably
known to some of my readers ; I would it were
known to all. It gives an account of unskilled
labour in the City of York. And this is what the
account amounts to : that nearly twenty-eight
per cent, of the population of that city — which
we may safely take to be no worse and no better
than other cities of the same size, but a fair average
specimen — are living in a condition which Mr.
Rowntree calls " poverty." I do not think the
word very happily chosen. It is all too weak to
express Mr. Rowntree's meaning, which is the
state of life wherein the earnings of a family are
" insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries
for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency."
198 The Question of Cheapness
He shows, by most careful and exact calculations
of the cost of the necessary foodstuffs, clothing,
and fuel, that the lowest income on which a family
of five — man, wife, and three children — can subsist,
without necessarily incurring physical deteriora-
tion, is twenty-one shillings and eightpence a
week. He takes " necessary " in the strictest
sense. " The estimates of necessary minimum
expenditure," he tells us, " are based upon the
assumption that the diet is even less generous than
that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York
Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any
expenditure other than that absolutely required for
the maintenance of merely physical efficiency."
Ponder these last nineteen words which Mr.
Rowntree puts in italics ; not a penny to be spent
on a train or an omnibus, on a book or a newspaper,
on a pipe of tobacco or on a glass of beer ; on a toy
for a child or a popular entertainment for the man
or his wife. It is a standard of animal, not human
life. But in York twenty thousand three hundred
and two persons — nearly twenty-eight per cent,
of the population — cannot attain even to that
standard, and are living, in varying degrees,
below it. Why is this ? It is chiefly because,
as Mr. Rowntree bears witness, " of the low wage
Physical Deterioration 199
of unorganised labour " ; or, as Mr. Charles Booth
puts it, in his well-known work, because of " the
unrestricted competition in industry of the needy
and helpless/' Here is another item of the price
which we pay for cheapness.
" Never before," Mr. Chamberlain told us some
years ago, " was the misery of the poor more
intense, never were the conditions of their daily
life more hopeless and degraded." True as his
words were when spoken, they are even truer now.
But there is something more to be said on this
topic of the degradation of the English home.
That degradation is the direct cause of the physical
deterioration of our race, which is beginning at
last to force itself upon reluctant minds, usually
absorbed in the fascinating game of party politics.
What kind of children are they that grow up in
the conditions indicated by Mr. Rowntree ? Con-
ditions which mean dirt and disease, with their
invariable concomitants, drunkenness and crime.
I know of nothing sadder than to go into the poor
quarters of one of our large cities and to gaze on
the multitudes of stunted, sickly, suffering boys
and girls whom one sees there, with their narrow
chests, their rickety limbs, their faulty teeth.
The causes are clear enough : such as the
200 The Question of Cheapness
overcrowding of human life in the slums where
they dwell, their unwholesome and insufficient
food, the ill-health of mothers toiling incessantly for
a precarious pittance under the sweating system,
or in conditions hardly less crushing, until the very
birth of their offspring. The disintegration of the
family has now been going on in our country for
many years, and we see the result of it in " the
more vitiated progeny " which swarms in the
streets and lanes, the alleys and courts, where the
indigent are congregated. I need not pursue this
topic. I must refer my readers who wish to know
more about it to the analysis of the physical con-
dition of very poor children which they will find
in Mr. Rowntree's book. Here I will merely note
the terribly significant fact that " sixty per cent.
of our adult male population now fail to reach the
already low standard of the recruiting sergeant."
IV
Again. Consider the case of the multitudes
of men, women, and children employed in " dan-
gerous ' trades. Think of the gradual impair-
ment of health, terminating in premature death,
Accidents or Crimes? 201
which is so frequently their doom : the numerous
accidents attended with loss of life, or with cor-
poral mutilation, which befall them. " Acci-
dents I " " The greater part of what we call
accidents are crimes," says Dr. Opimian, in that
delightful book, Gryll Grange. " Crimes ! " the
shocked manufacturer would reply : " Why, my
hands take the risk. How can I provide expensive
safeguards when I have to produce cheaply ? "
It is true. This is unquestionably the reason why
various approved contrivances for the protection
of life and limb and health are often withheld in
dangerous trades : the expense of production
would be unduly increased thereby. Mr. and Mrs.
Webb put it with grim terseness : " In the majority
of industries it costs less, whether in the form of an
annual premium, or in that of an occasional lump
sum out of profits, to compensate for accidents
than to prevent them." * Here the cost of cheap-
ness is the health, the life of the worker. This
truth has received recognition — if recognition were
wanted — in the Workmen's Compensation Act.
* Industrial Democracy, p. 375.
202 The Question of Cheapness
V
There is yet another item of the cost of cheap-
ness which should not be overlooked. One of the
most sagacious of Englishmen — for so I must
account him — the first Duke of Wellington, said :
" High interest is only another name for bad
security." In like manner we may affirm that,
generally, cheapness is only another name for
bad quality. So, indeed, the familiar saying
witnesses, " cheap and nasty." But here I will
quote a striking passage from Lord Dunraven's
draft Report :
Cheapness is now all that is sought for. The atten-
tion of the Committee was called to the chairs in the
room in which they sat. " We used to get paid £i 18s.
for re-stuffing and re-covering those," Mr. Holland, the
upholsterer, told us, " and now the price is cut down to
23s. You do not imagine the Government get the same
thing : I know they do not. The article is not in reality
cheaper, although it seems so. That chair," explained
Mr. Holland, " used to cost us altogether 34s. 8d., and we
used to charge it to the Office of Works at 38s. Now
the price it costs us is £1 os. id., and we charge the Office
of Works 23s." At every stage of the manufacture the
price had been cut down, and inferior materials were
used. " There are chairs in the Treasury," remarked one
of the contractors who supply the Government, " which
bear the stamp of William IV. on them. You will not
find chairs stand like that now." Cheapness has been
attained, but it is at the cost of nearly everything that
" Fraud in its Thousand Shapes " 203
British merchants and tradesmen formerly prided them-
selves upon, and which won for them their high repute
throughout the world. " I can remember the time," said
Mr. Holland, " when nobody in the West End thought
of using any inferior materials "... [now] " some of
the best houses, even at the West End, go to the East
End for articles which bear a resemblance to genuine
work of their own manufacture ; but the resemblance
does not go further than the outside. The general fact
is abundantly proved that the race for cheapness has led
to the production of inferior goods."
By way of commentary upon and supplement
to these remarks of Mr. Holland, I will give an
extract from the late Mr. David Syme's little
known but very valuable work, Outlines of an
Economic Science :
Fraud, in one or other of its thousand shapes, meets
us at every turn at every hour of the day. Everything
we buy is different from what it is represented to be,
and everything we eat, drink, or wear, is adulterated,
more or less, so that we seem actually to be living in an
atmosphere of fraud. . . . British manufacturers have
become so accustomed to make goods merely for sale,
that they seem almost to have forgotten that they are
wanted for use. This is more especially the case when
the goods are intended for export. Any rubbish which
is quite unsaleable at home is considered quite good
enough to send abroad. So long as it is off their hands
and the money obtained for it, what is it to them if the
article, when it arrives at its destination, proves to be
utterly worthless for the purpose for which it was ordered ?
. . . Some day or other England will wake up and find
herself without a character and without an export trade.*
* Pp. 80-90.
204 The Question of Cheapness
VI
Such are a few of the items — to present the
complete account would require a volume to itself
— of the cost of cheapness. They are enough,
surely, to make us ask, " Ought these things so to
be ? " But before we proceed to consider that,
a caveat must be entered.
The first thing which occurs to any one who
brings to the discussion of any social problem even
an elementary knowledge of history, a rudimentary
acquaintance with political philosophy, a moderate
power of reflection, is the necessity of guarding
against superficial data, abstract logic, intemperate
dogmatism. The simpler a formula is in such a
matter, the less trustworthy is it. The existing
organisation of society is the outcome of many
causes working through long tracts of years. The
men and women of the present generation are, for
the most part, directly responsible for it only in
small degree. A division of mankind into good
and bad, robbers and robbed, tyrants and victims,
may pass in parables. It has no ground in reality.
The habentes are not all thieves : the non-habentes
are not all injured innocents. There is no panacea
for the maladies of the body politic. Even the
The Cause of the Mischief 205
most specious looking remedies must be applied
cautiously, tentatively, gradually. But an in-
dispensable preliminary to the application of any
remedy is to trace the mischief to its cause, which
will usually be found to be some false doctrine,
some wrong conception of man, of society. Let
us try to pursue that method with regard to the
mischief dwelt upon in the foregoing pages of this
Chapter.
What, then, is the doctrine in which this
" frantic race for cheapness in production " finds
its justification ? It is unquestionably the
doctrine of the sect of Political Economists called
Orthodox — a sect which for the greater part of the
last century dominated the English mind. The
fundamental principle of that school, the corner-
stone of all its system, is covetousness, dis-
guised, usually, under a less ill-sounding name.
Senior avers : " The proposition that every man
desires to obtain additional wealth with as little
sacrifice as possible, is in political economy what
gravitation is in physics : the ultimate fact beyond
which reasoning cannot go." * From this ultimate
fact the doctors of " the great science," as it
used to be termed, derive their so-called " laws '
* Political Economy, p. 28.
206 The Question of Cheapness
of competition, prices, profits, rents — which are
merely hypothetical statements of the way in
which covetousness operates : and as Toynbee
pointed out, these " ' laws ' have come to be looked
upon as a complete philosophy of social and
industrial life." Adam Smith assures us that
" the natural effort of every individual to better
his own condition, when suffered to exert itself
with freedom and security, is so powerful a prin-
ciple that it is, alone, and without any assistance,
capable of carrying on the society to wealth
and prosperity":* Francis Newman lays down
what he calls " the grand and noble moral
theorem " that " the Laws of the Market which
individual interest generates are precisely those
which tend best to the universal benefit : " f and
Bastiat declares " Competition is to the moral
world what the law of equilibrium is to the
material one." J Now covetousness naturally
leads a man to buy in the cheapest market and
to sell in the dearest ; and to do this is the
Orthodox Political Economist's first and great
commandment, on which hang all his law and
his prophets. Nor is a man's bargaining to be
* Wealth of Nations, Book IV., c. 5.
t Lectures on Political Economy, p. 63.
t Essays on Political Economy, p. 57 (Eng. Trans.).
"The Free Play of Natural Forces' 207
affected, or conditioned, by any considerations
whatever independent of this master principle.
The proper price of a commodity, and human
labour is viewed merely as a commodity — " die
Arbeit ist eine Waare " — is the lowest sum for
which it can be procured. On the one hand, is the
Demand : on the other, the Supply ; and of course,
if the Supply exceeds the Demand, Competition
rules the price. This is the glorious liberty of the
sellers of labour according to the economic gospel
so long received and believed among us. They are
free to compete among themselves. What more
can they want ? It is true that the competition
wage, as we have seen, is seldom more than enough,
and often not enough, to supply the unskilled
labourer and his offspring with the bare means of
subsistence, the surplus value of his labour being
taken by the man who hires him. But this is the
state of things blessed and approved by the
Orthodox Political Economists as " the free play
of natural forces." It is not so very long ago that
one of them inveighing, after the manner of his
kind, against Trades Unions, insisted that " the
reward of labour like the exchange of commodities "
should be " free to be regulated by the heaven-
ordained laws of Supply and Demand." Mr.
208 The Question of Cheapness
Sterling's conception of heaven must have been a
strange one if he imagined that his " laws of
Supply and Demand " emanated thence. But it is
probable that this reference to the celestial region
was only a rhetorical trope, a lumbering flight of
economic fancy. Professor Jevons, however, in
his Primer of Political Economy — I elect to refer
to that work because it is addressed ad populum
— seriously insists : " The employer is, generally
speaking, right in getting work done at the lowest
possible cost : it is a question of Supply and
Demand." * " Right " : the word may well make
us pause. But I shall return to it hereafter.
Here I quote the Professor's dictum as a striking
manifestation of the spirit of commercialism ani-
mating the old Orthodox Political Economy, which
in spite of many somewhat inconsistent modifica-
tions in text books, and remedial measures of
legislation, still retains predominance in theory
and in practice. George Sand puts it well :
" L' amour d' argent a passe en dogme de morale
publique." Money is installed among us as the
one end of action : Supply and Demand, working
by competition, as the one bond of society. Mam-
mon is, in Wordsworth's phrase, " The master-idol
* p. 67.
"Did I not pay them fairly?" 209
of this realm." Society is founded on a money
contract ; and if you venture to hint a doubt
whether that is a right foundation, people are
surprised, and regard you as an amiable lunatic.
"We think," Carlyle observes, " nothing doubting,
that [cash payment] absolves and liquidates all
engagements of men. ' My starving workers,'
answers the rich Mill-owner, ' did I not hire them
fairly in the market ? Did I not pay them fairly,
to the last sixpence, the sum covenanted for ?
What have I to do with them more ? ' " * Pro-
fessor Ladd is well warranted when in his sugges-
tive work, Philosophy of Conduct, he observes that
" under the present conditions of the struggle for
existence, we are witnessing a return to the brutish
point of view, to the doctrine of the right of might,
to the concealed or expressed opinion that it is
justifiable for the strong to go as far as they can,
by way of pushing the weak and unfortunate over
the wall." f
VII
No doubt society is ever a tumult of hostile
interests ; no doubt selfishness, like sympathy —
* Past and Present, p. 185. f Pref., p. 11.
P
210 The Question of Cheapness
I decline to employ the barbarous jargon of
" egoism " and " altruism " — is a permanent ele-
ment of human nature. But mankind is governed
by its ideals. And the ideals which dominate our
age are quite other than those which, however
imperfectly apprehended or haltingly followed,
yet ruled the minds and guided the lives of so
many generations of our forefathers. There is
a vast difference between the way in which we
regard selfishness, and the way in which they
regarded it. What the Orthodox Political Economy
venerates as the " powerful principle alone and
without any assistance, capable of carrying on the
society to wealth and prosperity," as being "in
political economy what gravitation is in physics,"
as a " grand and noble moral theorem," the ethical
teachers from whom the Western world learnt for
a thousand years, numbered among the seven
deadly sins. Chief among those teachers is St.
Thomas Aquinas, and this is his definition of
avarice : " The sin by which a man desires to
acquire, or to retain, in undue measure : an im-
moderate love of having." * The appeal is to
what is due : " necessary to a man's life, according
to his rank and condition : ' to what ought to
* Summa Theologica: 2, 2, q, 118, a. 1.
Whence the Rule of Action ? 211
be : to reason speaking through the moral law.
For let me again note that for Aquinas, as for
Kant, and indeed for transcendental moralists
generally, the moral law is not, as is alleged by a
popular writer, whose confident dogmatism was
largely the outcome of his colossal ignorance, " a
code of theological ethics : " * that he is utterly
in error in asserting that for us " right and wrong
are right and wrong simply in virtue of Divine
enactment." f The moral law is another name
for the ideal of justice — to hUaiov, the old Greeks
called it — a fundamental, aboriginal, indecom-
posable ideal, the authority of which is intrinsic
and unconditioned : which is its own evidence,
its own justification ; which would subsist to all
eternity, as it has subsisted from all eternity,
though Christianity and every other religion
should vanish away. It depends, Suarez well
teaches, upon those dictates of reason which
are " intrinsically necessary and independent of
all volition, even of the Divine." J It is the
rule of action which necessarily arises out of the
relation of reason to itself as its own end ; and
I gladly adopt the words of a recent writer that
* Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics, pref., p. iv.
t Ibid., p. 50.
% De Legibus, c. vi., n. i.
212 The Question of Cheapness
the recognition of " Reason as supreme moral
faculty ... is the significant mark which dis-
tinguishes the real from the spurious in moral
schemes." * But although the authority of the
moral law is absolute and unconditioned, and
independent of theological doctrines, it doubtless
finds in religion its strongest sanction. The com-
mand : " Thou shalt not steal," is valid for all
time, and in all worlds, whether there be a God
or not. But Christianity — the religion with which,
as a matter of fact, we have to do — powerfully
enforces it by that word of the Apostle, prescient
of retributive justice : " that no man go beyond
or defraud his brother in any matter, because
that the Lord is the Avenger of all such."
VIII
We are told that European society can do,
and will have to do, without Christianity. I do
not propose here to discuss that question. But
I am sure that European society cannot do
without ethics — a science well described as
" supreme over the whole of human practice " : f
* Courtney's Constructive Ethics, p. 193.
t Shadworth Hodgson's Metaphy sic of Experience^ o\. III., p. 214.
A Function of Ethics 213
and as a student of history, I am led to doubt
whether morality is practically sufficient for the
government of life apart from the support and
sanction of religion. However that may be,
certain it is that man is, in Aristotle's words, an
ethical animal. Certain, too, is it that society
is an ethical organism ; as Euripides puts it, " we
live by well-known laws of right and wrong." It
is a function of ethics — in the admirable words
of a writer quoted just now — " to bind all
humanity into one corporate commonwealth of
moral units." * The moral law it is which trans-
forms life from a war of all against all, into an
ordered community founded on justice — Justitia
fundamentum regni. And what is justice, accord-
ing to the pregnant definition of the Roman
jurist, which cannot be too constantly kept before
us, but " the constant and ever-present will to
give each his due ? " Justice should rule in the
relations of life. There is a justum pretium, a
fair wage for labour, even unskilled labour. And
— to return to the immediate subject of this
Chapter — if that is so, surely we must meet with
an emphatic negative Professor Jevons' assertion
that the employer is right in getting work done
* Courtney's Constructive Ethics, p. 193.
214 The Question of Cheapness
at the lowest possible cost. No : the employer
is not right in getting work done at the lowest
possible cost. Professor Marshall, I am glad to
notice, has reprobated " the cruelty of irrespon-
sible competition." * Can any one maintain that
the employer is right in treating his workpeople
cruelly ? The labourer is worthy of his hire : he
is entitled to a fair wage, the measure of which is,
as those older moralists taught, the means of
living a human life ; and this includes, not merely
house and home, but leisure and spiritual culti-
vation ; not merely, in their accurate language,
bona naturce necessaria, but bona statui necessaria.
And if he is poor and needy, his destitution does
not make it right to underpay him. To under-
pay him is to steal from him ; and this is one of
the most common and most disgraceful forms of
theft : the most common because it is found in
every department of life : the most disgraceful
because it is the most cowardly. But the very
notion of a justum pretium, a fair wage, has died
out of the popular mind, taught to regard human
labour as mere merchandise. " There is no more
a fair rate of wage," Professor Jevons assures the
* Presidential Address to the British Association, Economic
Section, 1890.
The Economic Problem of To-day 215
readers of his Primer, " than there is a fair price
of cotton or iron." * He adds the quite unneces-
sary caution, " If there is a supply of labour
forthcoming at lower rates of wages, it would not
be wise of the employer to pay higher rates."
" Wise " : well, doubtless there is a sense in which
sweaters and rackrenters may be accounted wise
in their generation !
The great « lomic problem of to-day is not
production but distribution : a problem very
slightly investigated by the Smithian political
economists, but by far the more important of
the two : for the real test of the prosperity of
the commonwealth — let me again insist upon
this — is not the luxury of the few, but the sub-
stantial comfort of the many. The question,
How is a fair wage — a just share of the proceeds
of their labour — to be secured for workers, is of
vital moment to national well-being. John Stuart
Mill wrote in 1869 : "In the contest of endurance
between buyer and seller [of labour] nothing but
a close combination between the employed can
give them even a chance of successfully compet-
ing against employers." f " Combination," echoes
* p. 61.
t Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. IV., p. 42.
216 The Question of Cheapness
Professor Sidgwick, " is in fact the only way in
which the poor can place themselves on a par
with the rich in bargaining." * But this weapon
cannot be wielded save by the aristocracy of
labour. It is beyond the reach of those unskilled
toilers whose condition we have been considering.
" Freedom of contract," writes Mr. Commons, " is alone
the legal right which enables the labourer to refuse to
work except on terms which suit himself. It therefore
gives him the right to exact, in return for the use of his
personal abilities, a surplus of the social product above
the minimum of subsistence. But for this purpose it
applies only to organised and scarcity labourers : i.e. to
labourers who are able, by limitations on their numbers,
to keep their marginal utility above the minimum. The
skilled, the intelligent, the educated, the gifted labourers,
those in whom intellectual and moral qualities predomi-
nate, are benefited by the freedom of contract. But for
the unskilled, the unorganised, the redundant labourers,
those whose marginal utility is low, freedom of contract
offers no help. Their condition is worse than that of
slaves, for they may not even secure a minimum of sub-
sistence unless they come upon the poor-relief. Freedom
of contract is two-sided. It is freedom for the employer
as well as for the labourer ; and if the labourer is unable
by it, or otherwise, to limit his numbers and maintain a
high marginal utility, he cannot compel the employer to
pay to him more than this marginal utility. The right
of combination, therefore, in its influence on the dis-
tribution of wealth has a contradictory effect. It enables
organised labour to limit their numbers arbitrarily, and
thus raises their wages ; but it thereby depresses the mar-
ginal utility of the unorganised. f
* Elements of Politics, p. 579. t The Distribution oj 'Wealth, p. 75.
The Fraternity of Cain and Abel 217
This very clear and scientifically accurate state-
ment of the accomplished American Professor
should surely lead any candid mind to doubt
whether the principle of demand and supply work-
ing by competition, which is the one foundation of
our modern economic system, is really all-sufficient.
The commercialism to which it may be traced of
course arose on the downfall of feudalism. But
it is the direct result of the spurious individualism
preached by Rousseau, and adopted as the central
idea of the French Revolution, which broke up
the old social framework, and treated civil polity
as a chaos of unrelated human units. The Revo-
lutionists, indeed, prated of fraternity and made
it one of their shibboleths. In the political order
it proved to be the fraternity of Cain and Abel.
And that is precisely the spirit — " Am I my
brother's keeper ? " — which breathes through the
economic speculations of the Smithian school
with its postulates of free competition and laissez-
faire, and its " law of the market which individual
interest generates." Of course, competition is a
necessary element in human life, and the source
of much which is most valuable in civilisation.
It should not be the sole mode of adjusting the
relations between Demand and Supply. Human
218 The Question of Cheapness
society is not, and cannot be, an unrelated
mass of human units. It is an organism : and
in economics, as in other spheres, co-operation
rightly claims a place : a larger place, indeed,
than competition. Rivalry, contentions, strife
are necessary in their way : but no less necessary
are combination, agreement, union : no less neces-
sary is the sense of right, of justice, embodied
in the organised force of the State : no less
necessary is the spirit of pity and compassion
which animates the innumerable works of bene-
ficence and charity.
But to pursue these topics would take me
too far. The point immediately before us is,
What can be done to redress the wrongs of our
unskilled labourers ? Can anything be effected for
any of them by legislation ? Mr. and Mrs. Webb,
who speak on this subject with a knowledge to
which few can pretend, answer that question
with an emphatic affirmative. " We think . . .
that there is no other way," they write, " of
raising the present scandalously low standard
of life in these classes." Founding themselves
on the undeniable proposition that it is the duty
of Government " absolutely to prevent any in-
dustry from being carried on under conditions
A National Minimum Wage 219
detrimental to the public welfare," they advocate
the fixing of " a national minimum wage," which
" should be determined by practical inquiry as
to the cost of food, clothing, and shelter physio-
logically necessary, according to national habit
and custom, to prevent physical deterioration."
They are well aware that to a vast number " the
idea will seem impracticable " : and they answer,
at considerable length, the objections made to
it. I must refer my readers to their own lucid
pages for their arguments. Here I can only note
four facts upon which they lay stress : that " the
authoritative settlement of a minimum wage is
already daily undertaken, [as] every local body,
throughout the country, has to decide, under the
criticism of public opinion, what wage it will pay
to its lowest grade of labourers " : that " during
the last few years, systematic determination of the
rate to be paid for Government labour has been,
more and more consciously, based upon the
doctrine of ' a living wage ' : " * that "a national
minimum wage is the obvious completion of
factory legislation, at once logical and practical " : f
and that " the successful experiments of Victoria
* Industrial Democracy. Introduction to the 1902 edition, p. xli.
f Industrial Democracy, p. 774.
220 The Question of Cheapness
and New Zealand have proved to us that it
actually works, and works well." * Surely those
who maintain in the face of these facts, that the
remedy of a national minimum wage is inapplicable,
should seek to discover some more excellent way.
Most surely the British Legislature may reasonably
be expected to attend continually upon a question
so vitally important, until " the wisdom of Par-
liament " satisfactorily solves it.
IX
But what the British Legislature may reason-
ably be expected to do, is one thing. What it is
* Ibid. — Introduction to the 1902 edition, p. liii. The reader will
find details in Mr. and Mrs. Webb's pages. Here I can only give a
brief extract concerning the Victorian legislation. " By the Factories
and Shops Act, 1896, after a series of vain attempts to put down
sweating by other means, special wage boards were constituted in
certain oppressed trades. These were empowered to fix a minimum
standard wage for the trade, for both factory and out-workers, by time
and by the piece, and also the maximum number of apprentices or im-
provers under eighteen years of age, and the minimum to be paid to
them. The Common Rules then prescribed for the trade became, in
effect, part of the Factory Acts, and were enforced by the Factory
Inspectors, like any other requirements of the Acts, by summary pro-
ceedings in the police courts. The Act only related to six specially
sweated trades, and applied only to Melbourne and its suburbs. In
1900, after four years' experience, the law was widened in all directions.
The powers of the boards were extended so as to cover practically the
whole colony : nor were the employers themselves dissatisfied with the
result." — Pp. xxxvii.-xxxix.
Karma 221
likely to do, is quite another. Can we venture to
hope that it will interrupt the game of Ins and
Outs to bestow its attention, to give its days and
nights, to a most arduous problem, not easy to
manipulate for the manufacture of party capital ?
Anyhow, one thing is certain. The classes who
exist in luxury, or in substantial comfort, have,
as a rule, no conception of the depth of degra-
dation, moral and physical, in which millions
of underpaid toilers live and die. And the first
step towards the redress of this great evil of
underpayment, is the clear exhibition of the two
facts that it exists and that it is wrong, not, as
the old Orthodox Political Economists taught,
right. It is wrong that cheapness should be
purchased at the cost of which I have exhibited
some items. And for that wrong the men and
women who now constitute the community —
little as many of them may be personally to blame
— have to answer. A nation, like each of the in-
dividuals composing it, is an ethical entity. They
pass away : it remains : and in it their doing,
good or bad — their karma, to use that pregnant
word of Buddhism — lives on. The children inherit
the merits of their fathers, and the sins of the
father are visited upon the children, in the political
222 The Question of Cheapness
order as in the physical. We who are alive at
this present are accountable for the economic
conditions in which we find ourselves. We
are accountable for that robbery of the poor
and needy, because they are poor and needy,
which is daily perpetrated on every side. Such
robbery is accounted by the Catholic Church one
of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.
Let us not fondly imagine that it cries in vain.
" The moral laws of nature and of nations," rule
over us not only by their mandates, but also by
their penalties — penalties which are not the less
real because they are not to be discovered in
the statute book. Justice, as I shall have to
insist at length in the next Chapter, is, of its
nature, retributive — a verity largely lost sight
of, or disbelieved and even derided, in this age
of sick sentimentalism, which, for the most part,
is merely a form of selfishness. A community
where millions are condemned to physical and
moral degradation in order that the rich may be
richer, the comfortable more comfortable — plun-
dered by the employers who underpay them, by
the retail tradesmen who overcharge them, by
the landlords who batten on the exorbitant rents
exacted for the miserable dwellings where they
" It is unjust : it cannot last " 223
are huddled together, and neglected in the sterile
strifes of party j anglings by the Parliament which
should be " omnipotent to protect " them — such
a community is heaping up unto itself wrath
against the day of wrath. "It is unjust : it
cannot last," said the wise Duke of Weimar when
the First Napoleon, at the zenith of his success,
seemed " the foremost man of all this world."
Assuredly, we must say the same of " the shame
of mixed luxury and misery which is spread over
this land of England."
CHAPTER VII
THE CRIMINAL QUESTION
I
" Words have grown so false I am loath to
prove reason with them," says the Clown in
Twelfth Night. That this is true of the words
" right " and " wrong," was pointed out in the
introductory pages of the present volume. It is
equally true in respect of certain important words
which will often recur in this Seventh Chapter.
In dealing with the Criminal Question the Utili-
tarian School " eviscerates moral language of all
its meaning."
We still have with us and, no doubt, so long
as the world lasts, we shall have with us, certain
facts which are called " crimes ' and certain
persons who are called " criminals." We have
courts of what is called " justice," in which sus-
pected criminals are tried for their alleged crimes,
The New Theory 225
and by which, if convicted, they are sentenced to
what is called " punishment." But what is the
new theory now very confidently recommended
to the civilised world, and accepted by a portion
of it numerically not inconsiderable, as to " crime"
and " criminals " and " justice " and " punish-
ment " ? It is, apparently, that " crime " is the
misfortune, not the fault, of the " criminal " ;
that " punishment " is not what Milton called it,
" law's awful minister," but merely an educative
process designed to lead him, by calculations of
self-interest, to cease from conduct generally
destructive of agreeable feeling; while the idea of
justice, in any intelligible sense of the word,
disappears altogether, the tribunals which are
supposed to administer it being regarded as simply
preventive checks on abnormality. The news-
papers, the debates in Parliament, the transactions
of philanthropic societies of every kind, abound
with evidence warranting what I say. I give
a few specimens of it, taken almost at random.
In a debate in the House of Commons on May
20th, 1910, I find a member of that assembly,
whose name is of no importance, expressing his
hope that " the old feeling of a desire for revenge
upon those who had offended against society was
"
226 The Criminal Ouestion
fast disappearing " — I shall have occasion later
on to say something about that " old feeling " —
and instructing his fellow-legislators that the
principle upon which our system of punishment
should be based was that of reclamation. In
one journal of name I read : " We expect prison
authorities to improve a man, morally, mentally,
and physically in confinement.' ' In another, that
" what we have to do is to maintain a just balance
between deference and reformation, and to pro-
tect society by a wholesome consciousness of
penalties, while developing what elements of
good remain to the criminal." He proceeds to
admonish us — as it were ex cathedrd — " The old
retributive theories of punishment stand con-
demned to-day as being not merely unscientific, but
positively immoral," a declaration which inspires
me with a desire to elicit, by some process of
cross-examination, how this sage accounts of
" science " and " morality." " A prison," he
further pronounces, " should be a repairing shop
for humanity " — the phrase is worth noting — " so
long as repair is possible." Again, the author of
a series of most interesting articles in the Times,
entitled, " Prison Life and Administration," *
* Published on May 27th and 30th, June 1st, 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th,
21st and 27th, 1910.
A Scheme for Reforming Character 227
explains, with much fulness of detail, how this
theory is carried out in our jails, and gives us an
account of the way in which, to use his words,
" that most comprehensive and complicated pro-
cess which we call reformation of character," is
undertaken there. This, in slightly compressed
form, is what he tells us about that very im-
portant matter.
In the old days prison was primarily, as every one
knows, an act of vengeance for wrong done, being, in
short, only a substitute for the ear-cropping, nose-slitting,
branding, and the rest of it dear to our rough-and-ready
forefathers. All this has passed away with the one excep-
tion of the lash for mutiny and murderous assault in
prison — a rare exception in these days. In place of punish-
ment for punishment's sake there is useful, educative
labour provided for all, from the lad who is sentenced to
a week for skylarking against borough or county by-laws,
to the recidivist doing years for manslaughter or worse.
There is, moreover, direct encouragement and stimulus
given for good behaviour and industry by the institution
of the mark system, or, as it is termed, the " System of
Progressive Stages."
" A prisoner," say the regulations, " shall be able to
earn on each weekday eight, seven, or six marks, accord-
ing to the degree of his industry. On Sunday he shall
be awarded marks according to the degree of his industry
during the previous week."
These " incentives to industry and good conduct "
are the sign-manual of the authorities that they intend
prison life to reform as well as to deter. In gaol a man
is protected from himself. The keynote of the system is
to remove from him any responsibility, except to behave
and to do what he is told. He is placed in a groove, in
228 The Criminal Ouestion
short, and so long as he runs smoothly along it he is safe.
This is undoubtedly beneficial, up to a point. It teaches
self-discipline and self-control. Criminals as a rule are
impulsive, violent, and ill-ordered in mind or body —
always excepting certain classes of hardened offenders.
So it is well for prisoners to learn that hardness comes
to those who kick, or sulk, or deceive, and advantage to
those who obey, work hard, and do not shirk.
Such is the new theory of punishment ; and
now let us examine it, first in itself, and then in
its results.
II
First then as to the theory in itself. It rests
upon the position that a prison — imprisonment
is the only form of penal discipline which it will
tolerate — is, as a writer whom I quoted just now
tells us, "a repairing shop for humanity," by
which I suppose is meant a moral hospital. Surely
that position is, in the highest degree, absurd.
How can the denial of personal liberty and the
companionship of outcasts, or even the torture
of solitary imprisonment, be reformatory ? Re-
formation means — this is its only intelligible
meaning — the conversion of the will from bad
to good. But a sentence of imprisonment weakens
The Real Results of Imprisonment 229
the will and impairs, very often hopelessly shatters,
the power of self-control. The time spent in jail —
even the very shortest time — is destructive of that
self-respect which is produced by " a character
to keep up," as the phrase has it. The man who
is sent to prison has thenceforward no character
to keep up. As soon as he crosses the portal, over
which might well be inscribed Dante's terrible
words, he may well abandon hope of ever again
holding up his head among his fellows. He is no
longer " a respectable man." He has become a
jail-bird ; the taint of the prison-house, with its
manifold degradations, is on him and will ever cling
to him. His personality is well-nigh annihilated
amid his contaminating surroundings — that per-
sonality which alone supplies the foundation
whereon character can be built up. But it may be
said, " You forget the chaplain, and the spiritual
influences which he may bring to bear." No ;
I by no means forget the chaplain upon whom,
as the writer in the Times, just now quoted, well
observes, " rests the chief responsibility of bring-
ing into prison life that human sympathy and
compassion, and brotherly helpfulness of strong
personal intercourse, without which many a soul,
stricken with remorse or depression, finds lonely
230 The Criminal Question
confinement, however humane, a living hell."
But I know, from incontrovertible evidence, how
evanescent the chaplain's influence is, in the vast
majority of cases. The prisoner, once released,
forgets the good and religious words which he
heard gladly in prison. He is face to face with the
stern realities of life : a convict, pitted against
non-convicts in the struggle for existence : and
what are his chances of earning an honest living,
even supposing that he is inclined to try and earn
it ? I make the qualification because there is
terrible truth in the dictum " once a prisoner,
always a prisoner." Qui a bu boira, says the French
proverb, all too wisely. The chaplain's exhortations
may have been sincerely welcome to him when the
chaplain was his only " helper, friend, counsellor,
and brother." But, as a Hindu scripture admon-
ishes us, " A fact is not altered by a hundred texts,"
and the discharged convict is confronted by this
primary fact that, in spite of benevolent societies,
the world regards him with well warranted sus-
picion ; that the difficulties in the way of his
resuming his old place among men, or even of
coming within measurable distance of it, are
enormous ; nay, he may well be tempted to say
to himself, insurmountable.
A Lamentable Failure 231
The theory then that the prison is " a repairing
shop for humanity/' a moral hospital, is untrue. It
is rather indeed a criminal factory, as is sufficiently
proved by the fact that the vast majority of those
whom it receives, leave it much the worse for
their experience there. Miinsterberg goes so far
as to say, " Criminals are not born, but made ;
not self-made, but fellow-made." At least three-
fourths — eighty per cent, is, I believe, a truer
estimate — of those who have once been in jail
return thither. The effort to reclaim burglars
and thieves and loafers into skilled workmen by
exhibiting honesty as the best policy, is a lament-
able failure. The dominant desire of the average
prisoner is to escape pains and penalties, to have
as easy a time as possible while in jail, and to
leave it as soon as possible. That he is justly
expiating his offence against society, seldom occurs
to him ; how should it ? The newspapers and
magazines, if he is permitted to solace his cap-
tivity with them, for the most part agree with him
that he couldn't help himself. The mealy-mouthed
philanthropies, so much in vogue at the present
day, tell him that he is a mere victim of circum-
stances. It is clear that he must be so accounted
if he had no power to refuse the evil and to choose
232 The Criminal Question
the good : if free will is an objective and subjective
delusion. He is drunken, idle, cruel. Is that his
fault ? Nay, he might quote Shakespeare, if he
happens to have so far profited by the prison
library as to have looked into that poet :
" Alas ! our frailty is the cause : not we ;
For, such as we are made of, such we be."
Such and no other. And so he comes to the
conclusion that his punishment is not just but
unjust — a conclusion drawn reasonably enough
from the premises with which determinism sup-
plies him. For assuredly it is unjust to punish a
man for being what he cannot help being, for
doing what he cannot help doing. Poor victim
of temperament, of heredity, of environment, he
deserves not blame but pity. And he gets it.
Fifty years ago Balzac wrote: "Crime has been
made poetical : tears are drivelled over assassins."
True as these words were when they were written,
they are even truer now.
Ill
So much as to the new theory of criminality.
And now let us turn to the old which, differing from
The Right to Punish 233
the accomplished journalist whom I quoted a few
pages back, I take to be both scientific and moral,
and the alone scientific and moral. The primary
foundation of the right to punish is not the desire
for the reformation of the criminal, or for the
protection of society. No ; the primary founda-
tion of the right is justice, of which let me once
more recall Ulpian's definition — it is not likely
to be bettered — " the constant and perpetual will to
render to each his right (jus suum)." The penalty
inflicted on the wrong-doer is his right. It is
what is due to him ; what is merited by his
wrongful act ; the wages of his criminous deed.
It is fully warranted, nay, is persistently de-
manded by that great organic instinct of retribu-
tion which is implanted in our conscience, and
which, however much we try to expel it by any
force of sentiment or sophistry, is sure to come
back. And so Aquinas : " The law of nature "
— the law arising from that supreme reason which
is the nature of things — "proclaims that he who
offends should be punished." * It has been finely
remarked by Dr. Martineau : " The conscience of
mankind refuses to believe in the ultimate im-
punity of guilt, and looks upon the flying criminal
* Stimma Thcologica : i, 2, q. 95, a. 2.
234 The Criminal Question
as only taking a circuit to his doom."* Yes;
" the conscience of mankind." The instinct of
retribution is universal ; it is common to the
rudest and the most highly cultured of our race ;
more, it extends throughout the whole realm of
animate existence below us, and above us even to
the Infinite and Eternal himself, who is revealed to
the individual soul as Dens Ultionum; the God
to whom vengeance belongeth. It was this in-
stinct which led " the barbarous people " of
Melita, when the venomous beast fastened on the
hand of the shipwrecked St. Paul, to see in him
a murderer whom, though he had escaped the sea,
retributive justice f suffered not to live. It is
this instinct which has inspired one of the finest
of Plato's Dialogues, whereof more presently.
The non-recognition of it, in our age, is among the
worst consequences of the Utilitarian philosophy
which, while calling itself scientific, ignores the facts
of human nature irreconcilable with its ignoble
speculations ; which, while claiming to be ethical,
puts aside the determinations of conscience, upon
which alone morality can be established. " All
through my day," Cardinal Newman complained,
* A Study of Religion, Vol. II., p. 46.
t "Vengeance" in the Authorized Version and "ultio" in the
Vulgate, both correctly enough rendering the Greek 5ik7/.
A Conspiracy against Conscience 235
in words well worth recalling, " there has been
a resolute warfare, I had almost said conspiracy,
against the rights of conscience. . . . We are
told that conscience is but a twist in the
primitive and untutored man ; that its dictate
is an imagination ; that the very notion of
guiltiness which that dictate enforces, is simply
irrational, for how can there be freedom of the
will, how can there be consequent responsibility,
in that infinite eternal network of cause and effect,
in which we helplessly lie ? and what retribution
have we to fear when we have no real choice
to do good or evil ? " *
But let us go back to Plato and his doctrine
of retributive punishment. He too finds, like
" the barbarous people " of Malta, that it is a part
of justice. Punishment, he teaches in the Gorgias,
is another name for being justly corrected ; and
those who rightly punish others, punish them in
accordance with a certain rule of justice. In-
justice is an evil. Punitive justice acts as " a
moral medicine/' f delivering from that evil the
soul corrupted with it J : for he who makes
* Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, § 5.
+ 'laTpiKTi yiyverai irovnplas 7) Siktj. I am indebted for the admirable
rendering, " a moral medicine," to the late Master of Trinity, Dr.
Thompson. See his edition of the Gorgias.
% KaKias apa tyvxys aTraWarreTaL 6 Si'ktjj' SiSovs.
236 The Criminal Question
expiation thereby pays the debt due for his
unjust deed, the penalty contracted by his crime ;
and thus he who is punished and suffers retribu-
tion, suffers that which is good, namely justice ;
and so Plato concludes, " that to have one's
punishment * is the best thing that can happen
to the transgressor, since not to have it perpetuates
the evil." "The doer of unjust actions," he writes,
" is miserable in any case ; more miserable, how-
ever, if he be not punished, and does not meet with
retribution ; and less miserable if he be punished
and meets with retribution at the hands of gods
and men." The whole argument is founded on
the retributive character of punishment, and the
debt incurred by wrong-doing. And who that
will not shut his eyes to the plainest facts of human
nature can deny its cogency ? To quote again
Dr. Martineau, whose words burn with the
eloquence of truth, " When the conscience
shivers in the returning shadow of old sins ;
when, not having suffered enough at the hands
of circumstance, it plunges into self-inflicted
* Literally to get justice : Si/cnv ex* iv - I confess that the philosophers
and tragedians of ancient Hellas seem to me to be, for the most part,
on a far higher moral level than most of the ethical teachers who are
heard so gladly at the present day. They believed in justice — retribu-
tive justice — as a primordial law : in divine right, clothed with divine
might, as a ruling principle in the world.
Righteous Retribution 237
penances ; when, oppressed for half a lifetime by
the secret of unsuspected crime, it makes spon-
taneous confession at the last, that it may not miss
its righteous retribution, these superfluities of
anguish . . . are among the most pathetic and
solemn of human experiences ; not as pitiable
infirmities but precisely because they are the
outburst of a truth, and the self-vindication of a
moral law which resolution cannot suppress or
weakness defy." *
It is from this moral law that we derive the
right to punish. The first fact about man is his
consciousness of that law and of his obligation
to obey it — he is an ethical animal. But, as
Kant admirably remarks, " There is something in
the idea of our practical reason which accompanies
the transgression of the moral law, namely, the
feeling that the transgression merits punishment/' f
The connection between wrong-doing and penalty
is not accidental, but necessary ; it rests on
reason. The very words, " law " and " obliga-
tion," imply a penal sanction. A so-called law
which may be broken with impunity is no
* A Study of Religion, Vol. II., p. 41. The italics are mine. It is
a fine saying of Leibnitz that in virtue of the laws of nature every evil-
doer is a Self-tormentor.
t Kritik der Prak. Vermcnft, 1st Part, Book I., §8.
238 The Criminal Question
law at all. Punishment is involved in the
transgression of law ; it is, in Hegel's phrase, " the
other half of crime." Wrong-doing is the assertion
of a man's own unreasonable and evil will against
the Universal Will, which is Supreme Reason,
Supreme Right, for reason and right are syno-
nymous. Penalty is the re-assertion of the Uni-
versal Will. It is not a wrong done to the criminal.
No ; according to Plato's admirable teaching,
at which we have glanced, it is a right done to
him — a right due to him as a person, that is
a moral being ; it is the application of justice
to him ; it is, in St. Augustine's fine phrase,
" the justice of the unjust." Man in society
— and out of society he does not exist — lives
with certain laws of right and wrong, which
are the very conditions of human fellowship.
To infringe them is to commit an offence against,
to incur a debt to, the commonwealth. Justice
requires that the debt be paid, that the offence
be expiated. And the first end of punishment
is the payment of that debt, the expiation of
that offence. Crime, in the language of scientific
jurisprudence, gives rise to a vinculum juris
which punishment discharges. It is the legal con-
sequence united to the legal cause, by a rational
"A Revenger to Execute Wrath" 239
necessity, a necessity arising from the nature of
things. And the ministration of retributive justice,
the vindication of outraged right, is the highest
function of the civil ruler. Hence it is that St.
Paul was led to contemplate him as the repre-
sentative, the vicegerent, of the Supreme Moral
Governor of the Universe ; as " the Minister of
God, a Revenger to execute wrath upon him
that doeth evil," * the wrath being that which
is due to the wrong-doer. " Punishment," says
Kant, " must be justified as punishment, that is
a mere evil for its own sake : so that the punished
person, when he looks thereon, must himself
confess that right is done to him, and that his lot
is entirely commensurate with his conduct." f
IV
I very strongly hold then that punishment is
what Dr. Johnson defined it, " any infliction
* Contra, a writer in the Spectator of July 31st, 1910 : " It must not
be supposed that we favour, in any degree, the idea of vindictive
punishment. ... It is no business of the State to usurp or parody the
office of the Almighty. . . . The concern of the State is solely to
prevent the commission of crime." The able writer who thus speaks,
as it were pontifically, with all the authority of the editorial " we,"
must pardon me if I prefer St. Paul's doctrine to his. Am I told
that St. Paul is out of date as an ethical teacher? Well, at all events,
Kant is not.
t Kritik der Prak. Vemimft, 1st Part, Book I., § 8.
240 The Criminal Question
imposed in vengeance for a crime ; " that it is,
first and beyond all things, vindictive. To deny
to it this characteristic, seems to me to empty
it of its vivifying idea, to rob it of its dignity
in the life of man, to degrade it to mere brute
force. I of course recognise — who does not ? —
that it is also deterrent. Aristotle's words that
" the bulk of mankind do not abstain from evil
because it is wrong, but because of punishment," *
are as true now as they were when they were
written, and ever will be true. Regarding the
reformatory agency of punishment, we must
speak with much more caution. There is, indeed,
one penalty which no doubt, often does work the
moral reformation of the criminal ; which con-
verts his will from bad to good. That is the
penalty of death. Green well observes, "If a
true social necessity requires that the criminal
be punished with death, the fact that society is
obliged so to deal with him, affords the best
chance of bringing home to him the anti-social
nature of his act." f Experience proves that this
is so. The certainty of impending execution often
works a great and rapid change in the inmost
* Nicomachean Ethics, X. 9.
t Works, Vol. I., p. 516.
Capital Punishment 241
being of the assassin, a fact which did not escape
the keen eyes of Schopenhauer. " When [con-
demned criminals] have lost all hope," this
profound student of human nature writes, " they
show actual goodness and purity of disposition,
true abhorrence of committing any deed in the
least degree bad or unkind ; they forgive their
enemies and die gladly, placidly, and happily.
To them in the extremity of their anguish the last
secret of life has revealed itself;"* they obtain
" a purification through suffering."
I do not think that this reformatory char-
acter can be largely attributed to any other
punishment. As regards imprisonment, there is
overwhelming evidence of its failure to reform.
I have already observed that our jails must be
regarded rather as criminal factories than as
" repairing shops for humanity." There is, indeed,
one punishment, now, unfortunately, seldom em-
ployed, which we may well believe to rank next
to the punishment of death as a means of refor-
mation. I mean the punishment of flogging, f
* Die Welt ah Wille,etc, Vol. II., Book IV., p. 465.
t Of its deterrent effect, regarding which there can be no question
— those who are most reckless in inflicting pain are usually most
cowardly in shrinking from it — an admirable illustration is afforded
by the policy of Count Christiani, who was appointed Grand Chancellor
of Milan about the middle of the eighteenth century. On assuming
R
242 The Criminal Question
Reason clearly points to its employment in a certain
class of crimes — crimes callously committed with
an entire disregard of the physical suffering
caused by them to the innocent. Justice
requires that these should be expiated by the
physical suffering of the culprits, for the great
rule underlying the infliction of punishment,
whether we regard the matter philosophically or
historically, is the lex talionis : the requital, so far
as humanity allows, of the offender's deed upon
himself : or as the vulgar phrase is — the very
voice of human nature speaks through it — the
paying him out in his own coin. Examples of
such crimes are aggravated assaults and batteries
causing grievous bodily harm ; outrages on the
modesty of women ; the barbarous treatment
of children ; gross cruelty to animals. Men guilty
of such atrocities should unquestionably be sub-
jected to the lash, as the most effective instrument
of returning upon themselves the suffering caused
by their evil doing ; as the best way of enabling
them to reconcile themselves with justice by pay-
ing the debt which their unjust act has incurred.
Nor let it be said that this is to return evil for
office he found the city terrorized by the use of the knife and dagger
in private quarrels. He suppressed this species of crime by the simple
expedient of sentencing all convicted of it to be severely flogged.
Flogging 243
evil. It is to return good for evil. The highest
good which can be rendered to the unjust is
justice, and soundly to flog a garroter is to do
him the greatest service possible. It restores
him to the moral universe. It may prove —
as a matter of fact it often has proved — a
powerful deterrent from garroting in the future.
It may conceivably induce salutary reflections
which will convert his will from bad to good. Am
I here met with the objection — it is a very common
one — that flogging brutalises the criminal ? If so,
I will reply in the words of my old friend and
master, Sir Henry Maine: "I, for my part, must
confess that I do not even understand what the
objection means. What," as this great jurist
went on to ask, " What is intended when it is
said that flogging brutalises ? Is it that it appeals
to the offenders' animal nature, as distinguished
from his moral nature ? That it causes, in short,
physical pain ? Why every punishment, deserving
the name, inflicts physical pain. If 3'ou snu t a
man up in jail who is used to the open air, if you
deprive him of stimulants when he is habituated
to them, if you make him work when he is accus-
tomed to be idle — in all these cases, you inflict
physical pain, and sometimes pain even severer
244 The Criminal Question
than the pain of a flogging. . . . When you
sentence a criminal to imprisonment you de-
liberately make up your mind to render him
extremely uncomfortable ; and, for my part, I
cannot in the least understand why one form or
degree of physical pain should brutalise more
than another." * To this I entirely consent ;
and I would gladly see the liberal employment
among us of the punishment of whipping, intro-
duced, with very salutary results, into India by
Sir Henry Maine's Act. I seem to hear a cry
protesting against such an infringement of human
dignity. Human dignity ! The dignity of the
souteneur convicted of maiming the unhappy
girl who would no longer prostitute herself to
maintain him in idleness and drunkenness ! Of
the burglar guilty of braining the defenceless old
man whose property he had stolen ! Of the band
of ruffians proved to have set upon a solitary
police-constable and to have beaten him well-nigh
to death ! Talk about the dignity of these male-
factors simply nauseates me. " Public opinion
in this country will not suffer the reimposition
of corporal punishment," I am told. I can only
reply, " So much the worse for this country/ '
* Life and Speeches of Sir Henry Maine, p. 122.
Sick Sentimentalism 245
and call to mind Chamfort's question : " Combien
de sots faut-il pour faire un public ? " It is all
a product of what Carlyle has well called " the
sick sentimentalism which we suck in with our
whole nourishment, and get ingrained into the
very blood of us in these miserable ages ; " a
sentimentalism which is one part of the gigantic
legacy of evil left to the world by Rousseau.
If I may again cite one whom I must needs regard
as among the most considerable of our recent
ethical teachers, I would ask the reader to ponder
those grave words of Dr. Martineau : " The
benevolent aversion to the spectacle of suffering
is not worthy to assume an absolute ascendency
in any spiritual nature. Wherever it completely
dominates within us, we are enfeebled for our
trusts : the nerve of authority is relaxed : stern
responsibilities are declined : and in education, in
government, in the whole administration of life,
peace and good-will are purchased at the price of
indulgence." * In the instance before us, indeed,
it is not peace and good will that are purchased
but immunity for —
the beast that takes
His licence in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes.
* A Study of Religion, Vol. II., p. 45.
246 The Criminal Question
V
There are two more points which I ought to
touch upon before I end this Chapter. One of
the worst blots upon the existing administration
of the criminal law is the great inequality of
sentences. The true principle is laid down in
Kant's well-known dictum, " that every punish-
ment must be rigidly just, because justice is part of
the idea of punishment." But with us punishment
seldom even approximates to rigid justice, and
is frequently flagrantly unjust. There is no
uniform penal standard ; there is not even any
attempt at such a standard. It is often, as the
phrase goes, " a toss up " whether a criminal is
condemned to six months' imprisonment or to six
years' penal servitude for the offence of which
he is convicted. One reads occasionally of sen-
tences which are nothing short of barbarous. I
remember one such which completely astonished
me. It was the case of an ex-Army surgeon,
who was condemned at Quarter Sessions to five
years' penal servitude for obtaining a sovereign
by false pretences — his first offence — the Chair-
man, a noble duke, justifying this irrational
severity by the irrational explanation that he
A Ghastly Mockery 247
was " determined to make an example." On
the other hand, the writer in the Times on
" Prison Life and Administration," whom I
have several times quoted in the course of this
Chapter, tells us : —
I was prosecuting a man for stealing a short time ago.
It was a petty theft, but the record of the thief showed
him to have been continually thieving for many years
past. The magistrate, a London stipendiary, after ably
dealing with the evidence, sentenced him to three months,
with the careless remark that next time he was caught he
would be sent to the Sessions. Doubtless the sentence
was correct in law ; but the ghastly mockery of so dealing
with a creature who, as I discovered afterwards, was
steeped in criminality and had no more business to be
allowed loose than a mad dog or a homicidal lunatic ! *
* Such ghastly mockeries are very common. One is supplied by a
case reported in a newspaper which lies before me as I write. A
man was convicted at the London Sessions of obtaining money from a
number of chauffeurs to whom he falsely pretended that he would
obtain situations for them in South Africa. A detective officer gave
the following account of the prisoner's career :
" He had been four times convicted, having undergone fifteen
months' imprisonment for forgery. He had also been dealt with
for representing himself as a police officer, and for theft at Cape-
town. In July, 1909, he represented himself as a man of means
and made the acquaintance of a respectable servant girl and
married her. He went to South Africa as a servant to a lady, who
paid his fare home on becoming dissatisfied with his services. By
representing that he had returned from South Africa with a quantity
of valuable diamonds he attempted to obtain the lease of a house at
Ealing rented at ^65, and furniture worth ^131. Some years ago he
was in the Royal Navy, but deserted."
What does the reader suppose was the sentence passed upon this
incorrigible rogue ? Twenty-three months' hard labour ! In less than
two years he will be set free to begin again his life of crime.
248 The Criminal Question
VI
Those last words bring me to my second point.
There exists in this country a criminal class —
burglars, forgers, coiners and the like — who have
taken up burglary, forgery, coining, and other
crimes as their regular means of livelihood.
No one of these thinks of abandoning the career
thus chosen by him, with its excitement and
adventures and its big rewards to the success-
ful, for the trivial round, the common task of
the labourer or petty huckster's existence. The
lives of these professional offenders — so we
may call them — are a perpetual warfare against
society. They find their way, from time to
time, to jail where they are well fed and well
doctored, and at the expiration of their sentence
they go forth, physically rehabilitated, to continue
their campaign against the honest people who pay
immense sums to the police for watching, and, if
possible, recapturing them. I call this a colossal
scandal upon our civilization. It has been said,
and truly, "Half the people in prison ought never
to have been sent there,* and the other half ought
* In the year 1908, of the 250,000 inmates of our jails, about 95,000
were sent there for inability to pay a small fine, on its imposition : in
The Psycopath 249
never to be released." If anything is beyond
controversy it is that common sense — to say
nothing of elementary justice — demands the per-
petual seclusion of these degenerates, hardened
offenders, irreclaimable irreconcilables — call them
what you will. As I have written elsewhere : —
" A third conviction at the Assizes or at Quarter
Sessions should stamp a man as an habitual criminal, who,
for the rest of his life, should forfeit his personal liberty,
and should be reduced to a state of industrial serfdom.
Nor would there be any real hardship in this. On the
contrary, it would be a positive gain to such offenders.
If they reform at all, they reform while under penal
restraint. When left to themselves they, almost in-
variably, fall away." *
VII
One word more. The whole question of
criminality depends upon the will. The psycopath
and the voluntary offender belong to different
classes. I am far from denying that there are
among malefactors some — perhaps many — who
are worthy objects of pity. They are not all
other words, for their poverty. I understand that it is proposed to
remedy this monstrous wrong by legislation which will give to all
persons fined a fair opportunity of finding the money before they are
imprisoned in default of payment.
* First Principles in Politics, p. 308.
250 The Criminal Question
clever and designing rogues or reckless and violent
ruffians. No ; there are those who, in Swift's
phrase, " through weakness stepped aside " —
average people conquered by bad conditions,
crushed out in the struggle for existence, in that
free and unregulated competition which the Ortho-
dox Political Economy proclaims as the law of
human life, whereas it is, in truth, the law of hell.
Again, there are those who are innately abnormal,
in whom the moral sense is inchoate, in whom the
will is well-nigh powerless. All possible means —
it is unnecessary that I should here discuss details
— should be adopted to keep these unfortunate
people out of jail, where by the contamination of
their surroundings, what is good in them will be
utterly blighted, and what is evil rankly developed.
Again, there is the case of juvenile criminals, which
happily has of late years received so much atten-
tion. It seems at last to be recognised that to
send to jail a boy or girl convicted of some trivial
offence — the result, very often, of thoughtlessness
rather than of malice prepense — is in itself a crime
against humanity. It is not easy to overrate the
good done by the Borstal Association,* the last
# It may not be amiss to give here an extract from The Preven-
tion of Crimes Act, 1908. Section 1 provides as follows:
"(1) Where a person is convicted on indictment of an offence for
Juvenile Offenders 251
Report of which lies before me. It appears that
in the year ending March 31, 1910, two hundred
and thirty-six boys and five girls were received
by the Association on their release from Borstal
institutions. Of these one hundred and ninety-
one were provided with clothes and, in many
cases, with tools, were placed at work, and had
their wages supplemented, to begin with, when
necessary ; twenty-eight were provided with
clothes, and arrangements were made with
former employers and relations for their em-
ployment. Six could not be helped ; eleven
refused help. Five girls were placed in homes.
Of the two hundred and forty-one, one hundred
and sixty-eight were known to be doing well
which he is liable to be sentenced to penal servitude or imprisonment
and it appears to the Court (i) that the person is not less than 16 nor
more than 21 years of age; and (2) that by reason of his criminal
habits or tendencies, or association with persons of bad character, it
is expedient that he should be subject to detention for such term and
under such instruction and discipline as appears most conducive to
his reformation and the repression of crime, it shall be lawful for the
Court, instead of passing a sentence of penal servitude or imprison-
ment, to pass a sentence of detention under penal discipline in a
Borstal institution for a term of not less than one year nor more than
three years, provided that before passing such a sentence the Court
shall consider any report or representations which may be made to it
by or on behalf of the Prison Commissioners as to the suitability of
the case for treatment in a Borstal institution, and shall be satisfied
that the character, state of health, and mental condition of the offender,
and the other circumstances of the case, are such that the offender is
likely to profit by such instruction and discipline as aforesaid.
252 The Criminal Question
in May, 1910, and sixteen were believed to be
doing well. Seven were lost sight of, twenty were
unsatisfactory, and thirty had been reconvicted.
The net result would seem to be that some two
hundred young people were rescued from the
contamination of prison life and sent to make
their way honestly in the world. It is much and,
as we may reasonably hope, it is the presage and
the promise of widely increased endeavour upon
the same lines. As we read this Report of the
Borstal Association we may well thank God and
take courage.
INDEX
Accidents — or crimes ? 201
Agar Ellis v. Lascelles cases, the, 94
Agreeable feeling, not the source of ethical obligation, 6
Alien Immigration question, the, 193
Altruistic instinct and egoistic instinct, a phrase of physical
moralists, 14
a barbarous jargon, 210
Antiseptic, The, quoted, 166
Apologia pro hoc libro, 1-23
Aquinas, St. Thomas, on conscience, 9
on the natural law, 13
his method in ethics, 19
on human law, 22
on the right of property, 75
on property in land, jj
on the conditions of lawful possession of
riches, 78
his definition of avarice, 210
on punishment, 233
Aristotle, his definition of man, 9, 17
on justice, 16
on will, 32
on the end of the State, 74
on foreshadowings of man's life in the lower animals, 76
on the deterrent effect of punishment, 240
Arnold, Matthew, on the " English " doctrine of right, 96
on the origin of rights, 96
on Ireland and England, 136
Ashley, Professor, on Government and monopolies, 86
Astor family, the, how it has rolled up millions, 90
Atomism, political, what it is, 37
Augustine, St., on freewill, 1 1
on punishment, 238
Austin, his metaphysical attainments, 8
Babu, the, true account of, 153-159
Balfour, Mr., on party, 49
254 Index
Balzac, on the Revolution and the family, 107
on the sentimental view of crime, 238
Bastiat, on competition, 206
Bentham, on the principle of utility, 3
Bentinck, Lord George, and the Black Famine, 126
Bentinck, Lord William, the founder of what is called " higher educa-
tion " in India, 162
Biblical teaching, its practical effect, 109
Birrell, Mr., on Parliament and the Irish Land Question, 113
Black Famine, the, policy of the British Government during, 125-128
Bluntschli, on the State, 22
Bonum honestum and bonum delcctabile, 8
Booth, Mr. Charles, on the cause of the low wage of unorganized
labour, 199
Borstal Association, the, 250-252
Brentano, on the origin of Trade Unions, 59
Brieux, his La Petite Amie, quoted, 191
Bright, Mr. John, on English concessions to Ireland, 123
his objection to Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule
Bill, 142
Burke, on the decision of a majority, 30
on certain possessors of property, 44
on the Law of Nature, 103
Butcher, Mr., on Home Rule, 116, 143
Butler, his method in ethics, 19
Byles, Sir John, on the sort of abundance which profits a nation, 46
Capital, rightfully earned and wrongfully earned, 66-67, 79
Capitalists, combination of, 47
two classes of, 65-66
Carlyle, on making and unmaking laws, 23
on human equality, 27
his account of Mr. Gladstone, 49
on a fair day's wage, 86
on the pay of starving workers, 209
on sick sentimentalism, 245
Carnegie, Mr., on death duties, 88
Caro, on the new morality, 3
Casuistry, the office of, 21
Categorical Imperative of Duty, the, 10
Chamberlain, Mr., on the misery of the poor, 199
Chamfort, a suggestive question of, 245
Channing, Dr., on the condition of the English "lower classes," 53
Index 255
Chaplain, the Prison : his influence, 229
Cheapness, the question of, 184-223
vaunted as the glory of the age, 186
purchased at the cost of —
(1) the chastity of young girls, 187-192
(2) the degradation of family life and the physical
degeneration of the race, 192-200
(3) loss of life and corporal mutilation, 200-201
(4) the production of inferior goods, 202-203
frantic race for, justified by the old Orthodox Political
Economy, 204-209
is obtained by robbing the poor and needy, 214
the community accountable for such robbery, 222
Children of the poor, the, in what conditions they grow up, and the
consequence, 199
Chiozza Money, Mr., on the wealth and income of the country, 52
Christiani, Count, his employment of the punishment of flogging, 241
Cicero, on the Law of Nature, 103-104
Classes, the "lower," in England, condition of, 53
Commons, the House of, what it really is, 49, 149
Commons, Mr., on freedom of contract and unskilled and unorganised
labour, 216
Competition, "free": Adam Smith on, 57
its working in England in the nineteenth century,
58
and combination, 60
Conscience, Aquinas on, 9
history of the word, 14
Conservatives, so-called, the authors, in large measure, of some of the
worst so-called "reforms," 40
Contract, freedom of, parity of condition an essential of, 56, 57
Mr. Commons on, 216
Courtney, Mr. W. L. : on the criterion of true and false ethical schemes,
212
on a function of ethics, 213
Crime, new theory of, 225, 231-232
new conception of, 225
old conception of, 232
punishment, its other half, 238
gives rise to a vinculum juris, 238
Criminal Question, the, 224-252
Curzon, Lord, of Kedleston, on the Anglicising process in India, 160
Darwin, on " the imperious word ' ought, 1 " 7
256
Index
Death, the punishment of, reformatory, 240
Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen, the, Professor
Von Sybel on, 33
what merit it possesses, 101
Democracy, true and false, 27, 33, 38
Devas, Mr. C. S., on the benefits of Trade Unions, 59
Dunraven, Lord, Report drafted by, for the House of Lords' Committee
on sweating, quoted, 193-195, 202-203
EDUCATION, English in India, claims made on behalf, 160
what it really is, 162-168 173
Elections, Parliamentary, how decided, 30
Emigration, the Irish after the Black Famine, 129
Engel. on the demand of Socialism, 46
Ethics, the new, 3-7
rational, 9-21, 72-83, 97-106, 210-215
Evans Gordon, Major, on Alien Immigration, 193
Family, the, is the true unit of Society, 106
destroyed by Jacobinism, 107
See Parental Right, the Question of.
Fenianism, its origin, 131
Filon, M., on the Anglicised Hindu, 163
Fines, imprisonment in default of payment of, 248
Flogging, the punishment of, 241-245
Fraternity, Revolutionary, 217
Freewill, in Utilitarian ethics, 7
St. Augustine on, 1 1
the Scholastic account of, 1 1
Kant on, 11- 12
Gladstone, Mr., Carlyle's account of, 49
on the conduct of England towards Ireland, 121
his Irish Land Acts, 123
and Home Rule, 140
Gordon, General, a mournful vaticination of, 176
Grattan, on the transfer of power in the State, 41
on English government of Ireland, 121
Green, Mrs., on the commercial invasion of Ireland, 1 19-120
Green, T. H., on the practical result of Rousseau's theory of Govern-
ment, 35
on the expression of " a general will," 36
on the Law of Nature, 101
on family and household rights, 105
on the punishment of death, 240
Index 257
Habitual criminals, 247-249
Hegel, his definition of the State, 21
on punishment, 238
Heraclitus, on the life of human laws, 22
Hobbes, his doctrine on right and wrong, 3
Hooker, on Law Rational, 12
on the Law of Nature, 103
Holland, Mr., on cheap furniture, 202
Home Rule Party, the. See Nationalists.
Howard, John, " his circumnavigation of charity," 18
Hubner, the Baron von., his A travers V Empire Britanhique, quoted,
179
Idealist, the impatient, 193
Income tax, the English : manifestly and flagrantly unjust, 88
India, and Parliamentary Government, 148
population of, how composed, 152
"for the Indians," 151-153
unrest in, 154-185
persistent attempt to Anglicise, 160-172
Indian Question, the, 148-185
Ingram, Dr., on the social destination of property, 83
Interdependence, must be substituted for independence, 85
Ins and Outs, the game of 49. See Party Game.
Ireland, its ghastly history, 119.
Irish Question, the, 113-147
Jacobinism, its ultimate author, 107
hostile to the family, ibid.
Jerome, St., on the rich, 78
Jevons, Professor, on the right price of work, 208-214
on a fair rate of wages, 214
Jurisconsults, the Roman, the view of the Law of Nature, 102
Jus gentium, the, 102
Jus uaturale, the, 102
Justice, definition of, 16
disappearance of the idea of, 225
Juvenile offenders, 250
Kant, on free will, 11, 12
his test of the ethical worth of conduct, 19
his method in ethics, 19
on the development of the conception of Right, 20
S
2 5 8
Index
Kant, on casuistry, 21
on man's one innate Right, 75
on property in land, 77
on the Law of Nature, 103
his account of human law, 104
on parental right, 105
on the Practical Reason and punishment, 237
on the justification of punishment, 239
on the measure of punishment, 246
Karma, 221
Labour Party, the, rise and growing strength of, 42
Ladd, Professor on the present condition of the struggle for existence,
209
Land League, the, why it succeeded, 124
Lasson, on the inner ground of the existence of the State, 81
Law, the moral: What it is, 9-13, 102-104, 211-212, 213
Law of Nature, the. See Nature, the Law of.
Law, Mr. John, his Glimpses of Hidden India, quoted, 161, 164, 167,
177
Lazarus, now dominates the public order, 40
a natural inquiry of, 70
Lee Warner, Sir William, on the process of education in India, 169
Leibnitz, on evil doers, 237
Lewis, Sir George, on the means by which many large fortunes have
been amassed, 79
Lex ialionis, the, 242
Lloyd George, Mr., his famous Budget, 49
a favourite argument of, 50
what his financial policy means, 51
and the Irish Question, 113
Locrians, the ancient, their check on unnecessary legislation, 1
Lowell, Mr., on Mr. Gladstone's greatness, 140
Macaulay, Lord, on the end of Government, 73
Macdonald, Mr. J. R., certain statements of regarding India, 150
Maindron, M., on the Babu, 158
on a certain mania of Western people, 162
on the British occupation of India, 181
on Catholic missionaries in India, 184
Maine, Sir Henry, his error concerning the Roman jurisconsults'
conception of the Law of Nature, 102
on Indian Municipalities, 170
his defence of the punishment of flogging, 243
Index 259
Majorities, the decision of, Burke on, 30
Mallock, Mr., on Mr. Lloyd George's favourite argument, 50
Manners, Lord John, and the Black Famine, 126
Marshall, Professor, reprobates "the cruelty of irresponsible com-
petition," 214
Martineau, Dr., on conscience and guilt, 233, 236
on aversion to the spectacle of suffering, 245
Mathews, Mr. Byron C, his Our Irrational Distribution of Wealth
quoted, 62-69
Meade s Minors, the case of, 94
Menger, Professor, on the function of Government in respect of
Socialistic literature, 84
Metaphysics, What they are, 97
Mill, John Stuart, his ethical teaching, 3
on false democracy, 38
on certain capitalists, 42
on the danger of abuse of power by the ruling
majority of poor, 7 1
on public utilities, 87
on the true functions of the State with regard to
education, no
on Irish disaffection, 138
on the ostracism from the legislature of the United
States of the first minds of that country, 145
on putting India under Parliamentary Govern-
ment, 148
on combination among workers, 215
Milton, on the end of education, 168
on punishment, 225
Minto, Lord, his declaration on moral training, 175
Mirabeau, his definition of representative Government, 37
Missionaries in India, Protestant, agitated in favour of English "edu-
cation" in that country, 161
good service done in facilitating
study of Indian vernacular
language, 184
Catholic, their intimate acquaintance with
Indian life and modes of thought, 184
Mohammedans, Indian, number nearly sixty millions and are on the
whole a homogeneous community, 152
likely to seize power in India should the
English surrender it, 179
hostility of Babu agitators to, 182
260 Index
Mohammedans, Indian, danger of alienating, 183
Monopolies, 86
Montaigne, on the laws of conscience, 16
Morley, Lord, of Blackburn, his definition of the People, 31
influence of his works on young Indians,
164
his Indian Speeches quoted, 173, 179
Moslem League of All India, the, 155
Mutiny, the Indian, one cause of, 172
should not be forgotten, 181
Nation, a, is an ethical entity, 221
Nationalists, their demand, 116-119
their advantage over English parties, 139
their prospects, 139-142
Nature, the Law of, true meaning of the phrase, 101-104
Naturrecht, office of, 72
Newman, Francis, a " grand and noble moral theorem " of, 206
Newman, Cardinal, on the alienation of Ireland from England, 133-
135
on benevolent persons of narrow views, 170
on a warfare against conscience, 235
New York, the City of, Condition of two-thirds of the inhabitants
of, 54-55
unearned increment in, 90
Nizam, the, on sedition, 183
O'DoNNELL, Mr. F. H., his history of the Irish Parliamentary Party
quoted, 124-131
O'Hagan, Lord, on the authority of the father, 94
" Ought," the word, Darwin on, 7
the kind of necessity imposed by, 10
Ownership, fiduciary, not absolute, 80
Parental Right, the Question of, 93-112
Party, Mr. Balfour's account of, 49
another account of, ibid.
Party game, the, 38, 39, 49, 149, 176, 199, 221
Parnell, Mr., on the Nationalist demand, 117
Parsis, the, value of their judgment of Indian affairs, 161
their view of English education, 164, 173
P atria Potestas, the, whence it arises, 105
Kant on, 105
duty accompanying, 105
Index 261
People, the, prevalent conception of, 26, 27, 31
Will of, what it virtually means, 28, 29, 32, 35, 39
Lord Morley of Blackburn's definition of, 31
true conception of, 36
Personality, the source of rights, 98
Plato, his description of a demagogue, 34
on punitive justice, 235-236
Political Economy, the Orthodox, rise of, 56
its fundamental principle, 205, 206
its practical working, 206-212
Polygamy in a Mormon and in a Moslem, 20
Popular Government, the Question of, 25-47
Press, the vernacular in India, 175-176
Predatory financiers, 91
Prevention of Crimes Act, 1908, The, quotation from, 250
Prisons, English, how administered, 227
absurd theory concerning, 228
not repairing shops for humanity, 228-231
effect of, on those sent there, 229
manifold degradations of, 229
inmates of, how classified, 248
Production, not the criterion of national prosperity, 46
Progress, human, meaning of, 16
Property, the right to, belongs to the second sphere of natural rights,
75,98
whence derived, 98
Prosperity of a country, the true test of, 80
Proudhon, his condemnation of property, 77
Psycopath, the, 249
Punishment, new theory of, 225-232
old theory of, 232-239
OUARTER-Acre clause, the 126-128, 131
REDMOND, Mr. John, on English ignorance concerning Ireland, 114
his statement of the Nationalist demand, 1 17-1 19
Reformation of character, new mode of undertaking, 227
what it really means, 228
Reformatory Schools Act, 1866, The, provides for religious education
of youthful offenders, 95
Rees, Sir John, on the Bengali Babus, 154, 156-158
on local self-government in India, 171
on the reward of agitation in India, 182
262 Index
Representative Government, what it should be, 37
Retribution, the great organic instinct of, 233
Revolution, the French, a great service rendered by, 74
its essential principle, 82
and Rousseau, 106, 217
Right and Wrong, the most important words in human history, 16
development of the idea of, 16-18
Right, a, a metaphysical entity, 97-98, 100
personality, the source of a, 98
of property, the, 99
of freedom, ibid.
to political liberty, ibid.
Rollin, Monsieur Ledru, on the goal of the democratic movement, 70
Rousseau, his noble savage, 16
his foul Utopia, 74
the ultimate author of Jacobinism, 107
his disposal of his children, 107
Rowntree, Mr. Seebohm, his book on Poverty quoted, 197
Ruskin, on an idea which has gradually entered poor men's minds, 69
Russell, Lord John, and the Black Famine, 126
Schopenhauer, on the reformation of criminals condemned to
death, 241
School Boards, what led to their foundation, 1 1 1
Seamstresses, what they are paid, 190
Seneca, on Utilitarian morality, 8
Senior, on the ultimate fact of political economy, 205
Sentimentalism, sick, 245
Shadworth Hodgson, on ethics, 212
Shopgirls, their inadequate salaries how supplemented, 191
Sidgwick, Professor, on combination among poor workers, 216
Smith, Adam, his doctrine of laissez-faire, 56
controversy concerning his teaching, ibid.
his system of " natural liberty," 57
Smith, Mr. Goldwin, on the legislative Union of Ireland with England,
123
Smith, Mr. F. E., on the Parliamentary expression of the Will of the
People, 39
Socialism, its foundation and essential law, 41
what it offers the masses, 42
a noble Duke on, 44
truth in, 44-45
the demand of, 46
Index 263
Socialism, its merits and demerits, 83
Social Question, the, 48-92
Sophists, the, their standard of good, 8
Plato on, 34
Southwark, the Anglican Bishop of, on unorganised and unprotected
labour, 85
Speculation, dishonest, should be repressed by the State, 91
Spencer, Herbert, his ethical teaching, 4, 5-7
on freewill, 7
on the use of varied iteration, 97
his influence on Hindu students, 164-165
his criterion of good and bad conduct, 165
an ignorant assertion of, 211
State, the, what it is, 21
is vitally interested in economic relations, 84
should encourage the systematic organisation of industrial
society, 85
should interfere in industrial contracts for the protection of
those who are unable to protect themselves, 85
should control monopolies, 86
should own public utilities, 87
should check predatory financiers by stringent legislation,
90
and education, 109-112
its proper attitude to religions in this age, 112
Sterling, Dr. Hutchinson, his Lectures on the Philosophy of Law,
referred to, 8
Sterling, Professor, on the source of the law of Supply and Demand,
207
Suarez, his method in ethics, 19
on the necessity and independence of the moral law, 211
" Sweating," what it is, 193
Sybel, Professor von, on The Declaration of the Rights of the Man
and the Citizen, 33
Switzerland, universal suffrage in, 141
Syme, Mr. David, on the thousand shapes of fraud, 203
Taine : on the idee fixe of the age, 27
Taxation, two great fundamental principles of, 88
Trade Unions, origin of, 59
benefits of, ibid.
Trendelenburg, on the patria potestas, 105
Trusts, what they are, 60
264 Index
Trusts, what they have achieved in the United States, 62-64
general feeling against their encroachments, 63
Ulpian, his definition of justice, 16
Universal suffrage, egalitarian, 26-27, 37
rationally graduated, a very different thing, 38
Universality, an essential note of ethics, 19
Unearned increment, 89
Usury, true definition of, 91
Utility, the principle of : how explained by Bentham, 3
Utilitarian philosophy, the, its ethics, 2-7
and the criminal question, 224-232
Vernacular Press, the Indian, its true character, 175
would be utterly suppressed by a wise ruler, 1 76
Victoria, legislation in, concerning " a living wage," 220
Volders, " Citizen," on the essential law of Socialism, 41
Wage, a fair, how to be secured, 215
a "living," 219
Webb, Mr. and Mrs. on a frequent cause of " accidents," 201
on a national minimum wage, 219
Wellington, the Duke of, on Catholic Emancipation, 123
Whateley, Archbishop, on the difference between good and bad
preachers, 1
Whipping, the punishment of, vindicated, 243-245
" Will of the People," the, considerations on, 25-38
Will, what it is, 30
" Wobblers," decide Parliamentary elections by their changing caprice,
30
Wood, Sir Evelyn, on one cause of the Indian Mutiny, 172
York, city of, Poverty in, 197
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