NATIONAL AND SOCIAL 
 PROBLEMS
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 NATIONAL & SOCIAL 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1908
 
 COPYRIGHT 1908 
 Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 
 EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY 
 
 JOHN HENRY BRIDGES
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ... . . ix 
 
 PART I 
 NATIONAL PROBLEMS 
 
 1. BISMARCKISM : THE POLICY OF BLOOD AND IRON . 3 
 
 2. THE DUTY OF ENGLAND . . . 35 
 
 3. FRANCE AFTER WAR . . .71 
 
 4. LEON GAMBETTA . . .97 
 
 5. THE MAKING OF ITALY . 116 
 
 Cavour ... .130 
 
 Garibaldi . . . ..... 146 
 
 6. AFGHANISTAN ... . 163 
 
 7. THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE . . .184 
 
 8. EGYPT . . . . 195 
 
 9. THE BOKR WAR . . 225 
 
 10. THE STATE OF SIEGE . . .229 
 
 11. EMPIRE AND HUMANITY . . . 244
 
 viii NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 PART II 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ESSAY PAGE 
 
 1. THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY . .271 
 
 2. TRADES-UNIONISM ...... 307 
 
 3. INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION ... . . 333 
 
 4. SOCIAL REMEDIES . . . . . 37? 
 
 5. SOCIALIST UNIONISM . . . .421 
 
 6. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM . . . 440
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The essential principle of modern society is to bring all political 
 action under the control of moral duty. COMTE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THIS book being an appeal to international morality 
 and a plea for social regeneration develops the 
 principles laid down in two preceding works : the 
 first, on religious belief; the second, on philosophic 
 thought. 
 
 In The Creed of a Layman I traced the growth of 
 my own convictions from a theologic to a scientific 
 Faith. In The Philosophy of Common Sense I dealt 
 with the intellectual grounds on which a human 
 religion must be based. The natural complement 
 of these treatises is to show this system of philosophic 
 religion in action. Let us observe its practical effect 
 in moulding opinion on the great questions of Nations 
 and of Society: on patriotism, international justice, 
 government ; and again, on problems of Wealth, of 
 Labour, of Socialism. 
 
 Theology, absorbed in matters of Worship and 
 hopes of Heaven, has no call to meddle with earthly 
 politics, to offer counsel to secular rulers, or to
 
 x NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS , 
 
 propound any scheme for reorganising society. Its 
 kingdom is not of this world ; and it seldom intrudes 
 on worldly affairs without adding to the conflicts and 
 the perplexities it finds. A human religion, on the 
 other hand, is bound by its creed to preach a humane 
 standard in politics, to work for a new earth, if it 
 cannot promise a new heaven. It would belie its 
 name and betray its truth if its first duty were not 
 to show how the world of to-day might be made 
 better, how a happier future here might be secured 
 for our descendants ; how international strife should 
 be abated, and class wars merged in a moral and 
 religious Socialism. 
 
 Accordingly, at the close of a long and somewhat 
 active life, a life entirely detached from any party 
 interest or personal ambition, I collect and re-edit 
 a few of the essays which I wrote on various questions, 
 national or social. The lightning reviewer may perhaps 
 call them " ancient history " ; for they concern periods 
 before his own memory, of which he seldom reads 
 in books. But these topics are not " ancient history " 
 except so far as they deal with great events, whereof 
 the consequences have to be faced still, for they form 
 the burning problems of statesmanship in our own 
 generation. 
 
 I do not hesitate to reissue studies that are thirty, 
 even forty years old ; for the same forces are still 
 dominant and the same dilemmas are still unsolved. 
 Vital problems concerning France, Germany, and 
 Italy ; our own problems in Egypt, South Africa, 
 and India are as much alive to-day as they were in 
 the 'sixties, the 'seventies, or the 'eighties. The 
 errors, adventures, crimes of a previous generation 
 are more in evidence than ever, grow ever more 
 perplexing and dangerous. 
 
 The party politician who "has put his money
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 on the wrong horse," the journalist on the eve of 
 a division who has had to defend or to denounce a 
 minister, may well hesitate in after years to print 
 the speech he made or the article he wrote on the spur 
 of the moment. 
 
 It is a test of solid principles, whether on national 
 or social questions, that they are not evanescent with 
 every temporary crisis, but serve to explain the past as 
 well as to guide the future. The lapse of a generation 
 only justifies a view of events which had behind it 
 principles and convictions maintained throughout a 
 long life. I have found almost nothing to qualify in 
 the judgment which I passed at the time on the great 
 events and the dominant personalities of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 The busy politician and the publicist of the hour 
 is concerned with nothing but the question of the 
 day ; and he is impatient of any reminder of the 
 controversies which took place when he was at school. 
 But he cannot understand the present much less can 
 he settle its difficulties unless he knows their origin 
 and the inheritance of evils which they bear. The 
 occupation of Egypt, the series of wars and of 
 adventures this involved, remain still urgent questions. 
 This goes to the root of the problem of Empire and 
 its consequences. So do the long series of wars, 
 annexations, and troubles in South Africa. So, too, 
 the series of wars, annexations, imperial difficulties in 
 India. I am well aware of the vast improvement 
 effected in the material and administrative condition 
 of Egypt. I do justice to the recent efforts made to 
 heal the South African imbroglio. Nor am I blind to 
 the splendid services of many able and patriotic men, 
 at home and abroad, to grapple with the tremendous 
 tasks that India has imposed on its conquerors. 
 
 All this is plain ; and I am the last man to forget
 
 xii NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 it or to dispute it. But I see that the real dilemma 
 of the Egyptian problem began with the occupation 
 of 1882: or rather long before, when governments 
 became entangled in the financial and administrative 
 enormities of the Egyptian tyrants. I trace the chaos 
 and desolation of South Africa to similar follies and 
 offences of imperialist demagogues. The blunders, 
 extravagances, and crimes of our Afghan expeditions 
 have been often repeated since, and raise the whole 
 question of imperial expansion and imperial domina- 
 tion. Empire, alas ! is not "ancient history." It is 
 the insoluble ever-present problem of to-day in all our 
 national affairs. And, as Empire is the real subject of 
 the first Part of this book, so I am forced to illustrate 
 my argument by referring to past events in Egypt, 
 South Africa, and India just as I begin by tracing 
 the modern race after Empire to the sinister ambition 
 of a Napoleon, a Bismarck, a Beaconsfield. 
 
 It would be idle to consider the state of France 
 without tracing it to the evils of the second Empire, to 
 consider the state of modern Europe without tracing 
 it to the malign genius of Bismarck, to probe the evils 
 of our own imperial craze without ascribing them to 
 Disraeli and his pupils. A systematic analysis of 
 Empire is bound to start with Bismarck, and to trace 
 back our present difficulties to our dealings with South 
 Africa, India, and Egypt. 
 
 These pages were all in type when the very import- 
 ant work of Lord Cromer appeared. It is a record of 
 magnificent success in imperial administration and of 
 patient statesmanship. But it reveals to a thoughtful 
 reader the complex burdens which the occupation of 
 Egypt laid on our nation ; nor does it show that, in 
 twenty -five years of prolonged effort, these burdens 
 have been abated ; much less how they are to be 
 closed in the future.
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 The essays in this book all deal with the year 1882 
 before the occupation of Egypt began. Why was that 
 occupation a necessity to England, when France with- 
 drew from it, and even sacrificed her great statesman ? 
 Why was it necessary " to crush Arabi and his party " ? 
 Why was England to involve herself in international 
 dilemmas to enable speculators to secure their usurious 
 dividends ? The entire adventure of bloodshed and 
 oppression falls back always on " financial interests." 
 
 I believe that these papers will prove useful as histori- 
 cal documents. They are the record of revolutionary 
 and national upheavals in the light they appeared to a 
 contemporary observer, who was also an eye-witness 
 of tremendous events and in personal touch with some 
 of the chief actors therein. Many politicians and most 
 publicists are without any long memory of events and 
 persons. They know little of what was stirring the 
 world a generation or two ago, when they were at 
 school. History they know from books. But of that 
 intermediate period, a generation or two ago, they 
 know little either from literature, or from memory, or 
 from tradition. And yet the things which so keenly 
 moved their own fathers are the problems and dilemmas 
 which are left to them unsolved. 
 
 All this remains to them a blurred and often a dis- 
 torted sketch. I invite them now to look at a few 
 pictures painted at the time in rather warm tones and 
 in sharp contrasts of light and shade, it may be but 
 pictures which truly portrayed the alarms, the passions, 
 the hopes, the enthusiasms of the hour. 
 
 Nor do I think these papers, old as many of them are, 
 will be found by any serious reader to be stale reprints. 
 Many of them were pamphlets and manifestoes issued 
 by special societies, or circulated in quarters wholly 
 unknown to the public of to-day. The essays which 
 appeared in periodicals were published so long ago that
 
 xiv NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the present generation never saw them nor heard of 
 their existence. Practically the whole of this book is 
 new matter ; and I should be surprised if the reader 
 should find any part of it familiar to him. It may 
 astonish him to notice opinions of mine for which he 
 may not have been prepared to give me credit. 
 
 I am neither a party politician nor a doctrinaire 
 dogmatist. I profess myself bound by no man's dicta 
 nor by any party watchwords. Trained in the general 
 principles of Positivist sociology, I am ready to accept 
 the opportunist aims of practical statesmen, when not 
 in open conflict with moral principle. I have learned 
 much in politics from Carlyle, Francis Newman, 
 Bagehot, Michelet, Mazzini, Peel, John Bright, John 
 Morley, Gladstone ; and in economics from Mill, 
 Cobden, Spencer, Ruskin, Henry George, and William 
 Morris ; but I profess myself bound by no man's 
 school. Nor can I accept the current labels which it 
 is the fashion to assume as party badges or to bandy 
 about as party nicknames. 
 
 A Republican by conviction in the abstract, I am 
 the reverse of a hidebound Democrat. With a deep 
 loathing for mere Militarism, I could never join any 
 kind of Peace Society. Ardent patriot as I am, I re- 
 pudiate the tinsel Imperialism of blatant demagogues. 
 With a hatred of all forms of race oppression, I stand 
 clear of the Quixotic humanitarianism which clamours 
 to rush into every case of national wrong-doing. I can- 
 not call myself Radical, Whig, or Tory ; nor do I find 
 such essential differences in the acts of any one of the 
 recognised parties in the State. I have sometimes been 
 called a Conservative revolutionist ; but I must give 
 my own interpretation to any such term before I 
 could accept it. 
 
 Nor on the social problems could I accept any 
 one of the familiar labels. I am no Plutonomist, no
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 Individualist, no stickler for rights of Property and 
 personal freedom from State interference. If a Socialist 
 is one who looks forward to a reorganisation of society 
 in the interest of the masses what Comte calls " the 
 incorporation of the proletariat into the social organism " 
 one who fervently desires such an end and labours 
 to bring it about then I am so far a Socialist. If 
 socialism means the abolition of personal appropriation 
 of capital by force of law, then I look on such a dream 
 as the era of social chaos, and moral and material ruin. 
 If this seems to be a paradox, I hold it to be 
 reconciled by the combination of Comte's two correla- 
 tive laws. 
 
 (1) Wealth is the product of society ', and must be devoted 
 
 to the interest of the social whole. 
 
 (2) Moral evils can be cured only by moral^ and not by 
 
 material agencies. 
 
 This book, then, must be taken as a whole, and as a 
 continuation of my previous works on religion and on 
 philosophy. It is the mature and systematic belief of 
 one who has taken the keenest interest in the political 
 and social problems of the last fifty years, from no 
 party or sectarian point of view, but with profound 
 conviction in a general philosophy of society under the 
 inspiration of a human religion. The key of all 
 national and social problems lies in a human, moral, and 
 scientific Creed. Their solution must justify the truth 
 of that philosophy and the regenerating power of that 
 faith.
 
 xvi NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 PART I 
 
 The book, as the title indicates, is divided into two 
 sections, distinct although in mutual reaction. The 
 first Part deals with international problems, war, and 
 imperialism. It inevitably opens with a criticism of 
 German militarism and imperialism, begun more than 
 forty years ago by the powerful statesman who, in two 
 generations, has so deeply transformed the German 
 people and so potently recast the politics of Europe. 
 Modern imperialism and the militarising of nations 
 dates from the accession of Prince Bismarck to power 
 in 1 862 ; and, as he was the founder, so he is to East 
 and West, from Japan to the United States, the great 
 exemplar of imperial expansion and the nation in arms. 
 
 That is the key, the crux^ the type of all the inmost 
 problems of our age. All serious political studies must 
 start from the central movement of all German 
 militarism which the Kaiser and his statesmen regard 
 as a precious inheritance from the mighty founder of 
 their Empire. Prince Btilow said in the Prussian House 
 of Lords in a most memorable speech (February 26, 
 1908) "the successors of Prince Bismarck owe it to 
 the great Chancellor to continue the policy which they 
 had inherited from him." There is the centre of 
 European disturbance. 
 
 Thirty-eight years ago I warned our people and 
 ministers that the Bismarckian triumph implied an 
 entire recasting of international relations, and an era 
 of military imperialism. I even pointed out as an 
 inevitable consequence of this, the Pan-German 
 ambition to found a new sea-power and to dispute with 
 us our supremacy at sea. I do not pretend to discuss 
 questions of fleets and of armaments ; and I join in no
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 scare about our maritime defences or in promoting the 
 race to build rival Dreadnoughts. But I hold no one fit 
 to argue any political problem who fails to see that the 
 rulers and the people of Germany are bent on being 
 able to meet Great Britain at sea on equal terms not 
 immediately, but within a decade or two of years at 
 most. 
 
 This is an inevitable issue for German ascendency : 
 from the point of view of German patriotism, a 
 perfectly legitimate ambition. But the case of our 
 two nations is not parallel. To Germany, with a 
 small and most defensible coast but no colonies, a great 
 fleet is a costly ' luxury, which can be used only for 
 offence. To Britain, with its possessions scattered 
 over the globe, its food and prosperity depending on 
 transmarine trade, a mighty fleet even a predominant 
 fleet is a necessity of existence as a nation whilst we 
 hold a dispersed Empire. Our unwieldy Empire is 
 bound up with our naval supremacy. Ruin that and you 
 ruin their Empire is the deep conviction of German 
 patriotism : and a very natural ambition it is. 
 
 It is not enough to be assured that the British fleet 
 is equal to that of three powers, and overmatches that 
 of Germany three or four times over. To-day that is 
 true. But ten or twenty years hence things will 
 be changed indeed. The whole German fleet is, or 
 may be, concentrated in one of the most defensible 
 positions in Europe the mouth of the Elbe and the 
 south coast of the Baltic if not the mouths of the 
 Rhine and the Scheldt. One-half possibly two-thirds 
 of the British fleet must be elsewhere in East or 
 West when there is prospect of a great war. Who 
 can guarantee that, in the year 1920, a German fleet, 
 concentrated in the Baltic and the German Ocean, 
 and possibly with an ally, may not be able to overpower 
 that portion of the British fleet which can be safely 
 
 *
 
 xviii NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 withdrawn from guarding the Empire and protecting 
 our supplies of food ? 
 
 To work for that grand achievement in the future 
 is the inheritance of Bismarck to modern Germany 
 to modern Europe. Bismarckian imperialism, which 
 his successors acknowledge as a duty, implies the 
 attempt. Not to-day not to-morrow not perhaps 
 alone and certainly not whilst Germany is isolated 
 isolated as a result of Bismarckism and whilst Britain 
 is rich in alliances and ententes. But alliances come and 
 go like sunshine and storm-clouds. And our children 
 may live to see black tempests gathering up in East 
 and West, and the scattered Empire threatened within 
 and without from many sides at once. Then will be 
 the hour to challenge the naval supremacy of Britain. 
 
 For these reasons, the key of international problems 
 lies in the organisation, the power, the ambition of 
 German imperialism. And a serious study of Euro- 
 pean complications must start from that which I treat 
 in the first essay the Bismarckism which is what it 
 was more than forty years ago the menace and the 
 trouble of European peace and progress : a far greater 
 menace to the very existence of our country than it 
 was when Whig statesmen with tranquillity saw France 
 overwhelmed in 1870. 
 
 It is idle to repeat to us that neither Germany nor 
 any European Power has the least idea of attacking 
 our country now, or within the next five it 
 may be the next ten years. Nor could Germany or 
 any other power dream of success, if they did. But 
 politics are not a matter of to-day, nor of to-morrow 
 but of hereafter. When Kaiser Wilhelm started 
 his naval programme on January i, 1900, he said : 
 "/ shall reorganise my navy, so that it shall stand on the 
 same level as my army^ and with its help the German 
 Empire shall attain to a place which it has not yet,
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 reached" When those words were spoken the 
 German army was acknowledged to hold a supremacy 
 in Europe. When the Kaiser's very natural, wholly 
 patriotic, ambition is realised, and his navy has the 
 same level of predominance as his army, the very 
 existence of the British Empire will await his signal 
 to break it up, and the independence of Britain will 
 hang on the resources of our home defence. 
 
 Need I say that no man has a deeper admiration 
 for the intellectual eminence of the German people, 
 their great qualities, and their splendid achievements 
 in science, in art, in literature, in municipal govern- 
 ment I will even add in military organisation and 
 training. I know Germany from end to end. I 
 have lived in Germany for long spells at different 
 periods. I have watched her wonderful growth in 
 many visits, from 1851 to the present time. I have 
 German friends, and have the heartiest sympathy with 
 all that is noble, intellectual, sociable in the German 
 heart and the homes of the Fatherland. By educa- 
 tion, by sympathy, by personal tastes, I am a strong 
 pro-German still. But I cannot shut my eyes to the 
 inner meaning of the imperial autocracy. 
 
 With the efforts of the day to secure an entente 
 between our countries I can heartily join. By all 
 means let us encourage good feeling between the two 
 great types of the Teutonic race. Blood is thicker 
 than water ; and every Teuton feels the kinship in 
 spite of political differences or rivalries. But the 
 exuberant good-fellowship of journalists and savants 
 is a passing mood an artificial, shallow, and on one 
 side a purely official movement. It has nothing to do 
 with serious politics, with international policy, with 
 the future of Britain or of Europe. Let us all cheer 
 the genial and ubiquitous Kaiser. Let us embrace 
 the savant, the artist, the poet of the Fatherland. But
 
 xx NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 let us keep our powder dry and study the birth, the 
 growth, and the future of Bismarckism. 
 
 Do I by this encourage any imitation of militar- 
 ism ; am I justifying imperialism for ourselves ; am I 
 playing into the hands of the Union Jack enthusiasts ? 
 Humanity forbid ! My whole purpose is to point 
 out the dangers, the evils, the tremendous responsi- 
 bilities with which the Empire burdens our people 
 and our generation. This monstrous, abnormal, poly- 
 glot, incoherent Empire is our white man's burden 
 our statesmen's dilemma, our cancer, and our curse. 
 In the last essay of the first Part I explain what this 
 means ; and I show the grounds of political foresight, 
 of moral principle, of religious feeling, wherein this 
 conviction is based. 
 
 My memory, which goes back over the whole reign 
 of the late Queen, forces on my mind the momentous 
 change which during that period came over our country. 
 From the time of Waterloo, and for a generation after 
 it, England was foremost amongst the great Powers of 
 Europe. At the opening of the twentieth century 
 England was swallowed up in Empire. From being 
 the dominant nation in the State system of Europe, 
 it was translated into a nondescript World-Power. 
 From a solid impregnable island, it had become 
 an aggregate of unstable and disparate fragments. 
 England -plus -her -colonies had ceased as a homo- 
 geneous State. We are now an Asiatic, African, 
 American, Australasian hybrid. As an Englishman, 
 I view with shame the effacement of Old England. 
 As a patriot, I foresee the calamities in which its 
 inevitable dissolution may involve us. As a reformer, 
 I deplore the wasted opportunities, the protracted mis- 
 rule, the social chaos it inflicts. 
 
 I am no "little Englander." I am an English- 
 man of the English, with British, Welch, and Irish
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 ancestors. And, for one, I am intensely proud of 
 England with its thousand years of glorious traditions, 
 down from the incomparable Alfred the England 
 which they now have smothered in cosmopolitan 
 dependencies. I belong to a political school intensely 
 patriotic, for on the walls of Newton Hall we inscribed 
 as a sacred watchword the name of " Country." To 
 those who taunt us with "the craven fear of being 
 great," we retort with the finger of scorn at the low- 
 bred pride of being big. 
 
 It is not merely the sinking of heart I feel when I 
 find our ancient England besmirched into a mongrel 
 Empire, when I listen to the blasphemous swagger of 
 the imperialism of the canteen, when I think of all 
 the waste in wealth, force, good men, engulfed in 
 precarious adventures over the globe : it is not merely 
 a matter of degraded feeling and demoralised policy that 
 stirs me. It is the bitter conviction that this parvenu 
 Empire is doomed to early dissolution is incapable of 
 being made permanent or stable and in the meantime 
 is turning our political progress backwards, and may 
 possibly lead us down into cruel ruin. 
 
 Nothing can ever make a nation out of a congeries 
 of provinces, with every skin, creed, and type of man 
 to be found on earth. And nothing can ever make 
 the red patches tossed over the map of the planet a 
 coherent State or even a colossal Empire. It is not a 
 colossal Empire, but a patchwork bundle of conquests 
 not even strung together with a common civil and 
 military system, but detached and as far apart as North 
 Pole from the South Pole, as Central Africa from the 
 Pacific. 
 
 Common sense tells us that units so heterogeneous 
 and isolated can be held only by a nation which is 
 " mistress of the seas " i.e. by a people whose navy 
 can overpower two or three navies combined. For
 
 xxii NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the moment that is the case. We have hitherto had 
 but two possible rivals. We are now about to have 
 two, if not three, more. Is the British navy for all 
 time prepared to meet at once five or six nations at 
 sea ? I trow not. 
 
 It is true that at present there is no danger of any 
 such combination, nor of any combination that Britain 
 need fear. But who can predict the possible combina- 
 tions of the next twenty years even of ten years ? 
 Now, it is the inevitable effect of warlike supremacy 
 by any one power to provoke an irrepressible rivalry 
 to challenge it. Modern civilisation will not tolerate 
 the hegemony of any one Power. All the jealousies, 
 all the alarms, all the evils bred by the modern hege- 
 mony of the new Bismarckian Empire are being slowly 
 but inevitably nursed against the maritime hegemony 
 of Britain. It is childish to brag about overcoming 
 this rivalry by sheer force ; as if we could go on 
 launching fifty Dreadnoughts^ and could indefinitely 
 maintain a "three-power standard," when the day 
 comes that Germany and the United States, if not the 
 yellow races, and the Muscovite races, have each 
 developed a sea-power equal to our own to-day. 
 
 It is quite true and I have just argued this very 
 point that supremacy at sea is necessary to our actual 
 safety in our own shores at home, because with a 
 home army of but 100,000 regulars at most, we could 
 not sleep in peace within a few hours of the continental 
 millions were it not for our invincible fleet. But 
 that is no answer to our rivals. They say, " We have 
 each of us to protect our own countries, and you 
 might protect yours if you did not aim at being the 
 predominant world-power. And we will tolerate no 
 longer any predominant world-power." 
 
 The entire balance of power the whole European 
 State system has been entirely revolutionised during
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 the reign of the late Queen. It is a material, intellec- 
 tual, and moral change that has come over our kingdom. 
 The home interests of England, Scotland, and Ireland 
 have become secondary. Cosmopolitan adventures, 
 interests, ideals, have become primary. Napoleon III., 
 Bismarck, Disraeli, founded empires of which one 
 is extinct and the others are less than forty years old. 
 Of all empires on earth, or even recorded in history, 
 the British Empire, the youngest of all, is the most 
 disjointed, incoherent, and disparate ever devised by 
 man. All races, every skin, religion, manners, language, 
 climate, ideal, people it Negroes, Hottentots, Kaffirs, 
 Arabs, Malays, Chinese, Hindoos, Greeks, Italians, 
 Spaniards, Dutch, French with their own languages, 
 history, and law. The Court of Appeal administers 
 thirty -two different legal systems or codes. All 
 religions exist in it from Ultramontane Catholicism to 
 the worst Negro-Fetichism if not Devil-worship and 
 cannibalism, or human sacrifices. All languages are 
 spoken from the tongue of Shakespeare to the gibbering 
 of Bushmen. 
 
 Is citizenship possible in such a horde ? Is patriot- 
 ism conceivable ? Is settled government practicable ? 
 Can a crowd of scattered conquests be welded into a 
 permanent state ? Are these three hundred and fifty 
 millions our fellow-citizens ? Can a restless and 
 divided democracy look to hold them down together 
 for ever as mere alien tributaries ? This kingdom 
 has a history of one thousand years the conquered 
 dependencies hardly more than a century. On how 
 many years more can we venture to count ? now 
 that dominion has been substituted for citizenship now 
 that in place of a loyal union of free citizens we have 
 a string of huge provinces held to tribute by armies 
 shipped out and back in relays ? 
 
 And the ballads they bawl out in the canteen tell
 
 xxiv NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 us how " big " it is ! Is a man who weighs twenty-four 
 stones a better man in private life than one of twelve ? 
 Is Russia, which reaches in a straight line for some 
 5000 miles, a match for an island of 500 miles ? Is a 
 man whose income is five millions a year as happy as 
 one who lives on five thousand ? Of all the coarse 
 crazes of this age of " bounders," the pride in a " big " 
 Empire is the worst invention of our cheap-jack 
 literature. When Xerxes led his millions to Salamis, 
 when Philip II. blessed his Armada, when Napoleon 
 set forth to Moscow, their empires looked mighty 
 till they ended in ignominy and ruin. 
 
 It is an inheritance of evil omen a damnosa 
 hereditas incapable of being permanently held or yet 
 of being suddenly quitted rather a tremendous task to 
 be gradually, fearlessly, wisely faced and reduced in 
 time. To go on blindly increasing it, or maintaining 
 it unchanged and unreformed, is the road to national 
 ruin. Too long has Empire torn away our thoughts 
 from all the evils and sufferings we have at home, from 
 sympathy with all that is best and most progressive in 
 our European neighbours, from ideals of a civilisation 
 of peace and reform. It has plunged us into many a 
 miserable war, and burdened us with a load of cruel 
 and needless debt. Imperial pride is a sordid exchange 
 for national patriotism. The imperial ideal is the 
 vulgarising of our social life, the stifling of our national 
 development, and the distortion of our political energy. 
 Whilst we are pretending to Christianise the barbarous 
 East and the South, we are leaving moral and social 
 barbarism to breed at home. To add ever new 
 provinces to the red map of Empire is to pile fresh 
 burdens and dangers on these islands of our forefathers. 
 To find careers for a hundred thousand well-born 
 youths is to close our ears to the just demands of the 
 forty millions we neglect. .
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 PART II 
 
 Just as the tremendous responsibilities of our 
 amorphous Empire are the crux of our National 
 Problems, so the upheaval of the Industrial order is the 
 most urgent of our Social Problems. It is a question 
 wherein, for some forty years, I have had a keen 
 interest and have taken some slight part. For sixty 
 years at least the claims of Labour to have a larger 
 share in the control of the State and in the proceeds of 
 their toil have been continually shaking the world of 
 politics and also of economics. And now both worlds 
 are confronted with the far-reaching, indeterminate, 
 elusive social revolution known as Socialism. 
 
 With the deep and ever-growing uprising of all 
 civilised workmen and indeed of all men of clear 
 thought and generous feeling against the injustice 
 and the abominations rife in our industrial system, 
 I have been through life in complete sympathy. And 
 in the attacks upon our vicious economic world I find 
 little to dispute be these in the critical side of books 
 by Henry George, Karl Marx, the Fabians, or the 
 Social Democrats. I wholly and ardently agree with 
 them that this earth will not be a home worthy of 
 civilised man until there has been a root-and-branch 
 social revolution to reform the daily lot of the vast 
 working majority of our fellow-citizens. 
 
 But when we pass to their reconstructive schemes 
 I can see little but sophisms and passionate dogmatism 
 in the random crudities which pass as Socialism. These 
 vague Utopias swallow up each other ; and if applied 
 in practice would swallow up society and civilisation 
 together. 
 
 There are eight main grounds whereon the shifting
 
 xxvi NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 phantasmagoria called Socialism would be disastrous 
 and futile : 
 
 (1) Social regeneration could only be sound and lasting 
 
 if it took account of all the sides of man's social 
 life intellectual, moral, domestic, artistic, and 
 religious. 
 
 (2) A panacea of society which took account of 
 
 nothing but Labour could be nothing but a 
 sordid kind of materialism. 
 
 (3) Modern Industry could not be maintained much 
 
 less developed without rare individual genius 
 and no less rare personal energy. 
 
 (4) Such special genius and rare energy can only 
 
 be secured by personal freedom and the un- 
 trammelled initiative of gifted individuals. 
 
 (5) To suppose that industrial genius and personal 
 
 energy can be hired by the mass of the manual 
 labourers is an ignorant delusion. 
 
 (6) Democratic government is at best a poor make- 
 
 shift for ruling the State; to apply it to Industry 
 could end in nothing but material ruin. 
 
 (7) The personal control of capital is not only the 
 
 very condition indispensable to Literature, 
 Art, to all Improvement, physical, moral, and 
 aesthetic, but it is also the essential field of some 
 of man's noblest and most generous qualities. 
 
 (8) To subject industrial life as a whole to the demo- 
 
 cratic rule of the manual workers would be a 
 tyranny which would crush improvement, art, 
 thought, and freedom, and would speedily bring 
 this island first to collapse, then to starvation, and 
 ultimately to subjection to a foreign conqueror. 
 
 (i) In the essay on The Limits of Political Economy 
 I sought to expose the essential narrowness of the 
 orthodox Plutonomy in fashion in the 'fifties and the
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 'sixties by showing that the pretended science was 
 usually hypothetical reasoning from quite narrow data. 
 I believe the essay to be one of the earliest systematic 
 attempts to shake the mischievous fallacies of the 
 orthodox economists. The " dismal science " has now 
 lost its vogue j but I reissue my criticism of its hollow 
 dogmatism because most of the argument applies 
 mutatis mutandis to the current fallacies of Socialism. 
 The "orthodox" economists of a former generation 
 constructed a spurious code of industrial axioms on the 
 cynical assumption that all men acted on the instiga- 
 tion of their material interests. 
 
 The Socialism of to-day, however much its advocates 
 differ in method, starts with a similar false assumption, 
 viz. that all the men should be forced to live in the 
 ways their neighbours shall direct as most useful to 
 the convenience of the masses. This cognate fallacy 
 has no immoral basis, it is true. It even exaggerates an 
 eminently social desire. But, as it rests on the crude 
 doctrine of material democracy, and neglects all the 
 nobler sides of social life, it would result in paralysing 
 society and in the end bring about an industrial chaos. 
 
 In the first essay of Part II. I have analysed the 
 human motives and ideals of life which Plutonomy 
 neglected as useless and inoperative in social life. 
 Almost every word of that argument may be applied 
 to most of the current types of Socialism which have 
 nothing to say or to teach about all the nobler and purer 
 forms of human energy, which destine society to the 
 mechanical task of working up raw materials, and 
 satisfying the common bodily wants of mankind. 
 Loose generalities which some Socialists fling, as crumbs 
 from the laden tables of Labour, to Art, Philosophy, 
 Religion, moral and scientific Education to all that 
 makes up complex civilisation these empty phrases 
 count for nothing in their Utopias. A true and
 
 xxviii NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 sincere Socialism must reorganise Society from top to 
 bottom in all the manifold and subtle phases of man's 
 Social life, as ever was seen in the varied Past or as 
 ever is imagined in the Time to come. 
 
 (2) That miners, spinners, and masons should be 
 fascinated by such childish sophisms as that " all wealth 
 is produced by the manual workers" ; "that the entire 
 product of Labour should be handed over day by day 
 to the labourers " ; " that wealth is criminal in itself" 
 that such nonsense should be listened to eagerly by men 
 bowed down by the cruel conditions of modern toil, 
 is not so strange. But that men who pretend to speak 
 with culture of mind and authority to teach should 
 preach such wild stuff is a sign of the mental chaos of 
 our age in the break-up of all systematic convictions. 
 
 The whole of the second Part, and especially the 
 essays on Co-operation^ on Social Remedies^ and the 
 last, on Moral and Religious Socialism^ discuss these 
 fallacies. Manual Labour, left to itself, could pro- 
 duce nothing ; and, but for scientific leading and the 
 resources of Capital, would only waste its labour and 
 destroy good material. If the whole product of Labour 
 were paid out to the labourers there would be no 
 accumulation, no capital to start fresh work, and soon 
 no means of working at all. " Wealth " is no more a 
 crime than Labour ; for human society can only exist 
 by the co-operation of both. 
 
 (3) The crudest of the fallacies which mislead 
 unfortunate toilers for wage is the dream that great 
 industries could be managed by popular elections, 
 committees, and officials chosen by the votes of the 
 mass. A great factory, a railway, a bank, could no 
 more be run in such ways than Raphael's Transfigura- 
 tion could be produced by a gang of house- painters, 
 or Hamlet have been composed by the printers of The 
 Times. All industry rests on individual concentration,
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 personal genius, stores of accumulation, and then on 
 masterly rapidity in action. Napoleon's victories 
 "were won by half-an-hour." Industrial victories 
 even industrial success are likewise the prize of 
 rapidity, secrecy, inspiration, command of large reserved 
 capital and above all of freedom. Battles are not 
 won by councils of war much less by the shouts of 
 whole battalions of Tommy Atkins. 
 
 All this has been elaborately worked out in the 
 essays of Part II. on Co-operation and Social Remedies^ 
 and need not be discussed any further. I merely now 
 state my conviction that the Marxian scheme of 
 economic revolution, rigidly enforced in Europe, could 
 result in nothing but such desolation as fell on it when 
 the Roman Empire was broken up by the Northern 
 tribes. And, if enforced in our own country, would 
 end in a few months in general starvation, owing to 
 the stoppage of our foreign food-supplies, through 
 the destruction of credit, of mercantile skill, and 
 of efficient management of the material necessities of 
 life. 
 
 (4)-(8) The other inevitable results of real 
 Socialism are discussed in the second Part of this 
 book ; and in the essays on Social Remedies^ in par- 
 ticular, some evidence is given of the incalculable 
 services to society which large capitals continually 
 afford, but which could not be replaced by any 
 administrative or democratic machinery. If Demo- 
 cracy ever did get into its hands the collective Capital 
 of the community, it would soon prove itself to be the 
 most close-fisted, cruel, and grasping Capitalist of all. 
 
 This book does not undertake to expound in detail 
 the social reorganisation which it would substitute for 
 the existing economic tyranny. This is sketched in 
 the leading ideas to be found in the concluding essay 
 on Moral and Religious Socialism. It is, in fact, the
 
 xxx NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 subject of the whole of the volumes of which this 
 book is the continuation, as it is indeed the real 
 subject of almost everything I have written since I 
 accepted the social and religious scheme of regenera- 
 tion that the nineteenth century owed to Augustt 
 Comte. We also are Socialists but Socialists with a 
 difference that whilst working for an entire reorgan- 
 isation of industrial life, we will not cease to work for 
 the far more vital reorganisation of moral, intellectual, 
 religious life. Without this, the pretended reorgan- 
 isation of industrial life, by the violent confiscation of 
 personal capital (for " compensation " is an idle and 
 mendacious phrase ) this is a suicidal, and most im- 
 moral, delusion. 
 
 There will be found here no attempt to discuss, 
 what are so often mistaken for real Socialism, the 
 current schemes for the State acquisition of railways, 
 of mines, of ports and docks, of large tracts of land, 
 or of banks ; for the State control of all academies and 
 schools ; for the feeding of school pupils ; for old age 
 pensions ; for the support of the poor and helpless ; 
 for an Eight-hour Day or a Seven-hour Day ; for 
 a minimum wage ; for a revision of the Suffrage ; for 
 a reduction of armaments ; or for the reorganisation 
 of local government ; and generally of the whole 
 parliamentary and imperial system. 
 
 It is a mistake to call these schemes Socialism. 
 Many of them are now begun or advocated by 
 reformers of all schools. The present writer would 
 be heartily in favour of gradually introducing any or 
 all of them with due consideration of the practical 
 advantage of each scheme in its detailed form. Each 
 proposal has to be considered by practical statesmen 
 on its merits and on its proven efficiency. It would 
 be a mischievous dogmatism to resist them as mere 
 Socialism ; as it is a fallacy to regard them as real and
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 effective Socialism. The Socialism which was brought 
 over here from France and Germany, which was 
 propounded by Proudhon, Lassalle, and Marx, is a 
 very different thing. It is a form of Communism, 
 essentially based on the annihilation of personal 
 ownership of Capital in any form the annihilation 
 in the early future of the Family, and ultimately 
 of Civilisation because it applies a rigid and domi- 
 nant democracy to material life alone, blind to all life, 
 domestic, moral, intellectual, and religious. 
 
 To that we oppose a Socialism, economic, moral, 
 and religious, whereby the reorganisation of Society 
 as a whole will be secured by a new ethical and 
 religious education, entirely reforming the spirit in 
 which Capital, the product of society, shall be used, 
 enjoyed, and controlled for the good of Society alone.
 
 PART I 
 NATIONAL PROBLEMS
 
 I 
 
 BISMARCKISM : THE POLICY OF 
 BLOOD AND IRON 
 
 (November 15, 1870) 
 
 The following Essay was written during the great Franco- 
 German War in the middle of November 1870, 
 after the surrender of Metz and the armies of Napoleon 
 III. and of Bazaine. Trochu, with 400,000 men in 
 arms, was still holding out in Paris, and the Republican 
 Government was still at Tours with several armies in 
 the field. At that time English sympathy, at least in 
 the Army, in the Conservative press, and in the working 
 classes, was being turned in favour of the French defence. 
 The writer, who had been strongly opposed to Napoleon's 
 mad invasion of German territory, was full of indignation 
 at the mode in which the war was being carried on by 
 Bismarck. He had been on the Continent and through 
 Germany during August, September, and October. And 
 he foresaw the consequences to England and to Europe 
 of submitting to Prussia becoming the dominant power on 
 the Continent. The Essay must be read as the passionate 
 protest of one who was then labouring to rouse English 
 opinion to give some assistance to France. It is reprinted 
 without modification as it stood in the Fortnightly 
 Review, December 1870, vol. viii.^ then conducted by 
 Mr. John Morley. The writer reproduces it because 
 it is as true in essential principle as it was at the time,
 
 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 because the evils then evident, and the consequences then 
 foreseen, are again in some degree imminent to-day. The 
 writer never was a doctrinaire "pacificist" as it is 
 the fashion to call those who deprecate the huge war 
 preparations of our age. But he has ever been a 
 convinced opponent of Militarism. With all his admira- 
 tion for the genius and energy of the German people, he 
 still believes that the real cause of the unrest of Europe 
 is to be found in the system of ascendancy by armaments, 
 founded by Bismarck and continued by his successors 
 (1908}. 
 
 9 
 
 " It is desirable and necessary to improve the social and 
 political condition of Germany ; this, however, cannot be 
 brought about by resolutions and votes of majorities, or 
 speeches of individuals, but ' BY BLOOD AND IRON.' " 
 COUNT BISMARCK. 
 
 TREMENDOUS as is the drama which we have been 
 watching breathless in Europe, we have seen as yet 
 but its opening scenes. The crash of the most 
 gigantic battles known to history has deafened our 
 senses to the political movement. We have been 
 brought, as it were, in the flesh, close to these 
 onslaughts of two nations. We have almost heard 
 with our ears the cries of triumph and despair. We 
 have almost seen with our eyes the grappling of the 
 combatants. We hold our breath in the crisis, feeling 
 passionately, some with one, some with the other, 
 fighter as if we were watching gladiators in an arena. 
 It would be well to look at it more as politicians, 
 and less as spectators. This great struggle concerns 
 the welfare of Europe and of England ; it is our own 
 future and peace that are at stake. Let us consider 
 what may be the consequences to civilisation, and not 
 regard it merely as a grand study of national character 
 or some stupendous experiment in modern science.
 
 BISMARCKISM 5 
 
 It is, after all, not entirely a matter of sympathy with 
 this or that type of race. Nor does it turn altogether 
 on this or that quality or institution in one people or 
 the other. Our mere sympathies have their place ; 
 but it is high time to face the political issues fore- 
 shadowed. And whilst the crowd of the amphitheatre, 
 ever siding with force and success, turn down their 
 thumbs, and cry " Habet ! Habet ! " let us 'ask, What 
 may this contest be preparing for Europe ? 
 
 It is pitiful to hear the grounds on which the 
 issues at stake are so often decided. An anecdote 
 about a landwehrman, or the tone of a proclamation, 
 seems to some people sufficient to determine the right 
 and wrong in the greatest of modern struggles. 
 Frenchmen have given utterance to much unwarrant- 
 able language about the "sacredness of French soil," 
 " Paris the city of the world " j the peculiar and 
 special sanctity of a republic, and the enormity of 
 assaulting the Capital. Count Bismarck never said 
 a truer word than this, that the honour of France is 
 of precisely the same quality as the honour of other 
 nations. To besiege Paris is what it would be to 
 besiege Berlin, if it were fortified. To bombard Paris 
 is no greater outrage than it would be to bombard 
 London. The laws of war certainly do give the right 
 to shell a fortified city. And the annexation of two 
 provinces is not to be counted as a crime merely since 
 it is done at the expense of a republic. 
 
 Nor is the nonsense wanting on the other side. 
 The familiar picture of the German soldier, with the 
 inevitable three children at home, writing letters to 
 his wife between the pauses of each battle, and 
 studying his pocket copy of 'the Vedas on the 
 outposts, is striking ; but it is not decisive on a 
 question of boundaries. Pious ejaculations to extirpate 
 the immorality of France sound strangely from men
 
 6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 reeking from the gambling hells of Baden and 
 Homburg, and the stews of Hamburg, Berlin, and 
 Vienna. The fact that the educated classes are 
 serving in the German ranks is not incompatible 
 with the opinion that the nation is disordered with 
 military ambition. The German troops may be 
 learned in every modern and ancient tongue. Does 
 that lessen the danger of a vast military empire ? 
 The German armies may be the "nation in arms." 
 But have invaders in any age did Tilly or Attila him- 
 self strip a people more utterly to the bone than they 
 have stripped the east of France ? These fathers of 
 families and model husbands can burn down villages on 
 system, set fire to farmhouses with petroleum, massacre 
 civilians in cold blood by superior order, and use sub- 
 stantial citizens as buffers on their railway trains. 
 
 There is so much of the overgrown schoolboy 
 in the English world, that great political movements 
 are judged by the childish rules of the playground. 
 People need to be reminded that there is something 
 in politics more profound than the motto of a " fair 
 field and no favour." "They would fight, and they 
 must fight it out," says one. " The weaker is beaten, 
 and must pay the stakes," says another. " France 
 began it," says one. "Germany drove her to it," 
 says another. "The French are a nation of liars," 
 cries one. "The Germans are such brutes," replies 
 his neighbour. All this is the schoolboy view of 
 the war, just as thousands of people took the side 
 of slavery in the American civil war, because they 
 said the Yankees bragged and the Southerners were 
 descended from gentlemen. 
 
 Now what we want is a political view of this war. 
 A question like this is not a law-suit, nor is it a personal 
 quarrel. It concerns the future well-being of Europe. 
 Speculations into the real origin of the war are worse
 
 BISMARCKISM 7 
 
 than useless. They are like discussions on the origin 
 of evil. At the same time some short account of the 
 basis, as it were, on which the present argument 
 rests, may be almost indispensable. 
 
 It is quite plain that for generations, throughout 
 the political and literary classes of France, loud and 
 arrogant voices had been continually raised for the 
 frontier of the Rhine. There is no proof whatever 
 that these disgraceful appeals could ever have moved 
 the body of the French nation to an aggressive 
 war for its possession. But the aggrandisement of 
 Germany, and the formation of a vast military power 
 by her side, undoubtedly filled France with a fever of 
 jealousy and fear. The jealousy of German unity 
 was both insolent and foolish, and deeply disgraces 
 the French name. The fear of the German military 
 organisation, if hardly worthy of a great nation, was 
 not unnatural ; and if we look at the professional 
 cravings of the German chiefs, quite excusable. 
 There happened to France what would happen to 
 England if France by a war of aggrandisement had 
 seized Belgium and Holland, had doubled her naval 
 strength, possessed a chain of great arsenals along 
 the northern coasts, and had acquired a fleet of 
 ironclads in the Channel far superior to that of 
 England, with the avowed purpose of disputing her 
 maritime supremacy. There can be no doubt that 
 England would have seized the first opportunity of 
 bringing the struggle to an issue ; and every second 
 Englishman would have been saying, "Better to fight 
 it out at once." This is precisely what France felt 
 towards Germany. 
 
 But although the professional classes in both nations 
 were equally prepared for war, in both they were kept 
 in restraint by the good sense of the peaceable mass of 
 the people. And there is not the smallest reason to
 
 suppose that either the French or the German people 
 would deliberately have chosen a war of conquest. It 
 is this which makes the war peculiarly the crime of 
 Napoleon and his civil and military abettors. Large 
 classes of French society wantonly supported him, and 
 before the opinion of France could make itself heard, 
 she was hurled into war. The French people as a 
 whole had no voice or part in the matter. And all 
 the efforts of the prefets could not wring a show of 
 assent. It is utterly untrue that either they or the 
 citizens of Paris advocated war. The writer saw a 
 letter written by a very able observer from Paris (one 
 who is now at his place on the ramparts) during those 
 days when Pietri's hirelings were shouting through 
 the streets, " a Berlin ! " " Paris," wrote he, " est 
 morne et silencieux." And even the Government 
 never pretended to make, and never dreamed of 
 making, this a war for the Rhine frontier. A 
 victory, the shadow of a success, and a plausible 
 ground for peace, was all that they dreamt of. An 
 atrocious project in itself; one in which the French 
 people suffered itself to be involved, and one for which 
 the French people have paid a terrible price. 
 
 In this state of things the war began, and no one 
 desired more earnestly than the present writer that the 
 Germans might repel the iniquitous invasion, and 
 destroy the military power and prestige of the Empire. 
 No one rejoiced more than he did over the crushing 
 completeness with which this was done. The gain to 
 civilisation in the extinction of Napoleonism, and of 
 the wretched impostor in whom it has ended for ever, 
 in the disgrace which has covered the corrupt army he 
 had created, is almost a sufficient compensation to 
 France and to Europe for all the sufferings of this war. 
 It is therefore with no blind partiality for France that 
 this question is here discussed.
 
 BISMARCKISM 9 
 
 But the matter for us is this What does all this 
 portend to Europe ? It is of little use to weigh out 
 the relative measure of guilt in either Government, or 
 the degree in which their people participated in it. 
 The German leaders have passed from the task of 
 defence into a career of conquest. They have now 
 thrown off the mask, and no longer contend that they 
 are continuing the national defence. They no longer 
 even pretend that they are fighting for territory. 
 They are fighting now (November 15) solely for the 
 military point of honour the taking of Paris. As 
 the Times correspondent at Versailles told us, the King 
 would grant no armistice ; for every Prussian soldier 
 had but one fixed idea to enter Paris. That is to 
 say, the Germans are now fighting for military glory. 
 It is for this they are desolating France and distracting 
 Europe. 
 
 We have protested so fiercely against the military 
 ambition of France, that we have come to forget there 
 is such a thing as military ambition outside France at 
 all. But what is Prussia ? The Prussian monarchy 
 is the creation of war. Its history, its traditions, its 
 ideal are simply those of war. It is the sole European 
 kingdom which has been built up, province by 
 province, on the battlefield, cemented stone by stone 
 in blood. Its kings have been soldiers : sometimes 
 generals, sometimes, as now, drill-sergeants ; but ever 
 soldiers. The whole state organisation from top to 
 bottom is military. Its people are a drilled nation of 
 soldiers on furlough : its sovereign is simply com- 
 mander-in-chief ; its aristocracy are simply officers of 
 the staff; its capital is a camp. 
 
 Nowhere in Europe not even in Russia has the 
 military tradition and ideal been sustained in so un- 
 broken a chain. Prussia Proper has been the only 
 European State organised on a military basis as com-
 
 io NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 pletely as any State of antiquity. In the words of the 
 Edinburgh Review^ " No nation since the Roman has 
 ever devoted itself so wholly to the development of the 
 military side of the national life." And this is true. 
 Let it be distinctly understood that this is said of 
 Prussia only in its political, or rather its international 
 aspect. The writer is the last person to forget the 
 splendid intellectual, artistic, and moral achievements 
 of Germany ; the high culture, and noble qualities of 
 individual Germans ; their industry, energy, and devo- 
 tion to education. All that is not here in question. 
 What is meant is that in her international relations 
 Prussia is a nation resting on a military basis. Prussia 
 in a distorted way is the Rome of modern Europe a 
 brave and energetic race giving their whole national 
 force to war, and steadily conquering their neighbours 
 step by step. The notion of the Prussian army being 
 simply a militia of citizens fighting for self-defence is 
 an idle figment. Let one test suffice. Prussia, or 
 rather Prussianised Germany, has suddenly thrown 
 into the field at least 800,000 men, possibly 1,000,000. 
 Grant that these are mostly armed citizens. If 
 there is one thing in this war certain, it is that this 
 vast host, the largest which has ever been gathered 
 under one head in Europe, has been led by highly 
 trained professional officers, equipped with an adequate 
 commissariat, provided with gigantic siege and train 
 appliances, aided with the most scientific engineers, 
 and directed by the most accomplished staff that has 
 ever taken part in war. Now what does this imply ? 
 It is this that highly trained leaders for 800,000 
 men in every branch of the scientific uses of war are 
 not the creation of a militia, are not made in a day, 
 but in themselves prove a devotion of the national 
 power to war as a profession far greater than exists in 
 any people in the world far greater than ever has
 
 BISMARCKISM 11 
 
 been regularly organised since the palmy days of the 
 Roman Republic. 
 
 We hear much of the Chauvinism of the French 
 army and military class. No language can be too 
 strong for it. It is odious ; and France, even in 
 passing through the fire, is well freed from the curse 
 of France its own army. But that Chauvinism 
 the mere insolence of the soldier which is the curse 
 and shame of France, has not tainted the mass of the 
 people. The French peasant, and still more, the 
 French workman that is to say, nineteen out of 
 twenty Frenchmen look on the soldier's professional 
 arrogance with loathing. To the peasant the army 
 represents the blood-tax, to the workman the instru- 
 ment of the tyrant. And thus Chauvinism in France, 
 with all its shameful attributes, is a cancer in French 
 society, but is not its bone and sinew. 
 
 We never hear of the Chauvinism of Prussia. 
 What may be the reason ? Perhaps that the whole 
 nation is so penetrated with a faith in military qualities 
 Chauvinism, in fact that it finds no distinct type. 
 In Prussia the professional soldier makes less noise 
 not because the professional soldier is so alien to the 
 rest of society, but because he is so much akin to it. 
 Every Prussian, in one sense, is a professional soldier ; 
 and as a matter of course adopts the soldier's creed, 
 ideal, and morality. No one can doubt that the 
 German is a brave, strong, self-reliant, acute, and 
 calm man. It is in all the individual virtues a grand 
 and large type of human nature. The German 
 soldier is conspicuously, and even nobly, free from 
 gasconading. He very, very rarely brags. A fine 
 quality ; but there are others necessary to a social 
 being. And a man may disdain to boast, be brave 
 and self-possessed, and yet be overweeningly proud of 
 his brute force, and determined to exert his force
 
 12 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 without from the social point of view mercy, 
 shame, or conscience. And such a man is the pro- 
 fessional Prussian soldier. 
 
 What, for the last generation, has been the history 
 of the monarchy of Frederick in its international 
 relations ? Two wars of conquest against Denmark ; 
 a war of conquest against Southern Germany ; bully- 
 ing Switzerland ; bullying Holland ; oppression in 
 Schleswig ; oppression in Posen ; oppression in Han- 
 over, Saxony, Frankfort, Hamburg. We quite forget 
 that that history of the destruction of the old German 
 Confederation is a perfect tissue of violence and fraud. 
 Spoliation more arrogant, and chicanery more shame- 
 less, have never been seen in Europe in modern times. 
 The Prussian deals with the weak in Europe, as 
 Russia deals with the Turk, as Europeans deal with 
 Asiatics, but as no other people in Europe deal with a 
 Christian neighbour. In Prussian politics alone the 
 very germ of international morality is wanting. 
 
 Unhappily this gospel of the sword has sunk deeper 
 into the entire Prussian people than any other in 
 Europe. The social system being that of an army, 
 and each citizen drilled man by man, there is (out of 
 the working class) no sign of national conscience in 
 this matter. And the servile temper begotten by this 
 eternal drill inclines a whole nation to repeat, as by 
 word of command, and perhaps to believe, the con- 
 venient sophisms which the chiefs of its staff put into 
 their mouths. I purposely here and elsewhere speak 
 of Prussia, and not of Germany ; for it is Prussia 
 alone which is regularly organised on a military basis. 
 
 We hear much of the Napoleonic legend. But 
 there is such a thing as the Hohenzollern legend ; 
 and one of the sophisms which Germany repeats is 
 the worship, as of a great modern ruler, of a king 
 who, even in his own eyes, is a sort of imitation
 
 BISMARCKISM 13 
 
 Czar. One of the most laughable of these sophisms 
 is the notion that the German is a mild, peaceable, and 
 stay-at-home creature, utterly inoffensive, and never 
 resorting to arms except in urgent self-defence. 
 Really the " mild German " reminds one of the 
 "mild Hindoo." It is entirely forgotten that indi- 
 vidual is a very different thing from national character. 
 And the quiet or jovial Hans of his own firesids, 
 under a complex set of national institutions, becomes, 
 as the unit of a nation, one of a conquering people. 
 Nothing can get over these facts : that the history of 
 Prussia consists of military annals ; that the present 
 generation of Prussians have three times threatened, 
 and have four times engaged in, a foreign war ; and 
 that scarcely an acre of the broad fields of Germany 
 but has been soaked in the blood of one or other 
 variety of the "mild German." The lanzknecht is 
 transformed ; but he stalks still beneath the pickel- 
 haube* 
 
 Prussia, and even Germany under the Prussian 
 drill, is, in truth, a nation far more military than 
 France. French opinion, had it had time to speak, 
 would have held back Napoleon from his iniquitous 
 career. But the Prussian rank and file (such a thing 
 as public opinion does not exist) have neither the 
 desire nor the power, as we saw in '66, to question 
 the commands of their chiefs. And one of the most 
 ludicrous examples of this slavish condition of things 
 is seen in the way in which the entire German race 
 re-echoes the language of its mere soldiers, and all the 
 time that it wages a war of conquest, continues to 
 repeat the formula, " we are the most peaceful of 
 men," as if it were Von Moltke's own pass-word. 
 
 There is ground for thinking that many of them 
 actually believe it. One of the most repulsive features 
 of this war is the way in which a spirit of Pharisaism
 
 14 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 has entered into the very soul of the German. Phari- 
 saism hypocrisy cant was ever the Teutonic vice. 
 But in the history of human folly, it never has been 
 carried to such a point as in this late war. A nation 
 crazed with revenge and ambition, keeps on thanking 
 God for his mercy by platoons, the God which nine 
 out of ten of their educated men openly or secretly 
 ignore. A people who burn villages wholesale, and 
 massacre peasants on system, swear that they are the 
 most inoffensive of men. They heap on France every 
 insult, and threaten every evil which hatred can invent, 
 whilst whining through Europe that they are only 
 seeking a safer line of frontier. They are never weary 
 of calling Heaven to witness the immorality of France, 
 whilst themselves waging the most savage of all modern 
 wars, with inhuman cruelty and relentless hate. They 
 for ever cry out over the falseness of France, whilst 
 their own chosen mouthpiece, Bismarck, is perhaps the 
 most accomplished master of fraud in modern times ; 
 whilst the official and literary utterances of the country 
 form one system of organised falsehood ; and the whole 
 people gives itself up to mere stereotyped cant. 1 
 
 This falsehood on one side or the other is no true 
 test of right or wrong in this quarrel, but it is just as 
 well to clear away misconceptions. No language can 
 adequately stamp the untruth of French officialism and 
 journalism through this war. It is simply repulsive. 
 And few things in the frenzy of France have been 
 more melancholy than the proneness to utter and to 
 adopt fabrications. It is a sorry task to trace all the 
 ravings of a distracted people in the hour of their death- 
 struggle. But the falsehood of Germans throughout 
 the war, if less wild, has been more systematic. German 
 officials conceal the truth with at least as much skill as 
 
 1 We now know the whole story from the cynical Memoirs of Prince 
 Bismarck and the other official revelations (January 1908).
 
 BISMARCKISM 15 
 
 French distort it. In fraud, Bismarck has found no 
 French match or even rival. One impudent cry 
 succeeds another. Now it is to save their Holstein, 
 now their Alsatian brothers ; now it is the rescuing 
 France from her corrupt rulers, purging Europe from 
 French immorality, putting down military ambition, 
 denouncing English partiality ; now it is the guaran- 
 teeing their own frontier. One after another these 
 shameless pretexts are taken up by word of command j 
 and throughout Germany they are repeated by man, 
 woman, and child with ridiculous monotony. French 
 generals, and officials, and journals lie ; but the French 
 nation has not given itself up to organised cant at the 
 bidding of its officers. 
 
 I have spoken plainly my opinion about German 
 cruelty. I say it most deliberately that Germans are 
 now carrying on war with inhuman cruelty. War so 
 savage, torture so steadily inflicted on a civil com- 
 munity, has never been seen within two generations 
 in Europe save once. That once was the Russian 
 war of extermination in Poland. It rests on the 
 German race, with their pretended culture, to have 
 carried into the heart of Western Europe the horrible 
 traditions of Eastern barbarism. I do not intend to 
 argue any isolated case. Bazeilles, Strasburg, Ablis, 
 may perchance all have been burnt by the strictest of 
 military codes. I do not charge the German leaders 
 with having (exceptions excepted) exceeded in acts of 
 blood what are called the laws of war. I do not deny 
 that many of them may be proved to be what are 
 called military necessities. Still less do I charge 
 Germans individually with any love of cruelty as 
 such. But, like all people of Teutonic race, the 
 Germans, though they do not love cruelty, are per- 
 fectly capable of it to meet their ends ; and indeed 
 take to it with a calm inward satisfaction, and a
 
 16 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 business-like completeness, which is more horrible 
 even than the excesses of passion. 
 
 What has come over the English mind that it 
 acquiesces so calmly in the sanguinary acts of this 
 war ? The Germans have not exactly pillaged. 
 "The wise 'require' it call." But they have 
 stripped one -third of France utterly to the bone. 
 The ransacking the villager's home, seizing his cattle, 
 and "requiring" his daily bread and the seed of his 
 land, may be strictly according to the rules of war j 
 but it is still inhuman cruelty. It deliberately 
 reduces him to starvation. The bombarding the 
 civil portion of cities may be a right of war, 
 but it is still inhuman cruelty. The burning of 
 towns and villages wholesale twenty we were glibly 
 told of in one telegram from Berlin may be a mili- 
 tary necessity, but it is inhuman cruelty. Plundering 
 citizens by threat of instant death, the placing them 
 on the engines, the massacre in cold blood of irregular 
 troops, and still more of villagers suspected of aiding 
 them, may be a mere measure of self-defence ; but I 
 call it inhuman cruelty. It is the murder of non- 
 combatants or prisoners and therefore terrorism. 
 
 Why tell us that Napoleon did it ? Napoleon was 
 a monster ; and generations have passed since that day. 
 To murder and burn alive civil populations men, 
 women, and children to burn down whole districts, 
 to massacre prisoners in cold blood, and to starve a 
 civil population, may be war ; but it is not the less 
 inhuman. The fact remains laws of war or not 
 that no nation has ventured on this bloody path in 
 Europe for generations, except, as said before, the 
 Russians in Poland. Military necessity forsooth ! 
 So said the Russians ; so says every invader in a 
 war of extermination. But what necessity compels 
 the Germans still to carry on a war that must be so
 
 BISMARCKISM 17 
 
 carried on at all ? What compels them, with France 
 prostrate before them, still to continue this horrible 
 course ? Nothing but their own lust for conquest 
 and glory. Not all the glozing of their truculent 
 hypocrites professors or journalists who exhort 
 them to these outrages as to acts of duty, can cloak 
 this under the plea of self-protection. Deliberately, 
 with a lie on their lips, they choose to continue a 
 war of annihilation ; a war in which every step is but 
 a step into a deeper sea of blood and horror. Military 
 necessity was ever the plea of pitiless ambition. If all 
 this blood and horror, over and above all modern wars, 
 is a military necessity of this war then, in the name 
 of civilisation, it is a social necessity to stop this war. 
 The fact remains that, in mere pursuit now of military 
 glory, the Germans are carrying on war as no foreign 
 war in Europe has in this age been carried on, as it is 
 an outrage to humanity to carry on war at all. On 
 them, and on their children, will remain the curse of 
 reviving in modern Europe the most bloody and bar- 
 barous traditions of the past the wholesale wasting of 
 an enemy's country, and the systematic massacre of 
 civilians. 1 
 
 Of all the horrible evils of this war, none perhaps 
 is more sinister than this : the debauchery of public 
 opinion by the taint of blood, the sinking back of 
 European morality to the worst of the old level. 
 Wars there have been in Europe, bloody and horrible 
 enough, but for generations now they have been wars 
 between regular armies. We had hoped and believed 
 that what wars there were to be, were to be fought 
 out as duels between set forces, and not waged like 
 the wars of extermination of two Indian tribes. This 
 
 1 Alas ! in the last thirty-five years we have often seen this barbarous 
 example followed though not in Europe. The curse of Bismarclcism is 
 that it has torn up the old Law of Nations (1908). 
 
 C
 
 1 8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 hope has been crushed by Germany ; and we have 
 seen a war, not only the most gigantic in history, but 
 one marked with almost every phase of antique bar- 
 barity the wholesale massacre of non-combatants, the 
 pillaging of civil property on system, the tyranny of a 
 hateful conquest, the ferocity of martial law. And we 
 listen to it all calmly ; and feel reassured to know that 
 it is all done strictly according to the books. Desola- 
 tion and murder, sown broadcast, come upon us natu- 
 rally enough, if nothing be done but what has the 
 sanction of Tilly, or Marlborough, or Napoleon. 
 
 It is small plea to tell us that France would have 
 done the same to Germany. If so, then on her would 
 have lighted the curse. But as Germany has done it, 
 on her it rests. When Russia in annihilating Poland 
 told us that the fury of the Poles was such that it 
 could not be broken down unless by these horrible 
 extremities what was the answer of Europe ? Europe 
 answered to her : by what compulsion must you break 
 down Poland ? And so hereafter will rest on Germany 
 the ban of civilised Europe. 
 
 The continuance of this horrible conflict is fast 
 inuring us to the vile code of blood. For months the 
 journals have filled our minds with the loathsome cant 
 of the camp. Bloody battles are sketched off for us 
 daily with a jaunty gusto which is sickening. Women 
 and children are well tutored in all the hideous slang 
 of the trooper ; they read of " beautiful " charges, and 
 " superb " shell-practice, and of " lively " fusillades. 
 Not a brutality of the man-at-arms is spared us. 
 The ghastly delights of the battlefield, the dreadful 
 indifference to life, the foul professional jargon are 
 served up to us with much patchwork word-painting, 
 and much artificial joviality. This ape-like glee in 
 mimicking the tone of war is degrading the moral sense. 
 And the most horrible of human passions the love
 
 B1SMARCKISM 19 
 
 of destruction in its most settled and professional form 
 is nursed, and adorned, and stimulated, until it is 
 growing to form a sort of standard of opinion. 
 
 It seems necessary now again to repeat old truisms 
 that the slaughter of mankind is horrible in itself, 
 that the trade of slaughtering mankind is a horrible 
 one, that the morality of the slaughterer of mankind 
 is necessarily a low one. For two generations the 
 military type of life had been sinking into just odium. 
 But now, forsooth, war is to be rehabilitated. The 
 military becomes the normal form of life. Our civil 
 life is to be recast. Every citizen is to be a soldier. 
 Every civilian talks of guns, and shells, and formations, 
 and apes the jargon of the lowest form of righting 
 animal. Moltke and Bismarck are the great men of 
 our age. Prussia is our model state of an armed and 
 drilled nation. The one great public question is the 
 recasting of our military system. Our amusement is 
 to chatter over the incidents of these vast butcheries. 
 Our literature is the picturesque recounting of the 
 battle or the siege. And thus we are falling back in 
 public morality a century. The military becomes the 
 true type of human society ; some pitiless strategist is 
 a hero ; some unscrupulous conspirator is a statesman ; 
 and the nation which is the best drilled and the best 
 armed in Europe is to go to the van of modern civil- 
 isation. Brutalising and senseless creed ! And this 
 we owe to Prussia. 1 
 
 It is this evil which is the most to be dreaded for 
 the future the destruction of international morality 
 in Europe, and the restoration of the old military 
 standard. To substitute Bismarckism for Napoleon- 
 ism would be a very small gain to civilisation. And 
 the Prussian army is vaster, more anti-popular, more 
 
 1 And I have lived to see all this forecast too truly verified and by 
 our own countrymen in Asia and in Africa (1908).
 
 20 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 thoroughly professional and retrograde in its tone even 
 than the French. The French military regime 
 Napoleonism itself always rested on a revolutionary 
 basis, and existed in a revolutionary medium. It was 
 always felt that an upheaving of the people could 
 shake it to its foundations, and it was obliged to 
 respect and sometimes to adopt popular principles. 
 But the Prussian army rests on a feudal and mon- 
 archic basis exclusively. Patriotism in Prussia means 
 obedience to the commander-in-chief. The ranks of 
 society mean grades in the army. Thorough dis- 
 cipline reigns throughout it. And this, however 
 valuable in a military point of view, in the political 
 implies the stagnation of all civil life. Thus the 
 Prussian army (and for all international purposes the 
 Prussian army is the Prussian government) represents 
 the most retrograde spirit in modern society, and is 
 the natural foe of every element of progress. What 
 are we to gain, therefore, by substituting the Prussian 
 for the Napoleonic regime in Europe ? 
 
 We are told to trust to Germany at the close of 
 her victory assuming a liberal form. What are the 
 grounds for any such hope ? Bismarck may promise 
 to "crown the edifice," as Napoleon did every Spring, 
 and with as great result. We have seen the Prussian 
 government engaging in one war of conquest after 
 another ; but we never heard that the people could 
 exert the smallest influence on its government. Why 
 will they do so when Bismarck and Moltke have 
 riveted the chains of Germany for it is for 
 Germany, not France, that they are forging chains ? 
 What single political principle in Europe is due to 
 Prussia ? Politically, Prussia is a camp, and the 
 Prussian is a conscript. With all the wonderful 
 intelligence, industry, culture, and energy, for which 
 individual Prussians cannot be too highly rated, the
 
 BISMARCKISM 21 
 
 nation, as a political whole, has been ground down by 
 drill and bureaucracy, of which their very state educa- 
 tion is a part, to political nonentity. There is more 
 true public life in Russia itself. I do not forget the 
 strong language used by deputies and journalists. 
 But neither exert the smallest influence over the 
 action of the Monarchy and its Bureaucracy. 
 
 Now the elevation of a spirit like this (a spirit the 
 better side of which is seen in the antiquated pride of 
 the old martinet-king, and its worst in the " blood 
 and iron " of his crafty minister) must tell on the 
 public opinion of Europe. Let us suppose that 
 Germany returns, having added to her frontiers 
 Lorraine and Alsace, in the whole of her vast 
 strength, and with the immense prestige of her 
 unparalleled successes. The position of France, 
 Germany holding Metz and Strasburg, is simply that 
 of Piedmont whilst Austria held the Quadrilateral. 
 Germany would hold an armed hand pointed at the 
 heart of France. With her capital and her richest 
 provinces almost under the guns of these great 
 fortresses, France would be in every question at the 
 mercy of her great neighbour. She must be the 
 centre of a restless agitation, looking for allies every- 
 where, and seeking her opportunity anywhere. We 
 well remember what it was for European peace to 
 have had an Italian and a Polish question what 
 would it be to have a French question, France suffer- 
 ing a standing humiliation and danger ? Europe 
 would not enjoy a day of repose or peace. 
 
 There are those who look to see Prussia actually 
 dominating Europe in arms. We need look for no 
 such danger. Undoubtedly there are the germs of 
 many a sinister combination. Denmark, no doubt, 
 will fall one day a prey to her old despoiler. A 
 struggle for the German subjects of Austria is inevit-
 
 22 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 able. Holland and Belgium both have reason to fear. 
 Russia, in spite of dynastic sympathies, must be the 
 enemy of aggrandised Prussia. Prussia already coquets 
 with the Pope and threatens Italy, no doubt as succeed- 
 ing to the Holy Roman Empire. Patriotic murmurs 
 will soon be raised to recall their erring German 
 brothers in Switzerland. The theory of a German 
 Rhine (some filibustering professor will explain to 
 us) requires that it flows through dominions of the 
 Emperor of Germany from the glaciers to the sea. 
 They even now are calling out for the rescue of their 
 lost brothers in Heligoland. 1 There are quarrels 
 enough and to spare ; causes and " races " enough to 
 embroil Europe for a century. There is the unburied 
 Holstein question, the Polish question, Panslavism, 
 Czeckism, Pan-Germanism, the Rhine question, the 
 Belgian question, the Heligoland question, the Papal 
 question ; why not the Burgundian question, and the 
 restoration of the empire of Charlemagne ? If Europe 
 is to be recast to fit the crazy pedantry of German 
 professors, the Prussian spread-eagle will give us all a 
 pleasant time of it. 
 
 Now it is not necessary to suppose that Prussia is 
 about to overrun Europe with her troops as she is 
 overrunning France. That is not the danger. We 
 have not come to that point of weakness we non- 
 German people of Europe, and perhaps even German 
 docility would have a limit somewhere. But what is 
 to be feared is the passing of the undisputed supremacy 
 of force to such a power as Prussia organised ex- 
 clusively for war, retrograde, feudal, despotic, more 
 unscrupulous and ambitious than Napoleonism itself. 
 If Prussia returns home triumphant, and mistress of 
 the greatest fortresses of France, Europe is handed 
 
 1 Brothers so judiciously rescued in 1890, and so happily restored by 
 our Imperialists (1908).
 
 BISMARCKISM 23 
 
 over to a generation of arming for war ; and civilisa- 
 tion is thrown back incalculably. The military and 
 reactionary powers will have their own black reign 
 again as they did from the treaty of Vienna. All the 
 life of Southern Germany will be crushed out of her. 
 In Northern Germany there is not, and never was, 
 any political life. Germany at this moment is under 
 the rule of the sword as completely as the conquered 
 provinces of France. The mild German may hope 
 and protest, but he is mild enough in his own country. 
 He has waited, with the patience of a sentinel, for 
 some civic life to be given him by his "good and 
 pious " king and his clever, wise Bismarck but he 
 may wait for a century. Germany is really under 
 martial law at this moment, and likely so to remain. 
 The democratic leaders are in prison for protesting 
 against a policy of annexation. Public opinion is 
 stifled by police and soldiery. And the leaders of 
 the people who raise a voice against militarism have 
 something to put up with far more serious than the 
 amenities of a journal. 
 
 Do the English people seriously consider what 
 even from their insular point of view this portends to 
 them ? The capitulation of Sedan tore up the treaties 
 of 1856. The blood and sacrifices of the Crimean 
 war are thrown away, or must be repeated. Which 
 alternative will England choose ? Russia is free, she 
 is actually preparing to carry out her schemes of con- 
 quest in the East. Prussia is openly threatening this 
 country. She repeats, and her drilled press and litera- 
 ture reiterate impudent charges against our neutrality. 
 There is an ominous courting of the friendship of 
 America, with what end every one can see. Prussia 
 openly aims at maritime power, the command of the 
 Baltic, and the recovery of Heligoland. Denmark 
 may be swallowed up, as the first step in this career.
 
 24 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Holland may be the next leaf in the northern arti- 
 choke. Belgium, by the force of events, may be com- 
 pelled to throw herself into the arms of France. In a 
 word, there is hardly a country left without embroil- 
 ment and danger. Europe is thrown into the cauldron 
 to be re-cast, and a new Holy Alliance is forming on 
 the principle of " Blood and Iron " which England 
 must meet absolutely alone. 
 
 What should be our policy ? I do not hesitate to 
 say to check the progress of Prussian ambition. To 
 check it by diplomacy if possible ; but by arms if 
 necessary. It is not in the name of France, nor of 
 the French Republic ; but in the highest interests 
 of European peace and progress that it is the duty of 
 England to withstand the domination of a new empire 
 of the sword. It is time to raise the retrograde and 
 military weight of Prussia off Europe, and to force her 
 back to her true place. How is this to be done, even 
 if we wished it, men ask aghast, and what can resist 
 Prussia ? As if statesmanship, energy, and power had 
 left this country for ever. Is this nation Holland, 
 Belgium, Denmark, that it is to count for nothing in 
 European politics ? 
 
 In the first place it is to be done by statesmanship. 
 If England threw her whole heart into it, and it was 
 known that she had pledged herself to it, she could 
 form a great coalition of neutral states. She should 
 put herself at the head of a federation of the weak, 
 which in itself would be a strong federation. She 
 should bind Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and 
 Switzerland first in offensive and defensive alliances, 
 in which each member of the union guaranteed the 
 inviolability of each of the others with their whole 
 force. She should put herself right by restoring all 
 her foreign possessions in Europe. She might hold 
 Heligoland for the new Federation or for Denmark,
 
 BISMARCKISM 25 
 
 to whom it seems to belong. She might restore 
 Gibraltar to Spain, and Malta, if required, to Italy. 
 Then if statesmanship be a real thing at all, Spain, 
 Italy, Austria, all already sympathising with France, 
 could be brought into the alliance. 1 They would be 
 feeble hands who, using such a force, and with the 
 weight of all Western Europe in one, could not by a 
 moral demonstration alone cause the German to pause, 
 and to conclude a reasonable peace. 
 
 And failing this, for one, I would shrink from 
 no consequences. If Germany, in her headstrong 
 ambition, insisted on the destruction of France, and no 
 joint effort of neutrals were possible, let England 
 throw herself into the rescue of France with her whole 
 forces, moral and material, naval and military. If the 
 task be hopelessly beyond her strength, then England 
 has ceased to be a great power, and must have sunk 
 back indeed since the days of Pitt or Chatham or 
 Marlborough. It is a heavy task, doubtless, and one 
 not to be done in a day. But it is not hopeless. Let 
 money, guns, and supplies be poured into France, with 
 the aid of the English fleet, and it may be well believed 
 that France could turn the tide. She has a million of 
 men in arms. What she needs is time and every 
 material of war. And if that did not suffice let 
 100,000 men in red, equipped with every munition of 
 war, be planted in some spot in Brittany or Normandy 
 where, supplied and covered by the fleet, they might 
 take up a new Torres Vedras. 
 
 Then, let Paris fall or not, with the incalculable 
 moral support and inexhaustible material supplies of 
 England, France would not fall. She would rise more 
 desperate after every defeat, and more resolved after 
 every calamity. She might be driven back to Brittany 
 
 1 Something like such a pacific alliance or entente has been at last 
 secured, mainly by the King (1908).
 
 26 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 or the Pyrenees. She might endure every agony 
 that a nation could suffer. It might be years 
 before the struggle ended. But once let it be 
 known that the whole heart and power of England 
 was on her side, English gold, stores, and arms 
 pouring in at every port, and an English entrenched 
 camp as a reserve, and the tenacity of France would 
 do the rest ; slowly the grip of the eagle would 
 grow feebler, slowly the exhausted conquerors would 
 withdraw, and at length the armies of the two 
 western nations, brother leaders of the van of civilisa- 
 tion, would force back the German invader to his 
 own border. Such would be the policy of Chatham, 
 of William, or of Cromwell. 
 
 It is a great task. But great nations have great 
 tasks to do, and statesmanship is the doing great 
 tasks ; but it is a task worth every sacrifice. With 
 France prostrate under the armed heel of Germany, 
 with Germany in possession of Alsace and Lorraine, 
 with that retrograde military power the acknowledged 
 arbiter of Europe, Europe can know no disarming, no 
 progress for a generation. I disdain to answer the 
 canting plea that these provinces can add to the safety 
 of Germany or the peace of Europe. It is obviously 
 the real object of this annexation, to enable Prussia to 
 maintain a vast military establishment and vantage- 
 ground, from which to take Southern Germany in 
 flank, and coerce her in the great struggle which is 
 about to commence there. The regime of war, of 
 conquest, of subjugation begins again j and civilisation 
 is arrested for generations. 
 
 What still remains for France ? Simply to fight 
 on. France cannot be conquered. No great nation 
 can. The cession of Alsace and Lorraine is not 
 merely the surrender of two provinces. It is the 
 delivering up the country, its capital, and its independ-
 
 BISMARCKISM 27 
 
 ence, bound hand and foot, to a ruthless neighbour. 
 It is what no Frenchman worthy of the name, could 
 assent to. " Better burn France to ashes rather," as 
 Danton said. Let us take a parallel case. France 
 (we will suppose), in a sudden and unprovoked war, has 
 seized Belgium, Holland, and Denmark, and formed 
 along the whole northern coast of Europe a network 
 of arsenals, which sheltered a combined fleet far larger 
 and stronger than any possible British fleet. For 
 years she equips this fleet with the avowed purpose 
 of wresting from England the supremacy of the sea. 
 England rings with indignation, jealousy, and fear. 
 In an evil hour an English ministry, without con- 
 sulting the nation, hurls the country into war, and 
 attacks the French fleet in its moorings. Through 
 flagrant incapacity of the English Admiralty (a not 
 incredible assumption) the entire navy of England is 
 annihilated. The French forces invade this country. 
 Everything goes down before them. They take the 
 arsenals, and hold one-third of England, wasting it 
 with fire and sword. The dynasty (perhaps an im- 
 possible supposition) is swept away for ever. London 
 still holds out, and throughout England vast forces are 
 being organised for defence. The only terms that the 
 conqueror will accept are the permanent possession of 
 Portsmouth and Plymouth, their harbours, docks, and 
 forts, with Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, to 
 be incorporated with France, on the plea that they 
 were once possessions of the Dukes of Normandy, or 
 were once inhabited by Bretons. These are the con- 
 querors' terms. England is still not exhausted in men, 
 money, arms, or material. London contains an army 
 twice as numerous as its besiegers. The north of 
 England swarms with armies. What Englishman 
 will say (with his name, not with his initials) that he 
 would call on his countrymen to sign such a peace ?
 
 28 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The man who could do it, or talk of it, must have the 
 heart of a slave. 
 
 And yet there are men quite filled with moral 
 indignation that Frenchmen can refuse such a peace. 
 They talk quite grandly of the guilt of refusing such 
 terms. How many a lost cause have Englishmen 
 applauded the Polish, the Circassian, the Arab 
 defences, the defence of Hungary and Rome in 1849, 
 of the Danes in 1864, of the Confederates in 1866, 
 were heroic in the eyes of most of those who are insult- 
 ing the defiance of France. And now these hypocrites 
 who hate France call on her to yield in the name 
 of peace and good sense. In the meantime the case 
 of France is not hopeless. Every day her spirit seems 
 to grow more resolute. Paris may fall may have 
 fallen before these pages are published but that is not 
 the end. It may be that this is but the beginning of 
 the war, and not its end. The wealth of France is 
 boundless, her population is unexhausted, her natural 
 resources infinite. She has nearly a million of men 
 under arms ; she has six or seven armies in the field, 
 and all her seaboard and ports untouched. It is the 
 fashion to sneer at her efforts, to deny her courage, 
 and to undervalue her resources. For my part, in 
 spite of wild speeches and divided counsels, I call the 
 resolute front of her actual rulers heroic. I will not 
 be curious to note their faults or their follies. I will 
 forgive them and honour them for carrying on the 
 traditions of the great Danton, and for uttering 
 defiance in the midst of unparalleled disasters. I call 
 the rush to arms of all able-bodied Frenchmen heroic, 
 and in the main I accept that as a fact. I call the 
 willingness of Frenchmen to bear every extremity 
 rather than a dishonourable peace heroic. And above 
 all, I call the defence of Paris, the unity of its multi- 
 form population, and the resolve of its attitude heroic.
 
 BISMARCKISM 29 
 
 All this is much out of fashion now. It is easy to 
 make sport of the ravings of a distracted people in such 
 a crisis, to repeat the murmurs of the cravens, and 
 to paint pictures of panic here, bombast there ; of 
 suspicion in one place, delusion in other, and dis- 
 sensions everywhere. We all forget how France 
 now lives as under a microscope, and thousands of 
 unfriendly eyes are watching every spasm. We all 
 forget too how stupidly a Teutonic people mistakes 
 the excitement of a Keltic people for weakness. 
 Their ways are not our ways ; but it does not 
 follow that big words go always with little deeds. 
 It is easy for the victors to be dignified and calm ; 
 easier especially for a people of such admirable self- 
 possession and so perfectly drilled as the Germans. 
 But where is the nation in the agony of such 
 mortal strife that would escape confusion, divided 
 counsels, and wild talk ? The energy, unity, and 
 patriotism of France in the first shock are far 
 greater than was shown either by Prussian, German, 
 or Austrian after Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram, 
 greater than was shown by the great American people 
 in the first months after Bull's Run. Let us only 
 trust that if so horrible a catastrophe ever should befall 
 this nation, all civil strife and parties may be unknown, 
 that all administrators may act with dignity and judg- 
 ment, that false hopes and wild speech may be as little 
 heard as ungenerous suspicions ; that upon the annihi- 
 lation of the whole regular force and the loss of the 
 whole material of war in the country, a million of 
 citizens may be gathered in arms in two months ; 
 that seven armies may be organised, equipped, and 
 armed ; that bloodshed, fire, famine, and pillage may 
 not break the spirit of our people ; that our citizens 
 may calmly submit to starvation and bombardment, 
 and that throughout the length and breadth of the
 
 30 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 island there may rise up only one cry War to the 
 knife, rather than dishonourable peace. 1 
 
 But come what may if France drive out the 
 invader, or sink under his weight certain considera- 
 tions remain for the statesman's attention. This war 
 involves social changes greater than any since 1789. 
 The war has been caused by social movements, and it 
 must issue in still greater. Bismarck and Napoleon 
 were each driven to divert the energy of their respec- 
 tive nations to foreign war by the upheaving of the 
 popular spirit at home. The imminent danger to his 
 own throne at last drove Napoleon into war. The very 
 disasters of France are due to the same cause. France 
 (we must never forget) is still heaving with internal 
 revolution. There the great social struggle between 
 capital and labour, that prolonged struggle on which 
 England is entering, and to which Germany is approach- 
 ing, is already far advanced. The real cause of the war, 
 of the disasters, of the powerlessness of France, is one 
 and the same : that France is in the convulsion of a 
 social revolution. She is divided against herself. Work- 
 man and employer, rich and poor, stand apart in two 
 camps, distrusting each other, counter-working each 
 other ; and thus a prey to political adventurers. France 
 is thus for a time weak ; and falls in war an easy victim to 
 the unity of Germany, in which, from its more back- 
 ward social condition, all this crisis is yet to come. It 
 is very probable also that the gradual disintegration of 
 France into smaller political aggregates, a process which 
 awaits the larger states of Europe, has already begun. 
 There are now three or four French political units. 2 
 
 1 As we know, within two months after this was written, Paris was 
 starved into surrender} the treachery of Bazaine sacrificed the last regular 
 army of France ; social enmity and the selfish apathy of the South ruined 
 the defence ; and Peace was made. (1908). 
 
 2 The disintegrating process and the cause of Anti-militarism have 
 now reached an ominous degree (1908).
 
 BISMARCKISM 31 
 
 But the moment France has weathered the storm, 
 the impulse given to her social movement will be 
 enormous. The Republic has been established ; and 
 the Republic itself is the only institution in France 
 which has not been discredited. France, too, has 
 been happily relieved of that incubus which has 
 hitherto rested on progress her army. Those 
 350,000 praetorians those marshals, generals, and 
 staff; guns, standards, material, and eagles the 
 whole Chauvinist camp, from Emperor to drummer- 
 boy, have been swept into space and into ignominy. 
 The professional soldier in France is morally dead. 
 Her army, the curse of Europe and of civilisation, has 
 gone out with an ill savour. It was not the decheance 
 of Napoleon that was proclaimed in Paris on the 4th of 
 September, but the decheance of militarism. The soldier 
 is become an anachronism ; the symbol of national 
 degradation. The only sort of honour has been won 
 by workmen and peasant volunteers a true citizen- 
 army of national guard. For the first time in French 
 history, the workmen of the great towns are armed 
 and organised, and the whole of the new army from top 
 to bottom is essentially democratic. In a military 
 sense, this may as yet be a weakness ; but, in a 
 political sense, it means the emancipation of the 
 people. 
 
 Even after the fall of Paris, the war may be in- 
 definitely prolonged. But it must end some day. 
 And then, with France exhausted, stripped of every- 
 thing, wealth and the means of wealth annihilated, she 
 will be in the position of a new country ; capital will 
 be in search of labour, and labour will be master of 
 the situation. However long the war continue, and 
 however great the sufferings of France, it is the rich 
 who really suffer. The poor, so long as they keep 
 their own skins whole and are not actually starving,
 
 32 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 do not lose much, for the simple reason that they have 
 nothing to lose. A Prussian invasion to them in- 
 volves no greater personal loss than individual distress, 
 hard times, or a lock-out indeed, far less, for they 
 are the most indispensable part of the public, and must 
 be fed. 
 
 On the conclusion of peace, therefore, the people, 
 socially and politically, will be masters of the destinies 
 of France, and ultimately of Europe. All that France 
 loses in material ascendancy in Europe, she will gain 
 in moral ascendancy. Peace cannot be made in such 
 a way but that relatively labour shall be left in the 
 ascendant. It was so after the hurly-burly of 1793, 
 and it will be so again after 1870. And the workmen 
 are the only people who have upheld the honour of 
 France. Thus, however France may be materially 
 crippled, the cause of the Republic and of labour will 
 come to the front. Even if the Republic itself 
 collapse in the strife, for France is still divided into 
 two camps the rich and the poor the republican 
 element will be strong. And France will retain and 
 increase her moral influence. Not only Napoleonism 
 and militarism are dechus henceforth in France, but 
 something else ; and that is, the indolent extravagance 
 of the rich. The degraded and selfish pomp of the 
 second Empire is a thing of the past. For once since 
 1 793 liberty and equality have begun to be realities. 
 
 But the people in France will not stand alone. 
 Round them will gather the people and the re- 
 publicanism of Europe. In all the sufferings and 
 humiliations of France, this cause will gain a new 
 impulse. From henceforward the French people 
 alone, even in the eyes of German democrats, will be 
 felt to bear the standard of progress. The dangerous 
 designs of Prussia, her retrograde ambition, will be the 
 great enemies of the people all over the world. Round
 
 BISMARCKISM 33 
 
 the workmen of France those of England have long 
 gathered ; those of Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and 
 Germany herself are gathering. The issue is so 
 critical for the future, and the dangers from the re- 
 actionary power are so serious, that they override all 
 national and local questions. Now it will neither be 
 England, France, nor Germany ; but Republic against 
 Monarchy. Round the Prussian throne gather all the 
 retrograde principles ; round the French people all 
 the progressive. In this great issue, national and 
 party questions dwindle. All governments, will hence- 
 forward be alike to us. Whig or Tory, and the rest 
 are but vestry-room cries. The one cause in which 
 every other is merged, is the cause of the People. 
 
 Not that this great struggle need be one of arms 
 and of bloodshed. It is essentially a moral struggle ; 
 one of principles. The needle-gun has beaten down 
 the army of Napoleon, but it cannot beat back French 
 ideas ; of all others, not the social ideas of the French 
 people. Purged in the fire of this crisis, these ideas 
 will regain new purity and life. They are swaying 
 and heaving English society. Germany itself is 
 honeycombed with them. And long and fierce ere 
 long will be the struggle in Germany itself between 
 Bismarckism and Industrialism between blood and 
 iron and the German people. But whatever else may 
 be the issue, we may be sure that the real spirit that 
 is ultimately to triumph after this frightful catastrophe 
 will not be a military one. In spite of all the fighting, 
 in spite of the deadly hatred of race begotten by this 
 contest, and the undying spirit of revenge and pride it 
 will leave behind, the industrial regime is antagonistic 
 to the military ; and the increased ascendency of the 
 people must be fatal in the long run to militarism. 
 
 There is much in this, too, very worthy of thought 
 by our own governing classes. The attitude of the 
 
 D
 
 34 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 French Republic and people under the German yoke 
 has sent a thrill through the English workmen greater 
 than anything which has happened since 1848. They 
 are watching their own rulers with ill-restrained im- 
 patience and indignation. To them the cause of 
 labour and the Republic is one and the same all over 
 the world. The interests of English landlords, of 
 British merchants and shopkeepers, of Whig and Tory 
 governments, of Liberal or Conservative cabals, to 
 them are dust in the balance. They are loudly and 
 distinctly calling on their rulers to save the French 
 Republic from extinction by German invaders. For 
 that they are ready for sacrifices in blood and money. 
 One thing they will not suffer. They will not 
 see their governing classes shrinking from any real 
 action in Europe, and timidly reducing this country 
 to a nullity, whilst feebly patching up our own rotten 
 military system at home by resorting to the device of 
 tyranny abroad. A real reorganisation of the army in 
 a national sense is yet far off. Really to make it such 
 an army as the Prussian is simply impossible. This 
 English nation, at any rate, will never be drilled into 
 Bismarckism. And any feeble attempts to Prussianise 
 this country, to raise a conscription, in fact to force 
 the working people into the ranks, will be met and 
 resisted by all and every means. The attempt forcibly 
 to enrol English citizens will be stopped by every 
 resource known to a people defending their personal 
 liberty the ultima ratio populi not even excepted. 
 There are men enough in this country quite capable 
 of seeing what is,meant, and of organising the national 
 resistance. To attempt such a plot against all the 
 traditions of English liberty would be the end of 
 governing class, monarchy, and constitution. No 
 blood-tax will ever be levied in English homes. 
 
 November 15, 1870.
 
 II 
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 
 
 (January 17, 1871) 
 
 The following Essay was written during the franco-German 
 War in the middle of January, and was the first article 
 in the Fortnightly Review of February 1871 (vol. ix.}. 
 At the time of writing Paris was on the eve of capitulat- 
 ing through famine, and Gambetta was calling on the 
 country to continue the struggle. The writer was still 
 sanguine that England would be roused to take a part. 
 He and his friends had organised a great meeting of 
 Trades Unionists in St. James's Hall in support of the 
 French Republic (January /<?)/ and many influential 
 sections of English society joined that cause. The govern- 
 ment of Mr. Gladstone declined to interfere in any way, 
 as may be read in vol. ii. of the Life. Now that we have 
 the Memoirs of all the chief politicians concerned, English, 
 German, and French, the writer sees no reason to modify 
 the language he used in 1871, nor can he admit that the 
 policy he advocated was either impracticable or unwise 
 (1908). 
 
 THE true question which this war presents for 
 Englishmen to answer, is not whether France or 
 Germany have done most to provoke each other, nor 
 whether France or Germany have the larger sum of 
 wrongs to avenge, nor whether it is desirable for 
 Germany to be one and to be powerful, nor yet 
 
 35
 
 36 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 whether much that is vicious be not mingled in 
 French policy and the French character. The real 
 question is none of these j and it is sophistry only 
 which can lead us off upon these issues. The true 
 question is a very plain one. It is this. Is it for the 
 interest of civilisation^ or of England^ that France should 
 be trampled on and dismembered by Germany ? 
 
 I say the former are all false issues, and have little 
 to do with the matter before us. Let us grant that 
 the larger share in provoking this long -preparing 
 struggle must be laid at the door of France ; as I 
 certainly shall grant she wantonly commenced it. Is 
 it enough for a nation to have wrongfully entered 
 upon war, to make us rejoice at seeing it torn in 
 pieces ; rejoice over a policy which must hand over 
 Europe to discord and hate ? To sum up the historical 
 wrongs of Germany may exercise the ingenuity of 
 biographers ; but are politicians ready to make retalia- 
 tion the new key of international relations ? A man 
 may devoutly desire the unity of Germany, without 
 finding it precisely in the smoking ruins of Paris. It 
 may be the best guarantee of peace that Germany 
 should be powerful. It is a bold leap from that to 
 welcoming six months of pillage, fire, and slaughter. 
 We may wish to see Germany both safe and strong, 
 without caring to see France mangled and frantic 
 with despair. We never deny that the French temper 
 has many a blot, and French history many a foul 
 page. We may even hate French folly and vice. 
 What nation has not its own follies and its own vices ? 
 What puling Judas is he who would sneer away the 
 life of a nation by these hypocrite's laments ? We 
 have never yet admitted that the vices of national 
 character entitled one race to come forward as the 
 executioner of another, to wreak its hate and fill its 
 greed in the name of national morality. We have
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 37 
 
 ceased to regard a conquering horde as the chosen 
 avenger of God, or national disaster as the same with 
 national guilt. 
 
 We may admit all these propositions of the apolo- 
 gists of Prussian invasion, and yet the case is not 
 answered, nor even touched. Suppose France wrong 
 at first, to have been wrong in the past, to have been 
 and to be, as a nation, foolish and guilty. Suppose 
 that the unity of Germany is the greatest of human 
 goods, and its supremacy the best hope of mankind ; 
 what has all this to do with the long-drawn torture of 
 France, with the firing of her citizens, and the tramp- 
 ling on her provinces and her children ? The great- 
 ness of Germany is not secured, the guilt of France is 
 not cured, by dragging out a brutalising and fiendish 
 war, until agony itself seems to sustain life and to 
 inspire defiance. All the specious grounds on which 
 some still try to justify all this, no more justify this 
 war than they justify Pandemonium. There is but 
 one true question. What good end requires all this 
 fire and this blood ? Is it for the interest of civilisation 
 that France should be trodden down and dismembered by 
 Germany ? 
 
 To say that France is being trampled on and dis- 
 membered, is to use words far short of the truth. 
 For six months one-third of France has been given up 
 to fire and sword. For 300 or 400 miles vast armies 
 have poured on. Every village they have passed 
 through has been the victim of what is only organised 
 pillage. Every city has been practically sacked, 
 ransacked on system ; its citizens plundered, its civil 
 officials terrorised, imprisoned, outraged, or killed. 
 The civil population has been, contrary to the usage 
 of modern warfare, forced to serve the invading 
 armies, brutally put to death, reduced to wholesale 
 starvation and desolation. Vast tracts of the richest
 
 38 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and most industrious districts of Europe have been 
 deliberately stripped and plunged into famine, solely 
 in order that the invaders might make war cheaply. 
 Irregular troops, contrary to all the practices of war, 
 have been systematically murdered, and civil popu- 
 lations indiscriminately massacred, solely to spread 
 terror. A regular system of ingenious terrorism has 
 been directed against civilians, as horrible as anything 
 in the history of civil or religious wars. Large and 
 populous cities have been, not once, but twenty, 
 thirty, forty times bombarded and burnt, and the 
 women and children in them wantonly slaughtered, 
 with the sole object of inflicting suffering. All this 
 has been done, not in licence or passion, but by the 
 calculating ferocity of scientific soldiers. And, lastly, 
 when the last chance of saving Paris was gone, and it 
 became a matter of a few weeks of famine, they must 
 needs fire and shatter a city of 2,000,000 of souls. 
 
 Let us remember that all this was done and carried 
 on for five months after France had sued for peace in 
 the dust ; and had offered what was practically every- 
 thing except her national independence, and the honour 
 and self-respect of every Frenchman. It is well known 
 that there were no serious terms which France would 
 have rejected short of dismemberment. To give up 
 2,000,000 of the best citizens of France, and make 
 them permanent prisoners to Germany, is what no 
 nation in Europe would do whilst its powers remained. 
 Let Englishmen quietly contemplate surrendering 
 Sussex and Hampshire to an invader, to be per- 
 manently annexed to France. This is what French- 
 men are coolly exhorted to do. But it was much 
 more than this. To give the possession of Metz and 
 Strasburg, the Moselle and the Vosges, to united 
 Germany, is simply to make France her prisoner, to 
 make France what Piedmont was with Austria in the
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 39 
 
 Quadrilateral, what England would be if the whole 
 coast from Dover to the Isle of Wight were made 
 permanently French soil. 
 
 And because Frenchmen rejected these terms, terms 
 which the vilest of Englishmen would, in their own 
 case, turn from with scorn, Prussia has poured on, 
 revelling in this orgy of blood. In politics there are 
 no abstract rights. All matters between nations are a 
 balance of advantages. And even if there were, on the 
 side of Germany, some decent claim for what they 
 sought, humanity will brand the people that insisted' 
 on that claim through all the hideous cost which it 
 involved. A gambler (to pursue their favourite 
 metaphor) may have a fair claim to the stakes he has 
 won ; but we still call him a murderer who deliberately 
 kills the loser that he may seize them. The language- 
 boundary may seem such an obvious arrangement to a 
 pedant at his desk ; and the strategic frontier may run 
 glibly off the journalist's pen. One nation may be 
 most moderate in its demand ; and the other may be 
 most blind in its resistance. But if, in the hard proof 
 of facts, this natural boundary or this moderate claim 
 can be won solely by desolating a million homes, and 
 by turning provinces into one vast charnel-house, it is 
 only the tyrant with the heart of steel who seeks that 
 end at such a cost. 
 
 But I had forgotten "the security" and "the per- 
 manent peace " of Germany ! The security of 
 Germany which, unapt for war, with only a few poor 
 fortresses on the Rhine, and but a million of mere 
 armed citizens, will never be able to rest for fear of 
 France, without a new line of French fortresses, 
 strongholds, and mountain passes. She will never be 
 really safe till she has 2,000,000 of Frenchmen writhing 
 under her grasp on her French border. The poor 
 wolves must have a fold to protect them from the
 
 40 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 greedy sheep. And how can the great German and 
 the great French nations ever dwell, side by side, in 
 unity and peace hereafter, until every French field has 
 been trampled by the Uhlan, till every French home 
 has given up its one or two dead, or at least smelt the 
 petroleum of our highly cultivated troopers ? Once 
 plant in every French heart a feeling that a German is 
 a Red Indian savage on a scalping-party ; sow a blood 
 feud which the very infants may suck in with their 
 mothers' milk, and we shall have ample security and a 
 permanent peace evermore ! 
 
 Can we doubt that the real object of Germany is 
 the dismemberment of France ? I know that the 
 apologists of Prussia here, straining out the last dregs 
 of captious objection, ask us sometimes, with an air of 
 honest doubt, how we know that Bismarck insists on 
 the dismemberment of France ; and one of these 
 advocates has told us, almost indignantly, that if he 
 thought the Prussian had taken Metz (for instance) 
 with any intention of appropriating it for himself, he 
 for one would be the last, etc., etc. To this point is 
 the case of Prussia reduced ! How do we know, for- 
 sooth, that Germany insists on incorporating all Alsace 
 and at least half Lorraine, the Vosges, the Moselle, 
 Strasburg, Metz, and a string of French fortresses, the 
 whole " language-boundary," as the cant runs, and 
 something more^ to be settled by Count Moltke ? We 
 know it because, whatever journalists here may find it 
 convenient to say, every utterance in Germany, official 
 and semi-official, combines to tell us so. We all know 
 now how completely Count Bismarck controls and 
 inspires the whole well-affected press of Germany, and 
 muzzles the ill-affected ; how officials and aspirants to 
 office watch his every look ; how journalists and pro- 
 fessors truckle to his nod. With one consent they all 
 tell us that Germany must have at least all this, and
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 41 
 
 an indefinite something more. If the words of official 
 journals and publicists in high favour are worth any- 
 thing when they assure us that Count Bismarck wants 
 nothing but a united and peaceful Germany, we may 
 trust them not to misrepresent him when they tell us 
 he wants Alsace and Lorraine. To such a length has 
 the belief of this run, that Count Bismarck cannot 
 afford to disappoint it. And yet, seeing the set of 
 this current, and the concurrence of all who were 
 supposed to represent him, he has never directly or 
 indirectly attempted to check it. Whether Count 
 Bismarck demands Alsace and Lorraine or not, it is 
 plain that Germany does, and believes them to be hers 
 as completely as if peace were signed. Men of sense 
 judge matters of politics by what seems reasonable on 
 a balance of probabilities, and cannot be stopped to 
 answer every wild suggestion of an advocate whose case 
 is desperate. 
 
 Whatever Count Bismarck may find it at present 
 convenient to say, or not to say, it is plain to any one 
 of common sense that Germany most undoubtedly does 
 demand large provinces of France, several of her chief 
 fortresses, and a long line of strongholds. If not, if 
 Germany is continuing the war for only some small 
 object, even let us say for Strasburg, the invasion 
 assumes a still more wanton character. Practical 
 politicians will not strain the excited words of M. 
 Jules Favre quite literally, pronounced as they were in 
 September ; nor can they doubt that after an unbroken 
 succession of fresh calamities, Frenchmen would have 
 been inclined to terms had the Germans really been 
 content with anything short of the dismemberment of 
 their country. Had Germany no such end, then the 
 last four months of horror have had no purpose but to 
 satisfy the lust of military glory. But as every utter- 
 ance of those Germans who had the best right to know
 
 42 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 has declared, so every act in the dealing with the 
 conquered provinces has proved, that the wrenching off 
 most vital members of the French nation is the very 
 least of the demands of Germany. 
 
 It may well be that Count Bismarck's ultimate 
 intentions are not yet fully known. But it is not that 
 he will ask less, but a great deal more^ than has yet 
 been claimed for him. When did he ever yet stay his 
 hand in open violence, except that he saw his way to 
 his end by artifice ? If he gave up forcing on the 
 Prussian people his system of army extension, it was 
 only to rouse their military passions more fiercely by 
 corrupting them with baits to their vanity. When he 
 closed the war against Denmark, it was only that he 
 saw his way to seizing her territory by treachery and 
 fraud. When he made peace after Sadowa, it was 
 because he saw that secret diplomacy could thenceforth 
 effect the rest of his programme. Peace or war, 
 fraud or force, are with him only different means to 
 the same end the military aggrandisement of Prussia. 
 He uses both alternately, always in the same onward 
 path. Like the lion in the fable, if he is great in 
 bringing down the prey, he is yet greater in securing 
 the whole of it to himself by chicanery or threats. 
 And it is to this man, as false and as insatiate as the ideal 
 of Macchiavelli, that Europe is to confide for wisdom 
 and moderation. 
 
 It is but too true that we have not Count Bismarck's 
 real demands. For my part, I should wonder if the 
 world has yet heard the half of them. His enemies as 
 yet have found that to make peace with Count Bismarck 
 is as hard a bargain as to continue war with him ; 
 perhaps even a harder. The greatest of the German 
 chiefs loudly declare that they will be satisfied with 
 nothing short of reducing France to a second or a 
 third-rate Power. One of the foremost long since
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 43 
 
 explained this to mean that she was to be placed in 
 the position of Spain. Others use the phrase "of 
 annihilating the power " of France. The " Red 
 Prince," as they delight to call him in the Mohican 
 dialect of the camp, announced his intention of 
 "destroying the power" of France. Now, when 
 have these military chiefs not kept their threats ? 
 Morally speaking, they are men on the level of the 
 Black Prince, Wallenstein, or Charles the Twelfth 
 relics of a past age ; strong, able, born soldiers j of 
 an insatiable ambition, and scorning everything but 
 military honour. To them the annihilation of France 
 is just as worthy an object as it was to Catherine of 
 Russia to destroy Poland or to crush Turkey. They 
 honestly believe themselves capable of it. What is to 
 prevent their attempting it ? The Prussian soldier- 
 caste conceives the destruction of France to be the 
 most glorious of all achievements ; and the Prussian 
 soldier-caste is absolute master for the present of the 
 German people. Count Bismarck is but the organ of 
 that caste, its one man of genius who has seen how to 
 dress up that singular mediaeval figure as the champion 
 of modern ideas, and the leader of the people. But 
 Count Bismarck has not changed the lanz-knecht 
 heart within that caste ; it beats fiercely within him, 
 too. And though he can force its tongue to talk in the 
 language of modern statesmen, its true nature is to be 
 found in men to whom pity is unknown, and progress 
 a by-word, men between whom and modern civilisa- 
 tion there is a feud as deep as between backwoodsmen 
 and Sioux. These are the men no boasters, and no 
 madmen who have declared in tones not loud but 
 deep, for the annihilation of France as a great Power. 
 What is to stand between these men and their end ? 
 The intelligence of Germany ? But every one who 
 knows Germany has seen for my part I have seen for
 
 44 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 twenty years gathering up in the minds of the 
 literary and military classes of Prussia a hatred of 
 France, Frenchmen, and French ideas more deadly 
 than anything we know of in race-feuds. And with 
 this hatred there went a deep, fierce thirst to humble 
 France one day in the dust. I do not pretend that 
 this feeling existed outside the soldier and the academic 
 class. In both, I believe, it was based on mortified 
 pride. Prussians, conscious of their wonderful power 
 both for war and in thought, were stung with rage 
 when they saw how little their unapproachable pre- 
 eminence was recognised in Europe, and how much 
 French egotism and versatility had carried off" from 
 them their legitimate honours. Be the cause what it 
 may, men who have long watched this intense hatred, 
 existing, I admit, in only two classes, and of course 
 not in all members of them, such men have felt and 
 insisted for years that the most gigantic war in history 
 must be the issue of it. 
 
 It has come ; and this hatred has filled its maw, and 
 has swollen to incredible proportions. What, then, is 
 to stop it from working out its avowed end the 
 annihilation of France as a great Power ? The 
 Crown Prince ? And men can build all their hopes 
 on a life, which a stray Chassepot bullet may end, to 
 give us for twenty years the regency of the Red 
 Prince. Who is to stop it ? The intelligence of 
 Germany, now employed in inventing apologies for 
 every act of aggression ? The good sense of the 
 German people ? But the German people are now 
 only the German rank and file, and public opinion is 
 insubordination. The Great Powers of Europe ? 
 But they are employed in doing reverence to the new 
 Emperor, with the ministers of " Happy England " at 
 their head. Let us rest assured that the Prussian 
 chiefs will give up their project of annihilating the
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 45 
 
 power of France for one cause only that they find it 
 impossible. Till they find it impossible they will try, 
 in spite of the conviction of honest burghers in 
 Fatherland that they are a quiet home- loving race, 
 and in spite of goody-goody platitudes from courtly 
 professors. 
 
 Count Bismarck has certainly not told us his 
 ultimate demands. They will include all that has 
 yet been asked for in territory with a large addition 
 (perhaps that of Nancy and the whole of Lorraine). 
 But there will be other demands not necessarily of 
 territory and perhaps not immediately disclosed, the 
 effect of which will be to leave France absolutely at 
 the mercy of Germany. Austria is now of less 
 account in Germany than she was at the moment of 
 peace, and Denmark is also of less account in the 
 Baltic than when she gave up the struggle. Count 
 Bismarck is a swordsman who gives wourtds from 
 which his adversaries do not recover ; but from which 
 they grow weaker and weaker. And when he wipes 
 from his sword the blood shed in this great war, it will 
 be to leave France permanently crippled. Who or 
 what is to stay him ? 
 
 Let us take merely the already announced demands 
 of Prussia, and see how France will stand at the end 
 of the war. There will first be an enormous war 
 indemnity. Its sum-total will, in truth, be some- 
 thing as yet unconceived. It will be measured, how- 
 ever, not by the demands of Germany, but by the 
 limit of what it is possible by direct or indirect means 
 to squeeze out of France. There will then be the 
 prostration of France by the exhaustion of the war, and 
 the desolation and famine of about one-third of her 
 area. She will probably be compelled to cede some of 
 her colonies, and may possibly be restricted in her 
 standing army. Metz, Strasburg, with the whole
 
 46 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 chain of fortresses on the Moselle and Vosges line 
 from Longwy to Belfort will form the rampart, the 
 guns of which are directed upon her heart. The 
 whole of the French will thus be added to the whole 
 of the German strongholds along the left district of 
 the Rhine, and consolidated into a complex chain 
 more tremendous than anything in Europe. It will 
 be the Austrian Quadrilateral multiplied tenfold ; a 
 line for defence preposterously overdone ; for offence 
 almost irresistible. This vast line of forts will hold 
 the east of France in a vice. Within their walls 
 100,000 men may easily in peace be housed, and 
 around them 500,000 may easily in war be sheltered. 
 They are ten days' march from Paris. And between 
 them and Paris not a single fortress, not a single 
 military depot, and scarcely a single defensible line of 
 country exists. 
 
 Now, without giving too much importance to 
 strategic frontiers, it is impossible to be blind to what 
 follows when a strong power posts itself in a menacing- 
 position. If Antwerp in French hands would be a 
 pistol pointed at the heart of England, if Sebastopol 
 was a standing menace to Constantinople, if the Quad- 
 rilateral gave Austria the command of North Italy, 
 then France, with nothing between her capital and 
 this vast strategic line, would be prostrate at the feet 
 of Germany. A Power which commands a million of 
 men, with the overwhelming superiority now proved 
 in a hundred victories, possessing along the left side of 
 the Rhine the chief of all the great fortresses of Europe, 
 and a quadruple quintuple network of strongholds in 
 which the resources of nature have been used by the 
 skill of two nations, would hold France in the hollow 
 of her hand. A fortress is as useful for the most part 
 for offence as for defence, and with the whole of the 
 eastern fortresses of France turned over to Germany,
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 47 
 
 and the heart and capital of France turned naked to 
 their guns, Germany would be as absolutely mistress 
 of France as Austria in Mantua and Verona was 
 mistress of Lombardy and Venetia. Hand over Alsace 
 and Lorraine, and France stands disarmed the prisoner 
 of armed Germany. It is easy for those who turn the 
 selfish growl of the tradesmen into a sneer, to cry out 
 with a gibe " What are two or three departments out 
 of seventy ? what are two millions out of forty ? now 
 you are beaten, pay up the stakes, and for God's sake 
 let us get to business ! " So he with the money-bag : 
 but politicians of common sense know that this is no 
 mere question of surrendering broad provinces or even 
 of giving up good citizens. It is not a prince losing 
 an appanage, or a nation losing a subject province. It 
 is the life or death of France as a great Power. It is 
 her independence as a nation. It is whether she shall 
 be one of the Powers of Europe, or the State prisoner 
 of Imperial Germany. 
 
 " France," say the optimists, " will be always a 
 great Power, come what may." Perhaps so j but 
 not if the Prussian chiefs have their way. The 
 wretched juggle about the language, and the old 
 possessions of the Reich, the whole antiquarian 
 twaddle about Elsass and Lothringen, form only one 
 of Bismarck's tricks to amuse the bookworms ; who, 
 good, silly souls, are flapping their wings with the 
 glee they would feel if some one turned up the real 
 sword of Barbarossa, or proposed to revive the worship 
 of Odin. " The sword of Barbarossa ! " cry the learned 
 geese, "es lebe der Kaiser ! let us try if it will cut 
 off" men's heads. Oh, beautifully ! See how they 
 fly off, and how the corpses writhe ! Lieb Vaterland, 
 magst ruhig seyn ! " So do the professors rejoice 
 exceedingly. For political childishness and social im- 
 morality no one comes near your true Dryasdust. So
 
 48 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 throughout all Germany Teufelsdrockh, with immense 
 glee, is airing the biographies of the Imperial vassals. 
 Then, again, all the learned strategic stuff about the 
 line of the Vosges, and the indispensability of this, 
 and the importance of that to the defence of Father- 
 land, and the mysterious references to the omniscient 
 Moltke, are just another amusement for the journalists 
 and soldiers at home. Mephistopheles, who is as 
 relentless as he is artful, laughs his harsh laugh. Bah ! 
 let the pedants bring home their lost German brothers, 
 with hoch-Teutsch lays, and the wiseacres discuss 
 the defensive powers of the new German frontier ; 
 are the real chiefs of Prussia the men to play these 
 academic pranks, or fight for what they have got fifty 
 times over ? Their real end is a very plain one the 
 annihilation of France as an independent Power. 
 
 Jugglery about language-boundaries and strategic 
 frontiers (in its defensive sense) will soon be swept 
 aside, and the real purpose of Prussian policy will soon 
 be disclosed such a settlement as will leave France 
 prostrate before Germany. Bismarck swore to drive 
 Austria out of Germany. He has done it, and she 
 clings still struggling to its borders. Bismarck and 
 his captains have sworn, too, to drive France 
 (practically) out of Europe. And, if they have their 
 will, they will not rest till they have done it. That 
 is what the language-boundary and the Vosges line, 
 in sober truth, comes to at last ; and what is to 
 prevent them from insisting on it ? The heads of 
 the military caste in Prussia feel towards France what 
 the Roman aristocracy felt towards Carthage. Delenda 
 est Carthago is their policy, and old Bliicher was their 
 Cato. The pedants may go on maundering most beauti- 
 fully about Teutonic civilisation ; but the caste will 
 pursue their end as coolly as if the said pedants were 
 actual, as well as metaphorical, bookworms.
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 49 
 
 The most dreadful part of all this is that peace, 
 even on any terms now demanded by Germany, is 
 not a peace, but a truce. We have it on the best 
 possible authority, that of Count Bismarck. In his 
 cynical frankness, he told us that he knew that 
 France would renew the conflict, and he only wanted 
 a position of superiority to meet it. The truth is 
 that it suits neither the welfare nor the policy of 
 Prussia to complete the destruction of France at 
 once. Place her in a situation of overwhelming 
 mastery, and she would prefer to take her own time. 
 Prussia did not swallow Denmark at one mouthful, 
 nor drive Austria from Germany entirely in the seven 
 weeks' war. But she has planted herself in such a 
 position that she can deal with Denmark or deal with 
 Austria much as she pleases ; and she is assuredly 
 about to do so. With such a settlement as Prussia 
 exacts from France, she can begin again, and finish 
 her task whenever she pleases. There was a first, a 
 second, and a third partition of Poland, arranged at 
 convenient intervals, without too exhausting efforts. 
 And there was a first, and a second, and a third Punic 
 war. As Rome dealt with Carthage, as Prussia dealt 
 with Poland, and as she has since dealt with Austria, 
 so will Count Bismarck deal with France. It might 
 be too hard a task, Europe might be alarmed, if all 
 were done at a blow. But, once place Prussia upon 
 the prostrate body of disarmed France, and the rest is 
 a question of time. No one can imagine, even in the 
 most maudlin hour of optimism, that France can long 
 endure such a lot. Her two millions of oppressed 
 citizens, her sense of helplessness, and the intolerable 
 weight of humiliation, will goad her in some evil 
 hour to a fresh desperate effort. She will rush to 
 arms again like the Poles, or the Carthaginians, 
 without a chance, and almost without a hope ; and
 
 50 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 with a like result. A nation of forty millions of men 
 are not thrust from their ancient place in the world 
 by one war, however crushing ; nor are races nowa- 
 days partitioned and annexed in a single campaign, 
 however triumphant. The seizure of Silesia was a 
 splendid feat of arms, and Austria was crushed for the 
 time. But even in that age Frederick well knew that 
 it was but a truce, to be followed as certainly as night 
 follows day by the Seven Years' War. And France 
 is more than Austria, as Alsace and Lorraine are 
 more than Silesia. And so Frederick's successor tells 
 Europe, with the harsh laugh, what, indeed, we 
 know, and hear with a shudder, that even this 
 horrible war is but the first act j and when he makes 
 peace it will be nothing but a truce. 1 
 
 The prospect, then, which the statesmen of Europe 
 have before them is this : This fearful war is but 
 the beginning of an epoch of war ; it is, in fact, but 
 a first campaign. A new Polish question, a new 
 Venetian subject-province, is established on far larger 
 proportions, and in the centre of Europe. The popu- 
 lation to be torn from France is even more patriotic 
 and more warlike than are either Venetians or Poles. 
 And certainly France is stronger than Austria, and 
 occupies a more central position. But this is not 
 merely a question of subjecting a province to foreign 
 rule ; it is exposing the nation from which it is torn 
 to permanent helplessness. It is easy to say that 
 Austria gave up Venetia, the kingdom of the Nether- 
 lands gave up Belgium, Italy ceded Savoy, and Den- 
 mark Schleswig-Holstein. These examples in no 
 case apply. In all of them the ceded provinces were 
 
 1 We all know now how this danger was averted or perhaps only 
 arrested by the marvellous recovery of France, and largely by the 
 interposition of Russia. We know how a renewal of the war in 1875 
 was prevented by the act of the Czar and Queen Victoria. I wish I 
 could think the danger now passed (1908).
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 51 
 
 not a source of strength, but of weakness. They lay 
 outside the true area of the nation which ceded them, 
 and belonged by many ties to the nation that received 
 them. In the case of Alsace and Lorraine, all these 
 circumstances are reversed. They form an integral 
 part of France, socially, economically, and geographic- 
 ally j in every sense except in some wretched anti- 
 quarian pretence that could be found in any case. 
 They can only be torn from France by the sword, 
 and retained by oppression. And to tear them from 
 France is to expose her to standing helplessness. The 
 true parallel to the case is simply this : What would 
 England be if Hampshire and Sussex were annexed to 
 a foreign country, whose armies were posted in a net- 
 work of arsenals and strongholds along their entire 
 sea-coast. 
 
 We hear it thoughtlessly said : " Well, other 
 nations have ceded provinces, and lost territory ; 
 why is it so terrible for France to do the like, or 
 for Frenchmen to change their nationality ? " It is 
 sufficient to say that in every case in this nineteenth 
 century in which provinces have been ceded, with the 
 exception of Nice (which is yet a standing menace 
 to Europe), it has been done in the name of nation- 
 ality, and not in defiance of it. Colonies, alienated 
 provinces, and the like, have been ceded ; but in no 
 single case has a vital and integral part of a nation, 
 and one of its most intensely national centres, been 
 cut out of its very trunk. For deliberate violation of 
 national right this case stands, therefore, alone in the 
 history of the nineteenth century, or paralleled only 
 in the case of Poland. It is not the cession of a 
 province, but the dismemberment of a nation. It is 
 annexation on a scale and of a character unexampled 
 in more modern times. To find its parallel we must 
 go back to other centuries. .
 
 52 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Be it observed that the sentiment of nationality 
 is the birth of recent times ; sprung, in fact, from 
 the Revolution. In the old days of dynastic wars 
 nations in our sense hardly existed, or existed only 
 in England and France. The principal kingdoms 
 consisted of bundles of duchies, fiefs, and princi- 
 palities, with little sense of national coherence. To 
 transfer them from one sovereign to another may 
 have weakened the power of the ruler, yet it was 
 but a small shock to the feelings of the population 
 transferred, and hardly any to the other lieges of the 
 sovereign to whom they ceased to belong. Cession 
 of provinces, as the result of war, was then a dynastic 
 and feudal question, and may have had some reason ; 
 for national rights hardly existed. One German 
 savant, in that spirit of grotesque chicanery which 
 this war has developed in that ingenious body, has 
 told us that it is quite immoral to end a war without 
 cession of territory. Others have deluged us from 
 their note-books with instances from the history of 
 the House of Capet or the House of Hapsburg. 
 Antiquarian rubbish ! The intense spirit of nation- 
 ality has revolutionised these matters entirely. It is 
 but of recent birth, but it is now one of the prime 
 movers of the European system. Guai a chi la tocca. 
 Barbarossa may indeed awake, but if he venture to 
 recast Europe with the mediaeval notions with which 
 he went down into his tomb, more especially if he 
 attempt it in France, democratised and nationalised, 
 and in the enthusiasm of a new Republican spirit, 
 this weird phantom of a dead past will be plunging 
 the nations of our time into a new era of revolution 
 and war. 
 
 A very eminent historian has lately put forward 
 a defence for this and other acts of the Prussian 
 monarchy, by comparing it with what was done by
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 53 
 
 Plantagenet or Tudor kings in England, and by the 
 House of Capet in France. One would think it was 
 only necessary to be an historian, to set aside the 
 principles on which modern nations depend for their 
 existence. Why the very charge against the Prussian 
 dynasty and its advisers is, that they are carrying into 
 modern policy those violent and unjust practices of 
 old times, which it is the function of modern civilisa- 
 tion to repudiate and to repress. They are simply 
 Tudors and Capets in the nineteenth century ; and 
 that is what the nineteenth century will never endure. 
 The attempt to repeat the process by which dynasties 
 of old formed nations is the worst of all offences now 
 against the rights and peace of nations. It is precisely 
 because the Prussian monarch belongs to an era and a 
 caste which has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, 
 that he is outraging the conscience of modern Europe, 
 and perpetrating a wrong against nations, more fatal 
 than any other since the revolutionary wars, and against 
 which the modern world must remain in permanent 
 insurrection. 
 
 Let us now consider the position of England at the 
 close of this war. France, from the necessity of the 
 case, will be so much exhausted and humiliated, that 
 independent action in Europe would be in any case 
 impossible to her. But that she is feeble will be the 
 least part of the case. She will be so completely at 
 the mercy of Germany, that for the present she must 
 cease to count as one of the Great Powers. When 
 diplomacy has finished the work of war, she will not 
 dare to profess a policy contrary to that of Prussia. 
 She will not be in the position of Russia at the close 
 of the Crimean war, exhausted, but powerful and 
 independent. She will be like Poland after the first 
 partition, or like Piedmont after Novara, at the mercy 
 of an enemy who can march at any moment on her
 
 54 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 defenceless capital. She must, therefore, for any 
 practical purpose retire from the councils of Europe, 
 or enter them, as now, for the purpose only of making 
 her indignation heard, of fomenting discord, or of 
 grasping at any ally at almost any price. 1 
 
 The problem that English statesmen have to face is, 
 how to maintain our position in Europe when France 
 has ceased to be an element in the question. Let 
 them look back for one or two generations, and weigh 
 the importance of those interests in which England 
 and France were as one. Ever since the days of the 
 Holy Alliance, and the recovery from the great spasm 
 of the Revolutionary war, no fact in the history of 
 Europe has been more marked than the growing 
 tendency towards union in the policy of France and 
 England. In spite of dynastic or ministerial intrigues, 
 gradually for forty years it has been growing more 
 clear that in France and in England the weight of the 
 popular feeling marched onwards in parallel lines, and 
 that France and England stood out as the guarantees 
 in the long run for progress and for right. England 
 and France were felt by all to be great powers, second 
 to none in material strength ; the one supposed to be 
 supreme by sea and the other by land, whilst they 
 were the only states in Europe where the liberal 
 feeling of the nation had strength to prevent their 
 respective Governments from long continuing on the 
 wrong side. 
 
 During the last generation there have been four 
 great questions of European importance. In all or 
 these France and England, in the main, had a common 
 purpose. In the question of Turkey and the East, 
 
 1 This imminent danger was averted, first, by the extraordinary power 
 of recuperation by France, a power which astonished and alarmed Bismarck, 
 and next, by the strange alliance with Russia even less to be foreseen 
 an alliance which had the tacit approval of England (1908).
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 55 
 
 disfigured as their action was by private jealousies, 
 they at least concurred in this : both England and 
 France were opposed to the absorption of Turkey in 
 the Muscovite empire, and both favoured the status 
 quo in the East as the least disturbing issue possible. 
 In the key of the English policy, the French on the 
 whole agreed that the Eastern Mediterranean should 
 not become the prey either of anarchy or of the Czar. 
 During the Crimean war that alliance was deepened 
 and confirmed ; and since the taking of Sebastopol 
 there has grown up a tacit acknowledgment, too often 
 not justified by facts, that in the long run England 
 and France were the representatives of the cause of 
 national independence, in the Mediterranean as well 
 as in the Baltic. 
 
 The case of Poland came next. And to whom did 
 Poland look in spite of repeated disappointment to 
 whom could she look but to England and to France ? 
 There again the policy of our two nations, emphatic- 
 ally of both peoples, and mainly of both Governments, 
 has worked together. And though on no single 
 occasion has the Government of both agreed on any 
 common plan of active intervention, their assistance 
 has not been wholly in vain ; and their moral support 
 has enabled the Poles to maintain their national 
 traditions under all the tyranny of the Eastern 
 despotisms. 
 
 Throughout the whole of this period there existed 
 the Italian question ; and here again, in spite of the 
 insincere policy of Napoleon, the French and the 
 English people heartily concurred. With the ruler of 
 France, and sections of Frenchmen, selfish interests 
 held the foremost place ; but no one can doubt that it 
 was by the persistent support which the French and the 
 English nation gave to the principles of national right, 
 that Italy has at length regained her independence.
 
 56 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Then came the Danish war, the first beginning of 
 that career of aggression which is now triumphing 
 in France. Here again the French people and the 
 English were entirely as one. And though the 
 French ministry, but lately rebuffed on the Polish 
 question, declined (as we now know) to join the English 
 in active operations, the mere fact of a proposal of the 
 kind having passed between them, is a proof how 
 closely the two countries felt the cause of independence 
 to be violated by the attempt to partition Denmark, 
 and how much their joint support contributed to save 
 her from utter extinction. 
 
 In the East the fleets and armies of France and 
 England have acted even more directly in concert. 
 But I abstain from making any use of the arguments 
 to be found in the support which England has 
 received from France in Asia. In neither case do I 
 believe the interference to have been for the good of 
 civilisation, though perhaps it was rendered less in- 
 jurious to it by the presence of two rival nations in 
 concert. I freely admit that there have been many 
 questions in which the French nation has been 
 opposed. to the English, and still more frequently their 
 Government to ours. It is sufficient to point out 
 that in the four principal questions which have deeply 
 stirred Europe within this generation, the French 
 nation had joint interests and sympathies with our 
 own, and were actuated by the same principles to 
 follow a common policy. 
 
 Even when, as is too true, the wretched Govern- 
 ment of Napoleon, and at times the French people, 
 engaged in or tended towards a course fatal to pro- 
 gress and peace, and hostile to our common traditions, 
 the English policy and public opinion have been able 
 to modify and control those of France by virtue of the 
 sense of our many common interests. In the Italian
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 57 
 
 question, in the American civil war, in the Danubian 
 questions, in the Mexican interference, and even in 
 the Luxemburg difficulty in 1867, where the miser- 
 able ambition of the Imperial dynasty was embarked 
 on a retrograde course, the moral strength of England 
 has exercised a most salutary control, and gained an 
 ultimate ascendency for right, by virtue of its being 
 felt by the French people to represent the voice of an 
 honest and genuine friend. Looking at it broadly, as 
 national policy alone can be looked at, and seeking 
 only for what is fundamental, a fair mind will allow 
 that the co-operation of France with England has 
 been a solid and a great fact ; that the alliance has 
 been on the whole a real thing, and an alliance in the 
 main for good. 
 
 It is all over now ; and where are we to find its 
 like ? On all these four typical questions of European 
 policy, whilst France at heart was with us and with 
 the right, Prussia, the new mistress of Europe, was 
 against us and with the wrong. In the Crimean war 
 she threw her undisguised sympathies and her secret 
 influence on the side of Muscovite aggression. In the 
 Polish question she played into the hands of the 
 oppressors, for is she not one of the standing oppressors 
 herself? In the Italian question she joined her cause 
 with Austria, and declared for the permanent en- 
 slavement of Italy by German bayonets. Nay, 
 more, in 1859, sne declared Venetia a strategic 
 question for Germany, though for her own ends, in 
 1866, she found means to surrender it. Of the 
 Danish question it is needless to speak, for she 
 was the author and head of that wanton spoliation. 
 On all these great questions, in which England stood 
 forth with France as the guardian of right and 
 respect for nations, she will find herself now face to 
 face with that gigantic Despotism which is the very
 
 58 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 embodiment of the wrong ; and she will find herself 
 before that Power alone. 1 
 
 Condemn, as we may, the national faults of France, 
 denounce, as we please, their pretension to supremacy 
 in Europe (a pretension exactly equivalent to that 
 which England makes to maritime supremacy), we 
 must still feel that in no other nation does there exist 
 a public opinion so akin to our own, and at the same 
 time so completely in the ascendant. The heart of 
 the great French nation beats with that of our own, 
 and we feel its pulsations in every workshop and every 
 cottage of the land. The true modern life breathes 
 in both of us equally : the same generous sympathies, 
 the same faith in progress, the like yearning for a 
 social regeneration of the West. And France, we feel, 
 has been truly passed through the Revolution : the 
 social rule of caste, the dead-weight of feudal institu- 
 tions, the organised reaction, has passed away from 
 them, far more than from us, and certainly far more 
 than from any other people in Europe. Anarchy and 
 tyranny in turn afflict them for a season ; but we 
 know that in France the reign of neither can be long. 
 We feel that in spite of repeated failures and errors, 
 and the misdeeds of rulers, there still lives the great 
 French people, animated by noble ideas, the slaves of 
 no caste and of no system, who in the long run are 
 always, and are worthy to be, the masters of the 
 destinies of France. 
 
 It is so now, and it has been so in the past. The 
 true history of France, seen in the light of a broad 
 survey of the annals of mankind, is the history of a 
 nation which has been in the van of progress. She 
 who led Europe in the Crusades to resist the aggression 
 
 1 Happily, in the present reign things are changed. The fears of 
 1871 are modified not extinct in 1908. The doubtful hopes of 1871 
 are almost now real facts (1908).
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 59 
 
 of the Saracen ; she who built up the great central 
 monarchy in Europe out of feudal chaos, and inaugur- 
 ated the institutions of modern government out of the 
 antique armoury of chivalry ; she who kept at bay the 
 bigotry and tyranny which once menaced Europe from 
 Hapsburg ambition, rose out of a century and a half of 
 restless thought and evil policy into the Revolution, 
 which, with all its crimes, was the new birth of 
 modern society. In the true philosophy of history, it 
 is France who (often backsliding, and often the enemy 
 of right) has been in the main foremost in the cause 
 of civilisation. Let us leave it to half-crazy pedants to 
 represent her as the evil destiny of nations. Men who 
 have grown purblind and anti-social whilst working 
 deep down in the stifling mines of German records, 
 see the good spirit of mankind in the wild and valorous 
 doings of panoplied Rittmeisters ; of the Grafs and 
 Kaisers who prolonged the Middle Ages down into 
 the sixteenth or the seventeenth century. The good 
 sense of mankind has long agreed that the great 
 French nation holds a precious part in the history of 
 civilisation j a part which she held of old, and holds 
 still : her place no other can supply. 1 
 
 We need not thereby deny the great and noble 
 qualities of other races in Europe, much less of the 
 massive and energetic German people. But the good 
 sense of Englishmen is agreed that nowhere (for 
 America distinctly stands aloof from Continental 
 questions) do they find, as they do in the French, a 
 people combining the same sympathies and interests as 
 their own, with so high a power of giving them effect. 
 How can the new German Empire supply that place ? 
 How can the free and peaceful policy of England look 
 
 1 It has needed more than thirty years for English statesmen 
 thoroughly to realise this. Events in the late decade have forced it on 
 them (1908).
 
 60 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 for its right hand to the Prussian dynasty and its 
 military chiefs ? The Hohenzollern monarchy has 
 traditions more unchanged and rooted than any house 
 in Europe. They are traditions of national aggrandise- 
 ment, of military power, of royal prerogative, and 
 divine right. It represents, and is proud of repre- 
 senting, the despotic, warlike, retrograde forces of 
 Europe. The key of its policy has been common 
 cause with Russia. Its aim has been to broaden the 
 foundations of its own ascendency. Not a single liberal 
 movement in Europe has ever found in it a friend ; 
 not one service to civilisation or to peace can it boast. 
 Its great pride has been that, alone of the five great 
 Powers, it has upheld unbending the old royalty and 
 chivalry as it existed before the Revolution. Such is 
 the Power with which the Parliamentary Ministers of 
 this free English nation are to form their future 
 alliances, or to whose will they are to bow in sub- 
 mission. The scared Ministers of " happy England " 
 do not lift up the eyes to dream of an alliance with the 
 successor of Barbarossa ; but they are offering him 
 their homage at Versailles, as if the House of Guelf 
 were one of the mediatised princes. 1 
 
 Optimists, with a tincture of German literature, 
 are fond of assuring us that however little hope civilisa- 
 tion can find in the Hohenzollern dynasty, the great 
 German people will set all right in their own good 
 time. Far be it from us to deny the admirable 
 qualities of the German people, more especially their 
 high cultivation of all sorts, and their splendid in- 
 tellectual gifts. Professors, with a nal've enthusiasm, 
 rehearse the tale of Teutonic literature, science, and 
 art ; grow maudlin over the domestic virtues of the 
 German home ; and celebrate it as the nursery of 
 the best of fathers and the truest of friends. Well 
 
 1 We sing a very different song to-day (1908).
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 61 
 
 and good ; but the question is what has the Prussian 
 dynasty done for the peace of Europe ? A race may 
 have the highest intellectual and personal gifts, and 
 yet not as a nation have consciously assumed any 
 great international function. After all, the value of 
 a nation in the common councils depends on its social 
 forces, on its consciousness of public duties, rather 
 than on its intellectual brilliancy. In their later ages 
 the Greeks, with their matchless mental gifts, were of 
 almost no account as a nation ; whilst the Romans, in 
 cultivation far their inferiors, were foremost by the 
 ascendency of their national genius. The real strength 
 of a nation, especially in these days, consists not in its 
 achievements in science or art, but in the degree to 
 which its national will can command the sympathies 
 and give shape to the wants of the age. This is now 
 the only claim which a nation can possess to the 
 supremacy amongst nations. And it is this which 
 Germany is yet too inorganic, too much encumbered 
 with the debris of the past, and too little conscious of 
 national duty, reasonably to* assert. 
 
 Worthy and enlightened souls as the good German 
 burghers are in many relations of life, socially and 
 politically they are what we in the West of Europe, 
 or what Americans, call, decidedly backward. They 
 have a wonderful army, a consummate administration, 
 a high-pressure educational machinery, an omniscient 
 press, and a number of other surprising social produc- 
 tions, but, with all that, they have not the true 
 political genius. They still live under a grotesque 
 medley of antiquated princelets, who are not, like our 
 monarchy and aristocracy, modernised into the mere 
 heads of society, but are living remnants of feudal 
 chieftainship. The rule of these princes still rests on 
 divine right, on vassal devotion, and military subordina- 
 tion. It is buttressed round by the serried ranks of a
 
 62 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 social hierarchy, also feudal in its pretensions and in 
 its strength, not like our own, modernised and trans- 
 formed to the uses of a democratic society, but standing 
 in all the naked antiquity of its preposterous pride. 
 Society, therefore, in Germany, is heavily oppressed 
 by the superincumbent mass of strata upon strata of 
 old-world orders and venerable institutions, habits, and 
 ideas, of which a great free and progressive people, 
 as we here understand it, would never endure the 
 weight. 
 
 There is, therefore, in Prussia no true public opinion. 
 Politics are discussed with unfathomable profundity, 
 and the press peers into public affairs with well-regulated 
 curiosity ; but for true influence on the policy of 
 Prussia the people of Prussia count nothing. An 
 eminent encomiast of the German empire has but 
 recently acknowledged that, great as the proportions 
 of the new edifice" will prove, it will still want some 
 of the modern improvements of the State fabric. It 
 will not be (of course) a constitutional affair, it is not 
 intended to be a parliamentary government, there is 
 no idea of having ministerial responsibility, or of 
 public opinion controlling the army or the finances 
 of the State. For my part I am not enamoured of 
 our present form of parliamentary government j but I 
 do maintain that a government which is in no sense 
 to be the organ of public opinion, is not a free and 
 not a progressive government. The Prussian regime 
 is not one which has passed beyond a parliamentary 
 system, but one which has never reached it. It looks 
 upon the voice of the nation as Tudors or Stuarts 
 looked at it, as something which may offer respectful 
 comments, but is never to exercise control. This is 
 the ideal of government which accords with every 
 tradition of the house of Hohenzollern, which is main- 
 tained by the yet unshaken strength of a social system
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 63 
 
 pledged to defend it by pride as much as by interest, 
 which the middle-class Prussian accepts by every habit 
 of his nature, and worships with instinctive idolatry. 
 It will be a revolution only that can shake it. 
 
 But the true character of this Hohenzollern dynasty 
 is determined by that "peculiar institution " of Prussia, 
 the Junker class. It is a phenomenon to which no 
 parallel exists in Europe, a genuine aristocratic military 
 caste. It is not like our own aristocracy, rich, peace- 
 ful, and half-bourgeois. It is not like the French 
 imperial army, a mere staff of officers, with no local 
 or social influence. It is not like the Spanish order 
 of Grandees, an effete body of incapables. It is an 
 order of men knit together by all the ties of family 
 pride and interest ; with an historic social influence ; 
 with a high education, and a strong nature of a special 
 sort ; rich enough to have local power both in town 
 and country ; and yet so poor as to depend for exist- 
 ence on the throne and with all this, devoted 
 passionately, necessarily, to war. It is a caste, which 
 an aspiring dynasty has moulded out of the Ritters 
 and Grafs of mediaeval Germany. The Williams and 
 Fredericks, with their strong hand, have taken the 
 fierce old lanz-knecht and his children, given him a 
 scanty manor and a soldier's pension, drilled him into 
 the best soldier in the world, tutored him in the 
 absolute science of destruction, given him two watch- 
 words " King " and " God " and kept him for 
 every other purpose a simple mediaeval knight. He is 
 now the ideal of the scientific soldier, always a gallant, 
 often a cultivated man, but in this industrial and pro- 
 gressive age, an anachronism. Scratch the Junker, 
 and you will find the Lanz - Knecht. We have 
 nothing to compare with him, though he reminds one 
 a little of the Rajpoot caste in Oude, or the Japanese 
 Daimio and his Ronins. The last time these islands
 
 64 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 saw his like, was when Charles Edward led his High- 
 land chieftains on their raid. The difference is, that 
 the Junker is a social and political power, civilised in 
 all the material sides to the last point of modern 
 science. Morally and socially, in all that we look for 
 in peace and progress, he is as abnormal and foreign 
 an element as if Fergus Mclvor were amongst us with 
 his claymore. 
 
 It was the fashion (not unnaturally) to treat this 
 order as of small political account. But they have 
 now thrown up their man of genius, they are the 
 true masters of the situation, and they have embarked 
 their King on a new career, in which he will be unable 
 to stop. Count Bismarck has found how this caste 
 may make itself a necessity for the nation, how it can 
 step forward as the right arm to work out the national 
 dream, and in the name of Nationality and Peace may 
 found a new military supremacy. He has done with 
 profounder craft what Napoleon did at the close of last 
 century, and has debauched the spirit of patriotic 
 defence into a thirst for glory and domination. Who 
 thought in 1792 that the acclaims of Frenchmen for 
 universal philanthropy (more passionate and real than 
 those of German eruditi in 1870) were destined to 
 glide, step by step, into the sanguinary vanity of the 
 Napoleonic wars ? At every move in the game of 
 ambition, the self-love of the people and the degrada- 
 tion of the army grew with an equal growth. Like 
 Napoleon, Bismarck must go on, feeding an Empire 
 of military supremacy by fresh pretensions. 
 
 The situation is so unreal that it must be sustained 
 by further crimes. The Empire, threatened already 
 by the people, must rest on the vast soldier caste ; to 
 reward and stimulate that soldier caste, fresh aliment 
 must be found for its soldier pride. Russia, Austria, 
 France, must some day look askance, even if our
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 65 
 
 merchants still smirk before the new Empire, with a 
 tradesman's bow. To maintain an attitude founded 
 upon wrong, fresh wrongs must be ventured. The 
 weight of the new Despotism, threatened from 
 its birth both at home and abroad, must tell on the 
 deluded German people. And to repress their opposi- 
 tion, their national vanity must be fed with fresh 
 stimulants, or their efforts swallowed up in a new 
 convulsion. Bismarck plays with Fatherland to the 
 German burgher, as Napoleon I. played the Coalition 
 to the bourgeois of France, or Napoleon III. the 
 Spectre Rouge. As to the chiefs of the German 
 army, and its whole officer class, war is their profession, 
 and their social monopoly. They no more desire 
 peace than the lawyer desires to close courts of justice, 
 or the Roman patrician desired to close the Temple of 
 Janus. A military Empire now has but one career to 
 run that of Napoleon I. that of Napoleon III. 
 Those States who take the sword for their title, must 
 perish by the sword. 
 
 The new Empire of Germany is thus, in its origin, 
 a menace to Europe. The house of Hohenzollern, 
 with its traditions of aggrandisement, with its con- 
 summate bureaucratic machinery, and its bodyguard of 
 a warlike caste, can never be the titular chief of peace- 
 ful industrial German kingdoms. It is no case of 
 chance personal despotism, or mushroom revolutionary 
 adventurer. It is a great power, whose roots go deep 
 into every pore of the two upper classes of German 
 society. It is arbitrary, military, fanatical. In one 
 word, it is the enemy of modern progress. Though 
 not representing the German people, it has debauched 
 and masters the German people. Six months of this 
 gigantic war have turned the flower of the German 
 citizens into professional troopers. The very fact that 
 they have as a nation submitted to the military yoke, 
 
 F
 
 66 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the fact that every German is a soldier, is itself a proof 
 of a lower type of civilisation, and marks them as a 
 nation capable of becoming a curse to their neighbours. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that this new power 
 has any distinct vision of further conquests, or uni- 
 versal dominion. It is quite sufficient calamity to 
 Europe that such a power should possess paramount 
 supremacy. It may be the good German souls are 
 right, and that neither they nor the Empire, which is 
 another thing, mean any harm. But why are the 
 nations to depend for existence on the forbearance of 
 their mighty neighbour ? And if we are safe, are all 
 the smaller states safe ? The one thing which is now 
 the dream of the North German is a great navy and 
 power at sea. 1 To this end the very friends of Prussia 
 admit that Continental Denmark is necessary for her. 
 The inevitable result of such a career as that of Prussia 
 is, that she must seek to be the mistress of the Baltic. 
 She will begin by coercing, and end by absorbing all 
 who stand in her way. As to Holland, every step in 
 affairs brings her nearer and nearer to the inevitable fate. 
 And England will yet come to see that she must stand 
 alone to defend the existence, to guarantee the inde- 
 pendence of those industrious, friendly kingdoms along 
 the northern seas, or consent to see them made the 
 instruments of a new and far nearer Russia. 
 
 In the centre and South of Europe, Prussia, if this 
 war close with her undisputed triumph, can arrange 
 everything at her own good pleasure. The question 
 of the Danube, the very existence of Turkey, 2 hang 
 upon her favour, and will be determined by her in- 
 terests. For as the first-fruits of the new supremacy, 
 
 1 This forecast of 1871 has a very different meaning in 1908. In 
 1871 the German navy was a quanthe negligeable, 
 
 3 The Sultan has long found the German Empire his best his only 
 friend. Thus secured, he has a free hand in crime (1908).
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 67 
 
 Austria, who at first was calling out for English 
 support, is for very life drawing near in obsequious 
 deference to the conqueror. Italy may at any moment 
 be ordered to restore or to satisfy the Pope. And 
 Switzerland finds herself surrounded by a new danger. 
 With a power so tremendous, and an ambition so 
 ruthless, as that which Prussia has exhibited, every- 
 thing is possible, and every nation is unsafe. But the 
 matter for us is not so much whether Prussia will 
 overrun Europe, or swallow up this or that smaller 
 nation. All that is for the future ; but what is in the 
 present, our actual calamity, is this : the greatest shock 
 of this century has been given to the principle of 
 national rights ; the black flag of conquest has been 
 unfurled by a dominant power ; one nation has gained 
 a supremacy in arms which puts the security of every 
 other at her sufferance, and that a nation directed by a 
 policy against which every free people is in permanent 
 revolt. 
 
 Such is the result which an English Government 
 has watched gathering up for six months, now with an 
 air of Pharisaical neutrality, now with a flood of pulpit 
 good advice. European politics form a world in which 
 the forces are tremendous. To cope with them are 
 needed great insight and resolute natures, and not 
 fluent tongues. Statesmen need something to deal 
 with them more solid than pretty essays j they can be 
 touched only by deeds, and not by words. No nation 
 can stand apart, gaping on in maudlin hymns to its own 
 exceeding good fortune, or pouring out its eloquent 
 laments over the naughtiness of its neighbours. If 
 the foundation of a great military empire, overshadow- 
 ing all Europe, be in truth a good thing, let us make 
 it the new basis of our foreign policy, and not crawl 
 like mere courtiers to the conqueror's footstool. But 
 if it be a bad thing, and a danger to us and to the
 
 68 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 common peace, by all the traditions of the British race 
 let us throw our whole force to prevent its triumph. 
 Act ; for act you must ; to stand still is to be on its 
 side. Act with your moral force, if you please, since 
 we are told that England has no physical force left ; 
 act even with your moral force, for that may yet be 
 something. Have a policy, declare it, and act on it. 
 
 It is impossible to be morally neutral. If you 
 mean well to the conqueror, stand up and preach 
 sermons upon peace ; for that is to truckle to the 
 stronger. If you do not see his triumph with delight, 
 you must show him so with something stronger than 
 affectionate remonstrance or copy-book exhortations 
 to keep the Ten Commandments. Nations in this 
 wicked world are seldom amenable to moral lectures, 
 and a nation flushed with glory and ambition can be 
 touched by nothing but the fear of retribution. When 
 England stands by, and sees, without moving, the 
 whole face of Europe transformed and a new principle 
 enthroned amongst nations, she is virtually its accom- 
 plice. A great nation, in spite of itself, must play a 
 part. It cannot stand by, like a field-preacher, at a 
 street-fight, crying out with benevolent imbecility 
 "My friends, keep clear of those wicked men ! 
 Wicked men, shake hands and be friends ! " To 
 offer good counsels to Prussia is to become her play- 
 thing, or her parasite. You might as well throw 
 tracts and hymn-books at a tiger. 
 
 " What can we do ? " cries that cynical No- Policy 
 with which the governing classes have contrived to 
 gild and to satisfy the gross selfishness of the trader. 
 "What!" sneers the organ of the money -dealers, 
 "are we for the balance of power and intervention in 
 this latter half of the nineteenth century ? " If to 
 have national interests and duties, and to act for the 
 maintenance of those- interests, and in defence of
 
 THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 69 
 
 rights, if this be intervention, it has not yet ceased to 
 be the policy of this country, and let us trust it never 
 will. England has continually intervened when it 
 seemed to be her interest and her right. She inter- 
 vened in 1854 to protect Turkey from absorption; 
 she is intervening at this moment for the same end ; 
 she intervened but the other day to preserve Belgium. 
 She intervened persistently and effectively against the 
 retrograde oppression of the old Austrian empire. 
 Her policy in Asia is one perpetual and restless inter- 
 vention. As to the balance of power, if the pedantic 
 and jealous adherence to the status quo was a source of 
 danger and of wrong, which the good sense of our time 
 has rejected, there is a sense in which it is an invaluable 
 safeguard against the preponderance of power. 
 
 It is true still, that it will be a dark day for 
 Europe when any one Power shall hold the rest in the 
 hollow of its mailed hand. If it was a menace to 
 Europe when the House of Hapsburg or of Capet 
 threatened to absorb half Europe, if it was an Euro- 
 pean calamity when Napoleon ruled from Berlin to 
 Madrid, so it will be the knell of peace and liberty 
 when the triumphant Empire of Germany bestrides 
 the Continent without an equal. If it succeed in 
 doing so it will be the act of England, who stands by, 
 trading and sermonising, selling arms but using none, 
 " bellum cauponantes, non belligerantes," droning out 
 homilies and betraying every duty of a nation. It 
 will be the crowning proof of the degradation of those 
 governing orders who have bought power by subser- 
 vience to the traders, and surrendered the traditions of 
 their ancestors ; that they who can make war at the 
 bidding of a knot of merchants, and call Europe into 
 conference for some supposed commercial interest, 
 have nothing in this, the greatest revolution in the 
 State system of modern Europe, but a policy of
 
 70 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 absolute abnegation ; a policy which thoughtful 
 politicians know to be suicidal, and the mass of the 
 people feel to be shameful ; the policy which the new 
 Emperor of the West told them with a gibe, as they 
 came bowing to his court, was the only policy that 
 remained for them the policy of effacement. 
 
 January 17, 1871.
 
 Ill 
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 
 
 (June 1874) 
 
 The following Essay was written in May 1874, and was 
 published in the Fortnightly Review of that year 
 (vol. xv.~). At the time the whole of the milliards 
 (200,000,000) had been paid by France, and her 
 territory evacuated by Germany. A fierce struggle 
 under the " Marshalate " was being carried on by De 
 Broglie and the Bonapartists against the Republicans, led 
 by Thiers and Gambetta. The political parties and the 
 National Assembly were torn by monarchist and imperialist 
 intrigues, and the existence of the Republican form hung 
 doubtfully on the divisions of the reactionary sections. In 
 the meantime the German chiefs were contemplating a 
 fresh invasion, which became imminent in the following 
 year, 1875. The peril of the Republic, and even of 
 France, was extreme (1908). 
 
 MANIFOLD and subtle are the theories propounded to 
 account for the evils which have fallen upon France. 
 It is a subject to exercise our powers of invention, and 
 to gratify our sense of morality ; so that every man 
 has an explanation of his own, which differs with his 
 politics, his habits, or his creed. Democracy, des- 
 potism, Dumas, pilgrimages, Voltaire, absinthe, Malthus, 
 or bah-masques are the theories chiefly in favour. Yet
 
 72 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 there is, one would think, an explanation before our 
 eyes quite as simple, and far more complete. If we 
 miss it, it is only because it is too familiar to us, so 
 manifest that we are apt to forget its presence that 
 it towers above like a mountain, whilst we are staring 
 at the foreground. That grand cause of all is simply 
 the Revolution, still in the course of its long agony. 
 Often as it happens that we cannot see the wood for 
 the trees, it was never more so than when things 
 which are but the undergrowth of the Revolution 
 prevent us from seeing the Revolution itself. 
 
 Rightly to judge the condition of France, the first 
 thing is to recognise that she is still in the crisis of 
 organic revolution. It is too late to moralise or com- 
 plain over this obvious fact. We might as well 
 reproach our first parents with the Fall of man. And 
 it is idle to inveigh against evils which are the 
 inevitable results of the revolutionary state, when we 
 have made up our minds that the revolution itself 
 must be accepted. It was an unlucky piece of 
 hypercriticism in a great master of logic when he said 
 that the term revolution meant nothing definite or 
 real. The Revolution, at any rate in France, is the 
 most real fact of our age. The Revolution is the 
 change from the feudal to the industrial phase of 
 society, from the aristocratic to the republican form 
 of government, from the Church and terrorism to 
 good sense and humanity. It is transforming at 
 once ideas, habits, institutions, nations, and societies. 
 Under it the national sentiment is taking a new 
 departure, partly widening into that of the great 
 community of the people, partly intensifying itself in 
 the form of local republicanism. 
 
 Under the same influence the struggle of the 
 people for political and social emancipation makes 
 everything spasmodic and provisional. When we see
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 73 
 
 constitution after constitution torn to pieces in France, 
 it is simply that the Revolution has left the great 
 fight of classes still undecided. If anarchical in- 
 surrections are succeeded by murderous tyrannies, it 
 is the Revolution raging in the death-grapple of two 
 types of society. If government seems paralysed and 
 dissolved into a Babel of changing impulses, it is 
 simply the ebb and flow of the revolutionary battle. 
 The cross-purpose, the dead-lock, the ceaseless repeti- 
 tion, the round-and-round restlessness of politics in 
 France, are nothing but the sway of parties in this 
 secular contest. To complain of it is as idle as to 
 complain of the smoke and of the dead and dying in 
 a battle. There stand face to face two great prin- 
 ciples, which all modern history has been preparing ; 
 it is a struggle in which all nations are more or less 
 sharing, but which in its acutest form is concentrated 
 in France ; it is a struggle which cannot be fought 
 out either soon or gently, for it claims generations of 
 men, infinite destruction, suffering, and death. On 
 this issue hang the most momentous consequences 
 for evil and for good, for France and for Europe ; and 
 its effects are so grand and so inevitable that it is 
 useless to dilate upon the trivialities, the confusions, 
 the corruptions, the follies, the helplessness, which are 
 but its symptoms and concomitants. 
 
 The great war and the great overthrow which we 
 have lately witnessed in France are but an episode in 
 the greater civil war. France marched upon the 
 Rhine in the mere delirium of civil war ; she lies 
 prostrate before Germany in the exhaustion of civil 
 war, because civil war had almost dissolved her as a 
 nation. Parties and classes within her hate and fear 
 each other more than the invader. National spirit 
 has been broken, because the national sentiment itself 
 has been made a new weapon of civil war. Religion
 
 74 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is used as a means of party victory, and, in the language 
 of the day, the Bon Dieu has become a deputy, and 
 sits on the Extreme Right. So far from its being 
 matter of wonder that France should be weak, divided, 
 and restless, it would be wonderful if she were not. 
 The real wonder is that she exists as a nation at all, 
 and that her political mechanism still works as a whole 
 in the midst of these social battles. Nations engaged 
 in civil war are always distracted and changeful, and 
 usually a prey to their neighbours ; and it is so far to 
 the credit of the French people that they are carrying 
 on their social war without actual fighting or material 
 anarchy. 
 
 The nations of Europe, who from the comparative 
 calm of their national unity point the finger of scorn 
 at France, should at least remember that the evils 
 which she endures have an origin in European even 
 more than in French causes. That is to say, the 
 problems which her people have to solve, the social 
 war which she is battling through, and the desperate 
 parties and principles within her, are common to all 
 parts of civilised Europe, and are fed by European 
 resources. For various reasons these great social 
 crises are brought to their acutest and earliest phases 
 in France. But the issues are being fought out for 
 Europe, and are envenomed and protracted by Euro- 
 pean entanglements. France is the first of the great 
 nations of Europe which has resolutely faced and all 
 but solved the crucial problem involved in passing 
 from the feudal to the republican society. She is the 
 first which has set herself avowedly to cast off the old 
 skin of Catholic hypocrisy. And she is the first 
 which has taken as her political basis the social 
 recognition of the mass of the people. These three 
 problems, complex as they are, might have been 
 settled by France long ago had she stood alone. The
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 75 
 
 obstinacy of the contest is promoted by the moral 
 and often the material interference of forces in the 
 rest of Europe. 
 
 France by herself had long ago silenced the 
 remnants of the monarchical and the feudal factions ; 
 but they keep the field by the immense moral support 
 which they receive from the consolidated forces of 
 monarchy and feudalism still dominant in Europe. 
 By herself, France would long ago have reduced her 
 ultramontane Catholics to a powerless sect, were it 
 not that Europe and the world still arm them with 
 fanatical fury against her. Thus also alone she would 
 have settled the task of the social incorporation of the 
 people, were it not that her privileged and propertied 
 classes fight with the desperation of an advanced 
 guard, which sees itself supported and encouraged 
 by the unbroken ranks of the privileged in other 
 countries around them. Were France transported 
 bodily to the other side of the Atlantic, it would be 
 short work with monarchy, feudality, church, and 
 privilege. She suffers and heaves, and is torn in 
 pieces by her own children as by strangers, because 
 she has flung herself first into a movement for which 
 Europe is not ready, but where Europe yet must 
 follow her ; and as she struggles onward towards a 
 new and more human social order, she has to make 
 head against the feudalisms and the sacerdotalisms of 
 Europe, against the class -passions, the bigotry, the 
 valetdom, the clericdom of the world. 
 
 In this great revolution the last few years have 
 witnessed the most extraordinary change. The 
 deepest political fact of our time, the most critical 
 of the last two generations, is the fact that since the 
 fall of the empire the mass of the French peasantry 
 have definitely ranged themselves on the side of the 
 republic. Now, the French peasantry are the great
 
 76 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 majority of French citizens ; the territorial system 
 has freed them from all local dictation, and the 
 political system has made them feel independence and 
 power. The mass of the French peasantry, in the 
 material sense, are France j and they know it. They 
 were the bone and blood of the uprising of '93 ; they 
 filled the armies which threw back the kings, and 
 followed them over every country of Europe ; they 
 decreed the revival of the empire in 1852 ; and they 
 bore the suffering and the slaughter of the invasion of 
 1870. They are not an heroic, not a brilliant, not a 
 generous order. They have neither the genius nor 
 the magnanimity, and happily none of the fury, 
 which have often fired the Paris workmen. Their 
 virtues are of a soberer, duller kind ; they are patient, 
 enduring, cautious, frugal, critical. They are very 
 tough, very slow to persuade, very suspicious of the 
 new, full of worldly wisdom, and as obstinate as 
 overdriven mules ; and from their numbers, their 
 homogeneity, their impassibility, they are very strong, 
 and feel that they are very strong. Who that has 
 ever watched the canny Norman peasant on his 
 patrimony, has failed to read the unlimited caution, 
 grit, and patience of the man ? Who that has ever 
 studied the French peasant's fireside, the fireside of 
 Sand and Hugo, of Millet and of Frere, has failed to 
 perceive that, narrow, dull, and penurious as it might 
 be, it is the home of a citizen of a citizen who has 
 no master ? That man will ponder slowly over 
 things, doubt, suspect, and think mainly of himself. 
 He will often be wrong, unjust, and selfish ; but 
 when he gives his vote, he will give it as a man who 
 intends to make it good, and knows that he can make 
 it good. 
 
 For generations now he has looked upon the town 
 citizen as his principal enemy, as a man whose
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 77 
 
 atheism is needlessly obtrusive, and whose socialism is 
 an unpardonable sin. For generations his political 
 life has aimed at restraining the town workman ; and 
 for him the town workman has been embodied in the 
 republic. Hence, he gave France the first empire, 
 and in our day the second empire. But a great 
 change has come over him, in its own way perhaps 
 the greatest change of this century. For the first 
 time in modern French history the peasant and the 
 town workman have been brought together into line. 
 Widely as they differ in their view of its form, 
 though the one means a conservative bourgeoisie^ 
 scarcely differing from the English monarchy, and the 
 other a democratic dictatorship, both peasant and 
 workman are at one in demanding the republic. Nor 
 is it a mere toleration of the republic that the peasant 
 is prepared for : it is a settled conviction and instinct. 
 
 To him the republic is now the conservative, 
 safe, and moderate institution ; it is identified with 
 property ; it represents order, it gives a dignity to the 
 country without, and puts an end to civil war within. 
 The parties which seem to him to rage against the 
 republic are they who breathe anarchy and confisca- 
 tion. Horrid rumours of ancient feudalisms have run 
 round, and the quiet useful curd is seen to swell with 
 sacerdotal pretensions, and to meditate strange revivals. 
 All this has shocked and terrified the peasant, till at 
 last he has come to think of Church and Throne with 
 that kind of hate and fear with which the Scotch 
 peasant under the Stuarts thought of episcopacy. He 
 has awakened from his dream of the Red Spectre, 
 which was his bugbear of old. If he is troubled now 
 with spectres, it is with the tales of a Black Spectre of 
 the dimes, and the White Spectre of the corvees. 
 
 During the six months of war nearly a million of 
 men held arms, and hardly a home in France but was
 
 78 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 thus associated with the struggle. And every man 
 knew that he was fighting for the republic. The 
 republic was France ; it alone was clear of the guilt of 
 the original disasters ; the only gleams of success had 
 been won by the republic ; the only captains who 
 gained high reputations the Faidherbes, the Chanzys, 
 and the Denferts were known or thought to be 
 republicans. In the storm of disasters, in the agony 
 of final surrender, and in the last humiliation of the 
 cession, men's minds would turn to the image of their 
 country, and the symbol of their country was always 
 the republic. Tremendous sufferings and defeat can 
 bind men sometimes together as closely as illustrious 
 victories, and sometimes even more closely. 
 
 To the old soldier of the empire it was a memory 
 more sacred and binding to have been with the Emperor 
 at Waterloo than to have been beside him at Austerlitz. 
 The legend of the martyrdom of Waterloo bore its 
 fruit in the second empire, and the men who condoned 
 the crime of December were the sons and grandsons 
 of the men who had been dragged to bleed in the 
 death-struggle of the last years of the empire, who 
 perished in Spain, Germany, or Belgium, who died 
 on the march from Moscow or in the bloody fields 
 of Champagne and the Marne. The legend of the 
 great war of 1870 is slowly forming itself; and the 
 name under which the battles of France were fought, 
 and which symbolised her life, was the name of the 
 republic. It is sometimes the vanquished cause which 
 leaves deeper associations than the victorious. And, 
 as in every cottage in France, since 1815, the tradition 
 of the great events and great sufferings of the genera- 
 tion before grew personal and living round the lurid 
 image of Napoleon, so the graven memories of 1870 
 and 1871 clung with a tragic pathos round the image 
 and name of the republic.
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 79 
 
 There was thus a basis of sentiment to attach the 
 peasant to the republic as an institution. But this 
 would have availed little had it not been supported by 
 solid inducements. This tendency was turned into a 
 principle by the patience and skill of one man. To 
 M. Gambetta is due at once the conception and the 
 accomplishment of this grand political revolution. It 
 is a feat to be ranked amongst the highest successes of 
 political sagacity and genuine intuition. As a stroke 
 of policy, it ought to place him amongst the two or 
 three statesmen of genius of our time. And the 
 patience and dexterity with which this policy was 
 elaborated are as fine as the power of the conception. 
 M. Gambetta saw that the progress of the social 
 evolution was fatally interrupted by the antagonism 
 between the peasant and the artisan, by the gulf 
 which divided the one from the other in political 
 spirit, and the antipathy of the peasant to the republic 
 from which alone anything could come. He saw 
 that the occasion had arrived when the peasant might 
 come over to the republic, when the gulf between 
 him and the workman might be bridged, and when 
 both might be rallied round a common political ideal. 
 
 With this view he patiently set himself the task to 
 present to the mass of rural France the republic as at 
 once the national and the conservative symbol. For 
 three years now he has laboured with a patience and 
 an energy which would have aroused suspicion, had it 
 been less unobtrusive, in order to allay the suspicions 
 of the peasants, to show them the republic and the 
 republican party as the real basis of order and of 
 industry, to dispel the old association of republican 
 with socialist. The noble orations which, whilst free 
 speech was permitted, he addressed to France, were 
 always addressed to the country at large, and especially 
 the rural elements, and were as full of the true con-
 
 8o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 servative temper as they were of national sentiment. 
 They had that success which belongs only to the rare 
 orators of an age who know how to infuse a new idea 
 into an entire generation. Since free speech has been 
 suppressed, his action has been still more unceasing in 
 insisting on legality and order, in insisting on the 
 republic as the principle of legality, and in throwing 
 on the anti-republican parties the character of con- 
 spirators and revolutionists. Never speaking in the 
 Chamber, he has laboured incessantly to prevent his 
 party from speaking at all, and from committing 
 act, word, or attitude of violence ; until, alone of the 
 sections of the Chamber, the Left of Gambetta is 
 the party which has never menaced any interest, or 
 attempted any cabal, or indulged in any passion, 
 which has been always loyal to every legal right, 
 hostile to every change, and resolute against every 
 plot. 
 
 Monarchists, Churchmen, Bourbonists, Orleanists, 
 Imperialists, and Communists have been seen in a 
 phantasmagoria of conspiracies, intrigues, and coups 
 d'etat. The republic and the Left, which is its 
 guard, alone have represented to France and to the 
 world respect for rights, regular government, and an 
 era of rest. And if, of this republican party M. Thiers 
 has been the titular head and the tongue, undoubtedly 
 M. Gambetta is its genius and its will. Whilst Thiers 
 came over to it by the effect of calculation, Gambetta 
 created it by his conviction, energy, and self-command. 
 And his reward is patent. For two years the factions 
 of the Assembly have been growing more odious to 
 the nation, whilst the republican majorities have 
 become more certain and more complete. The 
 republican party is no longer besieged in the great 
 cities by armies of rural conservatives. They have 
 sallied out into the country, and both have fraternised.
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 81 
 
 The rural districts are the true stronghold now of 
 the republicans. The catholic West is as stout as 
 the turbulent South or the industrial North ; and the 
 pastoral centres are at one. For the first time in this 
 century the country voters have resisted the entire 
 force of the Government engine resisted it, and 
 broken it silently to pieces. The extreme angle of 
 Britanny, at once against its landlords, its priests, and 
 its officials, returns a republican vote. The peasant 
 has not changed his principles or his aims. He is 
 still an arrant conservative, still bent on industrial 
 repose, still the sworn foe of all disturbers of Govern- 
 ment, from whatever side and with whatever end. 
 He has not changed his principles, but he has distinctly 
 changed his watchwords. And he finds now all that 
 he hates and fears in the enemies of the republic. He 
 has said to the kings, the rival kings, " It is thou and 
 thy house that trouble Israel." And he is a republican 
 because he is a conservative, and because he abhors 
 revolution. 
 
 From all sides of France one may hear the republican 
 leaders and managers, men who all their lives have 
 looked to see the peasant vote undo in a day their 
 labour in the cities for years, one may hear these men 
 declare their wonder at the new creed of the peasant. 
 " We cannot believe it now we see it, we cannot 
 comprehend it, though we have worked for it," they 
 say, as the peasants under their eyes vote for the 
 republic in defiance of preYet, cur6, and mayor. The 
 canny, stubborn, suspicious, self-regarding peasant is 
 the same man now that he always was, and he is 
 voting for that which in his slow, sure way he has 
 found out to be the path of peace, order, law and 
 prosperity. In country towns and rural districts it is 
 all the same ; whether it be for members of the 
 Assembly, mayors, or municipal council, the republican 
 
 G
 
 82 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 candidate is chosen. There never was a sillier jest 
 than that famous phrase of the "Republic without 
 republicans." There are now some six or seven 
 millions of republicans ; not republicans by theory or 
 conviction or taste, not democrats, not even reformers, 
 but simply republicans in resisting a monarchic revo- 
 lution, and in founding a system of law and rest. And 
 this critical political conversion is mainly the work of 
 one man. 
 
 There are few men who, in this country, have been 
 more hastily judged than M. Gambetta. The Gam- 
 betta of reality, the man known to parties and voters 
 in France, is as nearly as possible the antithesis of the 
 Gambetta of the vulgar imagination. The idea that 
 he is an impassioned rhetorician, a violent demagogue, 
 and a man of phrases, is simply ludicrous to those who 
 really know the secret of his influence, and his actual 
 mode of working. That he was the one man who 
 rose in France, and who roused France, during the 
 war ; the one man whom the Germans recognised, 
 whom they still recognise, as a great force that he is 
 an orator, and capable of Titanic outbursts of energy, 
 is no doubt true ; but it is not the light in which he 
 has been seen since the hour of the capitulation. This 
 demagogue has for twelve months never addressed an 
 audience ; this man of phrases has for years hardly 
 uttered a word in the Chamber ; this violent democrat 
 has never let slip a revolutionary suggestion. And all 
 the while his influence has been extending, and his 
 action growing more definite, and never more so than 
 during the time when every republican channel has 
 been shut. 
 
 Far different are the modes in which his power has 
 been gained. By the most solid and lawful of all 
 methods of gaining influence j by the personal ascend- 
 ency of a strong nature and a clear brain, exerted
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 83 
 
 silently, daily, and unconsciously; by sagacious counsels, 
 based on passionate convictions ; by fortitude, reti- 
 cence, self-control, patience, and sagacity ; by dex- 
 terity in seizing any political opportunity; by capacity 
 to accept the inevitable, and turn it to better uses ; 
 by the most difficult of all tasks for a political chief, 
 that of rallying, disciplining, and creating a party 
 whilst submitting to a succession of defeats without 
 the hope of victory or the chance of retaliation 
 teaching them to endure an almost crushing re- 
 pression without recourse to insurrection ; these are 
 the means by which Gambetta has succeeded in 
 imposing his policy on the republican party, as in 
 imposing the republican party upon France. It is a 
 career so truly that of the leader of a national party, 
 such as we understand it, that it is strange this has 
 not been more fully recognised in England. With 
 untiring energy and prudence he has directed the 
 principal republican journal which has steadily re- 
 organised the republican party, whilst never admitting 
 a chance for prosecution even under a " state of siege." 
 Its policy has been strictly conservative, whilst at the 
 same time essentially republican. Its task has been 
 daily to insist on legality, respect for established insti- 
 tutions, the renunciation of all violent panaceas, and 
 the gradual formation of a regular government. In 
 the Chamber the work of this stirring orator has been 
 to suppress all speeches, to organise the party votes, to 
 sustain the courage of the waverers after defeat, to 
 repress every outburst of impatience. Those who go 
 to the Assembly prepared to see the Left the aggres- 
 sive party, have been struck by their patience and 
 reticence under every attack, their resolve to avoid all 
 discussion, their inflexible principle of recognising no 
 constituent powers in the Chamber ; and at the head 
 of the party, intensely active but resolutely silent,
 
 84 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 persuading, encouraging, calming all, but never mount- 
 ing the tribune, the greatest popular orator of France. 
 It has been a task of peculiar difficulty, because, 
 whilst reassuring the rural conservatives, M. Gambetta 
 was risking the indignation of the city democrats. His 
 most violent enemies are found in the Commune and 
 the friends of the Commune. These fanatics, to whom 
 metaphysical theories are of more importance than 
 national results, have fallen upon him as the worst of 
 all possible enemies a traitor to democracy. The 
 late rupture between M. Gambetta and the Paris 
 radicals has been and still is a real danger to M. 
 Gambetta. His grand policy of bringing the rural 
 conservatives and the town democrats for once into 
 line upon the ground of a conservative republic, may 
 of course always fail if the city republicans are in- 
 capable of adopting a compromise. It is true that the 
 compromise to which they were invited was one of 
 those compromises in which one side appears to yield 
 everything ; for the Republic of the last twelve 
 months has been as oppressive and anti-republican as 
 the worst of the tyrannies which preceded it, and as 
 arbitrary as any precarious government could be made 
 to be. And if M. Gambetta and his party seemed to 
 be more than accepting, almost supporting this system, 
 as if for mere sake of its name, it was hard for the 
 popular masses to believe that they got anything by 
 the name. There are, however, two things in the 
 Republic of Marshal MacMahon : in the first place 
 the institution is the Republic, and in the next place 
 the men are avowedly temporary. It was not, like 
 the empire, a dynasty and a permanent despotism ; 
 it is not, like the monarchy, a principle and a class- 
 tyranny. It was a temporary repression, grievous to 
 bear, but worth bearing for the sake of all that it 
 made possible.
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 85 
 
 If it has irritated democrats in France, it has 
 puzzled constitutionalists in England, to see the 
 entire party of the Left resolutely clinging to a 
 Chamber which they branded as mere usurpation, 
 accepting without protest its incendiary decisions, and 
 ardently working at its combinations whilst denying 
 its right to make a law. To their own friends they 
 too often seemed to be men who were taking part 
 with a cabal, which in set words declared itself at war 
 with the nation, a cabal which the republican minority 
 were utterly powerless to restrain. Their policy, 
 however, was a perfectly intelligible one. The 
 Assembly represented legality, and it also represented 
 the republic ; for if the Assembly was not the legal 
 power of the nation, and if it had not accepted the 
 republic, there was nothing legal but the empire, and 
 the field was open to any successful adventure. And 
 it was of the last importance that the plank of legality 
 should be retained in the storm, and the republic 
 appear before the nation as the sole legitimate power. 
 Then the army would obey the Assembly and its 
 chosen authorities, and to defy the Assembly was to 
 open the era of pronunciamentos. Again, had the 
 slightest pretext been given for repressive measures 
 against the republican party, had a suspicion found 
 a foothold that it was engaged in insurrectionary 
 schemes, the rural conservatives would have instantly 
 flung off from the republic as being no longer identified 
 with order. The republicans, then, would have been 
 the conspirators, the malcontents, as of old, and the 
 legitimate holders of power would again have been 
 saviours of society. This old, old game of the retro- 
 grade cause has been utterly checkmated by the 
 patience, the self-control, and the farsightedness of the 
 republican leaders. 
 
 Their parliamentary tactics have been simple in
 
 86 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 design, though very trying in execution. Their plan 
 has been to accept to the utmost the legal authority of 
 the Chamber, to check its excesses by skilful tactics, 
 whilst never appearing as a factious or insurgent 
 element. A single violent protest would have called 
 out all the revolutionary instincts, have called them 
 out to no purpose, and to certain repression ; whilst a 
 direct appeal to the nation would have broken the 
 confidence of the conservative peasants. This is the 
 secret of what some have called the tameness of Gam- 
 betta, and what the ardent democrats have attacked as 
 open apostasy. In the language .of one of them, the 
 business of the party is falre le mort^ to assume 
 extinction whilst working with intense activity and 
 watching for every opportunity. It is a policy need- 
 ing first-rate organisation and mutual confidence, 
 great ingenuity and energy, with the power of waiting 
 for the chance. The grand aim was to bring about a 
 dissolution, whilst never declaring war on the majority, 
 or appealing to the people against them. Gradually 
 it was believed that the play of parties would discredit 
 and defeat each succeeding government, until the 
 failure of every combination should bring about dissolu- 
 tion in very despair. 
 
 It is the fashion in England to make merry over 
 the French Assembly, and the gross caricatures of its 
 public sittings with which leading journals indulge the 
 pharisaical vanity of English constitutionalists have 
 misled many amongst us as to the real character of 
 that Assembly. But, as all the world in France 
 knows, the public sittings are merely the interludes of 
 its real activity, and are often devoted, like those of 
 other parliaments, to the noisiest jesters or most violent 
 bores. The art of parliamentary manoeuvring is not 
 the noblest of modern inventions ; but, such as the art 
 is, it is practised in France with consummate ability.
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 87 
 
 At any rate, the tactics which the Left have displayed 
 in a situation of desperate emergency may be ranked 
 with the best examples of discipline and sagacity in 
 party organisation. The defeat of the Monarchic 
 plot in November was a happy instance of what can be 
 done by an indomitable minority. Even before Easter 
 the De Broglie Government would have been defeated, 
 and have disappeared, had not the plans of M. Gambetta 
 been ruined by the unlucky blunder of M. Ledru-Rollin. 
 The policy at last has succeeded, and at length the im- 
 possibility of the actual Assembly continuing to govern 
 the country has been made manifest by the mere 
 machinery of parliamentary strategy, without a single 
 excuse for the charge that the Left have appealed to 
 force, or have quitted the ground of strict legality. 
 
 The result of this policy has been to extend the 
 republican sentiment in France as it could have been 
 extended in no other way. By the universal consent 
 of all parties, an honest appeal to the country at this 
 moment would show an overwhelming republican 
 majority. According to good authorities, a direct and 
 honest appeal to the nation, on the three typical causes, 
 would return republic, empire, and monarchy in pro- 
 portions of six, two, and a half. According to some, 
 Gambetta would be carried as deputy in four-fifths of 
 all the departments of France. But if the country is 
 essentially republican, it is at the same time truly con- 
 servative. The advanced democrats are in a scattered 
 minority, and, since the collapse of the communal 
 insurrection, a new democratic rising is impossible for 
 many a year. Hence, whilst nothing but a republican 
 settlement will ultimately satisfy the country, nothing 
 but a moderate government can hope for permanent 
 support. Fortunately, the men of the Left are clearly 
 convinced of this ; they are aware of the necessity of 
 patience, and see that their day has not yet come.
 
 88 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Perhaps it would be the most desirable solution if, 
 after one or two intermediate steps, a strong republican 
 government could be established on the type of men 
 like M. Grevy. To the communards and the ultra- 
 radicals no doubt M. GreVy represents nothing but the 
 bourgeois reaction, and M. Gambetta himself is to them 
 much of the same colour. But communards and 
 ultra-radicals for the present are out of the field, and 
 M. Gambetta himself is a long way from being under- 
 stood as the practical statesman that he is. 
 
 All these and similar calculations would be worth- 
 less if there was ground for the current belief in the 
 success of imperialist plots. Because military adven- 
 turers have so often succeeded in France and else- 
 where, because Napoleon III. seized an empire amidst 
 the wrangles of republicans, we are all apt to assume 
 that the party have only to fix their day to proclaim 
 Napoleon I V . It may be so, and he would be a bold 
 man who felt certain that any given thing was impos- 
 sible in the present aspect of France. But there seems 
 little in the state of the country to justify these expec- 
 tations. The imperialists are powerful, or rather con- 
 spicuous, by their audacity, skill, and cohesion, by the 
 experience of twenty years of government and power, 
 by the goodwill of large sections of the army, by the 
 general tradition and prestige of that which has filled 
 men's minds and accomplished great changes. For 
 twenty years every adventurer of courage and ambition 
 was a born imperialist ; every successful capitalist, 
 soldier, or official was in some sort pledged to the 
 only party which offered him a career, and for which 
 he could feel a fellow-feeling. The second empire was 
 a sort of grand Credit Mobilier or joint-stock com- 
 pany (unlimited) for military, financial, or professional 
 speculators. The men who meant to win, and who 
 knew how to win, were all entered as members of this
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 89 
 
 great national Jockey Club. And naturally, though the 
 company itself has been wound up, its old frequenters 
 are the men who make a great noise in the world, and 
 fill it with rumours of a new revival of the concern. 
 
 This is perhaps the reason why the French Rentes 
 are an inverse and not a direct barometer of public 
 affairs in France. The witty Dean said there was no 
 such fool as the Three per Cents. The Three per 
 Cents may be very shortsighted, though in England 
 they bear some relation to prospects of national pros- 
 perity. But the French Three per Cents are not only 
 foolish and shortsighted, but they give way to political 
 passion. A vision of successful conspiracy sends them 
 up ; the probability of civil war makes them buoyant ; 
 and the prospect of a really settled government will 
 send the quotations down to "heavy " or " flat." The 
 farther off grows the chance of the country being 
 turned into a national "hell," the more depressed 
 grows the rentier world. And as the French nation 
 in general do not do much in Rentes, their rise or fall 
 will depend on the prospect which the speculator class 
 may entertain of a legal exploitation of society. A 
 party like this is naturally strong, and it would be 
 strange indeed if we did not hear a great deal of its 
 activity. But it lacks two things now which enabled 
 it formerly to seize power and found an empire. The 
 imperial tradition was strong with the peasants, and it 
 was paramount with the army. It was the only thing 
 with an imposing past and with a possible future. 
 Both these are lost to it now. The tradition of the 
 empire is shattered for ever in the homes of the 
 peasantry. The Church has laboured to uproot it, 
 and laboured we may hope for the Republic, not for 
 itself. And what of that tradition the Church failed 
 to uproot was uprooted by successive mayors and 
 prefets of Gambetta, Thiers, and De Broglie.
 
 90 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 We may take it as admitted that whilst the empire 
 is strong amongst successful bourgeois and large 
 sections of the rich, it has died out for ever from the 
 rural districts of France. As to the army, we are 
 assured on all sides that it is only partly imperialist, 
 and that, by the best accounts, to an extent not 
 exceeding a third. On the other hand, a section in 
 the lower ranks, hardly inferior in number, is just as 
 distinctly republican ; whilst the bulk may be taken 
 as unwilling to be the tools of any political party. 
 The esprit de corps of the old Imperial Guard is no 
 longer available ; the sense of power as of a praetorian 
 band is gone j and the army itself is far more likely 
 to fell to pieces than to impose a new dynasty on the 
 country. These are not hopeful elements for the 
 imperial restoration ; and though perhaps in the chaos 
 of parties it is not altogether impossible, it would need 
 a conjunction of chances, and a genius for conspiracy, 
 such as are not at all likely to be vouchsafed to the 
 prayers of the Corsican band. If they were going to 
 succeed in their coup d'etat or pronunciamento^ why has 
 it not come off already for assuredly as good oppor- 
 tunities have arisen as are ever likely to arise ? And 
 if it were to succeed, and the flaccid lad at Chiselhurst 
 came back in the purple and the bees, how long would 
 his reign be likely to endure ? The empire is by its 
 essence an autocracy a democratic autocracy, it may 
 be, but in any case a government ultimately resting 
 in a single hand. That is its strength and its claim. 
 If it were anything else, it would not differ from any 
 of the other parties of moral disorder which, since the 
 fall of M. Thiers, have been struggling to possess 
 themselves of France. But where is the strong man 
 of the third empire, and how would any of his viziers 
 or marshals differ from the rest of the generals who 
 conspire and vapour at Versailles ?
 
 91 
 
 There is, however, another danger to which France 
 is exposed, perhaps more real than socialist insurrec- 
 tions or imperial plots. In the condition in which 
 France lies, she is practically at the mercy of her late 
 enemy. As every one but the English ministry saw, 
 the so-called peace of Frankfort left France utterly 
 exposed to a second overthrow at the will of Germany. 
 In a military sense three weeks would suffice to bring 
 the German Emperor to the gates of Paris, and no 
 one seems to see anything to stop him. The military 
 caste throughout Germany long to finish their work ; 
 the military and official caste are scandalised that 
 France should presume to live ; that she should be 
 still wealthy is a clear casus belli. Prince Bismarck is 
 said to speak of the five milliards with the self-reproach 
 of a bandit chief who discovers that a captive whom 
 he has just ransomed could have found double the 
 sum, had he been wrung rather more sharply. It is 
 certain that renewal of the war has been more than 
 once contemplated in Germany, and is still looked on 
 as merely adjourned. The safety of France therefore 
 rests only on the good sense of the German people, 
 and their power to resist the criminal ambition of the 
 German chiefs. No one in France or out of it can 
 seriously believe that the French army is in any way 
 equal to meet the German army in the field. The 
 re -organisation of the army has been much talked 
 about, but all accounts concur in showing that it has 
 not gone beyond that stage. Catastrophes like that 
 of 1870 are not repaired in a moment, and every 
 authority agrees in the opinion that the army is still 
 under the influence of that complete overthrow. 1 
 
 There is not the slightest ground for the assertion 
 
 1 This great danger, as we now know, was imminent in 1875, and 
 was only averted by the secret influence of the sovereigns of England, 
 of Russia, and European diplomacy.
 
 92 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 so sedulously repeated by official organs in Berlin, that 
 France is preparing to renew the contest. Neither in 
 nor out of the army is there any dream of the kind. 
 Frenchmen indeed would be wanting in every sense 
 of patriotism did they accept the partition of their 
 country as final, and took the treaty of Frankfort as 
 the date of a new national era. But as it is impossible 
 that it could be otherwise, it is hypocrisy to pretend 
 that because Frenchmen do not admit what it would 
 be base in them to admit, they are therefore preparing 
 for war. There is all the difference between declining 
 to believe the finality of an act of conquest and the 
 active intention to dispute it as a fact. Nations are 
 often compelled to recognise as facts what they would 
 be craven to sanction as rights. For a generation 
 after Waterloo, the French people talked of revenge 
 more loudly and more unanimously than they have 
 ever done towards Germany before Sedan or since. 
 
 If our statesmen in 1815-1825 had acted on the 
 assumption that these inevitable protests were equiva- 
 lent to a national intention to renew the war, they 
 would have acted in bad faith and with wanton 
 aggression. Since no conceivable acts of spoliation, 
 which German hypocrisy calls guarantees, could have 
 forced the French people to acknowledge them as 
 based on incontestable right, unless the French people 
 had lost all sentiment of honour along with the loss of 
 the provinces, it is ill faith to see the renewal of war 
 in every groan for the cities and the citizens which 
 have been torn from them. If the annexation of half 
 of all France had been found necessary to the strategic 
 combinations of Von Moltke, it would have been the 
 duty of the other half to refuse to acknowledge it as 
 a right, however much they were forced to accept it 
 as a fact. 
 
 The question then is solely one of fact, and the
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 93 
 
 patent fact is that France is not contemplating war, 
 in any sense that belongs to political realities, in any 
 sense in which it is not just as true to say that 
 Germany is contemplating war with Russia, or Russia 
 with Germany. Every nation which maintains an 
 army assumes that war is not impossible, and every 
 nation which has been dismembered hopes the day 
 may come when its lost member may return. In 
 this sense, and in this sense only, is France contem- 
 plating revenge ; and in this sense Denmark may be 
 said to be contemplating war on Germany, or Turkey 
 on Greece, or Spain on England. There is not a 
 single party, not a single journal, in France which 
 hints at a renewal of jthe war. Responsible men of 
 all sections, and indeed the people at large, are far too 
 conscious of their own prostration, and of the utter 
 madness of the attempt, to make such a policy en- 
 durable. Of all parties the republican party, if any, 
 is pledged to the national honour ; and of all men in 
 it, Gambetta represents most distinctly the principle 
 of no surrender. But the republican party and its 
 chief stand pledged to a policy of peace. And though 
 a political party may not always disclose their real 
 intentions, a party would be instantly discredited 
 which publicly discountenanced a national desire. 
 
 According to a popular theory, a theory most 
 grateful to German arrogance and British morality, 
 the entire French nation is in a state of physical, 
 moral, and national decrepitude. There are always 
 wiseacres who derive solid satisfaction from shaking 
 their heads over Sodom and Gomorrah, and explaining 
 the mysteries of national corruption. Curiously enough 
 it is a practice in which all nations indulge in turn, 
 and with the smallest possible data. A generation 
 ago it was the fashion to groan over the decadence of 
 England, the vitals of which, we were told, were eaten
 
 94 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 up with pauperism, gin, and the Haymarket. At 
 another time Germany was understood to be reduced 
 to a state of universal syncope by addiction to meta- 
 physics and nicotine. At another time Russia is 
 supposed to be the victim of general gangrene, and a 
 great moralist has warned us that nothing can come 
 out of Italy but dancers and singers. These whole- 
 sale indictments against nations are equally easy and 
 equally absurd. When thirty-six millions of men in 
 the very centre of Europe are found in a state of real 
 decay, the knell will have struck for the civilisation of 
 Europe. Europe is a political unit, and its civilisation 
 is homogeneous, and if one-fifth of its area is in a 
 dying state, Europe has not long to live. The brain 
 or the heart of a living body might as well dilate with 
 a gloomy satisfaction about the signs of cancer im- 
 pending over the misguided stomach, as Englishmen 
 or Germans moralise over the signs of dissolution in 
 France. Just as it is the conviction of profound 
 provincials that our modern Babylon is a mystery of 
 abomination, so it is the faith of profound politicians 
 that some particular race in Europe is rotting towards 
 its end ; so, too, it is the inward belief of the superior 
 American that the old world is used up, and so the 
 apostles of a new life in Salt Lake will assure us that 
 the old American States are doomed. Of all satire 
 national satire is the most obvious, as it is certainly the 
 most monotonous. 
 
 That society in France is in active convulsion and 
 transition, that her national cohesion is suffering most 
 violent shocks, that classes and strata of her society are 
 on the point of final extinction, all this is too obvious 
 to be discussed. But the state of exhaustion and 
 corruption within her is not nearly so great as that 
 which some other nations have experienced, and which 
 more than once she has experienced herself. This
 
 FRANCE AFTER WAR 95 
 
 does not to-day approach the state of disorganisation 
 and apparent death in which Germany lay in the 
 Thirty Years' War, or in which Prussia lay on the 
 morrow of Jena ; nor does it approach that which 
 France herself has known in the mediaeval civil wars, or 
 in the declining years of Louis XIV. A superficial 
 moralist, who dilated on the state of England during 
 the reign of Charles II., would have found little to 
 remind him that she had just produced Cromwell and 
 Shakespeare, and was about to produce Newton and 
 Marlborough. The elasticity of France in recovering 
 from the havoc of the war, and in unfolding incredible 
 resources, has filled the world with wonder, and has 
 filled Prince Bismarck's soul with pangs of covetous 
 remorse. In very truth France, for generations, has 
 never been so laborious, so thrifty, so prosperous, so 
 ingenious, so rich, so active as she is at this moment. 
 Amidst black spots marked with unutterable corrup- 
 tion, and perhaps with physical decline, the millions 
 who cultivate her vast and prolific area are as hardy, 
 alert, and sober as ever they were known to us before. 
 Absinthe, Ernest Feydeau, caf6s chantants, and 
 baccarat are not much in vogue amongst them ; and 
 if these reach as much as a million, there are thirty- 
 five millions to whom they are unknown. A people 
 so intelligent and vigorous have raised France before 
 out of deeper disasters, and with far less available 
 resources. 
 
 It may well be that worse is in store for her yet, 
 and that the lowest point of her agony has not even 
 now been reached. It may well be that a generation 
 or generations may still be needed for the final settle- 
 ment of France. The task which she has set herself 
 to solve is one which demands generations, and in 
 which even greater catastrophes may seem insignificant. 
 The passage from an exhausted to a new type of
 
 96 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 society is invariably surrounded with convulsion and 
 disaster. And if out of the ebb and flow of the 
 revolutionary struggle we are destined to see grow up 
 in France a permanent and solid republic, victorious 
 over the opposing forces, whether feudal, military, or 
 Catholic, the memory of the struggles through which 
 it had been won would be speedily effaced, and the 
 price at which it was secured would be cheerfully and 
 easily accepted.
 
 IV 
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 
 
 (1882) 
 
 This was a memorial address on the death of Gambetta, 
 December 31, 1882, and was delivered in Newton 
 Hall shortly after the State funeral, January 6, 
 1883. It was published in the Contemporary Review 
 (vol. xliii.}. It is in form what the French call an 
 Eloge, and it must be read as the funeral discourse 
 given at a public ceremony by one who was deeply 
 absorbed in the crisis of the Republic, and who had long 
 been in personal relations with the dead Statesman, 
 his friends, and colleagues, A long journey round the 
 French Provinces in the autumn of 1877, during the 
 great Electoral campaign, to decide if Marshal MacMahon 
 should se soumettre or se demettre, when the writer 
 sent a series of letters to the Times, and had been in 
 touch with all the Republican committees centralised by 
 Gambetta, had given him a special insight into the efforts 
 which forced the Marshal to resign in December 1877 
 (1908}. 
 
 FOR good or for evil, Leon Gambetta was bound up 
 with the Republic as was no other contemporary life. 
 He was the first statesman of European importance 
 formally to offer his public homage to Comte as the 
 greatest mind of the nineteenth century ; and formally 
 to adopt, as his leading idea in politics, Comte's great 
 
 97 H
 
 98 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 aphorism : " Progress can only arise out of the 
 development of Order." But it is not for this that 
 Gambetta holds a place of prime importance in my 
 eyes. The doings of a statesman are what concern 
 us, and not his protestations. And it is in the region 
 of action that Gambetta foreshadows the type of the 
 Republican statesman rudely and incompletely, no 
 doubt but with all the essential elements. He is 
 the first European statesman of this century who is 
 heart and soul Republican ; the only one whose fibre 
 is entirely popular ; who saw that the Republic 
 implied a real social reconstruction j he is the 
 only European statesman who is equally zealous for 
 progress and for order, and most assuredly he is the 
 only statesman of this century who has formally 
 thrown away every kind of theological crutch. 
 
 This is no panegyric of a public man. Of such 
 we have had enough. It is no critical analysis of a 
 striking personality. We are met here neither to 
 bury Caesar, nor to praise him. Brutus and Cassius 
 and the rest have told us that he was ambitious, and 
 had many grievous faults. I am not about to dispute 
 it. There are many things in his public career, 
 especially in its later years, which we wholly fail to 
 reconcile, not only with the best type of the 
 statesman, but with any reasonable version of his 
 own principles. As to his private life, there are 
 things, perhaps, gross and unworthy, and a public 
 man has no private life. But unworthy if they be, 
 they were not of the kind which seriously disable a 
 public career. He was not a corrupting pedantocrat 
 like Guizot, nor a corrupted cynic like Thiers ; he 
 was not a king of gamblers like Napoleon, nor a king 
 of jobbers like Louis Philippe. He was a jovial, 
 unabashed son of Paris ; without special refinement of 
 life, or sensitive delicacy of conscience. We have yet
 
 L^ON GAMBETTA 99 
 
 no means of proving the truth of the stories that we 
 hear of the kind of men who from time to time 
 shared his intimacy, and of the enterprises or 
 adventures to which he allowed himself to be made 
 a more or less blinded accomplice. Let us leave these 
 tales for time to reveal. However they turn out, the 
 essential man in the main is known to us now. 
 
 If he allowed himself familiarity with unworthy 
 adventurers, certain it is, that in all parts of France he 
 retained till his death the devoted attachment of the 
 most honourable spirits of his country. If his name 
 was used at times to back up a financial job, it is yet 
 most clear that with portentous opportunities for 
 serving himself, he neither made nor spent a fortune. 
 If his policy was not always consistent with a high 
 sense of honour, it was never dictated by vulgar 
 ambition. Coarseness of nature, whether in private 
 or in public life, is no final bar to greatness in a 
 statesman. The greatest names in political history 
 have often been soiled with unedifying weakness and 
 unscrupulous expedients. The statesmen of history 
 are as little the types of moral purity as the saints are 
 types of practical sagacity. A statesman in an era 
 like this is a man by necessity of compromise and 
 expedients. His agents he takes as he finds them ; 
 and he takes them with good and bad together. And 
 when all this is said, we must judge them in the 
 rough as they are. Energy and sagacity, and the 
 genius to give the true lead to forty millions of men, 
 are qualities of such transcendent value to mankind, 
 that we must hail them at all costs wherever we find 
 them. And these qualities were assuredly in Leon 
 Gambetta. 
 
 I will take but four cardinal facts about his career, 
 and consider him, firstly, as the true creator of the 
 Republic ; secondly, as a type of the statesman of the
 
 ioo NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 people ; thirdly, as the representative of the union of 
 order and progress ; and fourthly, as representative of 
 the secular movement in politics. 
 
 In every one of these, and in all of them in 
 combination, Gambetta is the only French statesman 
 of the first order whom this century has produced. 
 
 Of the first order ? it is asked. Yes ! Whatever 
 judgment we may pass on his work, there can be no 
 real dispute about his power. He was hardly laid in 
 his grave, when the very existence of the Republic 
 was suddenly challenged, and through all ranks of 
 Republicans a sudden panic arose, men's hearts failing 
 them for fear. A week before his death, in spite of 
 disquiet and confusion, the Constitution in France 
 seemed as much a thing of course as the Constitution 
 in England. A week after his burial everything 
 seemed an open question again, as on the eve of 
 Sedan. He is the one Frenchman whom the keen 
 statesmen of Germany took to be of paramount 
 importance to Germany ; he is the one Frenchman 
 who represented something definite to every man 
 throughout the civilised world possessing the simplest 
 notion of politics ; and he was the one Frenchman 
 whose name and character were known to every 
 elector in France. The death of Gambetta was to 
 France what the death of Cavour was to Italy ; what 
 the death of Bismarck will be to Germany. At the 
 day of his death he filled the minds of French 
 politicians more than Guizot ever did, or Thiers, 
 or any of the nameless Ministers of empire and 
 monarchy more than Peel ever filled men's thoughts 
 amongst us, more even than Gladstone does now. 
 
 His brief hour of office was an interlude. He is 
 almost the one Frenchman of our times who could 
 fall from office without disappearing from public life. 
 Office made no difference to his personal power,
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 101 
 
 except that it hampered it by arousing a storm of 
 jealousies. Death, as usual, is the true measure of 
 greatness, and death has revealed to us with startling 
 force what is the Republic with Gambetta and what 
 it is without him. Right or wrong, this is power ; 
 this is one of those pre-eminent personalities which 
 occur but now and then in a century. Here is the 
 great man (it is one of those facts which we must 
 take as facts, whether we like it or not), and it is with 
 justice that his followers say, "Here is the man who 
 is not of the order of the Jules Favres and the Jules 
 Simons, or the Jules Ferrys, or even of the Thiers and 
 the Guizots here is a born leader of the order of the 
 Dantons and the Hoches." 
 
 I. Take him as the creator of the Republic. 
 There were three successive epochs in which Gam- 
 betta was the true author of the Republic : in 1868-9, 
 in 1870-1, in 1876-8. For sixteen years the Empire 
 had lain like a nightmare upon France ; corrupting it 
 from above, crushing it within, weakening it without, 
 degrading and stifling the entire French nation. All 
 the better elements of the people revolted ; all were 
 ready for a resurrection but who gave the word ? 
 Always and everywhere Gambetta. His energy, his 
 courage, his faith in the Republic, his scorn of the 
 Empire, rang like an electric shock through France. 
 In November 1868, the date of his famous speech 
 denouncing the Empire, he was a briefless, unknown 
 barrister. In the early spring of 1869 he was the 
 rival, the terror, and the judge of the Empire. The 
 Emperor in these last two years shook and cowered 
 before a young lawyer. 
 
 It is easy to say that hundreds of thousands of 
 Frenchmen felt this, that Paris was seething with 
 insurrection, and the whole thinking class, and the 
 entire working class, was in defiance. True ; but
 
 102 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 both wanted the tongue, the soul, the heart, and 
 they found those in Gambetta. The Jules Simons, 
 the Rocheforts, and Prevost Paradols, might write 
 smart articles ; Delescluze and Blanqui could con- 
 spire ; but neither epigrams nor conspiracies could 
 shake the Empire. It needed an agitator who was 
 also a statesman. Gambetta was both ; and he struck 
 the Empire as neither fifty Jules Simons nor a hundred 
 Blanquis could strike it. 
 
 The Empire ended, as we know, in an utter 
 wreck ; and again, on the morrow of Sedan, the 
 Republic was the work of Gambetta. He planned it, 
 he organised it, he established it. In that shameful 
 overthrow of France, in the winter of 1870, the one 
 redeeming effort stood out clear ; and again, one man 
 alone struck the imagination of Europe, of Germany, 
 of France. Such a negation of all that is sound and 
 manly as was the Empire, cannot afflict a people for a 
 generation without leaving a heritage of blight and 
 corruption ; and with all my love for the French 
 name and people, I cannot deny that in 1870 it had 
 sunk as low as a nation can sink without death. 
 From that torpor France was saved by the energy 
 of Gambetta. That one man, a young, unknown, 
 penniless lawyer of thirty-two, roused France from her 
 slumber, upheld her banner against hopeless odds, 
 made the French people feel again they were a people, 
 and planted in their hearts the image of Republic 
 instead of Empire. 
 
 Then it was that the Republic was formed : 
 Gambetta's name was made a household word in 
 France. Into every village, from Ushant to Nice, 
 from Dunkirk to St. Sebastian, the conscript of 1870 
 carried back the tale of a leader who had kept alive 
 the French name. Since the days of the First 
 Napoleon, no name had ever penetrated into every
 
 LON GAMBETTA 103 
 
 heart in France as did Gambetta's. He was the one 
 man known to all living Frenchmen man, woman, 
 and child and known as the inspirer of a new sense 
 love of the country. He was the moral 'inspirer of 
 the nation ; for he recalled the spirit of the men who 
 fought at Valmy and Jemappes ; nay, it is no profana- 
 tion to say it, he recalled Jeanne Dare herself. He 
 restored the French nation to itself, giving France 
 back to Europe as one of her great forces. This is 
 the imperishable work of the Republic of 1870 ; and 
 for this the Republic of 1870 will be remembered 
 when Bismarck and Moltke and the German Empire 
 are names for historical research. 
 
 It failed. Yes ! it failed, because the miserable 
 monarchies and empires, which have succeeded each 
 other in France since the Revolution, had crushed out 
 of Frenchmen the national spirit ; and no energy or 
 genius can make a nation in an hour. But I say it 
 advisedly now that twelve years have passed, and all 
 the facts are known that but for the intrigues and 
 fears of men like Bazaine, and Trochu, and Thiers, 
 and the wild intestine hatred that a generation of civil 
 war had bred, and the feebleness and the selfishness 
 that a generation of Empire had bred, the defence 
 would have succeeded. 
 
 The Germans knew it, and feared it. It was 
 impossible for Germany to conquer France had 
 Frenchmen been true to themselves. The grandsons 
 of the men who had repelled Europe at five sides at 
 once were conquered by a nation no bigger, and far 
 less powerful in material resources than themselves. I 
 can never forget how Gambetta himself spoke of this 
 to me. In a long conversation on the war, I asked 
 him years after all was over : " Could then the defence 
 have been continued in 1871?" "Certainly!" he 
 groaned out bitterly, crunching his clasped hands.
 
 104 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 " Of course it could ! " " Then why did they give 
 in ? " said I. " C'etait le coeur qui leur manquait," he 
 roared out, bounding off his seat, and his face purple 
 with shame and rage. " Because they were out of 
 heart," said he. And I felt what Danton had been 
 in '93. 
 
 It is said this is not very much to have done. 
 Gambetta was an eloquent talker, and did nothing but 
 put into eloquent words the thoughts of thousands. 
 In one sense that is true. The statesman ex hypothesi 
 is not the original thinker ; he is never the lonely dis- 
 coverer of a peculiar truth. Nor is he the mere 
 mouthpiece of other men's schemes. The man who 
 touches the brains and hearts of his time with that 
 sympathetic and guiding note which brings them to 
 one act at the given time the man who makes the 
 current idea and the dominant feeling burn in thirty 
 millions of spirits at once, who utters the true word at 
 the right time this is the statesman j and the man of 
 this sort is rare, and appears but once in a generation 
 or two. 
 
 The work of Gambetta in 1868, or in 1870, was in 
 the main the work of a single idea. His work in 1877 
 was far more complex, and far more truly of the 
 political sort. The great struggle in 1877 between 
 Despotism and Republic for that was the true issue 
 then, as we now see was in a marvellous sense the 
 work of Gambetta. The long six months' struggle 
 of France with the Government of Combat, under 
 MacMahon and De Broglie, the consummate skill 
 with which all the Republican parties were restrained, 
 sustained, and concentrated, the order, self-restraint, 
 and discipline of the country under a series of reckless 
 provocations, the grasp over an intricate network of 
 electoral movements from one end of France to 
 another, the marvellous success in face of desperate
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 105 
 
 pressure, the ease, order, and completeness of the 
 triumph, its liberal and noble spirit, and the rejection 
 of all vindictive retaliation this was the work of 
 Gambetta alone. I was myself at that time in all 
 parts of France, and I was in constant intercourse 
 with leaders of the movement in Paris and in the 
 country. One and all would say, " We do not know 
 the data ourselves, but Gambetta has the whole 
 machinery of the party in his hands. He knows the 
 facts in every constituency in France. He has them 
 all in his head ; he assures us of success ; and we trust 
 him." France did trust him in 1877; and the 
 Republic was made. 
 
 Thus three times the Republic was due to Gam- 
 betta : to his audacity in 1868, to his resolution in 
 1870, to his sagacity in 1877. And to be the fore- 
 most bold man, the foremost resolute man, the foremost 
 sagacious man of your generation, is to be the great 
 man. Xo be the great man who founds the Republic 
 is to be the man of the century. I take of this century 
 in Europe, Canning, Peel, Cobden, Gladstone, in 
 England ; Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi, in Italy ; 
 Stein and Bismarck, in Germany ; Deak and Kossuth, 
 in Hungary j Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield, in 
 America ; and I say that the foundation of the 
 Republic in France is a work far greater and more 
 difficult than any which they undertook. 
 
 The Republic in France is the condition of all 
 progress. The old Europe of feudalism cannot dis- 
 appear, the new Europe of the people cannot begin, 
 till the Republic is founded. It means the definite 
 extinction of hereditary claims of every kind, the final 
 admission of capacity and merit to every function in 
 the State. The Republic is the issue of all modern 
 history since the sixteenth century ; it is the condition 
 of all future progress since the eighteenth century
 
 io6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ended. It is the great political problem of modern 
 Europe ; ripe for solution only in France : already 
 attained in a modified form by England ; still hovering 
 in the balance elsewhere. But the problem of the 
 nineteenth century is the establishment of the Republic 
 in France ; and the man who as yet has done most to 
 establish it is assuredly Leon Gambetta. 
 
 II. I take him next as the statesman of the new 
 social strata ; and here again it is certain that no single 
 politician in Europe'within this century has been at 
 once a foremost power in Europe, and a man of the 
 people in origin, habit, interest, and sympathy. The 
 type of Lincoln and Garfield is common enough in 
 the United States. But in Europe, in this century, 
 there has been no other example. Men like Cavour 
 and Bismarck are great forces j but they belong by 
 race and training to the old feudal classes. Mr. Glad- 
 stone and Mr. Disraeli did not belong to them by 
 birth j but their training and their habits were as 
 much those of the governing classes as Lord Derby's 
 or Lord Salisbury's. Mr. Gladstone has the popular 
 fibre and the popular sympathy ; but he has never 
 abandoned nor defied the old aristocratic orders. I do 
 not say it would be wise for an English politician to 
 do so ; but in France it is the condition of true 
 Republican force. Neither Thiers, nor Grevy, nor 
 any of the elder statesmen have ever stood forth as 
 direct representatives of the people. Gambetta alone, 
 of the men of European position, has done so. His 
 memorable words, that the Government of France 
 must pass to new social strata, was no idle phrase. 
 
 Gambetta, even if for a moment he indulged in 
 luxury, lived, and died, and was buried the son of 
 the grocer of Cahors. He not only felt sympathy 
 with the populace, but he never could cease to be of 
 the populace himself. I have seen him within recent
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 107 
 
 years myself living like any young beginner in litera- 
 ture or science, as completely a son of the people as 
 when he talked and laughed in the Caf< Procope. I 
 am far from saying that this is necessary or even desir- 
 able in every country in Europe ; but in France it is. 
 The only possible Republican ruler in France is the 
 man of the people. And it is of prime importance to 
 Europe to show that the son of a country shopman 
 can reach the first place in his country before he is 
 forty, and without ceasing to be the son of the shopman. 
 And here again I say that it is a thing of great 
 moment in the world that the death of the son of a 
 provincial tradesman should be an event of European 
 importance, and that he should have the burial of a 
 chief of the State. 
 
 III. I take him next as the first modern Frenchman 
 who combined Revolutionary ends with Conservative 
 methods that is to say, who was resolved to carry out 
 the principles of the Revolution, both those of 1789, 
 1791, and 1848, by means of popular conviction, and 
 not by coups-de-tnain and terror. He was, as no other 
 Frenchman in this century has been, trusted at once 
 by the masses of the cities, and by the masses of the 
 peasants. The workmen of the great cities of France 
 are at present in a state of revolutionary excitement ; 
 the peasants and farmers of the country are the most 
 purely Conservative class in Europe. I mean by 
 Conservative, averse to all doubtful experiments, 
 whether backwards or forwards. It is quite true 
 that Gambetta was so Conservative that he had lost 
 a large part of his influence with the workmen of 
 Paris and Lyons. He would probably, had he lived, 
 have lost even more. But he died, by free vote, 
 Member for Belleville, the most insurgent quarter of 
 Paris. He who did this at the same time possessed 
 the confidence of the mass of the rural voters. This
 
 io8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 was to unite Order and Progress, as no other foremost 
 politician of France has ever done in our time. They 
 have to choose the one or the other the changes 
 desired by the mass of the workmen, or the permanence 
 loved by the mass of the peasants. They are avowed 
 Revolutionists or avowed Conservatives ; men who, 
 like Thiers and GreVy, influence the middle class 
 without influencing workmen at all ; or men like 
 C16menceau, who lead the workmen, but not the rich 
 and the peasantry. Gambetta was the one French- 
 man of modern times who could induce the Revo- 
 lutionists to follow constitutional means to their ends, 
 whilst inducing the Conservatives to face and accept 
 a new order of government. He had founded, and, 
 had he lived, he would possibly have secured, what 
 M. Lafitte has called an organic, progressive, Repub- 
 lican party. 
 
 He had hardly succeeded, when cut short in death. 
 Nor can we be at all sure that in any case he would 
 have succeeded in his task. The situation of France 
 is extraordinarily difficult ; one that makes government 
 for the moment almost impossible. The democratic 
 mania (and by that I mean the passion of groups and 
 of individuals to reject every centre of power but that 
 which promotes their own particular nostrums), this 
 democratic frenzy has gone so far that we may well 
 doubt if any government by opinion is now possible. 
 Free government means government by consent of 
 the governed and by rational guidance of their con- 
 victions. But when a society has got into that state 
 that the majority of energetic natures hold it as the 
 first duty of a man not to be governed at all ; when 
 opinion is in that state that in place of rational con- 
 victions society is saturated with prejudices incom- 
 patible with each other, and agreeing only in being 
 impervious to reason at all then government (by
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 109 
 
 conviction at least) is nearly a hopeless task. I am 
 not saying that France has reached this hopeless state ; 
 but the democratic poison has gone nearly as far as is 
 compatible with rational existence. 
 
 We, to whom the Republic is the normal condition 
 of the most advanced civilisation, who call for a social 
 and not a mere plutocratic Republic, are as far as 
 ever from the democratic system. Let us explain 
 these terms which are used so loosely in England. 
 By Republican Government we mean that govern- 
 ment which represents the mass of the people without 
 privileged families of any kind, or any governing class, 
 or any hereditary office. It is government in the 
 name of the people, in the interests of all equally, in 
 sympathy with the people ; where, so far as the State 
 is concerned, neither birth, nor wealth, nor class, give 
 any prerogative whatever. We mean, in fact, by 
 Republican what is on the lips of all English Liberals, 
 but is so little to be found in the facts of English 
 politics. By Democracy we mean the direct control 
 of the machinery of government by all citizens equally, 
 or rather, by such of them as can succeed in making 
 themselves heard, and for the time paralysing the rest. 
 This government by everybody in turn is the negation 
 of the true Republican Government ; for in place of 
 being the government by conviction and consent of 
 the people in the interest of all, it is the arbitrary 
 enforcement of a set of narrow interests by small 
 groups in endless succession. 
 
 The virus of democracy (which, in the sense in 
 which I use it, is so little republican or popular 
 government, that it is rather a series of impotent 
 tyrannies by petty groups), the virus of democracy 
 may have gone so far in France, that Gambetta 
 would have attempted to organise it in vain. Certain 
 it is, that with all his democratic training, and all his
 
 no NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 democratic habits, his very existence was an antidote 
 to democracy. Every great personality, every national 
 reputation, every creative political force, is in itself 
 the negation of democracy. Democracy, or every- 
 body ruling for his day in turn, and in the meantime, 
 till his turn comes, furiously assailing every one whose 
 turn is come, is hushed into silence by the very exist- 
 ence of a great man. A great statesman is ipso facto as 
 fatal to democracy as a great general is incompatible 
 with mutiny. I am not speaking of England nor of 
 the English Parliament, where different circumstances 
 make different conditions. I am speaking of France 
 to-day, and I do not hesitate to say that her one 
 chance of good government lies in the hope that her 
 government will assume a personal and not a demo- 
 cratic form. By personal I do not mean despotic ; 
 certainly not military, nothing imperial, not a rule of 
 bayonets, and prisons, and exile, and the state of siege ; 
 but the government of a capable man or men, freely 
 accepted and followed by the will of an intelligent 
 people. In a way we have something of the kind 
 here ; in a way they have something of the kind in 
 America. The great chance of their having it in 
 France lay in the future of Gambetta. I am far from 
 saying that in such a situation even he would have 
 succeeded ; but his life offered chances of such a thing 
 that we look for in vain in France. 
 
 Far be it from me to imply that we should approve 
 of all his schemes, or even condone his later policy. 
 I am free to acknowledge that of late I have earnestly 
 repudiated many leading features of his policy. His 
 attack upon the Catholic fraternities, his idea of a 
 State Church, of a State education, of State public 
 works, are contrary, I hold it, to any just and radical 
 principles ; whilst the miserable aggression in Tunis, 
 and the criminal spoliation of Egypt, fill us with the
 
 LEON GAMBETTA in 
 
 warmest indignation. For the most part, in the last 
 two years, I have found myself more often on the side 
 of Clemenceau, and heartily desirous of seeing the 
 policy of Clemenceau succeed. 
 
 But in the one great necessity of France, the 
 formation of a governing party or power, perfectly 
 Republican, at once progressive and Conservative, I 
 ask myself if Clemenceau has the prospect of succeed- 
 ing where Gambetta failed. By all means let us 
 support him if prospect there be. But I am not 
 sanguine. Clemenceau is so far unable to deal with 
 Democracy, in that he is himself a fanatical adherent 
 of the Democratic creed. To him the defeating of 
 any personal power is the first duty of a citizen ; 
 whereas the formation of a personal power is the first 
 necessity of the Republic. To him Opportunism is 
 the worst of political crimes ; whereas Opportunism 
 is simply the basis of all true statesmanship. To him, 
 the beginning and end of politics is the logical fulfil- 
 ment of the Revolution ; whereas the condition of 
 fulfilling the Revolution is to make it the gradual 
 development of Order. On all these grounds, although 
 on so many a recent question I hold Clmenceau right 
 and Gambetta wrong, we would have held to the 
 party of Gambetta and not to that of C16menceau. 
 If we must choose between the Irreconcilables and 
 the Opportunists, then Opportunism means practical 
 government, and Irreconcilability means a pedantic 
 doctrine. To have thrown over Gambetta for 
 Clmenceau is the very type of the democratic 
 frenzy. 1 
 
 The one hope for France is the rise of a great 
 
 1 How different a man is the C16menceau of 1908 from the Cldmen- 
 ceau of 1883. Twenty-five years of struggles and defeats, Dreyfus, and 
 sixty-seven years of life have turned the Opposition orator into the 
 successful statesman (1908).
 
 ii2 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Republican chief. And circumstances had so worked 
 that for the moment Gambetta was the only possible 
 Republican chief. Power in France rests in the hands 
 of some seven or eight millions of electors ; and these 
 seven or eight millions know it, and mean to keep the 
 power. Since the death of Louis Napoleon and 
 Thiers, Gambetta's name was the one name of living 
 Frenchmen which was known to every one of these 
 millions. GreVy's is unknown to one-third of them, 
 perhaps ; the name of Cle"menceau is yet unknown to 
 two-thirds of them. The extraordinary events of 
 1870 had carried the name and the fame of Gambetta 
 into every cottage and garret in France. Nothing 
 that Clemenceau, or GreVy, or Jules Simon, or Roche- 
 fort, or any one of these could do, could bring their 
 names or their characters before the mass of the 
 electors. The good sense of GreVy, the political 
 logic of Clemenceau, are admirable forces ; but they 
 cannot reach the men who hold the power. They 
 cannot speak in the tones which are heard through 
 France ; they cannot rouse the ideas of the distant 
 sluggish millions. GreVy may issue a hundred 
 messages, and C16menceau may deliver a hundred 
 speeches, but not one word of these will reach the 
 dull ear of the herdsmen in the Morbihan, and the 
 vine-dressers of the Gironde, and the woodcutters of 
 the Jura, and the ploughmen of the Beauce. 
 
 But when Gambetta spoke, France heard it and 
 knew it, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. 
 The stout farmers and the shepherds and the peasants, 
 from the Pas de Calais to the Pyrenees, and the work- 
 men of Belleville, and of Perrache, and of the Canne- 
 biere, of Lille, and Bordeaux, and Rouen, and Havre 
 every Frenchman knew it and understood it, and, 
 more or less, was moved or influenced by it. France 
 is politically a bilingual nation. One-half speaks a
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 113 
 
 political language, and lives in a political world, which 
 is wholly unknown to the other. They who address 
 one-half of the nation are incomprehensible to the 
 other. Gambetta alone of modern Frenchmen was 
 bilingual too. He found a language that both under- 
 stood, and he alone could address France. He com- 
 bined Order and Progress that is, Revolutionary ends 
 and a Conservative spirit. Here, then, was the political 
 force. France is a Democratic Republic, whose only 
 possible government is a popular chief, Revolutionary 
 by his genius and Conservative by his instincts. Such 
 an one was Gambetta, and for my part I see no 
 other. 
 
 IV. I pass to the last of the points which remain 
 to notice, and my words on this great man, or this 
 great torso of a great man, are ended. He is the one 
 European statesman of this century who systematic- 
 ally and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance 
 of Priesthood. His Opportunist theory of a State 
 Church was no doubt as wrong in principle as his 
 persecution of the Catholic Orders. But about his 
 formal rejection of all theology there can be no doubt ; 
 his life, his death, his burial, all alike bear witness to it. 
 It is common enough with minor politicians of all 
 types in France. But when we see the way in 
 which the responsible rulers of France have entered 
 into partnership with the priests, when we remember 
 all that in that line was done by the Bourbons, 
 Napoleons, and Orleans, by men like Guizot and 
 Thiers, MacMahon and De Broglie, we see here a new 
 thing a statesman of the first rank in Europe who 
 formally repudiates creeds in any shape, the first ruler 
 of PVance in this century who has chosen to rule on 
 purely human sanctions. Had his rejection of theo- 
 logy been simply negative, had he been a mere sceptic 
 like Thiers, or an empty scoffer like Rochefort, it
 
 u 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is little that we should find to honour and respect 
 in his secular belief. But the soul of Gambetta 
 was not the soul of scoffer or sceptic. He had a re- 
 ligion in his soul, though he had neither God nor 
 saint, though he never bowed the knee in the temple 
 of Rimmon. His religion was France, an imperfect 
 and but narrow image indeed of Humanity, but a part 
 of Humanity and an organ and an emblem of it. 
 His religious life, like his political life, remained but 
 a fragment and a hope. Both have closed at the age 
 of forty-four. What a future might have lain beyond 
 had he lived to the age of Thiers or Guizot ! 
 
 It is a thing which the world will remember one 
 day that vast ceremony in Paris on the 6th of 
 January last such a funeral as no emperor ever had, 
 a day that recalled the gathering of the dawn of the 
 Revolution in 1789 ; when all France helped to bury 
 the one Frenchman who stood before Europe as 
 Bismarck and Gladstone alone of living men stand 
 before Europe to-day, and from first to last in that 
 throng where Paris did honour to the son of the 
 dealer of Cahors, no Catholic emblem or priest was 
 seen ; not a thought but for the great human loss and 
 human sorrow, not a word but of human and earthly 
 hopes. For the first time in this century Europe 
 looked on and saw one of its foremost men laid in his 
 rest by a nation in grief without priest or church, 
 prayer or hymn. 
 
 The nation laid him in his rest with an honour 
 that no service could equal. For death is peculiarly 
 the sphere of the power and resources of the religion 
 of the future. It will find for the last offices of its 
 great sons noble words and affecting ceremonies, 
 before which the conventional requiems will sound 
 hollow. It will clothe the memory of the great man 
 with all the memories of the servants of Humanity,
 
 L&ON GAMBETTA 115 
 
 whose work he has helped, and whose great company 
 he has joined at last. And in the spirit of the 
 immortal traditions of patriotic defence, let us 
 remember with honour the great citizen who has 
 been borne to the premature grave, wherein were laid 
 the unrevealed future of Danton, and Hoche, and 
 Condorcet.
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 
 
 (1860) 
 
 The three following studies on the Italian kingdom and its 
 makers, Cavour and Garibaldi, were the result of visits 
 to Italy and intercourse with the leaders of the Nationalist 
 cause. At Oxford I had been the friend and pupil of 
 Count Aurelio Baffi, one of the Triumvirs at Rome with 
 Mazzini and Armellini during the defence of the 
 Republic in 1849 under Garibaldi. By Saffi I was 
 introduced to Mazzini, Campanella, Pianciani, and other 
 Italian exiles, and I travelled in Italy with introductions 
 in 1853 and 1855. When the Italian cause was taken 
 up by Napoleon III. early in 1859, I to k deep interest 
 in the question, and wrote letters thereon in the Daily 
 News. This brought me into relation with Francis 
 Newman, Count Pulszki, the friend of Kossuth, G. J. 
 Holyoake, Count Pepoli, and other Italianissimi. Meet- 
 ings took place in my chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and we 
 projected the formation of an Italian Association to pro- 
 mote the cause by appealing to English sympathy in the 
 press and by public meetings and the Trades Unions and 
 radical organisations. 
 
 This project was suddenly cut short by Napoleon's aban- 
 donment of the campaign by the Peace of Villafranca (July 
 1859). In August I started off to Italy with ample intro- 
 ductions, and I undertook to write letters to the Morning 
 Post and to the Daily News as independent and honorary 
 116
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 117 
 
 correspondent. At Turin I made the acquaintance of 
 Senateur Matteucci, Cavour's Florentine associate, Baron 
 Poerio, the prisoner of Bomba in Naples, Count Mamiani, 
 and others. With introductions from them I visited 
 Genoa, Leghorn, Florence, Siena, Lucca, Prato, Bologna, 
 Ravenna, Modena, Parma, Milan, and Lugano, at each 
 place having interviews with the local governments of the 
 Duchies Prince Pepoli, Baron Ricasoli, Farini, etc., ana 
 the chiefs of the 'Nationalist movement. They furnished 
 me with abundant documents and information. I also 
 saw the levies of volunteers, and met Garibaldi in Romagna 
 at the head of his own corps. The letters I wrote to the 
 Morning Post and -to the Daily News were studied, I 
 understand, by Lord Palmers ton and Lord John Russell, 
 then Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary respectively. 
 These essays appeared in the Westminster Review, 
 January 1861, six months before the death of Cavour 
 (1908}. 
 
 
 
 IMPERSONATED under the great names and the marked 
 characters of Cavour and Garibaldi, there stand con- 
 fronted the two principles of policy, the aristocratic 
 and the popular, the legal and the revolutionary ; and 
 the two great parties of order and of movement. Just 
 as the French Revolution was, though principally social, 
 yet in a great degree national ; so indeed the Italian, 
 though originally national, is in no small degree social. 
 The former commenced in the effort to substitute one 
 form of society for another, but it ended in a struggle 
 for existence with its neighbours. The latter com- 
 menced a struggle for national existence, which it 
 cannot carry to its issue without calling into action 
 many of those elements out of which states are com- 
 pacted, and facing at least some of the difficulties which 
 disturb the union and harmony of orders, classes, and 
 institutions. 
 
 On the one side we have seen the action of the
 
 n8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Government, or rather of one pre-eminent statesman, 
 moulding the material and political strength of a small 
 state into one compact power ; divergent parties and 
 purposes welded into a definite national policy. Next, 
 the action of an established and strong system has 
 been extended to foreign powers, and the whole 
 machinery of international statecraft has been moved 
 and guided by one strong and practised hand. At 
 last, by a consummate stroke of daring and ingenuity, 
 an auxiliary of overwhelming strength has been in- 
 voked to be used, watched, and eventually resisted. 
 Beside which, a variety of local revolutions needed to 
 be tempered and guided under legal forms and in the 
 presence of retrograde parties ; and a work of inter- 
 necine struggle carried out under the jealous eyes of 
 European Governments. The power which could do 
 this must above all things have possessed patience, 
 tenacity, self-command, experience, and practical 
 sagacity, and no small share of those solid qualities 
 out of which grow the orderly consolidations of states. 
 Such an element existed in the rich and educated 
 classes of Upper Italy, amongst the nobility, the land- 
 owners, the professions, and the trades of the towns ; 
 men who, sometimes pedantic and often overcautious, 
 in the main retained the respect and confidence of the 
 people, and to a man were ennobled by the national 
 sentiment and zeal for order and rational government. 
 Such men, whose services are too much depreciated 
 because far from brilliant, formed in reality the strong 
 conservative element by which alone the hot passions 
 of the time have been mastered and guided ; and they 
 found in Cavour an exponent and chief who as far 
 surpassed them all in his instinct towards systematic 
 and orderly organisation, as in his power of grasping 
 and controlling the more vigorous forces of the revolu- 
 tionary element.
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 119 
 
 On the other side we have seen the conception of 
 national existence matured and upheld through dreary 
 years of suffering by a few brilliant intellects, gradu- 
 ally growing up as the religion of the finer minds, 
 until it at last spread to be the passion of all that is 
 generous in the national character. With them it 
 became a principle too sacred to be tampered with, 
 too vital to suffer excuse or delay, which demanded 
 every sacrifice and was capable of every achievement. 
 These ardent spirits addressed and found response in 
 the hearts of the people ; they repudiated the course 
 of diplomatic intrigue as much as that of cautious 
 legality. Believing more in enthusiasm than in 
 organisation, and in self-devotion than in ability, they 
 are impatient of the delays and scruples of the party 
 of order. Devoted to their principle of national re- 
 generation, they contemn those social influences which 
 unless in moments of extraordinary excitement virtually 
 dominate and represent every society. They thus 
 quite misconceive and undervalue the weight bearing 
 upon the future of their country from the will or 
 policy of foreign states, as well as that of the rich, 
 educated, or powerful individuals at home. With 
 feelings which in every great crisis do indeed make 
 the life of national movements, they had neither the 
 patience nor the judgment necessary for sustained 
 preparation, or for handling complicated situations and 
 rival parties. Besides which, they have so little 
 sympathy for those sentiments, interests, or habits, 
 upon which the order and obedience of masses of men 
 repose, that they force their own enthusiastic ideas 
 upon populations quite incapable of adopting them, 
 and govern alternately with untimely violence and 
 fatal negligence. 
 
 Such are the elements which have been at work 
 during the whole of this recent Italian movement,
 
 120 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 occasionally acting harmoniously as one, then separ- 
 ately but in common, at times in open hostility ; but 
 both indispensable and both inevitable. Cavour and 
 Garibaldi, the leaders of these two parties, are not, 
 however, their simple representatives. To all the 
 habitual self-restraint, the knowledge and patient 
 training of the Conservative classes, Cavour adds the 
 full power of conceiving and using the enthusiasm of 
 popular feeling. But with all his superiority to his 
 own order and party, he does not and cannot inspire 
 in others that passionate love of national existence, 
 that moral elevation of character, that unfaltering self- 
 devotion and perfect simplicity, which seem to beam 
 from the countenance of the great popular hero. 
 With his admirable versatility, sagacity, and know- 
 ledge of mankind, the great minister has been able to 
 conduct with consummate skill an undertaking as 
 great and difficult as ever fell to the lot of a statesman. 
 But the very ability of his combinations and devices, 
 the very brilliancy of his achievements, has proved in 
 no small degree fatal to the moral strength of his 
 position. He has mixed himself up in compromises 
 and intrigues, and in deceptions which, however 
 excusable in a politician, are fatal to the honour of a 
 great national regenerator. 
 
 The services of Cavour to his country have been 
 indeed indispensable ; without him neither the first 
 possibility of life, nor the actual maintenance of 
 existence, would have been practicable ; but he is not 
 all, and he needed a very different colleague. All that 
 is wanting in Cavour is supplied in Garibaldi. Utterly 
 incapable of civil administration as the noble soldier 
 has proved, he has inspired in the heart of every Italian 
 emotions which no Government orator or diplomatist 
 could awaken. When a ministry had completed a 
 bargain which nothing but necessity (yet unproved)
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 121 
 
 could excuse, the voice of the bravest of the brave was 
 heard in the council of the nation choked with shame 
 and indignation. That broken protest sank deep into 
 the hearts of the people ; it taught them to rely on 
 their own sense of dignity, and not on the hired 
 favours of strangers. Again, when the enthusiasm of 
 the nation was sinking under the chilling process of 
 consolidation and diplomatic manoeuvring, the same 
 voice aroused them to a sense of the task still before 
 them, and awoke the stifled cry of national reunion. 
 By him the sense of public honour and pride, wounded 
 to the quick by a humiliating sacrifice, was again 
 called into activity. By him also the desire of national 
 existence has been raised from a line of policy into a 
 sacred duty, and patriotism has been elevated into a 
 religion by which interest, habit, and personal ambition 
 are to be transformed and disappear. Lastly, it was 
 the Dictator alone who could give to the regeneration 
 of Italy that character of brotherly reunion, of moral 
 purification, of popular simplicity and intensity, which 
 were little dreamt of in the Cabinet, the Court, or the 
 Parliament. 
 
 Their country needed both. Each had his own 
 great part to bear in the contest. It has not fallen to 
 the lot of Italy to unite in one party, as in our own 
 Revolution, the most fiery enthusiasm with the 
 sternest discipline, or to create a leader who, like 
 Cromwell, could be at once the devotee of a sacred 
 cause and the consummate politician. With them, 
 principle and policy have had a separate representative, 
 and the claims of neither one nor the other should be 
 exaggerated or undervalued. The passion of the 
 soldier has been curbed by the providence of the 
 statesman, whilst the skill of the minister has been 
 ennobled by the energy of a hero. Without Garibaldi, 
 the intensity no less than the character of the popular
 
 122 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 feeling was in danger of being lost ; had he been 
 master, it would have been ruined in futile enterprises. 
 As in every regular act, heart and mind must concur, 
 the one to suggest, the other to control j so it has 
 been the duty of the hero to inspire, of the statesman 
 to guide the popular effort. That which the one felt, 
 the other thought ; the instinct of one has been 
 matured by the experience of the other. The one has 
 made his country respected, the other has made it 
 honoured ; the one has increased its power, the other 
 has elevated its character. Arm and head, heart and 
 brain, feeling and intelligence, may be contrasted, but 
 cannot be separated without danger. It may not be 
 possible, or even desirable, exactly to decide the share 
 which each may have had in a common work ; but it 
 would be a profound mistake to exalt one service at 
 the expense of the other, when both are indispensable. 
 In judging Cavour we are impressed by that 
 in which he surpasses all modern statesmen the 
 faculty of prevision. In this, pre-eminently the first 
 duty of a politician, the present century has shown 
 no example at all comparable. 1 In him alone 
 shall we find anything like a systematic and patient 
 elaboration of a great national object. There, 
 at least, we have an instance of a Government far 
 ahead of its people, creating and directing an active 
 public opinion towards one object, and subjecting the 
 whole of its action to the slow work of preparing for 
 a distant and gigantic enterprise. For ten years now 
 the whole public action of Piedmont material, 
 political, and moral, in foreign as well as domestic 
 policy ; in Parliament as in Cabinet, from one end to 
 
 1 In 1860 Bismarck was Ambassador at St. Petersburg, estranged 
 from the Prussian ministry and little known outside diplomatic circles. 
 Of course he ultimately made an even grander career. But his work was 
 neither so difficult, nor so honourable, nor so sagacious as that of Cavour 
 (1908).
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 123 
 
 the other of the public service has been centred in 
 the effort to prepare for that part which she has lately 
 been called on to perform. It was from the joint 
 action of all these means by diplomacy, by public 
 opinion, by material organisation, by attention to the 
 finances, the army, the railways, the schools, the 
 ecclesiastical bodies, and the civil service of the nation, 
 that Count Cavour has looked for the success of his 
 undertaking. 
 
 The history of his administration affords a com- 
 plete instance of a statesman who works out a profound 
 policy with unfailing sagacity and determination. 
 The details of management have been no less admir- 
 able than the scheme itself. The perfect publicity 
 and distinctness of the object sought, and the harmony 
 with which all developments of national activity fell 
 into the grand purpose, is the best proof of the sound- 
 ness and vitality of the policy. No other could afford 
 any basis for sustained and combined action. Such a 
 type of Government belongs, indeed, more to the past 
 times in which States have been created, than to these 
 latter days, in which they are feebly or carelessly 
 governed. It contains nothing of that irregular and 
 incoherent movement which, since the French Revolu- 
 tion, has marked more or less the European ministries. 
 To carry a few popular measures, to provide for the 
 wants or dangers of the present, to undertake or 
 surrender a course of action under the sway of public 
 opinion, to assume in Europe that position which for 
 the moment seemed most conducive to the national 
 prestige, has been the crown of the aims of any 
 modern ministry. 
 
 The work accomplished by Count Cavour belongs 
 rather to that order of statesmanship which has created 
 nations, changed the future history of Europe, and 
 consolidated new eras of social and political life. For
 
 124 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the true parallels or rivals to him, we must look, not 
 amongst the Palmerstons or Talleyrands, or even the 
 Peels or Guizots of our day, but amongst the company 
 of William of Orange, of Frederick II., and George 
 Washington. Not that he in any great degree re- 
 sembles any of these great men ; he may not equal 
 some of them in moral elevation of character, though 
 undoubtedly his mental capacities are not wholly 
 unequal to theirs. But it is to the class of great 
 creative statesmen, and not to that of able adminis- 
 trators or consummate diplomatists, that he belongs. 
 It is not from such men that we can look for the 
 organisation of all the conflicting principles and forces 
 in a highly cultivated nation, and the formation of a 
 great living whole out of the scattered fragments of 
 an oppressed race. It is a peculiar genius for govern- 
 ment which can grasp as a central idea that one 
 principle of action which can alone give cohesion 
 and vitality to disorganised communities, can make 
 it practical enough for the most unenlightened, and 
 broad enough for the most aspiring ; and at the same 
 time develop it in action under all the restraints im- 
 posed by prescription and the sluggishness which 
 timidity and selfishness impose on large classes of 
 mankind. The conception of national unity is indeed 
 primarily due to those impassioned thinkers of all schools 
 who upheld the sacred tradition of the Italian race, and 
 in perhaps the highest degree to that unhappy genius 
 who was himself the least capable of creating it. 
 
 To Mazzini, it is true, as thinker, poet, preacher, 
 or agitator as indeed anything short of politician is 
 due in this generation the strength of that principle 
 which is the very life of Italy at this day. But how- 
 ever we admit his claims as a teacher, which as a 
 conspirator he has done so much to nullify, it is clear 
 that had not Cavour found means to make that notion
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 125 
 
 of Italian nationality patent to the mind of all Europe, 
 and made it a practical and intelligible creed to all 
 classes of Italians, forcing the principle forward under 
 a constant shield of order and right, the very idea itself 
 would long have remained in the breasts of the small 
 circle of noble and intelligent spirits. It is not by 
 eloquent appeals or by desperate self-sacrifice that the 
 mass of the public can be penetrated. It has been the 
 task of Count Cavour, by a long series of public acts, 
 all within the sphere of sound and legal administra- 
 tion, to awaken in the minds of the great body of 
 his countrymen a sense of national right, duty, and 
 dignity, and to conciliate the spirit of freedom with 
 that of subordination to one powerful will. 
 
 The difficulties which met Cavour on his first 
 accession to power were such as even now it is diffi- 
 cult thoroughly to estimate. The defeat of Novara 
 had left the Piedmontese kingdom humiliated and 
 weakened, and yet fatally implicated in the insurrec- 
 tionary movement which each succeeding event in 
 Europe contributed to discredit. There the Church, 
 and a semi-feudal landed aristocracy possessed a strong 
 traditional power. The whole of the administration 
 of the little State was singularly backward and imper- 
 fect. Its legal and its commercial system, its municipal 
 institutions, the organisation of its army, of education, 
 of the public service, and of religious bodies, its tariff, 
 its roads, and system of communication, and lastly, its 
 own national unity, were below those of nearly every 
 other State in the Peninsula, except the Roman itself. 
 In the other provinces of Italy, monarchical sentiments 
 had not begun to exist, and national greatness was 
 known only in the language of insurrectionary appeals. 
 All the sad honours of the late campaign had been won 
 by the old municipal spirit, and Manin and Garibaldi 
 had upheld the glory of historic republics. The
 
 i 2 6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 strength with which upon the shattered efforts of the 
 national uprising the old empire of the foreigner had 
 been established, had crushed out all but the hope of 
 feeble palliatives and evasions in the minds of the more 
 cautious, and desperate conspiracies in those of the 
 bolder. Parties were swaying between hopeless sub- 
 mission and hopeless rebellion, amidst a state of things 
 in Europe which seemed at each step to be extinguish- 
 ing the last embers of revolution. By degrees two 
 distinct courses of action became visible, and two rival 
 parties made their existence felt. 
 
 The constitutional or moderate party adopted one ; 
 the party of action or the national party the other. It 
 has been the work of Cavour to vivify and fuse the 
 two. On the one hand, the party which comprised 
 the rich and noble classes, the more timid natures, and 
 the bulk of the commercial public, bowed down by 
 the great calamity of the last effort, preached against 
 any new risk or immediate action, looked only for the 
 future to the action of time and increased intelligence 
 in the people, and hoped by patient conduct and 
 ingenious management to alleviate rather than extin- 
 guish the national degradation whenever the circum- 
 stances of the day or the public opinion of Europe 
 offered an opportunity. Violently denouncing all 
 extreme measures, and resolute to expose themselves to 
 no fresh disaster, they hoped to ameliorate the position 
 of their country by legal resistance, and by the means 
 of those liberal institutions which survived the wreck, 
 by appealing to the public opinion and Governments 
 of Europe, and in particular by the introduction of a 
 parliamentary system. Opposed to this was the policy 
 of the revolutionary party, who, having their head- 
 quarters at Milan, possessed no insignificant strength 
 both at Genoa and Turin. Under this head belong 
 all those parties, whether republican or monarchist,
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 127 
 
 who looked forward to Insurrection as the means of 
 restitution, and laboured by conspiracies, associations, 
 and propagandism towards the freedom of the Italian 
 race by a general explosion of revolutionary energy. 
 
 This party indeed was animated by a far deeper 
 devotion to the common cause, and felt more deeply 
 the miseries of the present, than the supporters of the 
 more patient and cooler policy. They felt indeed the 
 immense necessity for action, and unhesitating con- 
 fidence in the capacity of their race. They saw, 
 moreover, the grand truth that all the patience and 
 prudence of their rivals never would result in creating 
 that deep national enthusiasm which alone, could 
 produce a restored nation ; and that the future of 
 their country could no longer be left to ministerial 
 ingenuity, but must be made the first and last of 
 public duties. 
 
 Standing as we do upon the pedestal of past events, 
 we can now discern that neither one policy nor the 
 other separately had a chance of success. With all 
 their efforts towards material and domestic advance- 
 ment, with their old ideas of regular and peaceful 
 efforts, the moderates could never have awakened the 
 sentiment of national reunion, or forced upon Piedmont 
 the danger and the glory of the national chieftainship. 
 They possessed no means and little taste for reaching 
 the popular sympathies, and were devoid of all con- 
 ception of a social regeneration as bound up in the 
 national revival. Nor could their doctrines attract the 
 nobler spirits or the finer intellects, whilst they com- 
 promised with the great end of all political life. 
 Under their system Piedmont might have gone on for 
 years increasing in ignoble prosperity, distinguished 
 from Belgium or Holland by a finer army or a nobler 
 soil. 
 
 Nor did the bare programme of the revolutionists
 
 128 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 offer a more fortunate career. The long series of 
 disastrous insurrections into which the unhappy 
 illusions of Mazzini led his generous but credulous 
 followers, seems to prove beyond all doubt the impossi- 
 bility of really organising a national insurrection in a 
 country so thoroughly shackled with the sanction of 
 every Government in Europe. Their appeal to the 
 spirit of their countrymen, whilst it does honour to 
 the sincerity of their own devotion, shows but too 
 sadly how much they had mistaken the vis inertiae of 
 the bulk of the people. And if to be always fancying 
 a passion for national independence in masses of the 
 country population, to whom the very name of Italy 
 was a word without meaning or sense, were not 
 enough to condemn them as politicians, it was a fatal 
 delusion to be preaching insurrection to a people 
 amongst whom the rich and the noble held the para- 
 mount social and political influence, classes who by the 
 very conditions of their existence must resent with 
 indignation any suggestion or attempt towards revo- 
 lutionary or social convulsion. Had such a party 
 succeeded in establishing their supremacy, the future 
 of the Italian race would have sunk more hopelessly 
 at each successive disaster which they had provoked. 
 Outcasts at once from all the conservative elements of 
 their nation, and hunted down by its oppressors, they 
 would have served only to renew continual protests 
 ever to be extinguished in blood. Discarding, it seems 
 despising, that material strength and organisation 
 which they did not, and could not possess, and attri- 
 buting to the moral strength which they had an 
 extent which was wholly delusive, they could do little 
 but keep alive a sacred principle which they were 
 incapable of making triumphant. Each insurrection 
 would have ended in fresh physical suffering and 
 deeper moral prostration. Had Italy possessed no sons
 
 THE MAKING OF ITALY 129 
 
 but them, they might have been now wandering over 
 Europe like the Poles, and showing us that Italian 
 nationality existed only in the minds of the thoughtful 
 and the ardent as a tradition or an aspiration. 
 
 It has been the task of Count Cavour to bring 
 about the fusion of these two parties, each of which 
 maintained an idea which was indispensable to real 
 success. The party of order saw the necessity for 
 regular and patient development of the national 
 resources ; the party of action the duty of rousing the 
 popular energy. From the one he took their notion 
 of the end, from the other their view of the method 
 of national policy. With the one he adopted as his 
 watchword the unity and independence of Italy, with 
 the other he proclaimed as his policy the regular and 
 public reorganisation of the State. With the one he 
 saw that no genuine progress was possible, unless by 
 accepting the conditions of the political and social 
 system existing ; with the other he insisted that all 
 political and material development must be animated 
 by a leading principle, and subordinated to one para- 
 mount duty. 
 
 Seen from a distance, his Government presents 
 itself to us as one series of sagacious yet aspiring 
 enterprises. With every fresh success he has risen in 
 audacity and vigour, until we have seen at last the 
 revolutionary energy of the outlaw matched by that of 
 the responsible minister. He has shown, indeed, that 
 a great revolution can be carried out without a reckless 
 use of convulsive measures, but not without rising to 
 a true conception of all the forces in society which 
 underlie its external forms and laws. He has carried 
 out the work of Italian nationality by repudiating, on 
 the one hand, the desperate aid of mere insurrection, 
 but on the other not without boldly advancing on the 
 path of organic revolution. 
 
 K
 
 130 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 CAVOUR 
 
 The career of Count Cavour exhibits the somewhat 
 unusual case of a politician who grows less and not 
 more conservative by experience. His progress has 
 been one from unobtrusive administrative and economic 
 studies to the conduct of astounding revolutionary 
 movements. First he is the industrious writer on 
 financial operations, then the minister of material and 
 political reforms, lastly the leader of a nation in a 
 struggle for existence. There was little in his early 
 life to foreshadow the formidable character in which 
 he now appears. 
 
 Almost the first act which it fell to his duty to 
 carry out, the commercial treaty with France, was an 
 emblem of his whole subsequent system. By that 
 treaty, indeed, Piedmont surrendered far more advan- 
 tages than she obtained ; but she obtained from it the 
 priceless gain of the foundation of a French alliance. 
 In the words in which the minister defended his policy 
 in Parliament we have indeed the key of his whole 
 career, a reorganisation of the whole strength of the 
 country to be combined with foreign alliances as 
 the basis of a national war. " To this treaty," said 
 he, " we are moved by considerations superior to any 
 economical or administrative interest. A crisis may 
 yet, and probably will soon arise in which Sardinia 
 might need, if not the material, at least the moral 
 support of France. This treaty may not give us all 
 the financial advantages which we have a right to 
 expect, but it will strengthen that precious union 
 which ought to exist between the free peoples of the 
 west of Europe." It was the same idea to which 
 belong all those commercial treaties which marked 
 the year 1851, with Belgium, England, Switzerland.
 
 CAVOUR 131 
 
 Greece, the Zollverein, and Holland. By them, 
 together with the second convention with France, an 
 entire revolution was introduced in the fiscal system 
 of the kingdom, and Piedmont took her place as 
 a Free Trade State in a manner to which no other 
 continental power could pretend. The sagacity of 
 these measures has indeed been amply proved by an 
 increased and increasing revenue ; by the stimulus 
 given to production, and the development of material 
 prosperity. 
 
 But it is to take a very narrow view of his policy 
 to suppose that it was as a free-trader, or economist, 
 that Count Cavour carried out these measures. They 
 are political no less than commercial measures. Their 
 prime object was to introduce Sardinia as the equal of 
 the enlightened and progressive States of Europe, to 
 ensure the moral support, if not the actual alliance, of 
 France and England, to raise the country up out of 
 the catalogue of obscure or satellite kingdoms, and 
 invest her in the eyes of her citizens and of all Italians 
 with a European dignity and importance. 
 
 Nor was this idea less conspicuous in any of those 
 administrative reforms under which the whole organ- 
 isation of the country has so marvellously expanded. 
 That system of railways which is now the completest 
 which any Continental State can show, if not quite so 
 thickly set as the Belgian or the English, possesses a 
 symmetry and a common design which show the work 
 of a dominant purpose directing their whole extent. 
 There is something quite strategic in their plan, and 
 we see them laid out as in the array of an army with 
 a first and second line of defence ; a double communi- 
 cation between the strong stations, and a general con- 
 centration of the whole. And the providence and 
 value of this work was abundantly manifested in the 
 recent campaign, where we saw Turin saved from
 
 132 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 invasion, and gigantic manoeuvres executed by the 
 sole agency of this new engine of war. 
 
 It is again to the same general policy that so many 
 of the other labours of that ministry belong : the 
 postal conventions with the other States of Italy, by 
 means of which Piedmontese journals and information 
 penetrated the Peninsula ; the reconstruction and re- 
 organisation of the mercantile and naval ports, the 
 reform of the finances, of the banks, the re-assessment 
 of the land-tax. Finally came that by which the 
 ministerial policy was to find its weapon the entire 
 reorganisation of the army, and the systematic arma- 
 ment of the fortresses which formed the key of the 
 internal defence. It was by this series of adminis- 
 trative reforms, and the energy and sagacity displayed 
 in such repeated instances of sound practical states- 
 manship, that the great bulk of the nation gradually 
 came to place its confidence in a minister who had so 
 strikingly increased the prosperity and activity of the 
 country. But if the policy of Count Cavour had 
 rested there, he might have been the organ of the 
 Conservative classes, without ever becoming the chief 
 of the active energy of the progressive. It was 
 necessary to assume an attitude which could arrest 
 the imagination and appeal to the heart of the bulk of 
 the nation, Italian as well as Piedmontese. He must 
 proclaim a principle which could really enlist that 
 smouldering but irresistible force of resistance, and 
 unite in one battle-cry the unguided will of thousands 
 of ardent spirits. To satisfy and to restrain the 
 passionate hopes of men to whom fear and despair were 
 unknown, and soothe the heaving agitation of over- 
 goaded populations, needed some more powerful engine 
 than financial arrangements or amended tariffs. 1 
 
 1 It will be remembered that the whole of these remarks applies to 
 the condition of Italy in 1860 (1908).
 
 CAVOUR 133 
 
 To exist, Piedmont must head the revolution. It 
 was this which none of the leading men of the country 
 seemed adequately to conceive. It was this which 
 has been the basis of Cavour's policy. Slowly he 
 began to announce a more energetic system. 
 
 The diplomatic struggle with Austria in defence 
 of the Lombard exiles whose property had been 
 sequestered, first exhibited him in the arena of 
 European politics, and gave its true stamp to his 
 policy. Then Italians for the first time saw the 
 audacity and skill with which the minister could meet 
 the high-handed violence of the great Empire. When 
 after the failure (at least outwardly) of the most power- 
 ful appeals and protests to Austria, the Sardinian envoy 
 was withdrawn from Vienna, the full significance of 
 the struggle became manifest. It was a great step 
 thus to have met the common enemy with a defiance, 
 and to have pronounced before the public opinion of 
 Europe a crushing indictment, and carried off the 
 approval of the Governments of England and France. 
 
 But there was an enemy at home yet nearer than 
 the Austrian whom it was necessary to humble and 
 defy. Whilst the Papal Church retained its prestige 
 and organisation, the union and independence of Italy 
 were alike impossible. 
 
 Rome yet possessed the strength to impede every 
 step towards national greatness, and the strength of 
 Rome lay in the monastic orders. It is a singular 
 fact that during the provisional regime in Tuscany 
 and the Duchies of Central Italy, the feelings of the 
 clergy, and with them of the rural populations, were 
 seen to vary exactly in proportion to the numbers and 
 power of the monastic bodies. To strike down and 
 shatter this priestly army was the object achieved with 
 entire success by the conventual legislation by which 
 all orders not engaged in preaching, teaching, or heal-
 
 134 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ing were suppressed. By this measure the Papacy 
 was humiliated and its strength crippled. The 
 rapidity, firmness, and moderation with which this 
 great social change was effected (unattended by any of 
 those evils which have too often followed upon such 
 an act), showed the minister superintending without 
 a single failure a real revolution in society, and con- 
 ciliating the strict claims of law, property, and order 
 with a scheme involving a most organic change and 
 kindling opposite passions. 
 
 Neither the fury of the Catholic party nor the 
 excitement of their extreme opponents could shake 
 the Government from its policy of long -matured 
 advance. The part which this measure alone has 
 played in the recent agitation towards annexation 
 to Sardinia is very remarkable. Both sides feel its 
 significance, and the resolution and boldness displayed 
 in it by the ministry as much added to their strength 
 as the senile anathemas of the Vatican exposed and 
 degraded the Catholic party. 
 
 The material strength of the country having been 
 thus raised to the highest efficiency, and the domestic 
 enemies effectually subdued, Count Cavour was pre- 
 pared to enter upon that branch of his policy which 
 involved the active co-operation of the European 
 powers. The war against Russia offered the means, 
 and even made necessary immediate action. The 
 opportunity was given of at once entering into the 
 circle of the European States, whilst the late outbreak 
 at Milan, and the evident excitement of the republican 
 party, proved the danger of a policy of inaction. Count 
 Cavour accordingly offered to the allies the vigorous 
 co-operation of the Sardinian State, and despatched a 
 force which nearly equalled and at one time exceeded 
 that of the British army. By this enterprise the 
 ambition and self-reliance of the army were awakened,
 
 CAVOUR 135 
 
 great impulse was given to its organisation and 
 strength, the disaster of Novara was blotted out, 
 and the credit of Piedmont again placed beyond a 
 rival in Italy. 
 
 It was by its indirect rather than by its direct 
 consequences that this measure must be judged. The 
 alliance with England and France, by which the 
 Sardinian territories were actually guaranteed during 
 the war, and which promised for many years the 
 closest relations, at once raised the little kingdom 
 into a European Power. The moral effect of the 
 protest, uttered at the Congress of Paris, formed a 
 real step in the history of Italy ; nor was the language 
 of the minister in the Parliament other than was justi- 
 fied by facts : " From henceforth the Italian question 
 has entered on the order of European questions. The 
 cause of Italy has been maintained, not by demagogues 
 and revolutionaries, but by the plenipotentiaries of 
 France and England. From the Congress it has 
 passed to the tribunal of public opinion. The 
 struggle will be long, and need prudence and 
 calmness ; but our cause will triumph." 
 
 Indeed the State papers which that occasion drew 
 forth before the public attention of Europe, were 
 such as possessed no ordinary significance. That 
 presented to the allied powers in April 1856, by the 
 vigour of its attack, by its unanswerable logic, and 
 still more by the perfect moderation of its tone, could 
 not fail to place the Italian question in a new light, 
 and force upon the most conservative minds in Europe 
 the necessity for acquiescing in important change. 
 The conflict waged in the field as well as that in the 
 council sank deeply into the minds of the whole Italian 
 race, the former chiefly into that of the people, the 
 latter into the convictions of thinking men. And if 
 in the recent elevation of Sardinia to the chieftainship
 
 136 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the nation, we see the influence of the glory of the 
 Crimean campaign, we see in it no less the impression 
 caused on the more vigorous of the older parties by 
 the attitude which the kingdom had assumed in the 
 councils of Europe. This it was that gave the minister 
 the support of the republican and purely revolutionary 
 chiefs. Now they saw opening to them a real prospect 
 of achieving by some not distant effort the entire 
 emancipation of the country with the sanction and 
 even the co-operation of some of the European powers. 
 Then they began to see the real drift of a policy which 
 looked forward to national independence, not by setting 
 up Piedmont as a fortunate model for imitation or an 
 example of prudent resignation, but by training her 
 whole energies for the hour of national struggle, and 
 preparing the way for success by a hearty co-operation 
 of parties and long-sighted combination of European 
 policy. 
 
 With regard to this participation of Piedmont in 
 the Crimean war very opposite judgments have been 
 formed. It may be said with much force that to 
 declare war with a friendly power which menaced no 
 possible right or interest of the State, to burden the 
 struggling resources of the country with a new and 
 indefinite weight, to have rushed unprovoked into the 
 midst of a gigantic struggle ; in a word, to have under- 
 taken a distant war for the sole purpose of deriving 
 therefrom glory and alliances, was an act of very 
 doubtful prudence, and of hardly doubtful morality. 
 
 Right or wrong, the war resulted almost as a 
 necessity from the part which Sardinia had under- 
 taken. To maintain her very existence and tranquillity 
 she was forced to show herself prepared for a speedy 
 struggle with the Austrian to enter upon that struggle 
 with a chance of success she needed at least the moral 
 support of the Western Powers and that support she
 
 CAVOUR 137 
 
 could not hope to obtain unless by boldly identifying 
 herself with their foreign European policy. The 
 Lombard campaign was only possible after the Con- 
 gress of Paris, and admission to the Congress would 
 have been impossible had it not been for the victory 
 on the Tchernaia. It may be that the task of 
 national regeneration is one which after all the sword 
 is not competent to effect ; but so far as force or 
 policy could effect it, the work has been most 
 thoroughly successful, and if the Crimean expedition 
 was one which by itself has no adequate justification 
 of right, it has been at least gilded over by amazing 
 results, and received a certain consecration from the 
 cause which it has so incalculably served. 
 
 The work hitherto had been one only of prepara- 
 tion for the struggle. The time was come for the 
 actual effort. The aid of France was sought, and 
 obtained. Nothing could be a greater mistake than 
 to regard the interference of France as the result of 
 an individual impulse of the Emperor, or any special 
 manoeuvre of the minister. It is bound up with the 
 whole system of Count Cavour's policy, of which it 
 forms the crown. By it that policy must stand or 
 fall. With reference to that his public acts must be 
 explained and judged. Imminent as that French 
 intervention was in 1848, with the whole course of 
 events leading up to it over a period of ten years, 
 popular as the object of the war was in France, it 
 must be looked on even more as the issue of the 
 situation of affairs in Europe than of any individual 
 will, however powerful and apparently capricious, and 
 as having justified the sagacity of Lord Palmerston, 
 who wrote in November 1848, "The glory of 
 delivering Italy to the Alps from the Austrian yoke 
 will compensate, in the eyes of the French people, 
 many sacrifices and great efforts. The opportunity
 
 138 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 for invoking French intervention in Italy will not 
 long be wanting. The Lombards would be ready to 
 furnish it directly they knew that the Government 
 and people of France were disposed to answer the calL 
 It is hardly possible to imagine that an Austrian army 
 could resist a numerous and powerful French army, 
 seconded and supported by a general rising of the 
 Italians." In any case, such an alliance was the con- 
 summation of the policy of Count Cavour. Under 
 his hands Piedmont had undertaken to solve the 
 national difficulty. She was, indeed, impelled to it 
 by a fatal necessity to preserve at once her independ- 
 ence, her tranquillity, and her throne. Had not, 
 indeed, the upper classes under their noble chief 
 placed themselves at the head of the national move- 
 ment, their power would in a few years have been 
 wrenched from them by the party of the revolution to 
 renew the policy and disaster of Novara. What, then, 
 were the means by which the end was to be obtained ? 
 The last campaign has proved how utterly power- 
 less would have been the most desperate efforts of 
 Sardinia alone against the entire force of Austria. 
 Nor were we to add to these efforts, as the revolu- 
 tionary party insist, the insurrection throughout Italy ; 
 it is not easy to assert that it would have improved 
 the chances of national success. This could not 
 escape the eye of the man who had evoked and 
 weighed the resources of his country, whilst he 
 repudiates, and perhaps undervalues, the power of 
 insurrection. He was forced then to look for some 
 external assistance ; nor is it conceivable that he could 
 have persisted in a long course of provocation and 
 defiance of the common enemy with the ultimate 
 intention of commencing war with no forces but the 
 compact army of the king, and the desultory fury of 
 unarmed populations. Such an idea is as much con-
 
 CAVOUR 139 
 
 tradicted by the character of the man, as by the whole 
 history of his acts. Some external aid was indispens- 
 able. It presented itself only in two forms. 
 
 Italy might meet Austria either with the assistance 
 of one or more of the Western Powers, or might wait 
 until she was a prey to the mortal throes of revolution 
 within. Even now, as we witness the slow dissolution 
 of that tenacious power struggling so long after a 
 death -wound, we cannot fail to see that to have 
 waited for that crisis might have been to wait 
 until safety, honour, and self-respect had been lost at 
 home. Each fresh act of provocation thrust Sardinia 
 nearer to the inevitable conflict, and necessitated a 
 still bolder act to confirm and extend the prestige of 
 the last. Sardinia was forced by an irresistible power 
 to advance incessantly upon a path where success was 
 only possible at the price of invoking the assistance of 
 the foreigner. To have relied, as the revolutionary 
 party insist, upon the unaided strength of Italy, means 
 simply to have submitted to an internal revolution as 
 a preparation, and to have established a democratic 
 republic upon the ruins of all those conservative 
 elements of the country, and of the consolidation of 
 the social system, out of which alone, as we conceive, 
 permanent success was possible. Italia fara da se was 
 the watchword of Mazzini at the opening of the war. 
 But the very weapon with which, as he conceives, 
 she ought to fight the insurrection after the model 
 of the year 1793 involves the previous suppression of 
 the whole force of the upper classes, to whom such a 
 weapon is abhorrent and self-destructive. 
 
 To the Western Powers, then, or more distinctly 
 to France, Count Cavour directed his hopes. Hazard- 
 ous as the cast was, it cannot be proved to have 
 been desperate. All those advantages which it seemed 
 to offer have been obtained from it ; and very few of
 
 1 40 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the evils which were foretold have come to pass. He 
 cannot be said to have conjured a spirit which he was 
 unable to control or to resist ; nor can any reasonable 
 mind assert that the loss of Nice counterbalances the 
 creation of Italy. It may be that the recent war has 
 not adequately solved the difficulty. The assistance 
 of France may have produced a moral injury to the 
 future of Italy. But all such evils were involved in 
 any possible course of active effort. No conceivable 
 policy, in such a case, could have been without its own 
 inherent defect. It may be that the European states- 
 man, or even the Italian patriot, might deplore the 
 intervention of France ; but it would be preposterous 
 to condemn a great practical politician from seizing 
 the only available engine of acting on the immediate 
 destinies of his country. 
 
 The assistance of the foreigner having been decided 
 upon, the task before Count Cavour was to direct the 
 Italian revolution by means of conservative authorities, 
 and with the least possible risk of political or social 
 convulsion, and at the same time to call out the whole 
 warlike energy of the nation. It must be admitted 
 that he succeeded far better in the former than in the 
 latter portion of his duty. The liberated populations 
 exhibited indeed far more sagacity than energy, and 
 finally achieved their freedom by a fortunate deficiency 
 of vehemence and excitement. It cannot be doubted 
 that an almost suspicious reliance was placed upon 
 order and diplomacy. The fact is that the whole 
 conduct of the movement had been placed in the 
 hands of the recognised heads of the social system, and 
 was left to the upper classes to direct by skill without 
 any admixture of revolutionary convulsion. This was 
 especially obvious in Tuscany (which was but a type 
 of the other provisional Governments), where the 
 entire guidance was placed in the hands of a real
 
 CAVOUR 141 
 
 aristocracy of birth and wealth, of men possessing the 
 leading territorial and social influence in the country, 
 full of the conservative instincts of an educated and 
 historic order, and united by long study, and an 
 almost pedantic trust in the machinery of orderly and 
 systematic government. 
 
 Such as the Tuscan rulers were, such were the 
 Parmesan, the Modenese, and the Bolognese, in a 
 greater or less degree ; and the whole of these govern- 
 ments were created under the influence, and in most 
 cases by the direct act, of Count Cavour, and were 
 even after his fall inspired mainly by his counsels, and 
 held together by the National Society which was the 
 organ and promoter of his peculiar views and policy. 
 The exigencies of the situation had all been foreseen 
 and provided for by the minister, and he relied for the 
 success of the revolution to be accomplished under 
 the shield of France exclusively on the strength, 
 authority, and ability of the conservative and wealthy 
 classes, assisted by all the educated intelligence which 
 they could command. It is true that but for a bolder 
 and less far-sighted effort, the population of Central 
 Italy might have sunk from want of military energy 
 and enthusiasm ; but it is not the less true that the 
 whole attitude, sobriety, and pertinacity of the resist- 
 ance they made to the Peace of Villafranca was 
 directly due to the sagacity of the statesman who had 
 placed the direction of a revolution in the hands of 
 men who belonged to the party of order by instinct, 
 position, and education. 
 
 More recent events have shown Count Cavour 
 assuming a bolder attitude, and earning almost the 
 name of a revolutionary leader. The connivance in 
 the attempt of Garibaldi, and the invasion and annexa- 
 tion of the Papal and Neapolitan territories, belong 
 wholly to the policy of a man who had risen to a full
 
 142 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 sense of a critical situation. The manner in which 
 he has used, aided, and then controlled Garibaldi ; the 
 skill with which the republican energy has been let 
 loose, to be at the very moment of destruction reined 
 in and pacified ; the audacity with which a startling 
 onslaught was made upon the Head of the National 
 Church, and a friendly monarch attacked and besieged, 
 without on the one hand calling forth revolutionary 
 passions, or on the other the hostility of jealous foreign 
 powers, is undoubtedly a proof of political aptitude, 
 such as makes the turning-point in the destinies of a 
 nation. In these later enterprises the true force of 
 the statesman's capacity is seen, for they exhibit him 
 as the chief of a revolution of which he has hitherto 
 appeared mainly as the controller. 
 
 Schemes such as these belong to those exceptional 
 crises in which a statesman must rise above the rules 
 of prudence, legality, and moderation, or be irretrievably 
 lost, and act, if he acts at all, in a full consciousness 
 that the safety of the people is above all law. It is by 
 such acts throughout history that the existence of 
 nations has been preserved by men who have broken 
 through at once all the habits, traditions, and laws of 
 society, under the overwhelming duty of the salvation 
 of the nation. Men will always be found to object to 
 Cromwell violations of the constitution ; to Danton 
 suppression of law ; to William the Silent duplicity 
 and intrigue : but politicians must be judged by their 
 power of commanding the crisis in which they are 
 placed, and the average of their good and evil must be 
 struck by the practical necessities of their task. On 
 any politician who dares to violate constitutions, laws, 
 or treaties, the heaviest responsibility must weigh, to 
 be removed alone by the verdict of history and the 
 conscientious sanction of public opinion. 
 
 Beneath the logic of pedants and fanatics, the
 
 CAVOUR 143 
 
 public instinct feels that the law of nations in no true 
 sense could apply between the provincial States of 
 Italy, or govern relations which rest on a condition of 
 virtual revolution and war. When the Sardinian 
 armies invaded the Marches and Umbria they invaded 
 the States of a power with whom they had long been 
 waging a deadly but informal war. When they 
 hunted the Neapolitan pretender to his last retreat, 
 they were only crushing an outcast tyrant and driving 
 forth an incendiary partisan. Legal pedantry and 
 hypocritical formalism apart, it is true that Count 
 Cavour has the right to say "We are Italy ! we act 
 in her name." The judgment of free nations has 
 welcomed that which does indeed bear the outward 
 form of the triumph of might over right, and the 
 hopes of order and national independence have been 
 raised high by these acts of violent invasion. Yet 
 not the less must we feel admiration for the sagacity 
 and courage of a policy which so far transcends 
 the regions in which ordinary statesmen dwell, 
 and belongs to the extraordinary efforts of decisive 
 emergencies. 
 
 Count Cavour is a politician of that high order 
 which unites the most opposite qualities, and resumes 
 in himself the various forces of an era. He embodies 
 the cause of monarchy, order, and constitution, whilst 
 working out a revolution and founding a new nation. 
 At once the sagacious economist, the consummate 
 minister, and the dictator of a crisis, he is by 
 turns laborious and energetic, subtle and impetuous, 
 ingenious and audacious, practical and profound. 
 Now it is his task to calm the agitation of a nation, 
 then to call it to a struggle for life ; now he imposes 
 on it his own strong will, then addresses and instructs 
 its judgment ; sometimes convincing in the Parlia- 
 ment, sometimes stirring the public heart, sometimes
 
 i 4 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 guiding unseen the machinery of diplomacy and 
 parties. 
 
 He has the true vein of a great statesman. His 
 whole action is practical, relative, and instinctive. 
 His policy rests upon principle ; yet he is never the 
 slave of his theories. He can rise to the grandeur of 
 ideas, yet is never carried away by illusions. An 
 inflexible purpose may bow before necessity and 
 storms ; and out of every emergency still grasp the 
 true clue upwards. No modern politician insists so 
 firmly upon theory ; none so consistently develops it 
 into action ; and none is so little cramped by it in 
 practice. His love of order never stiffens into oppres- 
 sion ; legality with him stops short of formalism ; his 
 mastery of logic is forgotten when logic has ceased to 
 be of use. With a turn for diplomacy worthy of 
 Talleyrand, his art is restrained to its due place and 
 function. A master of party politics, he is never 
 greater than when he has ceased to be a parliament- 
 ary leader. Conservative by nature, he knows the 
 value of institutions ; in the hour of crisis he sees 
 in them nothing but forms. He has gauged popular 
 emotion ; he neither mistakes its strength nor forgets 
 its fickleness. 
 
 With an appetite for power like Richelieu, he 
 loves to rest upon public opinion ; and being a real 
 dictator, he acts in the spirit of a responsible minister. 
 With a native insight into character, there are no men 
 and no parties whom he hesitates to use ; fanaticism 
 or industry, authority or enthusiasm, craft or heroism, 
 are instruments which he employs and controls. He 
 can lay deep plans without being tortuous ; be politic 
 without falsehood ; and strike an unexpected blow 
 without treachery. In the State he grasps a concentra- 
 tion of power, which he wields without selfishness, 
 and which is yielded without jealousy. In Parliament
 
 CAVOUR 145 
 
 he can solicit the support of a majority without 
 stooping to party triumphs. In the tribune he seeks 
 to convince, not to confute ; to win confidence, not 
 votes. He never perorates, but argues ; generally 
 careless in language, always keen in logic, sometimes 
 rising into moving eloquence, sometimes overcoming 
 by inherent energy. 
 
 In the Cabinet he is master of diplomatic fence, 
 yet his logic is ever drawn from public right and 
 plain principle. The exquisite skill with which he 
 crushes his opponent's case is only equalled by the 
 substantial justice of his own cause. His State-papers 
 would be models of art if they were not standards of 
 historic fact. With all his instinctive love of order 
 and law, he sees that these are not ends but means. 
 In a crisis he can rise superior to any notion but 
 that of public safety and duty. To habitual industry 
 in preparation he unites an impetuous rapidity of 
 execution ; and however careful in husbanding his 
 resources, he is prodigal of them in action. His most 
 daring schemes are all within the limits of reasonable 
 safety ; if he oversteps legality, he remains true to 
 right. In a word, he is in our day the single example 
 of a ruler who governs by native superiority and that 
 willing homage which ennobles the giver and the 
 receiver. He shows us how power can be gathered 
 into one hand, yet be but the expression of national 
 will. Nor less is he an instance of a politician who 
 conserves whilst he changes ; who conciliates order 
 and movement, tradition and expansion, the past and 
 the present ; who innovates without convulsion, and 
 modifies without destruction. Thus he is to us the 
 type of the real popular dictator, and the statesman of 
 true conservative progress.
 
 GARIBALDI 
 
 Such are the characteristics of Count Cavour, and 
 they are those essentially of the statesman. But they 
 represent but one element of the Italian movement alone. 
 The sagacity, self-restraint, and perseverance which 
 have marked it are amply exhibited in him, but for all 
 that has given it life, poetry, and moral grandeur, 
 we must find a very different representative. The 
 virtues, aspirations, and powers which we attribute to 
 Garibaldi belong not either to the minister himself, nor 
 to the classes of whom he is the chief. There exists 
 beneath the surface an intensely popular element in 
 this Italian revolution, showing in reality nearly all 
 the features which have distinguished the effervescence 
 of new ideas in the mind of the whole people, and 
 recalling in the strength of its enthusiasm, in the 
 electric contagion of its ideas, and in its influence on 
 the moral sentiments, the spirit which can be seen to 
 move through nations in great crises of their history. 
 
 We can thus best understand the heaving and 
 agitation of the mass of the people, a new idea 
 sweeping over them like an epidemic, kindling in the 
 hearts of man and woman a fanatical enthusiasm, 
 moving man to man and class to class, elevating 
 debased populations into momentary impulses of 
 dignity and virtue, and inspiring the finer tempers 
 with unwonted fires of self-sacrifice and daring. 
 Thus it was that in silent cities the people has sprung 
 forth as under some sudden frenzy, that armies have 
 laid down their arms at the magical influence of a 
 name or a voice, that men of wealth, position, and 
 refinement have hastened to stand shoulder to shoulder 
 with the peasant on bloody battlefields or more 
 deadly camps, and have given up every earthly
 
 GARIBALDI 147 
 
 interest, and even the convictions of their whole 
 lives, in defence of a sacred cause. We are far too 
 apt in presence of the discipline which has been 
 submitted to, and of the manifest inferiority of the 
 Southern population, to underrate the extent as well 
 as the intensity of the enthusiasm of the people of 
 the North. The immense depopulation of Venetia, 
 the 100,000 men who since the beginning of the 
 war have volunteered into the different armies, the 
 sacrifices borne, and the heroism shown by whole 
 classes of men, and the resolution and patriotism of 
 the bulk of the people of the North, cannot be effaced 
 by any tales of failure and indifference in detail, or the 
 worthlessness of the demoralised cities or barbarous 
 peasantry of the South. 
 
 It is the army of Garibaldi, and their leader 
 himself, who most worthily represent all this element 
 of the movement. With all their dexterity and 
 experience the supporters of the statesman do not 
 adequately embody the vitality and elevation of the 
 popular instinct. The heroic soldier and his men 
 belong not to the men who can guide and administer 
 a State, but they are of those who fought with Manin 
 the desperate defence of Venice, and maintained the 
 honour of their capital against the treacherous insol- 
 ence of France, of men who, like the Bandiera, 
 Bassi, or Ciceroacchio, have been murdered in cold 
 blood, who have spent their lives in prison and 
 exile, and lived a long martyrdom for their cause. 
 Without the spirit which sustained these men in the 
 dungeon or on the scaffold, it would have been 
 impossible that the sacred tradition could have kept 
 its purity and strength. These are the men, and 
 the party to which they belonged, who have taught 
 the youth of Italy to feel the holiness of their cause, 
 who have clothed it with an irradiating splendour, and
 
 required from its supporters a devotion and a moral 
 elevation unsurpassed. To them it is due that the 
 expulsion of the stranger means a real national 
 regeneration, and that the future of Italy is made 
 to rest upon the individual worth of the citizens. 
 They are the men who first saw and preached the 
 duty of absolute unity, of the consolidation of States, 
 and the fraternity of classes and orders, and who 
 upheld the singleness and directness of purpose to the 
 one great end. To them is due chiefly that which 
 gives moral dignity to the Italian people, and but 
 for them the sagacity or energy of the statesmen 
 would have dealt only with untutored masses and 
 a lifeless, passionless multitude. 
 
 It is quite consistent with this view to disbelieve 
 most strongly in the capacity of such men for 
 government or direction. With the most emphatic 
 conviction of the utter hopelessness of any revolu- 
 tion attempted under the control of such men, it 
 is impossible to refuse to the revolutionary parties, 
 whether under the name of Republican or National, 
 Mazzinist or Garibaldian, the credit of having set in 
 motion an action of which others were the more 
 fortunate directors. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Guerrazzi, 
 or Bertani have abundantly manifested, on one 
 occasion after another, their incapacity for civil 
 organisation and rule, and the public instinct is 
 quite justified in looking upon their ascendency 
 with unconquerable aversion. But as agitators their 
 influence has been indispensable. It is true that in 
 1848 they led the national cause to ruin, but it is 
 equally clear that their principles prepared it for 
 triumph in 1860. More and more we are forced to 
 see how powerfully the abortive struggle of 1848 
 acted upon the national mind, and led up to the 
 success we have lately witnessed. The Lombard
 
 GARIBALDI 149 
 
 and Venetian insurrections, the popular votes of 
 annexation in the Duchies, the heroism of the defence 
 of Rome, had educated the masses with a sense of 
 their duty and an instinct towards union. 
 
 The effort of 1848 was crushed by force, but not 
 the less was it a moral triumph. It awakened the 
 national conscience, and penetrated the depressed 
 multitude. It planted the standard of the nation, and 
 taught the creed of unity and the religion of patriotism. 
 The task of the statesmen of Piedmont was but to 
 moderate, guide, and organise the irrepressible spirit 
 of freedom, which was the outgrowth of the rising of 
 1848. More and more do we see in 1860, under 
 happier and wiser guidance, the noble enthusiasm and 
 aspirations of 1848. But that effort was made 
 notoriously under the auspices and direction of the 
 Republicans. If we measure out to them our con- 
 demnation of the unwisdom which brought them to 
 ruin, we should no less give them credit for the spirit 
 which at least they succeeded in inspiring. With no 
 stain upon its honour, with no possible charge against 
 it but that of misfortune and misconception, the effort 
 of 1848 cannot be stigmatised as the work of incen- 
 diaries or demagogues. The great agitator to whom 
 that movement owes at once its energy and its un- 
 success may indeed have been the victim of desperate 
 illusions, but wilful ignorance only can charge him 
 with baseness, or downright malice only represent him 
 as a sanguinary fanatic. Whatever faults may have 
 been committed by the Republican Governments in 
 Italy during 1848, no single charge of violence or 
 selfishness has ever been established against them. 
 And those who have really had any knowledge of 
 these leaders know them to possess a singleness of 
 purpose, a strength of principle, and a touching love 
 of their country and their countrymen, which surpasses
 
 150 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in depth and purity anything that their rivals or their 
 maligners can show. 
 
 Whatever may be the judgment passed upon this 
 party and the true character of its members, certain it 
 is that Garibaldi himself is its truest and fullest repre- 
 sentative. It is mere self-deception to deny that he 
 really belongs to that body with whom his whole life 
 has been passed, and all his ideas derived. It is 
 much the fashion to revile all the revolutionary leaders 
 amongst men, who forget that they thereby are dis- 
 crediting the whole previous history of their favourite 
 hero, and must wilfully distort the plainest evidence of 
 his acts. In spite of the most convincing proofs that 
 he looks on Mazzini still with friendship and trust, 
 that all his friends belong to the old Republican parties, 
 and all his acts are dictated by the old doctrines of 
 insurrection, the mere fact of his allegiance to the king 
 is supposed to place him in the constitutional party. 
 The fact is, that he belongs to the revolutionary 
 classes, by his whole nature, habits, history, and situa- 
 tion. He shares with them his greatness of heart, and 
 draws from them the false theories of his political 
 creed. He amplifies and exalts their virtues, but he 
 is not the less involved in their illusions and defects. 
 The highest political virtues are not incompatible 
 with great political incompetence, and the noblest 
 elevation of character cannot exclude fatal intellectual 
 errors. 
 
 It is by his character and not by his intellect that 
 Garibaldi holds his sway. It is not by what he directly 
 does that he inspires his country, but by the mysterious 
 influence of his spirit and life. In his story the 
 humblest and most ignorant can feel instinctively the 
 worth of a life unstained by one selfish act or worldly 
 motive ; the simple majesty of a man to whose eye his 
 fellow-men are seen as man to man, stripped of every
 
 GARIBALDI 151 
 
 circumstance of accident or rank, men in whose soul 
 burns nothing but the fire which makes martyrs and 
 heroes. It is this power which gives him a moral 
 influence, which neither king nor minister can approach. 
 Not merely through his own country does this in- 
 fluence extend. It spreads strangely through the 
 extent of civilised Europe. We have seen that his 
 name inspires a something more than passing sympathy, 
 and is mixed with convictions of unusual tenacity. 
 Strange stories are told of artisans in Berlin, worship- 
 ping in the streets at a shrine of St. Garibaldi, and 
 how his name stirred the blood of the Faubourg St. 
 Antoine in Paris. To the workmen of Glasgow or 
 Lyons, as much as of Naples or Milan, he represents 
 the claims of their own order, and from Poland to 
 Spain, and from Scotland to Sicily, his course has 
 kindled the interest of the democracy of Europe. 
 
 He has, in every fibre, the nature of the people, and 
 embodies their craving for a nobler future to be won 
 by their innate energy. He has their strength and 
 their weakness ; their generous instincts and their 
 incoherent doctrines ; and his career, in which both 
 have been signally exhibited, has awakened a motion 
 of that spirit which runs through each State in Europe 
 when revolution begins in one. He feels himself to 
 belong not only to Italy, but to the cause of liberty 
 through Europe. When he fought in the Republics 
 of America, when he promises his sword to Hungary, 
 or expresses his sympathy with the people in England 
 or France, it is because he feels instinctively the 
 brotherhood of people with people, and the bonds 
 which unite their future destinies in one. Nor does 
 he ever fail to show that he belongs little to the actual 
 political systems, but to a new and possible order of 
 things. To him the forms, constitutions, and cere- 
 monials of the day are vanity and expedients. He
 
 152 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 feels intensely with the heart of the nation, and 
 believes it will rise into a higher life. His perfect 
 simplicity of existence, his contempt for dignities, 
 wealth, or power, his gentleness and guilelessness of 
 heart belong indeed to a period when public life shall 
 have risen to a purer atmosphere. That he does not 
 understand it as it is, that he is ignorant of its tortuous 
 mechanism, is more to his honour than to his discredit. 
 He has left the task for which he has neither ability 
 nor heart to others. He has gone back to his own 
 simple world. He has left behind him the memory 
 of an unsullied character, a sense of duty, and a love of 
 truth, of which his age can see but half the worth and 
 beauty. 
 
 But whilst Garibaldi retains the idea and habits of 
 those with whom he has acted through life, his fine 
 character enables him to see and avoid the errors 
 which are peculiar to them. It is this instinct which 
 has gathered up all his faculties with native sincerity 
 round the standard of Savoy, and has made as the 
 centre of his creed loyalty to King Victor Emmanuel. 
 But this adherence to the king is very far from being 
 with him a political dogma. It is nothing but an 
 instinctive conception of the necessity of the case and 
 the practical sense of a man of action. His whole 
 mind, however, is essentially republican, and there is 
 something preposterous in supposing that such a man 
 can have any leaning towards monarchy as a system. 
 But he loves and honours the soldier king in his heart, 
 and he has idealised in him the national life. To this 
 beautiful fiction in the mind of Garibaldi is perhaps 
 due more than to any other single cause the welcome 
 which the staunchest republicans have given to the 
 once hated House of Savoy. 
 
 He, the man to whom peasant and prince appear 
 each in their native worth as men, to whom all the
 
 GARIBALDI 153 
 
 trappings of social life are contemptible, and the whole 
 political system of which the monarchy is but the head 
 is alien, to whom laws, tradition, or custom weigh 
 nothing in the balance against the safety of the people 
 and the honour of the nation, gives hearty allegiance 
 to the king, in whom he sees personified the destinies 
 of his country, and who is pointed out by fate as its 
 natural dictator and chief. Under such an influence 
 only could a nation in whom the bare notion of 
 monarchy has never been fairly implanted, and in 
 whom in this age no dogmas of a constitutional aristo- 
 cracy are ever likely to implant it, receive with enthu- 
 siastic submission the monarch who was indispensable 
 as a centre of union and of action. It was through 
 this personal trust of Garibaldi that, in moments of 
 great danger, fatal mistakes were avoided, when after 
 the armistice of Villafranca, on the several proposed 
 invasions of the Papal territories or the liberation of 
 Sicily and Naples, it required the whole force of an 
 influence like his to restrain the fiercest tempers and 
 most earnest republicans collected round his standard 
 from raising a separate standard, and at once com- 
 mencing a career of insurrection. 
 
 It is this idea which forms the principal link between 
 two very opposite parties in a word, between the two 
 distinct schools of policy of Italy the constitutional 
 and revolutionary. Nothing but a practical compro- 
 mise in the person of a beloved leader could reconcile 
 two parties who so thoroughly misunderstand and dis- 
 like each other. More than anything else, the example 
 of Garibaldi has contributed to this end. At his word 
 the most inveterate Republicans have consented to 
 forego their principles, and the high sense of Cavour 
 has not feared to use their indispensable services. It 
 was the name of Garibaldi which finally decided the 
 adhesion of the old party throughout Italy in 1859,
 
 154 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and has retained them true to their allegiance under 
 the most trying circumstances. But it is no less clear 
 that he is heart and soul with them. The revolu- 
 tionary engine the levee en masse war carried on by 
 insurrection trust alone in native valour without 
 discipline, organisation, or ceremony, is the only 
 weapon which he knows. Diplomatic measures, 
 foreign assistance, unless simply of volunteers, material 
 equipment, and even military science are to him as 
 irksome and worthless as golden trappings or braided 
 uniforms. He appeals to the heart of the people 
 alone, and trusts in their innate honour, energy, and 
 heroism. 
 
 It is this which makes at once his strength and his 
 weakness. He typifies and he evokes the life which 
 alone can make a nation free or strong, but he discards 
 at once all the institutions by which its strength is 
 disciplined and directed. Himself and his followers 
 feel in them no small measure of that unquenchable 
 fire which in 1793 preserved and created France ; 
 they will not see how far the condition of their 
 country and their countrymen is removed from that 
 era of convulsive excitement. Yet no little of the 
 religious zeal of those French Republicans may be 
 seen in his army and in him. To him the cause and 
 its defenders are alike sacred and dear. He can hardly 
 understand that one who has laboured and suffered for 
 Italy is unworthy of responsibility and confidence. 
 In his eyes, one who has bled on the field or pined in 
 a dungeon is a martyr to whom honour, influence, and 
 trust are due without stint or hesitation. He who has 
 endured the longest exile or the heaviest irons, or he 
 who is most hateful to the common enemy, must of 
 all men be most capable and worthy to serve the 
 common country. He who has shown jnost his love 
 for her must be best fitted to protect her. He who in
 
 GARIBALDI 155 
 
 the darkest hour uttered the most inspiring protest is 
 the truest guide in the hour of relief. Devotion must 
 imply capacity, and unbounded faith is the best proof 
 of a patriotic heart. 
 
 Such is the spirit in which the simple - hearted 
 soldier clings to his old friends and their views, upholds 
 Mazzini, Crispi, Mordini, Mario, and Cattaneo, and 
 thrusts, as rulers, upon the bewildered Neapolitans and 
 Sicilians men who have learnt their creed of politics 
 and system of action in conspiracies, in exile, and in 
 dungeons. With him they hold such a place as the 
 " people of God " held in the heart of Cromwell. 
 Those who have given all for the cause are sanctified 
 in his eyes. He feels for them as members of a sort of 
 religious brotherhood, of whose rectitude and zeal no 
 doubt can be permitted. These are the spirits, as he 
 believes, the country needs. It wants nothing but 
 sincerity and vigour. They who love it most serve 
 it best. The intrigues and artifices of professional 
 politicians discredit and pervert the national honour. 
 Compromises, arrangements, and prevarications belong 
 to their trade. The moral sense is lowered by their 
 specious precautions, and the keenness of self-reliance 
 is blunted by their diplomacy. Innate energy and 
 daring are nobler and surer weapons ; the generous 
 hearts of the people will do the rest. Brotherly 
 affection and frank forbearance must soothe the anti- 
 pathies of party. Unity of purpose and genuine zeal 
 will preserve the public security and order. Generosity 
 will supply the necessaries of life. Mutual trust must 
 stand for discipline ; the service of the country is 
 above any earthly reward ; its true leaders need no 
 formal commissions or solemn election. Heroic 
 valour supplies the place of armies, and simple man- 
 hood and its own great heart will create a nation 
 worthy of freedom.
 
 156 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 But whilst believing this in all sincerity and fervour, 
 he is a slave to no system, and is not deluded by any 
 narrow dogma. The same love for his country which 
 he perceives in Mazzini, he recognises in Victor 
 Emmanuel. He, too, and his soldiers and generals, 
 have fought and laboured for the cause ; and the very 
 ministers and politicians and official servants of the 
 State have, as he sees, after their fashion, a genuine 
 sense of the common duty. Hence, throwing aside 
 all logic, his fine instinct unites both parties in one. 
 Full of loyalty to the king, he yet holds by all the 
 friends of his old days ; devoted to the principles of 
 Mazzini, he submits to the will of the king and his 
 ministers. Thus are two rival and hostile parties 
 reunited and reconciled. The Garibaldians dare not 
 repudiate a king whom their beloved chief delights to 
 honour and obey. The monarchists are forced to be 
 forbearing with a party to whose head they owe an 
 incomparable service. The one have come to feel 
 that from the ranks of the revolution has come forth 
 the noblest son of Italy ; the others, with their leader, 
 can say, " We are Republicans still, but our republic 
 is Victor Emmanuel." 
 
 This sense of duty to the king, in whom he sees 
 personified the union and the honour of the country, 
 at last, after many struggles, induced him to surrender 
 the dictatorship of the South, in spite of his deepest 
 convictions and an intense repugnance to the ministry 
 of Cavour. Full of the purest ideas of the insurrec- 
 tionary party, still smarting under the shameful sacri- 
 fice of Nice, and cherishing an inextinguishable hatred 
 of Napoleon, Garibaldi was bent on retaining the 
 power in South Italy, and rushing with blind heroism 
 to the rescue of Venice and Rome. It needed the 
 whole strength of his unalloyed trust in the king to 
 restrain him from this fatal delirium. With many
 
 GARIBALDI 157 
 
 struggles he recovered his reason ; his instinctive good 
 sense returned. Almost heart-broken by the sacrifice, 
 he gave up, in the presence of an overpowering sense 
 of duty, all that he holds most dear and most true. 
 He consented to look on upon the prolonged slavery 
 of his brethren ; to yield to the will of a degrading 
 oppressor ; to sacrifice his oldest friends and most 
 trusted followers. And last trial of all, he consented 
 to place the work of his own hands and the people he 
 had fought for into the keeping of men to whom he 
 bears the keenest antipathy, to whose policy his whole 
 life is a protest, and who have but recently degraded 
 the nation and bartered its very principle of life. 
 Such was the temper in which the Dictator, much 
 loth, accepted the annexation and its consequences. 
 
 It needed some overpowering sense of duty to 
 counterbalance his ingrained convictions. Had he 
 not acted so, it is plain that he was going on the road 
 to ruin. Not only must his attack have been infallibly 
 crushed in the field (even it would seem by the arms 
 of Sardinia herself), but the internal state of the 
 country would have shortly resulted in irredeemable 
 chaos. It may indeed now be assumed that the 
 Garibaldian regime would have ended in Naples in 
 the most complete dissolution and anarchy, and almost 
 the rupture of society itself. It needs little argument 
 in the face of incontestable facts. Not indeed that 
 the rulers appointed were in themselves incompetent 
 or untrustworthy, but because they were wholly 
 incompatible with the people whom they had to 
 govern. Full of the notions of insurrection and 
 revolution, they were applying their own extreme 
 and incoherent system in a society quite unprepared 
 for it, and to circumstances in which it was an 
 anachronism. In a half-barbarous and debased popu- 
 lation it was necessary not to inflame, but to calm ;
 
 158 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 not to impel, but to restrain. They needed the 
 strong hand of a regular and orderly Government, not 
 the exciting stimulus of insurrectionary committees, 
 and the whole apparatus of revolutionary action. 
 Such a population could be controlled only by the 
 accustomed weight of recognised Government. The 
 Dictator was full of trust that they could be aroused 
 to the due point of insurgent energy. But a blunder 
 so fatal as this does not conclusively prove his in- 
 capacity for civil government under more favourable 
 circumstances. It only shows that he had thoroughly 
 mistaken the situation and the real necessities of the 
 case, and was only able to shake himself free from the 
 notions and habits of his whole previous life by an 
 effort of the most splendid abnegation, and by with- 
 drawing altogether and abruptly from a post the duties 
 of which he profoundly misconceived. 
 
 The sacrifice of principle once made, the retire- 
 ment to Caprera was a necessary and subordinate 
 incident. Much has been said of this act by men 
 who little understand his character. It was neither 
 the result of mortification, or impulse, or vanity, much 
 less of a morose or factious temper. With him to 
 retire to his position as a simple yeoman was a natural 
 consequence of no public task needing him. The 
 self-sacrifice is seen in the surrender of his principles 
 and friends, not in his love of the happiness of private 
 life. Garibaldi, if not the leader of a revolution, is 
 nothing. To head an army of heroes, to awaken the 
 enthusiasm of a population, to initiate a new order of 
 ideas and acts, is his only duty. To organise, to 
 govern, and to compromise, to prepare by patient fore- 
 thought, or devise by dexterous management, is above 
 or below his power. He cannot make the laborious 
 official, or the sagacious minister, or the rigid dis- 
 ciplinarian. His character is too lofty for the petty
 
 GARIBALDI 159 
 
 necessities of these duties. He belongs wholly to a 
 purer atmosphere. When no unusual effort is re- 
 quired, there is little in which he can serve his 
 country. He retires in the calmer moments of 
 ordinary life to the simplicity of the life of the 
 humblest citizen. Yet natural and voluntary as his 
 retirement has been, it is not the less melancholy. 
 For a character of such strength the surrender of such 
 hopes and purposes gives a profound shock. Though 
 feeling the necessity of the case, he could scarcely 
 comprehend all the reasons which made his mere 
 presence a danger. Yet his retirement to his island 
 is, perhaps, the most instructive, as it is certainly the 
 most honourable act of his life. By it his party have 
 learnt to yield, however reluctantly, to the true interests 
 of their country ; and the name of an Italian has been 
 placed before the eyes of Europe as the symbol of the 
 purest self-devotion, and a religious sense of public 
 duty. 
 
 Garibaldi thus gives to the national movement a 
 character which was essential, and could come from 
 no other. The creation of a nation needs more than 
 victories, treaties, institutions, or administration. 
 Success in the field or the council may furnish it 
 with opportunities. True national life needs real 
 public regeneration. It is right, then, that Garibaldi 
 should be felt to be the popular hero. In a prolonged 
 struggle, requiring so much from skill, circumstances, 
 and foreign aid, it needed the contact of one great 
 heart to keep alive the sense of dignity and honour. 
 Whilst ministers were engaged in diplomacy, intrigue, 
 or compromise (essential as they too were), it was 
 well that a hero should be found to speak of nothing 
 but truth and duty. Italian nationality means more 
 than independence and freedom, or it means little. 
 To show its true destiny, it needed one splendid
 
 160 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 example of public duty without blemish or alloy. 
 Henceforth for all Italians the memory of freedom is 
 for ever bound up with the ideal of perfect social 
 virtue. In years to come, in the strife of public life 
 they may learn from him higher aims and > nobler acts. 
 Nor was it less essential that in a deadly struggle with 
 a foreigner they should be headed by one who knows 
 the true brotherhood of nations : and that a war of 
 hatred should be tempered by one who has a woman's 
 gentleness and mercy. Thus the Italian has fought 
 without the brutalising hate of race ; and no single 
 instance of ferocity has stained his chivalry : for their 
 chief loves all brave men, and can pity even the 
 oppressor. Nor has this re -consecration of war 
 brought back its barbarous traditions, or its retro- 
 grade instincts. He, who for the last time has made 
 war noble in Europe, has cried aloud to it with almost 
 fanatic aspiration for universal peace. The noblest 
 soldier of our day tramples on the pomp and pride of 
 war with native loathing and contempt. So, too, it 
 was right that the popular heroism which lay burning 
 beneath the action of state policy should have its due 
 place and task. If all the power in this national 
 struggle has gone to the great and noble, it was well 
 that the true halo should rest round one who is of and 
 with the people. In the midst of convulsion and 
 strife, there rises up an image of mildness, simplicity, 
 and tenderness, a gentle spirit calming passions, 
 jealousies, and hatreds, disarming treachery, and 
 putting selfishness to shame. Men have seen in his 
 look the traditional image of goodness, and have not 
 scrupled to call him the Apostle and Messiah of their 
 race, as at once the deliverer from oppression and the 
 teacher of a moral regeneration. 
 
 Of all the comparisons which have been made for 
 him there are none which are not very wide of the
 
 GARIBALDI 161 
 
 reality. He has, indeed, none of the qualities of 
 statesman, dictator, or commander. That which 
 belongs to him exclusively is a species of popular 
 inspiration and influence as by electric contagion of 
 emotions. More than to warriors or politicians he 
 belongs to the order of religious enthusiasts. It is a 
 character infusing itself through a nation. One story 
 there is in history which in some moments recalls the 
 features of his. One character there has been with 
 whom his has some traits of likeness. Utterly unlike, 
 as in many respects it is (and without instituting a 
 purely fanciful comparison), there is something in the 
 great Liberator of the spirit of the Maid of Orleans. 
 Sprung like her from the depths of the people with 
 whom he is identified in every fibre of his heart, he, 
 too, in the extreme need of his country, has upraised 
 it by an almost miraculous career. As in hers, the 
 destinies of his country are bound up in his mind with 
 the will of Providence, from whom deliverance is 
 looked for by a faith truly religious. She, the simplest 
 and purest of spirits, went forth from her peasant home 
 rapt almost in a trance through her deep " pity for the 
 realm of France," and intense belief in the greatness 
 of her people, and carrying daring and devotion to the 
 verge of fanaticism, awoke in the very depths of society 
 the heart of the nation out of the midst of despair, 
 until by the sheer strength of native worth, the over- 
 wrought people had vindicated for themselves their 
 honour and salvation, in spite of every human obstacle, 
 and in defiance of every recognised means or aid. A 
 spirit not absolutely of another kind burns also in him. 
 He, goaded almost to madness at the sight of his 
 country's degradation, and called forth by the con- 
 sciousness of a nobler destiny, has given up his every 
 thought, act, and wish as to a sacred cause ; and 
 touching the inmost heart of his brothers, and calling 
 
 M
 
 1 62 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 them round a king in whom the nation itself is idealised 
 before his eyes, has led them on to incredible success, 
 and inspired them with unconquerable faith. She who 
 breathed life into France, her work once done, was a 
 peasant girl again. So, too, the rock of Caprera lives 
 in the hearts of millions of Italians as the emblem 
 of perfect worth, of moral dignity, and of faith 
 unwavering.
 
 VI 
 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 (1879) 
 
 At the close of the second administration of Lord Beaconsfield, 
 in December 1879, public opinion was deeply excited over 
 the wanton invasion of Afghanistan and the continued 
 Indian warfare instigated by the Viceroy as part of his 
 policy of Imperial expansion. Mr. Gladstone and the 
 leaders of the Liberal party were incessantly denouncing 
 these adventures in speeches which led to the fall of the 
 Government early in 1880. 
 
 I was at the time in close touch with them and in con- 
 stant relations with Mr. John Morley, then editor of the 
 Fortnightly Review. / carefully studied the news of 
 the Afghan war and the military occupation of Kabul, 
 seeing all telegrams published in India or at home. The 
 system of secrecy by means of the ''military censorship " 
 was not then organised so strictly as it has been in our 
 later wars. 
 
 Besides this, I was in daily communication with the late 
 Lord Hobhouse and the late Sir Henry Norman, and other 
 old soldiers and officials, who voluntarily supplied me with 
 information not known outside the India Office, and with 
 private letters written home by officers in active service. 
 I received a long correspondence from Lord Lytton 
 himself, and I saw letters from a former Viceroy, besides 
 others from officers in the front who were unknown to me 
 and to whom I was unknown. 
 
 163
 
 1 64 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 By these means I was in possession of a body of exact 
 and authoritative details as to all that took place. The 
 attempts made by officials in India to trace my means of 
 information signally failed, because the writers af the con- 
 fidential letters shown me did not even know my name. 
 With the support of the editor and of his political friends, I 
 wrote two articles in the Fortnightly Review, December 
 1879 and March 1880 (Nos. 156, 159], using the mass 
 of special knowledge I possessed. The first of these was 
 reprinted as a pamphlet, and was circulated widely by one 
 of the Liberal Associations at their cost. Attempts were 
 made to dispute some of my statements of fact ; but I 
 never saw any replies which were not either irrelevant or 
 false " as false as a bulletin" 
 
 I now re-issue the more general and permanent parts 
 of the first of these articles. I reserve for the future the 
 special details of the incidents of the war ; but, as I still 
 hold my papers and many letters from eminent persons, I can 
 substantiate all that I state when the time comes. It is 
 fortunate that our relations with Afghanistan are now 
 friendly and permanent, so that no indiscretions can be 
 charged in returning to a history nearly thirty years 
 old. 
 
 The general principles of international morality and of 
 justice herein maintained are just as important as ever, 
 and are quite as much in danger of being violated. 
 Indeed, the same crimes and follies have been continually 
 committed, and by both political parties alternately, in the 
 long series of Asian and African wars of the last thirty 
 years down to the most recent of all the idiotic campaign 
 in Tibet (1908). 
 
 " A superior race is bound to observe the highest current 
 morality of the time in all its dealings with the subject 
 race" JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 BY what title are we treating the Afghan people as 
 rebels ? By what law are our generals hanging men
 
 AFGHANISTAN 165 
 
 on charges of leading the enemy's forces to battle ? 
 Whence comes our right to kill priests who incite 
 their people to resist us ? That our armies have 
 invaded Afghanistan, and in two expeditions have 
 crushed the soldiers from Kabul, we all know. That 
 we have broken up what shadow of state existed ; that 
 we have its titular ruler a prisoner ; that we have 
 seized his treasures, and destroyed the centre of his 
 capital all this is very true. It is what invaders and 
 conquerors usually do, or at least have done in former 
 ages. But having done all this, by what right, in 
 public law or in moral justice, do we now affect to 
 treat the conquered people as rebels, and hang the 
 generals and the priests who led them to defend their 
 country ? 
 
 We well know what is the official plea for these 
 acts. It was not unskilfully concocted. It is this. 
 Down to last August we had on our North-Western 
 frontier in India, it was said, a strong, friendly, and 
 independent kingdom. We had lately entered on 
 closer terms of amity with this friendly nation, and 
 had covered its sovereign with personal favours. We 
 had an envoy and a brilliant suite in his capital. 
 Suddenly a faction in his army mutiny ; they over- 
 power our friendly prince j they attack our embassy, 
 and kill our envoy and his escort. The prince for the 
 moment is unable to restore order ; we go to assist 
 him ; he even invites us. We enter his kingdom to 
 assist in maintaining the police. A few murderers 
 and robbers still trouble the security of his capital. 
 We must assist our friend to overcome his rebels and 
 mutineers at home. 
 
 So far the official plea runs smoothly enough. But 
 in the face of the facts we know, it has grown too 
 unreal to be stated with gravity. Our expedition to 
 restore order in the midst of a mutiny becomes an
 
 1 66 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 army of invasion and conquest. India heaves with the 
 effort. The North- West is denuded of its troops ; 
 swept of its baggage animals, its supplies, and its 
 material. Millions and millions are poured out with 
 an almost desperate eagerness to win. As the invading 
 army advances, it finds that a war is before it at least 
 as formidable as the former war of conquest. The 
 mutineers prove to be the regular troops of Kabul j 
 they fight battles with obstinacy ; they do all that a 
 half-armed and semi-civilised race of mountaineers can 
 do to defend their homes and their freedom. Our 
 armies advance with skill and rapidity j the resistance 
 is crushed out in a series of battles, bloody enough to 
 the defeated, and certainly spoken of as victories at 
 home. The capital is occupied with all the formalities 
 of a conquered city ; and the people are dealt with as 
 national enemies. It turns out that in all probability 
 the friendly prince was himself the author of the 
 attack ; that he must be kept a prisoner, and no doubt 
 will be tried for his life ; his property is seized, his 
 palace destroyed, and his titular kingdom is treated as 
 a thing of the past. The occupied country is dealt 
 with as a conquered province ; and an outcry is raised 
 from our soldiers to annex it without more ado. 
 
 It seemed good last year to the British Government 
 to invade a neighbouring independent people. That 
 people was a group of rude tribes hardly formed into a 
 state, fiercely fanatical in religion, and proud of their 
 freedom and independence. After laying heavy 
 burdens on suffering India, our armies succeeded in 
 crushing the national defence, in driving the sovereign 
 into exile and death, in destroying what cohesion had 
 previously existed in his name. A period of confusion 
 followed, the kingdom dissolved into separate and 
 unsettled groups, and the tribes and chiefs made the 
 most of their new independence. Some partial attempt
 
 AFGHANISTAN 167 
 
 at resettlement followed. A son of the dead sovereign, 
 just released from a long imprisonment, succeeded in 
 securing some show of authority in the capital, and in 
 some other parts of the country. It was convenient to 
 treat him as the ruler, and we partly enabled him to 
 become so in fact. The late envoy forced on the 
 bewildered prince such terms as it suited us to dictate, 
 and with fair words a nominal peace was effected. 
 
 But all who knew Afghanistan warned us that the 
 treaty was a piece of paper, that the prince had no real 
 power to execute the treaty, even if he had the will, 
 that a large portion of the country repudiated him, that 
 the leading spirits of the people regarded him as a 
 traitor, a puppet, and a coward. If ever warning was 
 justified by events it was that which all the cooler 
 heads foretold when they said that to make your 
 puppet sign an ignominious treaty was not to conquer 
 a country, and to send a small force to hector over the 
 puppet in his mountain capital was a wild and fool- 
 hardy scheme. However, it was done. Into the 
 midst of a turmoil of fierce tribes, smarting under 
 defeat, furious with religious hatred, and torn by 
 intrigues and dissensions, the so-called envoy was sent 
 to enforce the terms of a so-called treaty which the 
 tribes had in no way accepted, to dictate to a sovereign 
 who was hardly obeyed by his own bodyguard, and 
 scarcely secure in his own capital. Almost the one 
 thing that Afghans and their chiefs for generations had 
 agreed in was to resist the presence of British soldiers 
 and officials. And here, by virtue of a treaty which 
 these chiefs repudiated, signed by a prince whom many 
 of them did not acknowledge, a small British force 
 entered the capital, headed by the soldier who last year 
 sought almost to force the Khyber Pass, and who this 
 year had personally dictated the treaty. It was almost 
 to invite an outrage, to make a collision inevitable.
 
 1 68 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 What else could we have done if we wished an excuse 
 for a new war ? 
 
 But this peaceful ambassador was only an ambassador 
 in name. He came at the head of a squadron. The 
 so-called suite of this so-called envoy consisted of a 
 small military force of about sixty or seventy picked 
 soldiers. It is true they were not strong enough for 
 an army ; but they were much too strong for an 
 embassy. It was not quite a corps of occupation, nor 
 quite a corps of observation, and they came in what 
 was at least a military truce. But they practically 
 served the purpose of an army of occupation and of a 
 corps of observation ; and they visibly represented an 
 ample army in reserve. When we know what feats 
 have been done by British soldiers in the midst of 
 barbarous races, it was only a little in excess of the 
 ordinary odds. They were not there exactly to fight 
 they were there to overawe and to control. The 
 time was not precisely war ; but it was little more 
 than a truce. 
 
 The small corps came into Kabul much as the 
 famous uhlan in 1870 rode into a French town. He 
 too did not come to fight ; he came to overawe the 
 citizens into carrying out his orders. The Red 
 Prince was never far behind ; and in the meantime 
 the uhlan took military occupation of the city, and the 
 practical control of the citizens. But the uhlan took 
 his chance of being shot. The position of Sir L. 
 Cavagnari was not exactly this. But it was not very 
 far from it. He had gone into the midst of a 
 turbulent enemy, in advance of the regular army. 
 He held a nominal political office, and he came under 
 the terms of a so-called treaty. But he came, as he 
 well knew, with his life in his hand. I shall say 
 nothing to dishonour the memory of a brave, but wild 
 man. He thought that audacity might supply the
 
 AFGHANISTAN 169 
 
 place of troops ; he believed that his death, if he died, 
 would be heroic. He has died as a brave soldier 
 dies, at the head of his men, fighting against over- 
 whelming odds with a half-barbarous enemy, whom 
 he meant to conquer and whom he thought to 
 overawe. But he has died, as a soldier dies, in what 
 was virtually an act of war. 
 
 This so-called envoy was in truth a soldier sent out 
 on an advanced post, into a country seething with 
 civil war, from which the invading armies had scarcely 
 withdrawn, under a treaty signed by a mere unrecog- 
 nised pretender. He is sent into a city which admits 
 no other European on any pretence ; where, as Lord 
 Lawrence used to say, no European's life is safe for an 
 hour, and where no Ameer could protect him ; amongst 
 wild mountaineers and fanatical Moslems, who regard 
 the presence of an Englishman as a personal humilia- 
 tion. He was sent out with a small force really to 
 secure the advantages of a war, which all sensible men 
 said was far from ended. To treat the death of this 
 soldier, ordered out on a forlorn hope like this, as the 
 murder of an ambassador to a civilised power, to be 
 avenged with all the punctilio of European diplomacy, 
 is mere chicanery. And upon this chicanery is built 
 up the claim to punish the last efforts of Afghan self- 
 defence as mutiny, rebellion, and murder. 
 
 Even this chicanery itself is not consistently 
 maintained. The legitimate mode of redressing the 
 slaughter of an envoy is to make war upon the State, 
 to coerce its government, and to obtain satisfaction. 
 But war with a State, however great the provocation, 
 gives no right to hang generals and priests, who head 
 the national resistance. If, in the very act of war, 
 the State is reduced to atoms, and its government 
 shattered or dissolved, that may give a right to the 
 injured power to punish the actual offenders itself,
 
 170 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and to set up a government of its own. But what 
 we now complain of is, not the punishment of the 
 men who committed the outrage, or fair attempts to 
 restore a government, but the hanging of generals and 
 priests whose crime is to have animated a national 
 defence, the proclaiming that all who resist the British 
 invader shall be treated as rebels, and the setting 
 rewards upon their heads. For this there is no 
 justification whatever in public law, in morality, or 
 even decency. 
 
 Against whom are these men rebels ? You have 
 seized their ruler as a prisoner : from the first he was 
 practically a hostage. You are about to try him for 
 his life on the charge that he instigated or approved 
 of the attack. How came the Afghan soldiers at 
 Charasiab to be mutineers ? They fought as regular 
 regiments under their own native officers, and to all 
 appearances at the secret orders of their nominal 
 prince. Where is the government that they defy ? 
 There is no government, or shadow of government, 
 except the British army, and the late government 
 which is now its prisoner. And the British army are 
 plainly invaders who have deposed two sovereigns and 
 destroyed two governments. Are the men you hang 
 the authors of the attack on the embassy ? Where 
 are the proofs of it ? What is the evidence that 
 satisfies a court-martial, on fire with military venge- 
 ance ; smarting under a bitter catastrophe, and the 
 cruel death of brave comrades ? What is the law you 
 use in your drum-head commissions, whence issue no 
 reports that you do not countersign, where is no in- 
 dependent or civilian witness ? The men whom you 
 hang, you pretend, have abetted the outrages after the 
 fact, by resisting the invaders of their country, by 
 taking arms against the British forces. 
 
 By this military indictment, every soldier in the
 
 AFGHANISTAN 171 
 
 Afghan armies supports the rebels ; rebels are those 
 who abet the mutineers ; mutineers are those who 
 resist the British ; and those who resist the British 
 are guilty (after the fact) of murder of the British 
 envoy. Mutiny, rebellion, outlawry, murder, on your 
 lips are nothing but random phrases, tossed together 
 by soldiers, parading the terms of law and justice ; 
 who really come to conquer a brave, but turbulent 
 race ; who mean to kill all who oppose them, and to 
 terrify the rest into the show of submission. The 
 pretexts that justify this unsoldierlike slaughter of 
 prisoners of war are chicanery, worthy of Scroggs and 
 Jeffreys. And the putting men to death by legal 
 chicanery bears an ugly name in English history. 
 The meaning of it, that which justifies it in the eyes 
 of soldiers, and probably of some politicians, is this 
 that since the difficulties of subduing Afghanistan 
 permanently are very great, and the forces that are 
 sent to do it are very small, and since Kabul is in the 
 heart of Asia away from all European observation, and 
 veiled by the "military censure," recourse must be had 
 to terrorism. 
 
 It would be better to give up this affectation of 
 legality, and, if it is necessary to herald a war of 
 conquest with proclamations in the style of Oriental 
 Caliphs, to open thus : " Be it known to all men in 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the name of the Empress 
 of India, and so forth. Whereas, for sufficient reasons, 
 we have determined tosubdue the people of Afghanistan, 
 we hereby warn you not to resist our victorious armies. 
 If you oppose our good pleasure, we shall hang some of 
 you, until the others obey and submit. Such part of the 
 city as we think fit we shall destroy, and it is only in 
 mercy that we do not destroy it entirely. We shall kill 
 and burn until the people come to know that our will is 
 irresistible. Imperium et Liber tas. Rule, Britannia ! "
 
 172 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 I am not making any general charge of cruelty 
 against our soldiers and generals. We have no 
 evidence that they acted in the thirst for blood, nor 
 in any lust of outrage. Fortunately things are not 
 so bad as that. English gentlemen are not suddenly 
 converted into MouraviefFs, Gallifets, and Chefket 
 Pashas. Nor do I assert that they acted worse than 
 soldiers always act who are left to themselves and 
 permitted to hang civilians. Their moderation in 
 hanging contrasts favourably with that of Russian or 
 Turkish generals suppressing an insurrection. My 
 charge is a perfectly definite one. It is that they 
 are permitted to hang people at all as rebels ; that 
 they should be suffered to set rewards on the heads of 
 soldiers and generals who meet them in open battle ; 
 that they should be allowed to execute prisoners in 
 cold blood (short of any case of specific murder proved 
 against the criminal) ; that they have power by 
 proclamation to convert the national defence of a 
 free people into rebellion and mutiny ; that they 
 should be left to be the sole judges of what constituted 
 this offence. Lastly, my complaint is that British 
 officers sent to invade and conquer an independent 
 people should be authorised to do so by terrorism by 
 the use, that is, not of their swords and rifles in battle, 
 but by the rope and the torch when no one is left to 
 fight. 
 
 To all this the one defence is, as always the 
 prestige of our Indian Empire, the extreme paucity of 
 our forces in Asia. They say, The troops we can 
 spare to hold vast territories are so few, the importance 
 of our Eastern Empire is so enormous, the difficulties 
 of subduing vast mountain tracts with two or three 
 thousand Europeans are so great that we cannot be 
 bound by European law, that we can only exist by 
 terrorism in fact. Now to say that it is impossible
 
 AFGHANISTAN 173 
 
 to apply the public law of Europe in the East is no 
 answer at all. Our very charge is, that they do apply 
 the forms and fictions of European law, whenever it 
 suits them, and just so far as it suits them, and throw 
 these forms off the moment they tell on the wrong 
 side. In dealing with Oriental races, it has become 
 a settled practice with some British Governments to 
 assert and exact all the rights that can be grasped 
 under the strict letter of European diplomacy, and 
 to recognise none of the obligations and limits of 
 European law, whenever they cease to be convenient. 
 The dilemma is this. If they go to Kabul under 
 the rights of public law, they are acting there in 
 defiance of public law. If they deny that public law 
 can be applied to Afghans, how ludicrous is the plea 
 of the sacred person of our envoy, the mutiny against 
 a friendly prince, the constructive rebellion, and the 
 ex post facto murders ? The public law of Europe is, 
 perhaps, in all its forms, or in all its rules, not capable 
 of strict application in Asia. But to a civilised and 
 honourable people that cannot mean that they are 
 exempt from all law in Asia, from the spirit and 
 principle of public law as well as from its forms ; that 
 cannot justify them in using the terms of public law 
 in order to entrap and mystify Asiatic rulers, and then 
 to laugh at the very essence of public law, if it hinders 
 their own objects. To a great people at the head of 
 modern civilisation, the difficulties of applying the 
 public law of Europe to people in Asia involve most 
 scrupulous care to follow that which is beyond and 
 behind all public law in Europe, a real and healthy 
 sense of equity, to look at the things as they are, to 
 treat half-civilised races of different religion and habits, 
 from the point of view of a wise understanding of 
 their prejudices and their ignorances, to bear ourselves 
 always as their guides in civilisation and justice.
 
 174 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Now throughout this Afghan war (it is not the 
 first nor the last war that has been waged by England 
 on that plan) it is laid down on system that our troops 
 are to enter the enemies' country, whether they be 
 independent tribes, rebels, mutineers, or robbers is 
 immaterial ; in any case the country is treated as in 
 " insurrection " and general outlawry ; and, as the 
 troops are too few to occupy and permanently hold 
 so vast an area, they are to kill and burn, ravage and 
 destroy so far as may be requisite to secure submission. 
 They are to behave just as Edward I. behaved when 
 he was conquering Wales or invading Scotland, just 
 as Caesar behaved in Gaul, or Cortes in Mexico. 
 That is to say, they are to hold themselves free from 
 all the laws of war as understood in modern Europe ; 
 they are not bound to fight as civilised nations fight ; 
 if they are too few to subdue the country physically, 
 they must terrorise it into submission ; the end is 
 conquest, and any means leading to that end are 
 good. 
 
 Now I say that no circumstances, no diplomatic 
 outrages, no pieces of paper or treaties with mountain 
 chiefs, can justify this system of conquest by terrorism. 
 The spirit of evil is on it, everywhere and always ; in 
 Asia, or in Europe, in the mountains of Afghanistan, 
 or in the valleys of the Balkans. If your troops are 
 too few to conquer and hold a territory, by the public 
 laws of peace and of war, you should keep out of it ; 
 if the tribes you wish to annex do not understand 
 modern diplomacy, it is no ground that you should 
 sink to the morality of a hill chief. To tell us that 
 the interests of India are paramount, and that to 
 save our power and our credit there, all things are 
 permitted, and that all morality is idle ; this is indeed 
 to demoralise the nation, to turn our Indian Empire 
 into a curse greater to Englishmen than her Mexican
 
 AFGHANISTAN 175 
 
 and Peruvian conquests were to Spain ; it is to teach 
 a free people the creed of the pirate. Let the old 
 watchwords be erased from all English flags : Dieu et 
 man Drolt Honi suit and the rest, are stale enough. 
 We will have a new imperial standard for the new 
 Empress of Asia, and emblazon on it Imperium et 
 Barbaries. 
 
 It concerns the honour of this people, it especially 
 concerns the credit of Parliament, that the political 
 and international side of these foreign wars should not 
 be resigned carte blanche to soldiers with a roving 
 commission to conquer, free from all reference to 
 the law of nations, and practically exempt from the 
 rules of war. Above all, it is monstrous that they 
 should be permitted to draw round them a strict 
 cordon of secrecy, and exclude all information of an 
 independent or civilian kind, even to the civilian 
 government they serve. It is an idle pretence that 
 the secrecy was demanded in the military interests 
 of the campaign. It was enforced to exclude criticism, 
 to avoid observation, to withdraw the acts of the 
 generals from the control of the civil government, of 
 the Parliament, of the nation. 
 
 No doubt generals in the field delight in nothing 
 so much as in carte blanche, the exclusion of all 
 political control, the suppression of all criticism, the 
 absorption of every force civil, political, legal, and 
 moral into the one convenient autocracy Martial 
 Law as understood at headquarters. Of course these 
 heady captains, with the thirst of Alexander and 
 Napoleon in their veins, would be only too happy to 
 conquer all Asia on such terms, and career over the 
 planet so long as at home we found them in men and 
 in guns, and asked no awkward questions. But it 
 behoves a responsible government and a free Parlia- 
 ment to beware that these men never shall be let
 
 176 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 loose on a province or a nation, to drag the name of 
 England through blood and dust, to shut themselves 
 up in a sealed district on some idle military excuse, 
 and then to set to work with fire and sword, gun 
 and halter, until they have tamed .another semi- 
 civilised and independent people. Such things may 
 cause joy in military clubs, and their admirers ; it 
 may delight those who believe that England can 
 civilise the East by force ; but it is utterly dis- 
 honouring to a nation such as England, and it 
 disgusts and shames the manly spirit of our thought- 
 ful working people. 
 
 Again I say, I do not charge our soldiers and 
 generals with promiscuous cruelty. Very far from 
 it. I know and honour amongst them many most 
 gentle and generous men. They often show con- 
 spicuous self-control, and a quiet mercifulness worthy 
 of truly brave natures. They almost never lose their 
 heads, and seldom indeed do they catch a blood lust 
 like French or Turkish generals in an insurrection. 
 Personally at home we all know them as English 
 gentlemen and just men. But I complain that they 
 are often set to tasks such as no soldier should have 
 given to him, and granted a licence such as should be 
 trusted to no general. One could not trust the arch- 
 angel Michael to be just, or the seraph Abdiel to be 
 faithful, in a position so trying. 
 
 Our soldiers are sent into a district, one against a 
 thousand or ten thousand, usually heated with some 
 tale of outrage to avenge, and knowing that nothing 
 but desperate energy can enable them to win, despising 
 their enemy as "niggers," and utterly unable to look 
 on them as soldiers ; they are sent into a province 
 or a kingdom alone, without any political control or 
 civilian witness, and they are simply ordered to 
 chastise the rebels, or crush the resistance. What
 
 AFGHANISTAN 177 
 
 would have been the consequences had the Red 
 Prince been let loose upon France without any civil 
 control or witness, with orders carte blanche to bring 
 Frenchmen to their senses, and to be his own Vattel 
 and Foreign Secretary ? Prince Bismarck took care 
 to keep his generals within bounds. Had he not 
 done so, Europe would be ringing now with horror. 
 What then must it be when soldiers, on fire to avenge 
 some outrage, outnumbered as the Spaniards were out- 
 numbered in Mexico, are sent in upon a " nigger " 
 people, with all the physical loathing of race, and the 
 inhuman prompting of their religion, to tame an 
 insurgent tribe ? Angels could not be trusted to do 
 the horrid work, and the natural result ensues. 
 
 In spite of the conspicuous coolness and generosity 
 of our soldiers, the fact remains that they never meet 
 their equals or a civilised foe. A generation has 
 passed since Englishmen met in fight white men, 
 and even those were hardly of European civilisation. 
 They never fight under the rules and conditions of 
 modern war. They hardly ever fight with a foe, 
 whom they treat as an honourable foreign enemy. 
 They are for ever engaging in battues of black skins, 
 red skins, brown skins, "niggers," or savages of some 
 kind. Their enemies are almost always " rebels," or 
 " mutineers," or " insurgents," or " marauders," with 
 whom they do not pretend to hold the conventional 
 laws of warfare. Our officers, therefore, are almost 
 always partly executioners, and partly criminal police, 
 as well as soldiers. They not only use their swords, 
 but they have ever in their train ropes and halters, 
 gibbets and cats, and all the apparatus of a Russian 
 army in Poland. They seldom fight without killing 
 prisoners in cold blood after all resistance has ceased. 
 They blow them from guns by platoons, they hang 
 them from the first tree, they shoot them in squads, 
 
 N
 
 178 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 they flog them by scores, they burn villages whole- 
 sale ; they hold drum-head courts-martial on priests 
 and officials ; they proclaim martial law at their own 
 free-will. 1 
 
 Again I repeat that I do not charge our officers or 
 men with wanton cruelty, nor do I say that they 
 become personally savage, except in rare cases. Nor 
 do 1 say that they do these things without general 
 orders, or without a very fair show of actual insurrection 
 and real outrage. But this, as a fact, is the horrid 
 work the British army is usually called on to do 
 when it enters the field. It is one of the curses, no 
 doubt, of our Empire ; one of the burdens to be 
 borne by a nation which builds its greatness on vast 
 continents of half-civilised people. I wonder that the 
 fine stuff of English gentlemen can resist, as it does, 
 the contagion. I am amazed that so few of them 
 get brutalised by their work. There were men, we 
 know, in Jamaica who seemed to delight in hanging 
 and flogging the blacks. And I myself have heard 
 a young officer say that what pulled him through a 
 desperate wound in the Indian "Mutiny" was the 
 crawling to the window each morning to see the 
 niggers hung the "niggers" being prisoners taken 
 in the battle where he got his wound. 
 
 But. not the less necessary is it, for a civilised 
 government and people, to control with a strong 
 hand the appeal to military law. There is that of 
 the wild beast in all fighting men heated with battle, 
 that they ought almost never to be turned, with the 
 blood still hot upon their hands, into governors, 
 executioners, judges. This Martial Law is a big word 
 for a black thing. It means terrorism, slaughter, 
 
 1 Much of this has been repeated mutatis mutandis in our various 
 African wars, where again we were fighting against raw levies and 
 native races. See the Essay on Martial Lcnv (1908).
 
 AFGHANISTAN 179 
 
 violence within such limits as a soldier thinks 
 convenient. It is strange that of all nations on the 
 earth, except possibly the Russian, the English nation 
 is the one which most often proclaims Martial Law. 
 The British army, of all armies in the world, is the 
 one which is most often hanging, shooting, or 
 punishing prisoners of war. And of all civil Govern- 
 ments on earth, unless, perhaps, that of the Czar, the 
 Parliament of this free nation is the one which is the 
 readiest to hand over countries and provinces to the 
 absolute will of a soldier flushed with victory. 
 
 If these words, quite undeniable as they are, cause 
 pain and anger in the minds of honest men, the fault 
 is not mine. I do not pretend to be a man of peace 
 at any price, nor do I deny the necessity for soldiers 
 and the duty of recognising war. But I have a right 
 to appeal to the civilian sentiments of civilised 
 citizens, and to ask that our army shall be held 
 strictly in civil control and consistently used in a 
 civilised spirit. No honourable soldier can refuse 
 such a claim. As to the men of blood and of 
 swagger, we care as little for their wrath as for their 
 insolence. They cannot rise, as a French statesman 
 said, to the level of our disdain. Men who fulfil their 
 civil duties in the face of any opposition, need not 
 be dismayed by the courage which hurries back to 
 banquets, balls, and welcomes, from the slaughter of 
 "niggers," from wild raids across savage districts in 
 expeditions which, like a tiger-hunt, combine at once 
 a battue and a picnic. Such men entirely mistake 
 the true temper of their fellow-citizens at home. The 
 opinion of the profession or the narrow class that feeds 
 it is not all in this island. There are serious men 
 here, quite as eager for the honour of their country as 
 they are, who have thought about war, its history, its 
 duties, and trials as much as they have, who turn with
 
 i8o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 a sick heart from this never-ending tale of invasion, 
 slaughter, repression, military executions, and martial 
 law. 
 
 For a generation the Temple of Janus for us has 
 hardly once been closed. No year passes that British 
 troops are not fighting somewhere, and never a white 
 or a civilised foe, and rarely indeed in civilised warfare. 
 To us these men come home, yet honourable men no 
 doubt, and unpolluted with savagery, but still reeking 
 with the blood of men killed in unjust quarrels, of 
 men put to death in cold blood, butchered in the loose 
 hubbub of military retribution. Will some member 
 of Parliament exact a true return of the prisoners 
 taken in battle in these African and Asian wars, and 
 of the punishments inflicted by military justice ? How 
 many of the hundreds of thousands of fighting men 
 who have so lately met our armies in battle, have been 
 taken prisoners in the field ? How many of such 
 prisoners have been honourably treated as Europeans 
 treat European prisoners of war ? What are these 
 wars in which we never hear of prisoners, in which 
 prisoners of war are systematically tried by courts- 
 martial ? Have we no member on either side of our 
 docile parties, who will tear open the secrets of the 
 " military censor," and drag before the nation the true 
 story of this hanging of "niggers " ? 
 
 There are men at home to whom these things are 
 never gilded by displays of personal daring, who hear 
 the groans of the prisoners in their agony amidst all 
 the cheers of admiring friends. The vast mass of our 
 working people, in town and in country, loathe these 
 criminal wars, and turn from the instruments of these 
 wild acts of retribution. Bella gerl placuit^ nullos 
 habitura triumphos^ said the noble Roman there are 
 wars too odious to deserve a triumph. Our soldiers 
 too often forget this maxim, and the stern warning it
 
 AFGHANISTAN 181 
 
 conveys. There is no response in the mass of the 
 nation to the thoughtless cheers of the idle, when 
 executioners and hangmen return to claim a triumph. 
 They may have done their duty, and may have done 
 it without passion : but we do not care to see them ; 
 and we ask of the Government that sent them by 
 what law or right these things were done. 
 
 To all that is said there is always one monotonous 
 reply the prestige of our Asiatic position the critical 
 necessities of our Indian Empire. If this means, that 
 having a great possession in the East, its importance 
 is such that neither justice nor morality has anything 
 to do with the matter, then this nation will sink to 
 the Spain of the Philips, if it ever accepts such a 
 doctrine. I know there are politicians on both sides 
 who have quietly made up their minds, that having 
 got India they mean to keep it by any means and all 
 means which come to hand ; and whatever has to be 
 paid in life, or in waste, in guilt, or in shame, will 
 be paid to the bitter end. To such men we have but 
 one short answer we do not argue with Pirates : we 
 call upon civilised mankind to judge them. 
 
 It is just because we have a deep sense of all that 
 we ought to do in India, it is just for the sake of 
 India itself, that we condemn this military terrorism. 
 It is not we who say Perish India, or who crudely 
 call out for its summary abandonment. For my part, 
 I recognise all the duties which our presence there has 
 imposed on us, and I desire to fulfil those duties of 
 good government and upright dealing at every sacrifice 
 and with all our might. It is because I desire a just 
 rule and the firm and peaceful settlement of India, 
 such as may lead to the ultimate establishment of real 
 native governments, that I protest against the system 
 of these constant wars of retribution. How is the 
 government of India ever to rise to the level of a
 
 182 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 just and beneficent power, or to educate its people to 
 govern themselves, when, year after year, it is occupied 
 in successive wars of aggression and repression, of 
 terrorism or vengeance ? How are officers to become 
 the peaceful guardians of a contented empire, when 
 they are for ever returning, hot with revenge and 
 triumph, from a promiscuous battue of half-barbarous 
 rebels " ? 
 
 The day when the white and the dark race shall 
 feel that they are fellow-citizens, instead of conquerors 
 and conquered, masters and subjects, is indeed in- 
 definitely adjourned by these wild raids amongst wild 
 tribes in the spirit of Cortes or Pizarro. The bad 
 blood which these raids enkindle in every vein, the 
 desperate sense of race-feud which they breed in the 
 native, and the fierce temper of disdain which they 
 rouse in us these are the real perils and difficulties of 
 the Indian Empire. Fed by this slaughter and violence 
 and lawlessness, that empire will always be precarious, 
 will always be sinking to a lower level. To believe 
 that an empire can for ever subsist on terrorism, be 
 the terrorism only in reserve, is to believe that the 
 most cynical of Turkish Pashas or Russian Prefects 
 are wise politicians and true patriots. 
 
 If we are asked what do we mean by terrorism^ the 
 question is easily answered. Terrorism consists in the 
 killing, torturing, or punishing A, not for any crime 
 committed by A, but in order to terrify B, C, and D 
 into submitting to your will. That is terrorism j and 
 it is, always and everywhere, evil and abominable, 
 in Europe or in Asia. No circumstances can justify 
 it. No object can excuse it. And that is what, we 
 say, our troops have done in Kabul, and what our 
 Government has authorised them to do. If it be 
 objected that all war is terrorism, the answer again is 
 simple. War has its recognised laws as much as
 
 AFGHANISTAN 183 
 
 peace, and they must be submitted to in Asia as much 
 as in Europe. If it be said that they cannot be applied 
 in Asia, or are not understood by barbarians, then the 
 spirit of these laws must be followed, if we cannot 
 follow their letter. They are laws like the laws of 
 honour which bind soldiers as such, which distinguish 
 them from pirates, banditti, and cut-throats, wherever 
 they may fight. They are laws which ought to bind 
 the British soldier as a part of his own self-respect, 
 quite apart from their being enforced by adverse 
 opinion, or formulated in words by the enemy. And 
 the chief and centre of these laws are these : Thou 
 shalt not kill helpless prisoners of war j thou shalt not 
 kill for civil offences, as distinct from military attack. 
 Both are summed up in this. You may use your 
 swords and your rifles in battle you may not use 
 gibbets and ropes in cold blood. And we tell these 
 heroes of the drum-head and the halter that, whether 
 it be in Asia or in Europe, in Africa or in America, 
 they who do these things cease to be soldiers, and sink 
 to the level of hangmen or cut-throats. Longitude 
 and latitude have nothing to do with it : nor have the 
 habits and ideas of the particular enemy. It is a 
 matter of personal self-respect, binding on gentlemen 
 and on soldiers everywhere.
 
 VII 
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 
 
 I 
 
 Before the second ministry of Mr. Gladstone had been in power 
 for two years, a movement was started to check the con- 
 tinuance of the aggressive policy abroad which it was 
 hoped the Mid -Lothian campaign had suppressed. It 
 originated with Mr. Herbert Spencer, the late Lord 
 Hob house, and many Members of Parliament, journalists, 
 and political speakers who were dissatisjied with the Zulu 
 and Transvaal wars, the Borneo annexation, and other 
 expeditions. After many private meetings, a public 
 conference took place in February 1882, at which Mr. 
 John Morley presided, the speakers being himself, 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, Lord Hobhouse, several Liberal 
 M.P.'s, and myself. Some twenty Members were 
 present, including three who have been Cabinet Ministers 
 in the present Administration. A full account of the 
 speeches and of the policy of the League was published 
 in March 1882, entitled And - Aggression League 
 Pamphlets, No. i. // gave the names of some thirty-six 
 Members and upwards of forty Professors, writers, and 
 politicians as farming the General Council. 
 
 From this Pamphlet I extract a few sentences of the 
 speech I made at the Conference (1908). 
 
 THE vast increase of the Empire in Asia and in Africa 
 
 has been effected almost entirely by war. If we 
 
 184
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 185 
 
 count up the years since 1832, and set against each 
 year the wars in which we had been engaged, we 
 should find there were more wars than there were 
 years j that is, if now and then a year might be found 
 free from war, the next gave us two, three, and even 
 four wars for one year. If we take a period of fifty 
 years, we shall find that in at least ten of these years 
 we have been engaged in warlike expeditions in 
 Africa ; during ten of them we have been engaged 
 in war with China. During eight of these years we 
 have had wars with the Afghans ; during ten years 
 we were occupied with wars in India j during four or 
 five in New Zealand ; and during as many more in 
 Burmah, Japan, Persia, or Malayland. During fifty 
 years I reckon that England has been engaged in more 
 than forty distinct wars, without counting either the 
 Crimean war or the constant sputtering of war with 
 the Indian hill tribes. 
 
 Between 1850 and 1860 we were engaged in 
 almost incessant war in every part of Asia, from the 
 Black Sea to the Yellow Sea. The fact is that 
 England is very rarely at peace, and has more wars 
 than any other nation in Europe, not even except- 
 ing Russia. If we study the list of years of war, 
 we see a very significant fact : there are some years 
 in which these Asiatic, African, and Colonial wars 
 seem suddenly to lull. They ceased during the three 
 years of the great Crimean war j they ceased after 
 the great European revolutions of 1848 and 1849 ; 
 they ceased during the great German war in 1866 ; 
 and they ceased again during and after the great war 
 in France of 1870-1871. During periods of great 
 danger or watchfulness at home, they cease. That 
 proves they are under our own control. We can 
 abstain from them when our safety and policy demand 
 it. The word is passed to our prancing pro-consuls
 
 1 86 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and bold ambassadors in Asia and in Africa that they 
 must be quiet at their peril, and immediately peace 
 reigns on all our remote frontiers ! 
 
 In old Rome there was the ancient Temple of 
 Janus, with its gate open in time of war, and closed 
 only in time of peace. I sometimes wish that we too 
 had our Temple of Janus in Palace Yard, so that our 
 senators, as they go down to take their places, might 
 see the gate so continuously open, and might remember 
 that we were still at war. 
 
 Something more is needed to check war than the 
 questions or remonstrances of independent Members 
 of Parliament. They tell us how much they need 
 support from without. And our movement just offers 
 such support. It proposes a union of men of affairs 
 with men who address opinion through the press, or 
 by books, or by the pulpit. A persistent tendency to 
 war, aggression, and commercial adventure can only 
 be held in check by a systematic effort to maintain 
 peace and international justice. The criticisms of 
 politicians require behind them an organic and con- 
 structive theory of a policy fitted for an industrial 
 and civilised age. We need a matured system of 
 international morality a practical scheme for an 
 effective policy of Peace. 
 
 Such we make bold to think may be found in the 
 printed papers and programmes of the intended 
 League, which will bring together men of influence 
 in the House and the country alongside of men like 
 our Chairman and Mr. Herbert Spencer, who in their 
 works have elaborated and illustrated the doctrines 
 from the point of view of social philosophy. We 
 contemplate no abstract Doctrine of Peace ; no 
 specific cut-and-dried scheme of constitutional change ; 
 no arbitrary limitation of the Executive. We seek 
 to make the Executive conscious of its responsibility
 
 THE ANTI- AGGRESSION LEAGUE 187 
 
 to public opinion ; not to impose chains on it in the 
 exercise of its duty, but to make it feel that it will be 
 judged according to its deserts. Nor are we hostile 
 to the present Government. Our movement counts 
 many of the warmest friends of it. But if we find 
 men like Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, and Lord 
 Hartington, so continually overpowered by the self- 
 will of officials, or the interests of certain classes, we 
 think they need help to enable them to maintain a 
 policy of peace and justice. Had they had it, they 
 might have found it easier to withdraw from the 
 Transvaal and from Afghanistan, when they knew it 
 was their duty to do so. 
 
 II 
 
 The new League was hardly constituted when in the summer of 
 1882 our entanglements in Egypt threatened to involve 
 us in a new war with practical annexation. The League 
 appealed to public opinion, and especially to the working 
 class, to prevent such a catastrophe. A great meeting 
 was held in the Memorial Hall on June 26, at which I 
 was asked to give an address to specially invited repre- 
 sentatives of Trades Union and Labour Associations. It 
 ivas published as Anti-Aggression League Pamphlets, 
 No. 2. 
 
 From this report I extract the following passages : 
 
 When, two years ago, the great appeal to the 
 nation was made, we thought it was decided for ever 
 that England should renounce the policy of injustice, 
 and cease to undertake the control of half the human 
 race in the name of civilisation in general and Great
 
 188 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Britain in particular. We were all, perhaps, a little 
 too confident that the policy we rejected was really 
 abandoned. Mr. Gladstone, and almost every member 
 of his Ministry, and his supporters in the House, were 
 pledged up to the eyes to repudiate it. But the 
 authors and agents of the system remained. In a 
 country like ours, with world -wide commercial 
 interests, with an Empire that is scattered over the 
 planet as no empire in history ever was, with traditions 
 of conquest and domination, founded by war and main- 
 tained by enterprise, it was inevitable that the classes 
 who had created and worked the system should struggle 
 to maintain it. 
 
 The zealous governors and fiery consuls, pushed on 
 by the resident traders seeking new markets, the vice- 
 roys and envoys, and ambassadors, trained to dictate to 
 kings, and to extend the Empire by policy or force, 
 the adventurous spirits who form an irregular band of 
 pioneers in advance of the limits of the Empire, the 
 permanent foreign and colonial staff, all made it 
 difficult for Mr. Gladstone and his party to carry out 
 the pledges they had given. It needed incessant 
 remonstrances from the Press and the people before 
 Afghanistan, Kabul, and Candahar were finally got rid 
 of; the shameful war with the Basutos in Africa was 
 still suffered to drag on ; the author of the Zulu war 
 Sir Bartle Frere was not immediately recalled ; 
 the unjust imprisonment of the Zulu king was still 
 enforced ; the unjust annexation of the Transvaal 
 country was still maintained, till it ended in a shameful 
 and iniquitous war. 
 
 The League, whose objects I am to present to you 
 to-night, is far from designing any opposition to the 
 Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, or any wish to embarrass 
 it. We are most of us steady supporters of the 
 Liberal party, and no man could more heartily desire
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 189 
 
 than I did myself the great change in policy which 
 brought Mr. Gladstone to power. And, with his 
 work in Ireland and in the reform of our Parliamentary 
 system still incomplete, no man could more honestly 
 than I regard his fall as a national calamity. We are 
 not acting, I say, with any desire whatever to em- 
 barrass the Government. We are seeking only to 
 remind them of their principles. People do not 
 always like to be reminded of their principles ; but it 
 is good for them it is always good for them and 
 they very soon find out that those who do so are their 
 best friends. 
 
 Now, what are the principles of the Anti-Aggression 
 League ? Well, they are the principles of the Mid- 
 Lothian campaign, of the Government of Mr. Glad- 
 stone : the principles that the nation ratified in May 
 1880. That is to say, that this policy of extending 
 the Empire, aggrandising the power of Britain, 
 thrusting ourselves as managers and masters of our 
 weaker neighbours, backing up our adventurous people 
 in every enterprise, just or unjust, bullying the weak 
 tribes, making petty kings our vassals, opening 
 markets by gunboats, and maintaining controllers by 
 ironclads this system must cease, once for all. The 
 Empire is a great deal too big and scattered and com- 
 posite in itself to need any increase. He is the worst 
 enemy of our country who seeks to make it wider and 
 more difficult to defend. We have already more 
 nations to manage and govern than we can succeed in 
 governing well, and some very much nearer home than 
 Africa. The adventures of our traders, whether in 
 China or Japan, or South Africa or North Africa, or 
 Australia, or the Pacific Islands, are often of a kind 
 that cover us with shame as a nation, and add nothing 
 but sorrow and trouble to our Governments. 
 
 England, in spite of all our professions, is that
 
 igo NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 country which, of all others, has the oftenest war on 
 its hands, and is the oftenest engaged in crushing the 
 efforts of some weaker people for independence. The 
 German E mpi re, under B ismarck, is a model of a peaceable 
 nation compared to England ; Russia herself has not so 
 many wars, and all the military monarchies of the world 
 put together are not so frequently engaged in fighting 
 as our little island, shut off from the warlike people of 
 Europe by the " silver streak." In fifty years we have 
 been engaged in at least fifty wars, and a year hardly 
 ever passes without military operations of some kind 
 by sea or land. In theory every British Government 
 is a firm friend of peace, and every party repudiates 
 the idea of aggression. But, one after another, every 
 Government finds war too tempting to be resisted. 
 
 For these reasons the Anti-Aggression League has 
 requested me to address a meeting of men who were 
 chosen to represent the working classes and the mass 
 of the industrious community, and they have invited 
 you to consider the appeal that I make to you for 
 support and co-operation. This great issue of our age 
 the replacing of the old international policy of war, 
 aggression, and rivalry by the new international policy 
 that has yet to be of peace, forbearance, and mutual 
 confidence especially concerns the great labouring 
 class of the community, and its best hopes lie in their 
 help. You, if I may address myself directly to those 
 here to-night, who represent the great political and 
 social organisations of the workmen, their Trades 
 Unions, their Co-operative Societies, their political 
 clubs, and their educational institutes, you, I say, have 
 nothing to gain and everything to lose by this policy 
 of national aggrandisement. 
 
 Your first interest is peace, for the horrors of war 
 fall first and heaviest on you. You are the bulk of the 
 people, who suffer most and first in times of national
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 191 
 
 distress. You are not dazzled by the prizes and 
 honours of an adventurous campaign. These new 
 markets which our great merchants are ever seeking 
 to "open up" only derange the labour market at 
 home, bringing violent gambling in the employment 
 of capital, to be followed by gluts, reaction, and slack 
 trade upon an over - stocked market and an over- 
 stimulated labour population. This civilisation which 
 our official and our capitalist classes are ever eager to 
 discharge wholesale upon some foreign people who 
 seem very much to object to it ; this civilisation which 
 they seem to think can be shot like the cargo in a 
 ship, and not seldom like the charge in a cannon ; 
 this "civilisation" is no interest of yours and no work 
 of yours. 
 
 You have nothing to gain by sacrificing your blood 
 and savings in order that more traders may carry gun- 
 powder and brandy and loaded calicoes farther and 
 farther into the wilds of Africa ; in order that the 
 Czar may find himself checkmated in Central Asia ; 
 in order that the city of Alexander may be turned into 
 a French or Italian town, and that the salaries of 
 thousands of Europeans may be paid out of the taxes 
 of Egypt. This continual stimulus to the aggressive 
 instincts of the nation is a continual stimulus to the 
 power of the military classes, and to all the retrograde 
 elements in our political life. They strengthen the 
 power and the opportunities of those who maintain 
 the older class prejudices of our people, and they retard 
 the growth of industrial habits and aims. The policy 
 of the people is bound to be a peace policy in the long 
 run j for it is only by peace that the condition of the 
 people can possibly be raised, and it is only by a 
 settled habit of peace thaf we can learn the habit of 
 social justice, and the true solution of all our social 
 problems.
 
 192 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 War, the rumour of war the very breath of war 
 postpones indefinitely the work of reforming our home 
 abuses, our class anomalies, our ancient misgovern- 
 ment. It postpones the remedies, and it gives a new 
 authority to the classes who are mainly responsible for 
 the diseases. Tell those who are so fond of touring 
 round the globe to import (I would rather say to 
 inflict) their civilisation on the backward nations and 
 tribes, tell them that you want civilisation here at 
 home, if you can get it genuine. Tell those who are 
 so eager to govern Arabs, and Africans, and Afghans, 
 and Chinese at modest stipends of ^4000 or ^5000 a 
 year ask them to see what can be done in the better 
 government of our own island. 
 
 Before they settle the 'Eastern question, and the 
 Central Asian mystery, and the great Euphrates 
 Valley imbroglio, ask them to settle the land question 
 in Ireland first, and then in Scotland and in England. 
 Ask them to give the 4,000,000 of hard-worked people 
 of London the chance of drinking pure water ; ask 
 them to give the people of London some means of 
 controlling their own affairs, and of providing for their 
 own wants ; ask them to give a rational system of 
 local government to the English and the Scotch and 
 the Irish counties ; ask them to do something to get 
 our vast fabric of law out of the chaos of obscurity and 
 confusion in which it is involved. Tell them that 
 there are fifty burning social questions at home to 
 solve, and wants of the English people to supply before 
 they undertake to civilise the human race, and cause 
 order and prosperity to reign in every corner of the 
 old hemisphere, in every island at least of the new 
 hemisphere. Tell those noisy philanthropists who call 
 heaven and earth to witness gf the "anarchy " on the 
 Nile, the "anarchy" on the Balkans, and the murderous 
 propensities of the Pacific islanders tell them to go
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 193 
 
 and do something to prevent anarchy in Ireland. 
 Whilst "civilisation" is making the tour of the world 
 on board ironclads with eighty-ton guns, civilisation 
 is terribly wanted in the three kingdoms at home. 
 These " crises " and " demonstrations " suspend your 
 interests and silence your claims. The old Roman 
 said, " In the midst of arms the laws are silent." 
 Silent is law in every sense, and the reforming of law, 
 and the making of good laws most silent of all. 
 
 Our Prime Minister, not many years ago, set down 
 some twenty-seven questions which he said were of 
 vital and immediate moment to the people, and 
 urgently awaited the attention of Parliament. Is one 
 of the twenty-seven ever heard of in the midst of a 
 " crisis," on the eve or even in the moment of a war, 
 when the whole attention of Parliament and the 
 Ministry is strained after some fierce international 
 struggle ? The hope of land reform, of law reform, 
 of municipal reform, of county reform, even of the 
 supply of wholesome water, is adjourned Session after 
 Session. Ireland and Ireland is only a case of old 
 international oppression thrusts out everything, and 
 now the condition of Egypt is even more urgent than 
 that of Ireland ; and if this terrible imbroglio on the 
 Nile were to land us in a European war, it would be 
 years and years before we ever heard again of any one 
 of Mr. Gladstone's twenty-seven burning questions. 
 Therefore it is, I say, that peace, international justice, 
 and quiet relations with all our neighbours, are the 
 first of all the interests of the workmen. They alone 
 of the community can make their voice heard without 
 any prejudice ; they lose most heavily by war, both in 
 what they immediately suffer and in what they have 
 to surrender. They may leave their bones to wither 
 on distant lands, but they bring back no fortunes, no 
 honours, no new markets for their capital, no new
 
 i 9 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 posts for their class. They only can speak out boldly 
 and with the irresistible voice of conscience, because 
 they only have no interest in injustice, nothing to 
 gain by conquest, and everything to lose by inter- 
 ference.
 
 VIII 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 (1882) 
 
 / then applied these principles to the Egyptian imbroglio. 
 
 Now I ask you to apply these principles to the present 
 crisis in Egypt. In what I have hitherto said, I have 
 been expressing the views of the League in whose 
 name I have spoken to-night. But in all that I may 
 say, on the immediate cause of this crisis, and on the 
 practical policy to pursue, I would rather be taken to 
 express my own personal opinion, and not the view of 
 any group whatever. What the League thinks on 
 the crisis may be seen in their published statement. 
 I should like to add something to that statement on 
 my own responsibility. 
 
 What has led to the existing stage of crisis in 
 Egypt ? For a long time past, as you know, the 
 European nations have been running a race together 
 as to which should be foremost in pressing upon Egypt 
 its civilisation and its protection. Their civilisation 
 took the form at first of enormous loans of money at 
 high interest, which the civilisers advanced to the 
 rulers of Egypt in the philanthropic spirit in which 
 Mr. Ralph Nickleby advanced cash to his pupils. 
 These bounties of " civilisation " amount altogether 
 to some ^115,000,000. Then the civilisers, when
 
 196 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 they found the country utterly sinking under this 
 gigantic burden of debt, and racked by the most 
 odious misgovernment, were good enough to invite 
 themselves to fulfil various offices at large salaries to 
 keep things a little straight. By a Parliamentary 
 paper just published, we learn the names, and offices, 
 and salaries of this vast army of European officials 
 paid out of the taxes of the people of Egypt. Their 
 total number is 1325 ; their total salaries amount to 
 jS73?74> a bout one-twelfth part of the entire avail- 
 able expenditure of the country. The number of 
 the European civilisers is some 60,000 or (some say) 
 100,000. In consideration of their beneficent mission, 
 these European missionaries of good works at 10 per 
 cent have been exempt from local taxation. A native 
 pays a tax of 12 per cent annual value on his house ; 
 the European lives tax free. The native fly-driver 
 pays a heavy tax on his carriage ; the European 
 banker drives his pair tax free. Next, the civilisers 
 having obliged the country with some 115 millions 
 sterling at 7 and 10 per cent, obtained "concessions" 
 for about thirty-five millions more. Then they kindly 
 exempted themselves from taxation, were good enough 
 to set up local courts in which they had the right to 
 bring their civil and criminal affairs to a judge of 
 their own nation. An army of European judges, and 
 secretaries, and assessors, and barristers were called in 
 at very liberal salaries, who kindly undertook to do the 
 law for the Egyptian people. 
 
 The civilisers, of course, could not flood the 
 country with their gold, make themselves free of 
 local taxation, free of local jurisdiction, without 
 coming into political conflicts with the Egyptian 
 Government and people, as well as with one another. 
 One Khedive or ruler of Egypt was dethroned by the 
 pressure put by the European Powers on the Sultan
 
 EGYPT 197 
 
 of Turkey ; another was put in his place who well 
 understood that he would be protected only so long 
 as he did what he was told. And to maintain this 
 system the notable device of the Control was set up. 
 England and France have the right to send out each 
 a Controller or official who shall supervise the entire 
 expenditure of the country, provide for due payment 
 of the foreign debt, and regulate and control the 
 Budget. The Controllers are the two foreign Chan- 
 cellors of the Exchequer, as it were, to the Egyptians. 
 The whole financial system of the country is under 
 their supervision. They are practically in the position 
 of the House of Commons here, having ultimate 
 control of the purse. Technically, I know they have 
 no veto ; but as every item of the Budget passes in 
 review before them, and as they can object to any 
 item they please, the Controllers are really the irre- 
 sponsible rulers of Egypt. Each Controller receives 
 a salary of nearly ^4000 a year, and the entire cost of 
 this one institution is ^14,000 a year. 
 
 There are two other Controls, so that the Egyptian 
 people pay about ^30,000 a year for the luxury of 
 not being allowed to raise or to expend their own 
 taxes as they please, for fear that their foreign creditors 
 may not get the whole of their four and a half millions 
 of interest. The population of Egypt is much less 
 than ten millions j and the revenue of this very poor 
 people is nine or ten millions, or some 1 per head. 
 The taxation of the people of India (and we are often 
 told that it is as high as it can possibly be raised) is 
 about 48. per head that of the Egyptian fellah about 
 five times as much. Of this nine millions about one- 
 half is carried straight out of the country to pay the 
 foreign usurer, and only one-half of the total revenue 
 is available for the administration of the country itself. 
 Imagine your own feelings, if you had to send every
 
 198 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 year some forty millions sterling out of the taxes of 
 the country to pay Turkish, or Arab, or Chinese 
 bondholders j and then, having paid that regularly, 
 that you had to keep a Turkish pasha and a Chinese 
 mandarin in London to control your expenditure, so 
 that every penny of the Budget had to get the sanction 
 of their excellencies, and if Mr. Gladstone or any other 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer wished to put on or take 
 off a tax, down would come a fleet of ironclads from 
 the Bosphorus into the Thames, and train their 8o-ton 
 guns right in view of the Tower and Somerset House. 
 That is the state of Egypt now. 
 
 Egypt is a very poor and a shamefully ill-governed 
 country. The fellah or peasant of the Nile is one of 
 the poorest, the most patient, ill-used, the most hope- 
 less of all the cultivators of the soil to be found on this 
 wide earth outside of Ireland. For centuries he has 
 been the prey of oppressors and tax-gatherers. But 
 the worst exactions of his native Mahometan tax- 
 gatherers never imposed on him so hopeless a burden 
 as the cool, scientific, book-keeping sort of spoliation 
 of his European civilisers. 1 
 
 All this, be it remembered, is duly settled by high 
 and mighty treaties. You hear much, you will hear 
 more, of these international engagements, of firmans, 
 and treaties, and obligations, and decrees, and what 
 not. It is all as tight and technical as international 
 lawyers can make it, just as tight and legal as Mr. 
 Nickleby's bill transactions with young heirs. The 
 Sultan has been bullied, and coaxed, and influenced. 
 The Khedive has been coaxed and warned. There 
 are bipartite treaties, and quadruple treaties, and all 
 sorts of grand European proceedings. But the long 
 
 1 I quite admit that from the purely material point of view much of 
 this has been remedied and the condition of the fellah has been immensely 
 improved but with corresponding evils (1908).
 
 EGYPT 199 
 
 and the short of it is this : Europeans having encour- 
 aged a profligate and unscrupulous Turkish Pasha, 
 the late Khedive, in a career of incredible extravagance 
 and folly, have forced another profligate and unscrupu- 
 lous Turk the late Sultan of Constantinople to 
 fling over the first old scoundrel, to bind over the 
 country to all eternity to pay his scandalous debts, to 
 set up a nominee and agent of the creditors as a new 
 ruler of the country, and have taken the practical 
 government of the country into their own hands in 
 order to make sure that the interest of these loans 
 shall be regularly paid. The same thing has happened 
 in Egypt which happens in real life. The spendthrift 
 heir to a property goes to the Jews to supply his 
 extravagance and follies. They fool him to the top 
 of his bent, and lend him any sum he likes at any 
 usurious rate they can compel him to accept. The 
 crash conies, and then they come into possession ; 
 they get a receiver of his property ; and they squeeze 
 his tenants to get their interest. 
 
 Well, the bondholders are now in possession of 
 Egypt ; or rather, they were the other day, till they 
 beat a hasty retreat. That is the real meaning of this 
 Egyptian mystery. We hear a great deal about inter- 
 national duties, about the Canal, and the interest of 
 England in her Indian Empire ! All that is idle talk, 
 that is wide of the true facts. It is quite true that 
 the Canal is a matter of great importance to English 
 commerce. But no one has threatened it. The 
 Canal is more than 100 miles from Alexandria, 
 separated by 50 miles of impassable and uninhabited 
 desert from the cultivable soil of Egypt. But does it 
 follow that, because we have an interest to sail our 
 ships freely through the Canal, the ruler of Egypt 
 is to be our mere puppet that we are to undertake 
 the moral and material control of a population of five
 
 200 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 millions in a country as vast as France, that we are to 
 establish in the country a huge national debt, a huge 
 army of foreign officials of our own ; that we are to 
 control the Budget, and meddle with their politics, 
 make Ministries, and dynasties, and unmake them 
 when we don't feel quite satisfied that they are 
 looking after our money ? And all this, forsooth, 
 in order that our ships may sail through a canal 
 100 miles off! 
 
 Naturally this " spoiling " of the Egyptians, which 
 they now call "exploitation," this control and dry- 
 nursing, roused native hostility. Strange to say, the 
 Egyptians grew sulky at so much civilisation. The 
 1300 civilisers, paid 3 73,000 per annum out of their 
 taxes, seemed a little overdone ; the 60,000 Europeans 
 living tax free ; the local courts of alien law and 
 foreign judges ; the 4^ millions (half the total revenue) 
 carried off to foreign bondholders. The Mahometan 
 population conceived what is called a "fanatical" 
 objection to the foreigners ; they even blasphemed 
 the value of the civilisation ; they murmured it was 
 rather too dear, and they talked about a Parliament. 
 For some time the head of this movement was in the 
 native army,headed by a native gentleman, Arabi Pasha. 
 A Parliament was called, and soon began a struggle 
 between the Parliament, the Army, the University, 
 and the native leaders on the one side, and the Khedive, 
 some of his official world and the European ring of 
 civilisers on the other. The ring, and when I say 
 the ring I mean the 1300 European salaried officers of 
 the Egyptian Government and their belongings, the 
 agents of the banks, and railways, gas works, and other 
 concessions of 35 millions, and the European popula- 
 tion which had planted itself in Egypt the ring, I 
 say, chose to treat the native movement as a military 
 rebellion.
 
 EGYPT 201 
 
 For months the Press, the Foreign Offices and 
 political world of Europe have been deluged with 
 outcries that it was all the work of mutinous soldiers. 
 It suited the ring to call a national movement, pro- 
 voked by their meddling, a mutiny. Unhappily our 
 public representatives took side against the leaders j 
 they misled our Foreign Office ; they openly avowed 
 their hostility to the native party. The English 
 representatives refused to recognise its chief, and 
 plotted his downfall ; and to fall in the East is usually 
 to be killed or exiled. It is as if, in the struggle in 
 France in 1877 between Gambetta and the Republican 
 party and Marshal MacMahon and his Ministry, Lord 
 Lyons and the English Embassy had entered into the 
 struggle, and had eagerly stimulated the Marshal to 
 crush the Republic. The pretext that the movement 
 was a military mutiny is a wild and silly calumny. 
 Events have proved it ; the strength of the movement 
 is not military, but civil. It lies in the great university 
 or school of Cairo, the intellectual centre of the Mussul- 
 man world, with nearly 20,000 members. It lies in 
 the intelligent people of the city and the headmen of 
 the villages. Events have proved, I say, how idle is 
 this cry of a military mutiny. If it were so, why has 
 the national Parliament placed itself in the front ; 
 why is it that we are told that Europeans are hardly 
 safe in a village, whilst the whole army is now at 
 Alexandria ? Egypt is not the first nor the only 
 place where a national rising against a corrupt 
 monarchy has been headed and represented by soldiers. 
 
 We know something ourselves about political 
 colonels who stood up by the cause of the people. 
 But military mutiny or not, the cause of Arabi 
 succeeded, in spite of the hostility, the intrigues, 
 and the threats of the European Consuls and the 
 European Controllers. The Khedive did not take
 
 202 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the advice of the English Controller and did not arrest 
 Arabi ; but Arabi's affection for the Control was, of 
 course, not increased by the advice. He became, 
 however, the leading Minister of the Khedive, and 
 proceeded to carry out a number of changes in the 
 Egyptian army and the Egyptian finances. Now, I 
 am not concerned to argue that Arabi's measures 
 were wise or good. Perhaps he is not as admirable 
 a War Minister as Mr. Childers, or as consummate 
 a financier as Mr. Gladstone. But he was, for the 
 time being, the lawful Minister of Egypt, and he was 
 dealing with the details of Egyptian administration. 
 Now the one thing that the British officials in Egypt 
 will not tolerate is that Egyptians should deal with 
 the details of Egyptian administration in any way but 
 what the officials like. Our Controller in Egypt is 
 an Indian official. He is paid nearly ^4000 a year 
 out of the Egyptian taxes to prevent the Egyptians 
 from spending their revenue as they like. The English 
 Controller, I say, seems to look upon himself as the 
 resident at an Indian Rajah's Court his practical 
 tutor and master. 
 
 There are three of these separate controls in 
 Egypt, and the principal Controller seems to assume 
 the position of superintending Providence. To such 
 lengths does this meddling go, that you will find in 
 the Blue-books a high international question made of 
 some articles in the native papers. The English 
 Envoy demands and obtains the suppression of two 
 native journals for two articles set out in the Blue- 
 book, which simply (and I think very reasonably) ex- 
 press the irritation of the native mind at the European 
 exploitation of their country. From November last 
 the story is the same the Consuls and Controllers 
 interfering in every detail of government, thwarting 
 the formation of the national party, openly instigating
 
 EGYPT 203 
 
 the Khedive to crush Arabi, intriguing with his 
 political rivals, and seeking to destroy the influence 
 of the Chamber. The part taken by the British 
 authorities in Egypt was the part taken in France 
 in 1877, by the reactionary Monarchic and Imperialist 
 parties, to crush Gambetta and the Republic, with this 
 difference, that in Egypt it was the act of a foreign 
 and avowedly friendly Government. At last the 
 British Government took that fatal step of sending 
 a powerful fleet to Alexandria, and under its guns 
 demanding by an ultimatum the dismissal of Arabi, 
 his exile, the break-up of his party, and the reconsti- 
 tution of the old system of nursing. 
 
 Lord Granville was warned on many sides that 
 this would certainly produce a dangerous excitement j 
 you will find in Blue-book No. 7 that Lord Granville 
 was informed, and repeated to France, "that the 
 political advantages of the demonstration by the fleet 
 outweighed the danger it would cause to the Euro- 
 peans in Egypt." The fleet, as we know, utterly 
 failed to effect the object sought. The Egyptians 
 were not cowed by it ; they were roused to fury by 
 it. I honour the Egyptian people that they were 
 capable of such manly indignation. Where should 
 we be if the Czar and the French Republic sent a 
 fleet into the Thames, and in front of the Tower 
 served an ultimatum on the Queen, to send Mr. 
 Gladstone to Australia, to dismiss the House of 
 Commons, and to restore Lord Salisbury, with a 
 French and Russian dry-nurse to control him ! 
 Well, the Egyptians have feelings, and they resented, 
 as was natural, this insolent and impotent menace. 
 What followed ? The Government the Govern- 
 ment of Mr. Gladstone actually went to the Sultan 
 of Turkey and implored him to send an official armed 
 with his Imperial authority to crush the national
 
 204 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 party and restore the dry-nurse system. In the 
 history of national humiliation I know nothing so 
 tragic as that the Government of Mr. Gladstone 
 should go on its knees to the despot at Constantinople 
 and crush out the rising hopes of a people struggling 
 into some kind of independence and life. The 
 Government well knew what crushing Arabi meant. 
 To crush a national leader in the Sultan's dominions 
 is to kill him. A man was chosen, well known to be 
 one of the most unscrupulous ruffians of the Pashas, 
 and words can hardly exceed that ! They were warned 
 that the Pasha sent out was at once treacherous, reck- 
 less, and merciless. The Government wanted Arabi 
 to be made away with ! Well, he was too much for 
 them too much for Dervish, and the Sultan, and the 
 Khedive, and the British and French fleets. 
 
 We all know what followed. The Egyptian army 
 and people were stung to frenzy by this attempt on 
 the part of their foreign creditors, first to crush a 
 legitimate national movement towards representative 
 government, by cannon, and then the attempt to 
 crush it by the force of Sultan and Pasha. A 
 horrible, savage, and most abominable massacre re- 
 sulted. I am not about to defend or to palliate any 
 massacre ; and this one was cruel and brutal enough. 
 But let us remember that the Italian nation, with its 
 political and intellectual leaders, with Garibaldi at 
 their head, have just been celebrating, six hundred 
 years after the event, the great massacre of the French 
 in Sicily, known as the Sicilian Vespers. That is 
 now held in Italy to be a glorious event. Well, I do 
 not think so. But I say that the massacre in Alex- 
 andria on the nth inst. was not unlike the massacre 
 of the Sicilian Vespers, except only that it was not 
 one-hundredth part so bloody, and that it had the 
 additional excuse of religious fanaticism. I deplore
 
 EGYPT 205 
 
 the innocent blood that was then shed ; but I say 
 that the British Government did everything that men 
 could do to make a massacre probable ; they were 
 warned that a massacre was more than probable ; and 
 they urged the French Government to go on, as the 
 political advantages to be gained outweighed the risk 
 of massacre. 
 
 And now what are we going to do ? 30,000 or 
 40,000 Europeans have left the country. Perhaps 
 nearly as many remain. The Control has broken 
 down, the dry-nursing system has come to an end. 
 There let it stay. Let the Europeans who have left 
 Egypt stay away. If they have made themselves 
 intolerable to the Egyptian people, let them take the 
 consequences. If they have sunk their money in 
 Egypt, that is their affair ; if they have gambled in 
 Egyptian bonds, I cannot say I particularly pity them. 
 But the system of taking into our hands the entire 
 administration of Egypt, receiving its taxes, paying 
 ourselves for the trouble of getting our money, nursing 
 the native government, using the native ruler as our 
 mere puppet, treating Egypt in fact as a conquered 
 country, has broken down. I am glad it has. It was 
 a curse to Egypt, to the world, and to England. 1 Our 
 Indian officials, civil and military, and all whom they 
 influence, and all our military, and half our civil 
 service, have come to think that anything which is 
 convenient for India is right, and just, and necessary. 
 Egypt lies on the road to India, and so Egypt must 
 be made dependent, nursed if need be, but also 
 annexed and conquered if need be. 
 
 I am coming to look on our Indian empire as one 
 of the greatest burdens that ever befell a nation, if 
 
 1 The occupation and administration of Egypt has been renewed, 
 under better conditions, but the inherent evils of the system are as evil 
 as ever as dangerous as ever (1908).
 
 206 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 India is the eternal excuse for every injustice, every 
 aggression, and any crime. These Indian habits and 
 ideas have corrupted our soldiers, our officials, our 
 Ministries, our Parliament. Men who rule 240 
 millions think another 10 millions of slaves a mere 
 trifle. They get to look on all Orientals equally as 
 "niggers." When you read the despatches of Sir 
 A. Colvin, you see that he treats the Khedive as a 
 dependent Rajah, and Egypt as if it were part and 
 parcel of the Indian empire. Talk to these Indian 
 soldiers and you hear them say that of course Egypt 
 lies so much in the way, that one day we must take it 
 ourselves. Others talk about a Sepoy army from 
 Bombay and a little of the rough-and-ready justice 
 of Kabul. Are they quite sure that a native army of 
 Indians can be trusted to fight their co-religionists in 
 Egypt ? that Arabi may not raise the flag of the 
 Prophet in a way that may vibrate through Asia, and 
 rouse all the dormant enthusiasm of the servants of 
 Islam ? Are they quite sure that Europe will stand 
 by and see Sepoys in possession of the Nile and of 
 Alexandria, and will suffer English generals to hang 
 the native officers and leaders as easily as we hung the 
 Afghan officers and leaders at Kabul ? 
 
 And all this wild and criminal bluster is supposed 
 to be justified by the one word the Canal. Well, 
 the Canal is not a British river ; it is an ocean high- 
 way open to the world. The covetous rivalry of 
 European Powers to possess Egypt existed long before 
 the Canal was thought of, and will continue, even if 
 the Canal were to disappear. When Napoleon and 
 Pitt fought for Egypt, there was no Canal, and Egypt 
 was not even the road to India ! When Palmerston 
 and Thiers fought the old Egyptian question in 
 Mehemet Ali's time, there was no Canal. The French, 
 at times, have been just as eager to dominate Egypt as
 
 EGYPT 207 
 
 we are, and so have the Italians and the Russians, and 
 yet neither Power has any especial concern with the 
 Canal. The Canal is a miserable excuse, just as the 
 Bosphorus was, or Cyprus was and is ! The Egyptian 
 people live miles away from the Canal ; the possession 
 of Egypt is in no way necessary to the free use of the 
 Canal ; and a series of bloody struggles for the posses- 
 sion of Egypt is the worst and most costly and most 
 criminal way to secure the use of the Canal. How 
 miserable a pretext it is that the sole object is to secure 
 the Canal is shown by this : When Mr. Gladstone 
 formally defined in Parliament the objects of the Con- 
 ference, he expressly said that the Canal was not one 
 of them. When he stated the ends of British policy, 
 he said nothing about the Canal. He mentioned 
 three objects, not one of which is a national concern of 
 ours, and what was the fourth object as he stated then ? 
 He then stated the true one the money interest of 
 certain bondholders and shareholders. 
 
 It is a miserable fiction to tell us that all this 
 elaborate system of the three Controls, the inter- 
 national tribunals, and the various rights under the 
 firmans, is aimed at securing the passage of English 
 ships through the Canal. It is a system for plunder- 
 ing the Egyptians, for riveting on them the chains of 
 that debt-slavery which is regarded as their permanent 
 and natural condition. The Greek philosopher thought 
 that all non-Greeks were naturally slaves ; and so the 
 British financier looks on the Egyptians as naturally 
 debt-slaves. The firmans and decrees and treaties 
 which have been wrung from the weakness and the 
 cupidity of Sultan and Khedive are an elaborate system 
 for handing over the Egyptians to their European 
 creditors. It is an enormity to saddle a wretched 
 body of peasants, as poor as any Asiatics, with a 
 nominal debt of 100 millions, nearly as much as the
 
 2o8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 whole debt of India with its 240 millions, more than 
 the debt of Prussia and many of the rich and powerful 
 nations of Europe. It is an enormity to tax the 
 fellah of the Nile nearly i per head, the taxation of 
 the Russian people, five times that of the Indian. And 
 a still greater enormity to carry off to Europe half of 
 the entire revenue of the country. 
 
 This is organised plunder and extortion. No 
 treaties, or firmans, or decrees can make it just or 
 reasonable in the eyes of morality. Is it conceivable 
 that this country can be about to proceed to the 
 desperate crime of attempting by war to restore this 
 apparatus of extortion ? What is it to the people and 
 Government of this country that a dozen banking firms 
 of Paris and London, and their clients, should lose 
 some of that money which they recklessly placed at 
 usury ? Why is it that the blood and money of our 
 people are to be poured out in order to maintain the 
 speculators who have farmed the taxes of the fellah, and 
 the officials who have forced themselves on the ruler of 
 Egypt ? I am for from demanding repudiation of the 
 debt, gigantic as it is, and unscrupulous as it is for us 
 to saddle the Egyptian people with the follies of a few 
 vicious Turks. I do not ask for the dismissal of the 
 Europeans whom the Egyptians desire to retain in 
 their service. But I ask that this nation shall leave 
 the usurers and the Egyptian people to settle it. I 
 protest against the iniquity of engaging in war, jointly 
 with European Powers, or making the Turk our 
 agent, or singly ourselves. I protest against the firing 
 one shot or the spending one penny to restore a 
 system which has broken down, to replace Europeans 
 who have run away, and to set on its legs again the 
 legalised plunder of Egypt. 
 
 It is no business of ours to assist speculators 
 in getting their 7 per cent by using the fiction of
 
 EGYPT 209 
 
 European law to an Oriental and Mahometan people. 
 We have, as a nation, no concern in securing the 
 salaries of a crowd of adventurous Europeans who 
 have forced themselves into good berths at Alexandria 
 and Cairo. The air is full of grand reasons of State. 
 We hear of international treaties, the rivalry of nations, 
 and the paramount British interest of India. Thrust 
 these solemn impostures aside even when they are 
 repeated with a grand air by that new convert to 
 Jingoism, the Pall Mall Gazette. Whatever there 
 may be in these things, there is one thing para- 
 mount over all that it is an infamy to use the armed 
 might of England to do the dirty work of rings of 
 financial speculators and adventurous place-hunters. 
 It would be an indelible shame on us to crush back 
 into the slavery of the other subjects of the Sultan a 
 people who are just stirring towards national life and 
 freedom. I cannot believe that a statesman so keen as 
 Lord Granville will ever commit the folly of reviving 
 that system of nursing Egypt of which he has himself 
 pointed out all the evils. And I will not think that a 
 Government of which Mr. Gladstone is the chief can 
 be about to enter on a European war (for it may mean 
 that) to crush out in blood and tyranny a weak but 
 inoffensive people for the sake of an organised and cruel 
 system of unscrupulous money-lending. 
 
 Tell them that their own eloquent protests against 
 Turkish misrule, Russian and Austrian misrule, will 
 fall back on them like coals of fire on their head. It 
 is not the misrule of the Turks, it is Englishmen 
 fighting to rivet on a weak people the chains of a debt- 
 slavery. For my part, I will not believe it. It would 
 be too dark a close for the political life of Mr. Glad- 
 stone. For my part, I am ready to leave Egypt for 
 the Egyptians. It would be monstrous that this 
 country should be dragged into the attempted conquest
 
 210 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of a difficult country as large as France or Germany 
 on the stale and tawdry pretext that it is required for 
 our prestige. Let us all appeal from the Ministers in 
 office in 1882 to those same Ministers in opposition in 
 1880. Let us make it impossible ever to say that we 
 were thrust into a wanton and unjust shedding of 
 blood solely because our Foreign Office had received 
 a merited rebuff and our navy had been paraded in a 
 foolish and futile menace. 
 
 AN APPEAL TO MR. GLADSTONE 
 (July i, 1882) 
 
 The foregoing Address had hardly been published and widely 
 circulated when I issued an open letter to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, which reached him just before the bombardment of 
 Alexandria, the prelude to the iniquitous conquest of 
 Egypt. 
 
 I reissue it after twenty-six years have passed, because 
 all that has taken place since justifies, in my opinion, the 
 fears I then expressed, and proves the soundness of the 
 principles I then maintained. 
 
 In spite of the immense improvement in the material 
 condition of Egypt and the admirable results obtained by 
 the eminent statesmen and the beneficent institutions that 
 our rule has established on the whole valley of the Nile, 
 the inherent evils of conquest and annexation remain and 
 fester in that land. 
 
 I repeat these protests and I recall these principles of 
 international morality because the same evil courses have 
 been constantly followed by England in Burmah, in 
 Tibet, in China, in South Africa, as well as by Russia, 
 Germany, Italy, and most conspicuously are still being 
 attempted by France in Morocco (1908}.
 
 EGYPT 211 
 
 SIR I venture respectfully to address you in a 
 time of crisis, when the reputation of your whole life 
 is at stake and not merely your reputation as a states- 
 man, but as a man. Every principle that moved you 
 in the most famous effort of your political career, 
 as well as every profession that made you the most 
 popular Minister of this century, now draws you to 
 the side of justice and peace. You are being drawn 
 to the side of oppression and war by interests and 
 motives, the strength of which I make no attempt to 
 deny, and the difficulty of resisting which is extra- 
 ordinarily great. 
 
 Almost every sentence that you uttered in the most 
 memorable campaign of modern politics would serve 
 my turn, if criticism were my purpose. But I have 
 too deep a sense of the sincerity of those noble counsels 
 you gave to the nation but two years ago, to charge 
 you lightly with inconsistency ; and I know the com- 
 plications of the crisis too well to look on it as any 
 plain and clear matter. The crisis in Egypt imposes 
 on English statesmen a dilemma as painful as ever 
 harassed a Minister ; and just and wise men of the 
 same way of thinking, we know, come to different 
 conclusions thereon. I shall waste no time in quoting 
 from your speeches, nor in establishing general maxims. 
 The question for us all to-day is whether the peculiar 
 circumstances of Egypt justify a policy which you 
 have taught our people to repudiate elsewhere. Is 
 Egypt a real exception to the principle, that British 
 interests shall be no pretext for international injustice ? 
 
 Here a compromise with principle which is easy to 
 many statesmen is not possible to you. The passion 
 with which you exhorted the nation to throw off the 
 evil system of the past sprang from a truly religious 
 impulse in your own heart, a loathing for wickedness, 
 a spiritual sense of moral rather than material interests.
 
 2i2 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Having lifted up your voice with a power over the 
 people that has never been equalled by any English 
 statesman, and with a religious fervour for right which 
 is hardly ever brought into politics, you cannot in 
 your old age launch the nation on a new career of 
 international crime without covering your life with a 
 stain. It would be not so much a mistake in policy 
 as a recantation of faith. 
 
 All then turns on the issue, whether the special 
 conditions of Egypt make that policy a duty there 
 which is a crime elsewhere ; whether the theories of 
 Lord Beaconsfield were wrong rather in this, that 
 they were applied on the Danube instead of the Nile. 
 As a general principle all is plain ; as a matter of duty 
 your own position is notorious. Men say, and some 
 of those whom you most trust, that this particular case 
 is a peculiar exception ; that the real condition is not 
 the apparent one ; that the true dangers and interests 
 are unknown to the public ; that there are higher 
 interests even than right and good faith ; that there is 
 a subtlety about this Egyptian problem which is lost 
 on the vulgar mind. All this may be true ; but the 
 burden of proof rests on those who assert the excep- 
 tion ; and it will require all your skill, if the nation is 
 not to feel its conscience wounded and its self-respect 
 lowered by a sudden change of front in the hour of 
 temptation. 
 
 There is about all attempts to justify aggression in 
 Egypt that same vagueness and uncertainty of ground, 
 that juggling with reasons, and that appeal to contra- 
 dictory motives which we have heard so often in 
 Turkey or Kabul, the Greek islands and Cyprus. It 
 is even greater. The advocates of aggression do not 
 rely steadily on any one of these. India, the Empire, 
 British interests, commerce, our countrymen in per- 
 sonal danger, English capital sunk in Africa, the large
 
 EGYPT 
 
 financial interests at stake, our international obliga- 
 tions, the harmony of Europe, the cause of good 
 government, the emancipation of the slaves, the 
 amelioration of the lot of the fellah, the jealousies and 
 ambition of France, with a general background of 
 "civilisation," make up the shifting reasons for the 
 one solid end, which is military operations on 
 Egyptian soil. It is the old story j the same grand 
 phrases which so often did duty on the Danube and 
 the Bosphorus, on the Vaal and the Indus. You tore 
 them, sir, into shreds and patches in Mid-Lothian. Can 
 these rags now obscure your sight ? 
 
 Grapple with any one of these reasons, and the 
 advocates of war straightway fall back on another. 
 If we deny that the Indian Empire involves the 
 British occupation of every country that lies in the 
 way, they refer us to the financial interests we have in 
 Egypt. If we deny that it is the business of the 
 State to collect debts, we are told that it is not the 
 interest of the bondholders so much as the danger 
 of French conquest. When we say that France is 
 clearly opposed to war, then we have rehearsed to us 
 the story of British capital invested in business, 
 civilisation, and the poor fellah. These things are, 
 some of them, desirable objects enough, but separated 
 by a gulf from any connection with English conquest ; 
 or they are private matters in which the State has no 
 concern ; or they are mere phrases or bugbears. The 
 people who affect the higher politics shake their heads, 
 and ask if we have heard of that despatch. There is 
 the old hollow assumption of superior information and 
 foresight. " Serious " politicians, as they love to call 
 themselves, ask us volatile persons if we know all that 
 there is behind Tewfik, Arabi, and Dervish, and what 
 the French Consul is aiming at, and what the In- 
 telligence Department has just heard. They shuffle
 
 u 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 these objects and motives backwards and forwards, and 
 nimbly avoid a real probing of any one. You, sir, 
 have shown us that the peace and good name of a 
 great people are not to be bemouthed away by diplo- 
 matic brag. When you tore up all this artificial 
 network of injustice, you made it impossible for the 
 nation to have it woven again under its eyes. 
 
 It cannot escape you that these counsels of crime 
 are not brought to us by pure hands. It is not 
 politicians of wisdom and experience who call for the 
 establishment of British power in Egypt. It is 
 money-lenders and shareholders. There are in England 
 and in France groups of very rich men with enormous 
 financial interests in that country. Four millions and 
 a half yearly is paid to them on loans alone. They 
 have further invested an immense sum as much, we 
 are told, as thirty-five millions in works, business, 
 and adventures on Egyptian soil. There are 1353 
 Europeans who have places and salaries under the 
 Khedive. The Bourses of the West have made Cairo 
 and Alexandria hunting-grounds for their speculations. 
 Their class owns or influences half the Press in 
 Europe. It influences, and sometimes makes, half 
 the governments of Europe. Here is the true source 
 of all the persistent political intrigues of which for 
 years Egypt has been the field. The ultimate end of 
 these wealthy persons is a perfectly legitimate one : it 
 is the increase of their own fortunes. But this is not 
 an end which concerns the State. And all the lofty 
 reasons of State which they inspire in the Press, and 
 impose upon diplomatists, are deeply tainted at their 
 core by the fact that the root of them is the desire 
 of rich men to become richer. I suspect imposing 
 political schemes and imperial interests which rest on 
 an obvious financial purpose. 
 
 The oldest and most imposing of the political
 
 EGYPT 215 
 
 reasons for armed intervention in Egypt is the fear 
 that some other Power is likely to occupy it before us. 
 In other words, we are to seize Egypt in order to forestall 
 France. That is one of the shallow traditions of a 
 school of diplomatic quidnuncs. It still has its charms 
 for the editors of thoughtful journals. Such a policy 
 in itself is neither wise nor honourable ; but it is 
 needless now to discuss it. There exists at this 
 moment not the slightest ground to justify the 
 suspicion that France has any such design. Now, 
 indeed, less than ever. The evidence of the Blue- 
 books is all the other way. England for months has 
 been pushing on France to consent to intervention. 
 And the argument, if argument it can be called, drops 
 to the ground by the force of events. On the contrary, 
 the mutual jealousies of France and England in Egypt 
 are a very strong reason for not interfering. Whilst 
 it is certain that France will make no advance there 
 if we do not, it is far from clear that we should not 
 find her ultimately waiting to dispute our conquest. 
 An expedition to Egypt means in the long run war 
 with France. Is that to be the crown of Mr. 
 Gladstone's political life ? l 
 
 Again we hear of international duties, treaties, and 
 settlements in which " Europe " is interested. But 
 events have disposed of this as completely as they have 
 of the supposed designs of France. The settlements 
 have settled nothing ; and " Europe " is at liberty, 
 and is perfectly willing, to make any settlement de 
 novo. These settlements and treaties were never real 
 settlements in any political sense. They were con- 
 cessions wrung by England and France from two 
 Eastern governments, in order to secure for our 
 people the utmost possible advantage in their private 
 
 1 At Fashoda in 1898 we came within measurable distance of it 
 (1908).
 
 216 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and financial adventures ; and in order to place the 
 internal system of Egypt at their entire disposal. 
 The scheme has proved not workable ; it has broken 
 to pieces. Are you, sir, about to restore it at the 
 price of a formidable and guilty war for the sake of 
 the persons interested ? The pretended international 
 and European nature of the settlement was always a 
 figment. It was a mere financial expedient which has 
 brought anarchy into Egypt, ruin on the speculators, 
 and infinite anxiety to the governments of Europe. 
 
 Now we hear of the anarchy in Egypt, and the 
 paramount duty of suppressing it. Can anything be 
 more certain than that the anarchy (such as it is) is 
 the direct work of the allied fleets ? The fleets at 
 Alexandria made the anarchy. Withdraw the fleets 
 and it will cease. The " anarchy," as it is called, that 
 is, the irritation of certain classes in Egypt with the 
 government of the Khedive, has been steadily growing 
 for years. It is the obvious consequence of any 
 attempt to govern under the pressure of foreign 
 dictation, supported by continual menace of foreign 
 intervention. It is easy to produce anarchy, riot, and 
 massacre, in any Eastern state or indeed in many 
 Western states. Send the fleets to the Bosphorus 
 and deliver an ultimatum to the Sultan ; you will see 
 a very lively outburst of fanaticism. Or try the same 
 at Tangiers, or at Athens, or Zanzibar. You can 
 always produce anarchy anywhere by goading a people 
 to frenzy where any spark of courage and independence 
 is left them. The great aggressive empires always 
 begin by producing anarchy in regions which they 
 intend to annex. France did this but the other day 
 in Tunis. Anarchy was the pretext for invasion in 
 the Transvaal and in Afghanistan. You, sir, have 
 shown us that the way to restore order there was to 
 withdraw the menace.
 
 EGYPT 217 
 
 As to the lives and property of our countrymen, it 
 is your duty to protect them in all things right and 
 reasonable. But it is plain why they are in danger ; 
 and plain how to relieve them. They never were in 
 any risk whatever till a long course of foreign dicta- 
 tion culminated in an act of armed menace. Their 
 safety will be secured by withdrawing the fleet, as its 
 presence produced their danger. There is no more 
 reason to suppose that (apart from foreign dictation) 
 the lives and property of Englishmen will be less safe 
 in Egypt than in Turkey or any other part of the 
 East. If our countrymen choose to carry their wealth 
 and their skill to distant lands, they must do so at 
 their own risk. If they behave so as to rouse the 
 hostility of the population, that is their fault and they 
 must answer for it. It is a monstrous assumption 
 that this nation is to be responsible for all their 
 adventures ; and must straightway annex any country 
 where their claims to domineer are thwarted or dis- 
 liked. Our adventurous people thrust themselves and 
 their business into every country in the globe, civilised 
 and uncivilised. The sense that the power of England 
 is behind them makes them reck little of forbearance, 
 good faith, or conciliation. They assume the rights 
 of conquerors, knowing that in the long run they can 
 always force the State into conquest. To yield to 
 their claims on the State is to increase their confidence 
 and stimulate their demands. Such a policy indeed 
 can have but one issue. It would lead us to universal 
 dominion, a result too preposterous to contemplate. 
 
 We hear much sonorous talk about "civilisation," 
 the condition of the fellah, the suppression of the slave- 
 trade, and the " Western institutions " which we have 
 planted in Egypt. Excellent objects no doubt ; but 
 what have these to do with eighty-ton guns, a fleet of 
 ironclads, sepoys, an armed occupation, and virtual
 
 218 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 annexation ? These laudable purposes would be 
 equally good reasons for annexing Syria, or Asia 
 Minor, or indeed any other country in Asia or Africa. 
 If these great blessings are to be poured out from our 
 cannon, let our missionary fleets and armies tour round 
 the world dispensing the gospel of civilisation. To 
 bring them forward as grounds for a war in Egypt is 
 a shallow and shameless pretext, which no one would 
 ever have heard of, had there not been one hundred 
 and fifty millions or so of Western gold trembling for 
 its dividends and interest. 
 
 Turn it which way we will, it comes back always 
 to this that we are to go to war really for the money 
 interests of certain rich men in London and Paris. It 
 is no doubt of great importance to them to get their 
 four and a half millions regularly out of the taxes of 
 Egypt. It is a great convenience to them to be 
 exempt from taxes, to have virtual control of the 
 internal government, to have concessions, business, 
 companies, works, and the rest, to have their own 
 courts, their own law, and their own judges, to hold 
 a crowd of offices in the Egyptian service, to be a 
 dominant caste in a foreign land. All this is very 
 desirable to the persons themselves. But it is no 
 concern of this country to guarantee them these 
 profits, privileges, and places. It would be blood- 
 guilt in this country to enforce these guarantees at 
 the cost of war. The interests of these rich and 
 adventurous persons are not British interests ; but the 
 interests of certain British subjects. And between 
 their interests and war and conquest, domination and 
 annexation how vast is the gulf ! Does it necessarily 
 follow that, because certain Englishmen hold large 
 sums in Unified bonds, and because they have invested 
 much capital in Egyptian works, that Europeans are 
 to be guaranteed as a dominant caste ; and that, if the
 
 EGYPT 219 
 
 Egyptian people make any effort to displace one rivet 
 of the dominion, there is instant appeal to war, ending 
 in virtual conquest ? 
 
 Our people have large interests in the debts of 
 America, of Italy, of Turkey, of Greece, of Spain. 
 Much British capital is embarked in all of these 
 countries. Is that a ground, under any conceivable 
 circumstances, for securing our people a local domina- 
 tion, to be followed by conquest if this foreign 
 dominion be not patiently borne? Most of the 
 conditions present in Egypt exist in a degree in 
 Turkey and even in Spain. There too our people are 
 owed enormous sums j there too is a mass of British 
 capital sunk in industrial and commercial ventures ; 
 there is very often anarchy in Turkey as well as in 
 Spain ; and there would be anarchy again the moment 
 we sent a fleet to produce it. There is a great deal 
 of barbarism there, and a fanatical and idle population. 
 But the man would be a madman who pretended that 
 these conditions in Spain or Turkey led us logically 
 to enforce the claims of these creditors by war, and 
 ultimately to conquer these countries. 
 
 There is, indeed, but one plausible ground after 
 all for armed intervention in Egypt, and that is a 
 ground which you, sir, have torn to pieces. It is 
 the old windbag cry of the Empire in danger. Is it 
 possible that in your lifetime and in your ministry, 
 this phantom is again to rear its head ! Your whole 
 political life is pledged to the principle that " Empire " 
 is no justification of national injustice. You have told 
 us that no doctrine can be more criminal than this : 
 that a nation has a right to oppress, whenever it 
 becomes convenient. What, then, is the syllogism 
 that leads us irresistibly from the safety of the Empire 
 to the conquest of Egypt ? The safety of the Empire 
 seems to demand any achievement that can enter into
 
 220 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the visions of ambitious and restless men. Hot-headed 
 soldiers and hare - brained viceroys swore that the 
 Empire was not safe, till our ensign floated at Kabul, 
 Candahar, and Herat ; as they will tell us to-morrow 
 it must float at Baghdad, or Pekin. Sir Bartle Frere 
 thought the sun of England was set whilst Cetewayo 
 lived and reigned in Zululand. The theories of a 
 military expert about the Empire are indeed as wild as 
 those of a German philologist, and as anti-social as 
 those of a Russian Nihilist. It is the part of a states- 
 man to treat these ravings as we treat the barkings of 
 chained mastiffs. And of all living statesmen, it is 
 especially your part to put them away from the 
 counsels of the State. 
 
 When the windbag pretext of Empire is pricked, 
 the one residuum is the Canal. No one denies that 
 the Canal is of great importance to this country, 
 on political as well as commercial grounds. That 
 importance, as a highway to India, has been much 
 exaggerated. But granting its importance to be real, 
 to what extravagant conclusions is the Canal supposed 
 to lead ! Reasonable military and international pre- 
 cautions against any interruption of the waterway 
 would be approved by public opinion in Europe, as 
 much as they would at home. Is there the least reason 
 to suppose they would not be accepted in Egypt ? It 
 is a long chain of hypotheses indeed which leads from 
 the Canal to the conquest of Egypt. The freedom 
 of a watercourse less than one hundred miles long 
 through an uninhabited desert does duty for the 
 annexation of a country fifty or one hundred miles 
 away, larger than France, with a population of ten 
 millions, and two of the greatest cities of the East. 
 
 The logical sorites is this. The passage through 
 the Canal is of vital interest to England. But the use 
 of it implies that England should dominate throughout
 
 EGYPT 221 
 
 Egyptian territory. Now, this domination implies 
 that Englishmen should be free from the local taxes, 
 the jurisdiction, and the government. But they 
 cannot be really free without they possess the virtual 
 control of the whole internal policy of Egypt. Yet, 
 if this control is interfered with, it is the duty of the 
 British Government to secure it to them by force. 
 Again, if this force is not at once successful, the 
 virtual annexation of the country must follow. But 
 the virtual annexation of the country means an enor- 
 mous burden on our already overgrown Empire ; and 
 it will almost certainly lead to a war with one or more 
 of the Powers of Europe. Hence, to be sure of a free 
 passage through the Canal, war and conquest in Egypt 
 are a logical necessity. Q. E. D. What is this but 
 the old story that the Indian Empire would not be 
 safe, unless Christian women could be freely ravished 
 on the Danube ; and that the occupation of Cyprus 
 would shower steam-ploughs throughout the length 
 and breadth of Asia Minor ? 
 
 We look, sir, to you to distinguish the rational and 
 legitimate interests of the State from the personal 
 interests of private Englishmen, and the fantastic 
 projects of political dreamers. The only interest of 
 the nation in Egypt is this, that the Canal shall not 
 be closed against us, and that no European rival shall 
 found an Empire on the Nile. There is at this 
 moment no reasonable ground to fear either of these 
 evils. But what measures may be necessary, by force 
 of arms or international agreements, to guard against 
 either, will not be refused by any party in this country. 
 The passage of the Canal could never be guaranteed 
 in any absolute sense, even if it were incorporated in 
 the Empire : it would still be liable to treacherous 
 destruction or obstruction, even if it were in the 
 Punjab or in Ireland. What a farce then to tell us
 
 222 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 that its existence is secured by meddling with the 
 promotion of Egyptian officers, by suppressing native 
 newspapers at Alexandria, and denying the right of a 
 National Chamber to add ^300,000 to the Budget ! 
 To pretend that the freedom of the Canal requires 
 the reconstitution of the status quo by armed inter- 
 vention is like saying, as our grandfathers said, that 
 commerce would not be free in the English Channel 
 till we had suppressed the Republic in France. In 
 other words, and you, sir, will not deny the position : 
 the Canal is not worth the evils of conquering Egypt^ 
 even if conquest were the sole means of securing it. 
 M. Lesseps tells us, as common sense told us before, 
 that the real danger to the Canal lies in the dread of 
 an English invasion and conquest. 
 
 The settlement of Egypt on some tolerable basis 
 that may promise stability and order is no doubt a 
 British interest of a very real kind. And the nation 
 will welcome any solution that the counsels of Europe 
 can devise without war and without oppression. 
 But two things are certain : the Control and the 
 status quo have utterly failed, and any settlement to be 
 forced on the Egyptian people by war and invasion is 
 doomed to failure as well. The status quo has done 
 some good ; but it had the incurable vice of being the 
 domination of an alien caste, directed to secure their 
 personal interests, resting on intrigue and menace, but 
 not on acceptance and not on force. The ascendency 
 of a foreign race, even where they have much to offer 
 to the natives, and even where the natives are so far 
 behind them in wealth and knowledge, cannot be 
 permanently secured without conquest ; and it must 
 be maintained by a protracted struggle for supremacy. 
 If that ascendency is to be secured under new forms 
 and after a bloody contest, it will be the occasion of a 
 series of rebellions and wars. We repudiate, as equally
 
 EGYPT 223 
 
 wild and criminal, the burdening this country with a 
 British Algeria on the banks of the Nile. 1 
 
 It was not for an English ministry wantonly to 
 destroy the Control and the so-called settlement of 
 Egypt, so long as it seemed to be working, and apart 
 from a general revolution. But the Control and the 
 settlement altogether being swept away in the crash, 
 it is a duty to review the situation afresh and to seek 
 some new solution. No diplomatic grandiloquence, 
 no international treaties, no firmans or decrees, can 
 obscure the fact that the effect of the settlement was 
 to make the Khedive the manifest tool of his foreign 
 patrons, to secure to foreign Powers the practical 
 administration of the country, to maintain the sixty 
 thousand Europeans in Egypt in the privileges of a 
 dominant caste, to place the offices of the country 
 mainly in their hands, to offer unlimited opportunities 
 for Western enterprise, to revolutionise the life of the 
 country in the interest of Western capitalists, and 
 finally and mainly, to secure the punctual payment for 
 ever to Western creditors of about one-half of the 
 entire revenue of the nation. 
 
 To saddle the fellahs of the Nile for all time with a 
 debt of more than one hundred millions, more than 
 the debt of Prussia, is an international crime which no 
 treaties can gloze over and no imperial interests can 
 excuse. To carry off year by year half the revenue of 
 a poor country to pay to foreigners for their usurious 
 and fraudulent loans, forced on a half-lunatic despot, is 
 a mere financial juggle ; and nothing can make its 
 maintenance worthy of a just nation, though its 
 settlement was effected by right honourables, ambas- 
 sadors, and European treaties. One need not deny 
 that some temporary relief has been given to the 
 
 1 Therein lies the present, continuous, and indestructible "unrest" in 
 Egypt, which wMl one day become an intolerable evil (1908).
 
 224 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 native ; or that the money of Europe has afforded 
 some material improvements. But the reduction of a 
 population of ten millions to a systematic debt-slavery, 
 enforced from time to time by war, is dearly bought 
 by the partial introduction of Western law, railways, 
 and gas-works. And "civilisation," as it is understood 
 by syndicates of bankers and concessionnaires^ is not 
 worth the bloody and fraudulent crushing down of 
 an Eastern people under the insolent dominion of a 
 motley tribe, alien in race, religion, and habit. 
 
 Sir, a great occasion is now yours : to find some 
 tolerable settlement of the Egyptian imbroglio, with- 
 out war and without international oppression. The 
 talk we hear about Imperial interests and British 
 rights is a flimsy varnish, as we see, to cover the lust 
 of conquest and the thirst for gold. It is idle to 
 discuss whether Arabi Pasha represents a national or a 
 military movement. It is certain that the domination 
 of Egypt cannot be secured to England without a 
 desultory war with the natives first, and a possible war 
 with Europe afterwards. The permanent exploitation 
 of Egypt by Western speculators and adventurers is an 
 object which it is worthy of your career formally to 
 repudiate as a national concern. It will avail your 
 good name hereafter but little, that you raised your 
 voice against the persecution of the Christians in 
 Turkey, if one of the last acts of your official life shall 
 have been to rivet on one province of that Empire a 
 debt-slavery to their Christian masters. There is one 
 consideration I omit j for it would be an insult to you 
 and your colleagues. I will not conceive it possible 
 that you can be about to commit this people entrusted 
 to your care to the crime and risk of a new conquest, 
 simply because the official policy of the past has led to 
 a disaster which you and they from the first foresaw. 
 
 July i, 1882.
 
 IX 
 THE BOER WAR 
 
 (December 1899) 
 
 The Boer War raised so many of the questions treated in 
 previous sections, and illustrated so clearly the evils of 
 vicious policy abroad, that it is impossible altogether to 
 omit notice of it. Nor can it be charged that my 
 friends or myself failed to assert the same principles for 
 which we had contended for a whole generation. We 
 formed associations, held meetings, published addresses and 
 pamphlets, and for four years sought to bring our fellow - 
 citizens to reasonable views. I now issue a few extracts 
 from various speeches and writings of my own during 
 that dismal period. 
 
 It is a satisfaction to know that the chaos and desolation 
 caused in South Africa by that cruel folly are being 
 slowly cured, and that an era of peace and progress may 
 be looked for on lines so different from those anticipated by 
 the misguided authors of the War. As I write, the 
 three chief states in South Africa are being directed by 
 men who in arms or in council were the most eminent 
 leaders of the Boer defence. And their wise and generous 
 efforts promise a settlement harmonious and prosper- 
 ous now that our country has wasted 250,000,000 
 and 20,000 lives in the vain attempt to conquer and 
 enthral a free people (100$). 
 
 THE foundation of Rhodesia and the militant phase 
 225 Q
 
 226 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the Chartered Company caused deep alarm in the 
 Transvaal and its neighbour. The two Boer Re- 
 publics which had trekked forth, fought, and suffered 
 in order to be free of British dominion, now found 
 themselves engulfed by the Empire North, South, 
 East, and West finally shut out from the Northern 
 wilderness, and girt on North and West by British 
 powers, ; 11 controlled by the great "Empire-builder," 
 who openly aimed at bringing South Africa, from 
 the Zambesi to the Cape, under the Union Jack. If 
 from that hour the Boers did not strain every nerve to 
 prepare to defend their freedom, they would have 
 deserved to lose it without a blow. 
 
 But the Transvaal soon found its independence 
 menaced by a new force. In 1886, it was discovered 
 that most valuable gold-fields existed in the Transvaal, 
 and miners and gold agencies poured in. Wealth, far 
 more vast than that of the diamond fields, as spread 
 over a larger area, a far larger outland population, 
 greater fortunes and bigger companies arose. In 
 eleven years Johannesburg became, not only the 
 wealthiest, the most modern, but the largest town in 
 South Africa. The annual output of gold rose to 
 about twelve millions. The expenditure of the State 
 rose from ^114,000 to between four and five millions. 
 The Outlander male population began to exceed 
 that of burghers. The old President believed that 
 the Outlanders were about to swamp the Boers. As 
 they pressed for political power the Transvaal 
 narrowed its terms, until at last an immense body 
 of aliens a majority, far the wealthiest and most 
 cultivated found itself in the grasp of a jealous, 
 obstinate, unfriendly, unyielding government, which 
 regarded them as in a state of permanent conspiracy 
 to displace it. And this, no dcubt, was quite true. 
 
 This is not the place or time to rehearse the trite
 
 THE BOER WAR 227 
 
 story of Outlander grievances and Boer misrule. I 
 have come here to state historic facts, not to plead the 
 Boer case or to excuse or justify Boer policy. I am 
 quite willing to believe that much of it was unjust as 
 well as unwise. I do not doubt that the railway and 
 mining and dynamite monopolies were oppressive, 
 that their Protective tariff almost outdid that of 
 President McKinley j that the education of English 
 children was neglected, as indeed it is in France ; 
 that the municipal government of the Rand was as 
 bad as it is in Spain j that the Chamber was open to 
 bribes, as it is said to be in the United States. All 
 this and more may be true, but, as Mr. Bryce justly 
 insists, it gave no legitimate ground for war. 
 
 And on the top of this race antipathy, of these 
 bitter memories, of these incessant menaces, of these 
 well-grounded fears, came the Raid ; organised by the 
 Prime Minister of a great British colony, carried out 
 by the armed forces raised under Royal Charter, and 
 led by men of rank in the Queen's service. Of this 
 Raid, wherein, as Mr. Lecky says, a Privy Councillor 
 and servant of the Crown organised a conspiracy to 
 overthrow the Government of a friendly State, 
 deceiving the High Commissioner, his own colleagues 
 in the Ministry, and the great companies for which 
 he was the principal trustee, I will not here speak. 
 The Colonial Secretary told Parliament that all this 
 was "a mistake," but that the author of it "had done 
 nothing dishonourable." Mr. Rhodes admitted that 
 he had upset the apple-cart ; and gracefully retired 
 from the scene uncondemned. 
 
 He ceased to be Prime Minister, but he continued 
 to build Empire, to menace the independence of the 
 Boers, to labour for colouring South Africa pink in 
 spite of Boer, in spite of a Parliamentary majority in 
 Cape Colony, at the cost of our good name and
 
 228 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 welfare in the United Kingdom. Mr. Cecil Rhodes 
 is, after all, only one, no doubt the greatest, but the 
 type of groups of keen, ambitious, reckless men who 
 have forced us into war a war wherein the whole 
 Empire is now being strained to its roots in order to 
 crush some 50,000 herdsmen, whose ancestors for a 
 whole century have struggled to be free from British 
 grip. If I felt free to speak my whole mind, I should 
 speak of it as a new Imperial Raid, carried out in the 
 name of our Queen, under the instigation of a 
 combination of trading syndicates. It would take us 
 too far to consider the justice or morality of these 
 raids, whether Chartered or Imperial, and we might 
 be told that all this was " unctuous rectitude." 
 Rectitude of any kind, it seems, has gone out of 
 fashion. But I am old-fashioned enough to prefer it 
 to unctuous turpitude. And I prefer the name of a 
 just, peaceful, and righteous England to that of an 
 Empire scrambling for half a continent at the bidding 
 and in the interest of cosmopolitan gamblers and 
 speculative companies, in search of bigger dividends 
 and higher premiums.
 
 X 
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 
 
 (1901) 
 
 The lawless proceedings of civil and military authorities in 
 South Africa, in colonies in which neither war nor 
 rebellion existed, called out strong protests from lawyers 
 and politicians. But the incredible defiance of law and 
 precedent by the Government at home and the House of 
 Lords raised the indignation to a point which I sought to 
 express in the following statement. 
 
 The course then followed by Ministers and the Court 
 of Appeal shook to its foundations the system of Consti- 
 tutional law as understood in England for two centuries 
 and a half. I am prepared to substantiate every proposi- 
 tion of law here laid down, and I challenge any competent 
 lawyer to displace them, writing with his own name, citing 
 precedents of authority (1908}. 
 
 " THE State of Siege," as understood in some foreign 
 countries, and as it is embodied in the constitution of 
 France, is a thing unknown to the British constitu- 
 tion and abhorrent to the principles and traditions of 
 English law. If the Empire has come to that pass 
 that its welfare demands our submitting to such an 
 anomaly, a change so tremendous should be expressly 
 adopted by the nation and sanctioned by Parliament. 
 To foist it upon us out of a few vague legal dicta, 
 and the loose assertions of Ministers and journalists, 
 229
 
 230 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 would be treason to the noble history of English justice 
 and English faith in law and freedom. 
 
 The question at stake to-day whether or not the 
 Executive of this country can at will impose " the 
 State of Siege" without control of civil courts, and 
 without being responsible to law ? is a far bigger 
 and more critical matter than any incidental breach of 
 a particular law. It is not even the abrogation of a 
 constitutional privilege, however important. It is 
 the collapse of the whole edifice of constitutional law 
 as understood since the Revolution which swept away 
 the Stuarts. If, at any moment, the Executive, 
 without the assent or knowledge of Parliament, can 
 declare itself despotic, and can suspend and defy the 
 entire body of civil law, and never be liable to give 
 any account in a civil court of justice then we have 
 gone back two or three centuries to the times of 
 Stuart and Tudor absolutism, and even worse ; for 
 the whole fabric of the Constitution, built up by a 
 long succession of Parliamentary and judicial acts, is 
 shaken down to its roots. 
 
 The levity and the apathy with which this formid- 
 able change in the position of every citizen has been 
 ignored can only be explained by general ignorance of 
 law and the passions roused by the war. There is 
 too much readiness to give any licence to those who 
 are fighting the Boers, and to approve any weapon 
 that can be used against them and their Afrikander 
 kindred. But this is suicidal folly. In flinging over- 
 board in a time of pressure the central principles of 
 British law, we are sacrificing the best achievements 
 of our own ancestors and preparing a novel bondage 
 for our own descendants. 
 
 Our civil rights are matters of general principle, 
 which may be insidiously undermined by casual 
 precedents. English law is of that kind that, if you
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 231 
 
 play fast and loose with it, it vanishes. Defy the 
 principles of liberty under the law, and there will soon 
 be no principles remaining at all. There is but one 
 constitutional law for all subjects of the Crown, where 
 not specially modified by local charter or Act of 
 Parliament. Every citizen within the Empire, of 
 whatever race, is imperilled by the breach of con- 
 stitutional right in any part of it. What is done in 
 a colony to-day may be done in Ireland to-morrow, 
 and in England hereafter. If the government of the 
 Cape may "declare the State of Siege," assume the 
 powers of Tsar and Sultan, and defy any court of law 
 at home or abroad to question it, it may be the turn 
 of Canada or Australia next presently of Ireland 
 and a future Joseph Chamberlain may have another 
 Morley or Harcourt condemned and executed at 
 Aldershot by a captain of horse and two lieutenants 
 of yeomanry. 
 
 " Martial Law," unless it means " military law,"- 
 a formal code of rules dealing only with the army and 
 navy, and never applicable to civilians at all or unless 
 it means " warlike operations " and " military violence," 
 is a mere nickname or slang. The idea that the 
 " proclamation of Martial Law " is equivalent to the 
 " declaration of the State of Siege " under the code of 
 the French Republic, that it gives any legal authority 
 to the civil and military servants of the Crown to 
 exercise arbitrary acts of punishment and restraint of 
 civilians, such as they do not possess under the law 
 all this is a vulgar error. Martial Law gives no fresh 
 legal right. It is merely notice that the armed forces 
 of the Crown are about to take those measures as to 
 persons and property within defined limits which are 
 directly necessary to repel invasion and to suppress open 
 rebellion. To pretend that this mere " proclamation " 
 confers a legal immunity on the Crown and its agents
 
 232 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 to suspend law, to abrogate civil rights, to assume 
 despotic authority in general administration of the 
 country is a wild sophism. To admit such a right 
 would land us in such a state of society as when the 
 State was seized by some Italian Podestd or some old 
 Greek " tyrant." 
 
 The rights and duties of the servants of the Crown, 
 when order is so far disturbed by invasion, riot, or 
 civil war, that soldiers have to act in a military way, 
 are perfectly clear and reasonable. It is their duty to 
 meet force by force, to kill, seize, arrest, and hold all 
 who oppose them, and all who interfere with their 
 own operations of war. Their acts of violence are 
 justifiable whilst they concern direct operations of 
 war, military offences, open resistance or interference 
 with any act of war. Such acts to be justifiable must 
 be both temporary and local ; limited in time to a 
 period when invasion, rebellion, or disorder openly 
 exist, and limited in space to the places where such 
 disorder and war actually are found. When invasion 
 and rebellion are crushed, and in places where they do 
 not exist, the pretended " Martial Law " gives no 
 servant of the Crown, civil or military, any legal 
 right to do anything he could not do under the 
 ordinary law, no right to administer any district 
 arbitrarily, no right to inflict any punishment on a 
 civilian. Every man, from Commander -in- Chief 
 down to a private, from Viceroy down to a policeman, 
 remains liable to be tried by a jury for any act done 
 outside law during war or rebellion^ and he is criminally 
 liable to punishment for any illegal act committed 
 when war or rebellion have ceased to exist, and in 
 places where they have been suppressed. This being 
 so, many scores of judicial murders have been com- 
 mitted by soldiers in South Africa, and hundreds of 
 sentences passed on civilians are not only invalid in
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 233 
 
 law, but expose those pretending to exercise them to 
 criminal process. 
 
 This is the certain law of England, laid down for 
 centuries by great lawyers, and established by a series 
 of statutes and judgments. It has of late years been 
 repeated by such authorities as Chief Justice Cockburn, 
 Lord Blackburn, Mr. Justice Stephen, Professor Dicey, 
 and almost every jurist who has treated constitutional 
 law. Professor Dicey was merely repeating accepted 
 maxims when he said in his Law of the Constitution^ 
 3rd edition, 1889, p. 265 : 
 
 " Martial Law " in the proper sense of the term, in which it 
 means the suspension of ordinary law and the temporary govern- 
 ment of a country or parts of it by military tribunals, is unknown 
 to the law of England. We have nothing equivalent to what in 
 France is called the " Declaration of the State of Siege," under 
 which the authority ordinarily vested in the Civil power for the 
 maintenance of order and power passes entirely to the army. 
 
 "It is also clear that a soldier, as such, has no exemption 
 from liability to the law for his conduct in restoring order." 
 
 " This kind of martial law [state of siege as understood in 
 France] is in England utterly unknown to the Constitution. 
 Soldiers may suppress a riot as they may resist an invasion, they 
 may fight rebels just as they may fight foreign enemies, but they 
 have no right under the law to inflict punishment for riot or 
 rebellion . . . any execution (independently of military law) 
 inflicted by a Court Martial is illegal, and technically murder." 
 
 To the same effect writes Mr. Justice Stephen in 
 his History of the Criminal Law, vol. i. pp. 207-216. 
 He, like every lawyer, agrees that the officers of the 
 Crown are justified in any exertion of physical force 
 to suppress insurrection and restore order ; but they 
 remain civilly or criminally liable for any excess, and 
 are not justified in inflicting punishment after resist- 
 ance is suppressed, and after the ordinary courts of 
 justice can be reopened.
 
 234 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 This view was affirmed by the Lord Chief Justice 
 Cockburn in his charge to the Grand Jury in Reg. v. 
 Nelson and Brand (1867). He shows that the common 
 law is the inheritance of all subjects of the realm ; 
 that in settled colonies with responsible government, 
 the constitutional rights and statutes of Englishmen 
 obtain. He quotes Lord Chief Justice Hale that 
 civilians could never be tried by martial law. He 
 quotes Coke "that a rebel may be slain in the re- 
 bellion ; but, if he be taken, he cannot be put to 
 death by the martial law." And he quotes Lord 
 Chief Justice Rolle, who said : " If a subject be 
 taken in rebellion, and be not slain at the time of his 
 rebellion, he is to be tried by the common law." 
 Lord Loughborough, afterwards Lord Chancellor, 
 said (Grant v. Gould^ 1 792) : 
 
 Martial law, such as it is described by Hale, and such as it 
 is marked by Mr. Justice Blackstone, does not exist in England 
 at all. Where martial law is established and prevails in any 
 country, it is of a totally different nature from that which is in- 
 accurately called martial law, merely because the decision is by 
 court martial, but which bears no affinity to that which was 
 formerly attempted to be exercised in this Kingdom ; which 
 was contrary to the Constitution, and which has been for a 
 century totally exploded. 
 
 It was thought that Lord Blackburn did not entirely 
 adopt the language of Chief Justice Cockburn. What 
 difference of opinion there was turned on minor points. 
 On the main question, he said (Reg. v. Eyre^ 1868) : 
 
 Even if an officer's illegal act was the salvation of the 
 country, that, though it might be a good ground for the legisla- 
 ture afterwards passing an Act of Indemnity, would be no bar 
 in law to a criminal prosecution. . . . The mere fact of good 
 intention, or even the benefit that may have been done, would 
 not be a bar to a criminal indictment. 
 
 He held that in a settled colony the settlers carry
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 235 
 
 the law of England with them. He held that the 
 Petition of Right which prohibited resort to Martial 
 Law in time of peace did not sanction it specifically, 
 even in time of war. He held that the Governor who 
 kept up Martial Law for thirty days after the end of 
 an insurrection did wrong. And in arresting and 
 sending a prisoner out of a district where civil law 
 was in force into a district under the rule of soldiers, 
 the governor "committed a grave and lawless act of 
 tyranny and oppression." 
 
 Now, all these things, for ages declared illegal, have 
 been done in South Africa. The rule of the sword 
 has been maintained, not for days, but for years, in 
 districts where no fighting exists, where the civil 
 courts are open. Civilians have been seized, im- 
 prisoned, sentenced by soldiers without warrant. 
 They have been carried off into districts where civil 
 law is not acting. British subjects have been tried, 
 condemned, and executed for treason and rebellion, by 
 troops without any pretence of military codes j and 
 this is murder. Coke said "if a lieutenant execute 
 any man by colour of c martial law ' this is murder, for 
 it is against Magna Charta." In the rebellion in 
 Canada, in 1838, Lord Campbell and Lord Cranworth, 
 then Attorney- and Solicitor - General, advised the 
 Government that when the regular courts were open, 
 there is no power in the Crown to proceed by military 
 courts. A long succession of legal authorities, down 
 from the Civil Wars, have established these prin- 
 ciples : 
 
 1. "Martial law," as meaning the continuous 
 government of any district within British dominions 
 by military persons or tribunals, is unknown to our 
 law. 
 
 2. It is the duty of all in the service of the Crown 
 to repel invasion, crush rebellion and treason by arms,
 
 236 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and to execute all necessary operations of war. Rebels 
 may be killed in fight, and all who are assisting rebels 
 or invaders may be arrested. 
 
 3. It is illegal for soldiers to try or punish civilians 
 for offences triable by civil courts when civil courts 
 are open. 
 
 4. Every official remains liable to trial for every 
 breach of law against the person or property of a 
 civilian subject, even if taken in arms, and a fortiori 
 of one who has taken no part in the war. 
 
 5. Such an official has a good defence, if his act 
 can be proved to be a direct incident of actual war j 
 but of this a civil magistrate and jury are the judges. 
 
 6. Nothing but an Act of the Legislature can 
 withdraw from a civil court the cognisance of offences 
 committed by soldiers against civilian subjects of the 
 Crown. 
 
 These principles have been flagrantly defied in South 
 Africa ever since 1900; though since 1689 there has 
 been no attempt to set up martial law as a system in 
 England, even during the Jacobite rebellions and 
 Scotch invasions ; nor could any lawyer have doubted 
 that to set up martial law, so as to suspend all civil 
 rights without authority of Parliament, was illegal and 
 criminal. Suddenly, by a bolt out of the blue, the 
 Privy Council, under the lead of the Lord Chancellor, 
 himself one of the Ministers charged with illegal 
 action, assumed the power to tear up these settled 
 maxims of the Constitution. He induced the Court 
 to refuse full trial of the petition of a civilian, who, 
 without due proof of any act of assisting rebels, had 
 been seized in a district where order had not been 
 disturbed, where law courts were regularly sitting, and 
 who has been kept in a military prison untried for 
 seven months. 
 
 The obiter dicta of the Lord Chancellor at the hear-
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 237 
 
 ing were a surprise to the Bar, recalling a Chancellor 
 in comic opera not the "keeper of the King's con- 
 science." He cited the trial by Military Court of a 
 naval officer, as if that applied to the case of a civilian. 
 He " protested " against a dictum of Lord Coke. He 
 professed to think little of Chief Justice Cockburn, 
 and set small store by the case of Wolfe Tone, in 
 Ireland in 1798, on which all the judges and all the 
 text-books have uniformly insisted as a decisive and 
 leading case. He tried to distinguish the case of 
 " foreign invasion " from that of " rebellion " and 
 " civil war." There is no authority whatever for this 
 distinction so far as " the State of Siege " or " martial 
 law " is concerned. On the contrary, the case of 
 Wolfe Tone was itself a striking instance of war and 
 foreign invasion and rebellion together. War was 
 indeed "raging" in Ireland in 1798-9. Finally, the 
 bald and weak judgment, as after six weeks' incubation 
 it was delivered in writing, takes no note of the mass 
 of decisions and authorities which it defies, but pro- 
 fesses to rest this vast revolution in the civil status of 
 all British subjects on an obscure appeal from an 
 Indian court in 1817, a case which turned on the 
 conquest of a foreign realm, during a state of war, 
 and on the claim to money of a subject of an Eastern 
 despot a case which no more concerned the constitu- 
 tional right to liberty of a civilian British citizen in a 
 time of peace than do the proceedings in Rex v. Bishop 
 Gore. 
 
 The case of Elphinstone v. Bedreechund (I. Knapp, 
 316) was the case on which the Lord Chancellor 
 relied for reversing Coke, Hale, Blackstone, Campbell, 
 Cranworth, Cockburn, Blackburn, and a host of text- 
 writers and commentators. The case does not seem 
 to have been even mentioned in argument, and, indeed, 
 "it has nothing to do with the case," as the Lord
 
 238 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 High Executioner puts it in the Mikado. In nine 
 bare lines the judgment in that Indian case decides 
 that what soldiers take as prizes of war from a foreign 
 enemy, during war in an enemy's country, cannot be 
 recovered by an agent of the foreign despot in a civil 
 action during the continuance of the war. What has 
 this to do with the right of a civilian British subject, 
 in a district where peace reigns and civil courts are at 
 work, to be free from arrest and imprisonment by 
 soldiers without warrant or authority by statute ? 
 
 There seems to be a strange confusion of thought 
 in those who now argue about salus reipubllcae suprema 
 lex "the prerogative of the Crown to assert peace 
 and order " or the necessity for illegal action " whilst 
 war is raging." It is, no doubt, the duty of the 
 Crown and its servants to take all or any measures 
 necessary to preserve the existence of the State. This 
 necessity would justify them if charged with unlawful 
 action. But it does not make their unlawful action 
 legal. Nor does it withdraw that action (whatever it 
 may have been) from the purview of a civil court 
 hereafter. The Government have occasionally in a 
 panic authorised a breach of the Bank Act. But such 
 breach was not a legal act, nor was it withdrawn, 
 before any indemnity statute was passed, from review 
 in a court of law. It was a thing outside law, without 
 sanction of law, advisedly committed at peril, though 
 excusable on adequate justification when challenged in 
 law. The captain of a ship might put in irons or kill 
 any of his officers or crew whom he suspected of 
 plotting mutiny. He might run his ship ashore and 
 blow it up to prevent its falling into an enemy's hands. 
 But it is no part of the articles of war for a captain to 
 kill his own men, or to destroy his own ship. These 
 acts are not legal, nor can necessity make them legal, 
 nor withdraw them from cognisance of a proper
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 239 
 
 tribunal. They remain utterly illegal, but excusable 
 on adequate proof of necessity. The acts of Govern- 
 ment in breach of law may be morally and politically 
 right, and legally excusable. But they always remain 
 lawless, utterly unprovided for in law, and always open 
 to consideration by courts of law. If not, it is always 
 open to a Government to declare itself despotic as 
 Louis Napoleon did, or as a Spanish dictator in 
 America does. 
 
 The gravity of the present occasion consists in this 
 that for the first time in the history of our country 
 since the Great Charter the violent assumption of 
 arbitrary power has been declared by a court of law to 
 be legal or at least not open to question by any court 
 of law those who seize the arbitrary power being 
 declared to be the sole judges of the rights they 
 exercise. If so, it is open to Lord Roberts to make a 
 pronunciamento in front of the Horse Guards and 
 declare this country to be a military empire in " a 
 State of Siege." The Lord Chancellor, if sitting in 
 court, would have to hold : " Lord Roberts declares 
 that ' war is raging ' ; and we lawyers have nothing 
 more to say." Nothing that was done by Strafford or 
 Cromwell, by Laud or Jeffreys, went as far as this. 
 The public takes it quietly, because it is done to 
 Afrikanders at the Cape, and they trust it may help 
 Kitchener to end the war. All this is a delusion. It 
 is done to English subjects, and cuts into the roots of 
 our Constitution. It is a menace to the peace of our 
 own country. 
 
 This question is indeed the most vital and sweeping 
 in the whole range of public law, for it concerns the 
 very existence of law itself, not of any particular right. 
 It is the question whether England is a country of 
 constitutional law, or a country in which the Execu- 
 tive of the hour can outlaw the nation, and place
 
 240 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 itself above law. If this new claim of outlandish 
 autocracy is admitted 
 
 'Twill be recorded for a precedent, 
 And many an error by the same example 
 Will rush into the state. 
 
 There is but one public law, where not specially 
 modified, for all the Britains. All Britons enjoy the 
 same constitutional right which is one and indivisible. 
 And the foundations of this right disappear if, when it 
 is necessary anywhere to appeal to the sword, the only 
 rule is to be inter arma silent leges nay, too, silet 
 jus silent jurisconsulti. No lawyer doubts that in 
 extreme peril and confusion the servants of the Crown 
 are bound to take all measures to save the State and 
 protect their sovereign. But to tell us that soldiers 
 are to be the sole judges of the necessity, of the condi- 
 tions and limits of their powers, are never to be 
 accountable to any civil tribunal, are to be what the 
 King is, i.e. "can do no wrong," and are judge, jury, 
 counsel, and witnesses in their own case ; this is 
 enough to make Coke, Hale, Blackstone, and Mans- 
 field turn in their graves. 
 
 During the Gordon riots Lord Chancellor Thurlow 
 said : 
 
 But the King, any more than a private person, could not 
 supersede the law, nor act contrary to it, and, therefore, he was 
 bound to take care that the means he used for putting an end to 
 the rebellion and insurrection were legal and constitutional, and 
 the military employed for that purpose were every one of them 
 amenable to the law, because no word of command from their 
 particular officer, no direction from the War Office, or Order of 
 Council could warrant or sanction their acting illegally ... all 
 persons of all descriptions being equally amenable to the laws of 
 the land, and answerable to them for their conduct on every 
 occasion. 
 
 In his judgment in the leading case of Fabrigas v.
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 241 
 
 Lord Mansfield thus laid down the law as to 
 the liability of a colonial governor : 
 
 To lay down in an English court of justice such monstrous 
 propositions as that a governor acting by virtue of letters patent 
 under the great seal can do as he pleases ; that he is accountable 
 only to God and his own conscience and to maintain here that 
 every governor in every place can act absolutely ; that he may 
 spoil, p lunder, affect their bodies and their liberty, and is account- 
 able to nobody is a doctrine not to be maintained ; for, if he be 
 not accountable in this court, he is accountable nowhere. 
 
 Now, if the " State of Siege " is an exotic of despotism, 
 unknown to English law, the "proclamation of 
 Martial Law" gives no new rights to governor or 
 commander ; but both soldier and civilian remain 
 accountable for their acts in civil courts wherever 
 such are in regular sessions. 
 
 No one denies, be it said again, that the extra-legal 
 acts of violence, taken in an emergency and the storm 
 of war, may prove to be justifiable by circumstances 
 and even striking instances of patriotic duty. But 
 nothing can make them legal in themselves, nor make 
 the authors of such illegal acts the sole judges of the 
 necessity, and for ever unaccountable to justice. The 
 sinister evil of to-day is, not so much that lawless acts 
 of violence are being done, not that so many public 
 speakers and writers approve of their being done. It 
 is that the Government of the King, the Supreme 
 Court of Appeal, and the first law officer of the realm, 
 dare to tell us that law has nothing to do with the 
 matter at all. 
 
 Hitherto, it has been regarded as undoubted law 
 that neither the Crown nor its officials can lawfully 
 u suspend" law, or "dispense with" laws ; that where 
 they violate law under an alleged "necessity," they 
 remain liable to justify a bona fide necessity when 
 summoned before a civil court. Prerogative, official 
 
 R
 
 242 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 immunity, superior order, " reasons of State," " martial 
 law," are in this behalf mere fictions and figures of 
 speech, unknown to English law. The final expul- 
 sion of the Stuart dynasty turned on this very claim 
 "to suspend law," to "dispense with" laws. And 
 the Bill of Rights was the answer of the nation, which 
 in its first two sections expressly declares the pretended 
 power of suspending law or dispensing with laws to be 
 illegal. Now the Bill of Rights and its extending 
 statute the Act of Settlement are the constitutional laws 
 which deposed the Stuarts and are the sole title to the 
 throne of the House of Hanover. So that the consti- 
 tutional party have made our gracious sovereign begin 
 his reign by exercising the despotic power which cost 
 James his crown, and which is forbidden by the very 
 statute to which King Edward VII. owes his own 
 throne. 
 
 It was a strange confusion of mind that caused the 
 Prime Minister to say that if Martial Law was not a 
 lawful system it ought to be so made. Well, there is 
 a very simple mode of making it lawful, which is to 
 carry a Bill through Parliament and turn the British 
 Constitution upside down. He might just as well say 
 " If the Crown has no power to tax without con- 
 sent, it ought to be given that power, and in the 
 meantime we will take it." Or he might say "If 
 conscription is not legal, let us act as if it were, for it 
 ought to be legal." This is just what Straffbrd and 
 Laud, Jeffreys and James II. tried to do. They all 
 said if the constitution does not give power enough 
 to the royal prerogative, the King must take it " for 
 the good of his people." And so, the Prime Minister 
 and his Chancellor in effect say " The King's troops 
 have seized civilians in a district where order has not 
 been disturbed, keep them in a military prison, 
 uncharged and untried ; but to talk about Habeas
 
 THE STATE OF SIEGE 243 
 
 Corpus and civil courts is mere l legal pedantry,' for 
 the proclamation of Martial Law by His Majesty's 
 officers has now 'suspended ' law and 'dispensed with ' 
 the Constitution and the rights of the subject ! " 
 
 It is strange to find the twentieth century thus 
 returning on the seventeenth. It is stranger to see 
 the constitutional party opening a new revolution and 
 providing future weapons for terrorists. Danton and 
 Robespierre insisted that foreign invasion and treason 
 at home were sufficient authority for the party in pos- 
 session of power to kill those who opposed them, with 
 or without legal pedantry. The majority may turn 
 even here. Those who hold the electorate for the 
 time being fancy themselves exempt from the risks 
 which were run by a Stuart king. But the electorate 
 is fickle. Conscription taxing food suppressing 
 trade unions if pressed home, as some imperialists 
 talk of pressing them, might lead to disorder even 
 here ; might end in a civil war and surprising changes 
 in the temper of the people. Why might not a 
 democratic or a socialist majority "suspend law," and 
 laugh at the outcries of the constitutional party, if 
 they ventured to appeal in their own behalf to "legal 
 pedantry " ?
 
 XI 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 
 
 (January I, 1880) 
 
 The following was a portion of the Annual Address given to the 
 Positivist Society at Newton Hall on January i, 1880. 
 This was towards the end of the Ministry of Lord 
 Beaconsfield, and about the epoch of Mr. Gladstone's 
 famous Mid-Lothian campaign. It was published in the 
 Fortnightly Review, February 1880, vol. xxvii. 
 
 Though it is now twenty-eight years old, it is re-issued 
 because in all its essential principles it is now as true as it 
 was then, and because succeeding events have proved how 
 real were the dangers which it deprecated, and how con- 
 tinually the same evils are bred by the Imperialist 
 system. 
 
 It may serve to explain the general view of the 
 political world on which the preceding essays and pro- 
 tests were based, and also to show that this political scheme 
 of international justice and morality is the direct result 
 of the religious faith expounded in preceding volumes 
 (1908). 
 
 EUROPE is still in arms : each nation watching every 
 other with suspicion, jealousy, or menace. The West 
 still groans under that policy of aggrandisement, of 
 imperial ambition and military concentration, which 
 was so fatally renewed by the house of Napoleon ; 
 244
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 245 
 
 which has been developed into a system by the houses 
 of Hohenzollern and Romanoff. The crime of 
 December '51 led on by a sure course to the empire 
 of the Corsicans, to military government, to foreign 
 wars, till it awoke by a fatal reaction the military 
 revival of Germany, and ended in the foundation of a 
 new empire of the sword. That empire was the prize 
 won in three successive wars, each one carefully pre- 
 pared and deliberately contrived, and each followed by 
 violent annexation of territory. The camp at Berlin 
 still arms, still studies new wars, still menaces its 
 neighbours. Worst of all, it fills the air with its 
 spirit, and the sense of foreboding. It fiercely and 
 cynically proclaims that its conquests must naturally 
 lead to a fresh appeal to the sword ; and, for its own 
 part, it hardly cares how soon the appeal be made. 
 Berlin almost taunts Paris with waiting so long for her 
 revenge. To the east of Europe, the three Empires 
 watch each other's movements with alternations of 
 suspicion, menace, and intrigue. Russia seizes the 
 opportunity to recommence her old career of conquest 
 and aggrandisement. Italy too has been infected with 
 the same frenzy ; and vapours about winning more 
 provinces in arms. And as Lord Palmerston gave us 
 in a policy of self-assertion and of menace a weak 
 imitation of Napoleon's empire, so now our Lord 
 Beaconsfield would catch some rays from the imperial 
 crown of Germany, and parades (against the weak and 
 the uncivilised) a policy of Empire and of War. 
 
 For more than a generation Europe has endured 
 the misery of this new imperial ambition. Within 
 that time four new titles of Emperor or Empress have 
 been assumed by European royal families of which 
 titles two still survive. Within that period six great 
 wars in Europe have been waged, every one of them 
 followed by territorial changes and forcible annexation.
 
 246 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 And what is the result ? Russia overwhelmed with 
 a military cancer, a prey to a social confusion such as 
 has not been seen in this century. Germany, with 
 her intelligence and her industry bound in the fetters 
 of military service, governed as if she were a camp, as 
 if the sole object of peace were to prepare for war. 
 France staggering under the most tremendous defeats 
 that this century has witnessed, and still not clear of 
 the long agony of her domestic revolution. Italy 
 weighted with a useless army, uneasy, intriguing, 
 restless. Spain still weak from the drain of a series of 
 wars and internal convulsions. England uncertain, 
 divided in action, continually distracted and dis- 
 honoured by an endless succession of miserable wars in 
 every quarter of the globe. 1 
 
 Such is a picture of Europe after a generation of 
 Imperialism and of aggressive war. Who is the 
 gainer ? Is the poor Russian moujik, torn from his 
 home to die in Central Asia or on the passes of the 
 Balkans, doomed to a government of ever-deepening 
 corruption and tyranny ? Is the workman of Berlin 
 the better, crushed by military oppression and indus- 
 trial recklessness ? Who is the gainer the rulers or 
 the ruled ? Is the French peasant the gainer now 
 that Alsace and Lorraine are gone, and nothing rests 
 of the empire but its debt, its conspirators, and its 
 legacy of confusion ? Or is the wretched Czar the 
 gainer, hunted like a mad dog ? Or the imperial 
 family of Germany, so ominously bound up with the 
 future of the Czar ? Or our own Empress and 
 Queen, in whose name patriots and priests are being 
 hung in Kabul ? Who is the gainer by this career of 
 bloodshed and ambition ? It would be a gloomy 
 
 1 This was spoken in January 1880, at the close of Lord Beaconsfielu's 
 ministry ; and in the twenty-eight years since somewhat similar con- 
 ditions prevailed (January 1908).
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 247 
 
 outlook for those who believe in Humanity, in 
 Progress, in a Future of Peace, were it not that we 
 know this to be the last throes of the monarchical and 
 military system. And we hear the groans of the 
 millions the working, suffering millions who are 
 yearning to replace this cruel system, none of their 
 making, none of their choice, by which they gain 
 nothing, from which they hope nothing. 
 
 For more than a generation our party has called 
 out that there can be no safety for the West until 
 the grand object of our rulers becomes the peaceful 
 reorganisation of Industry. It has insisted on Peace 
 the status quo avoidance of all attempts to resettle 
 and redistribute the world : it has protested against 
 the consolidation of all vast states, and above all against 
 the formation of all military empires. This policy, 
 our central policy for the West, has been much more 
 than the mere cry for Peace. We are no simple Peace 
 Society, without a policy, appealing to mere repug- 
 nance to bloodshed and waste. Our policy has been 
 an active one, a policy of efficient maintenance of 
 peace. We have asked, in words more earnest and 
 consistent, we make bold to say, than any of the new 
 school of Imperialists, that the weight of England 
 should make itself felt in the world ; that our whole 
 power should be committed to maintain a policy ; that 
 England should play a great part and speak with a 
 voice of authority in the councils of Europe. Who is 
 a patriot, filled with the high memories of our glorious 
 name, staunch to make every sacrifice to continue 
 that heroic tradition to our children and our children's 
 children to the twentieth generation, if we (whose 
 very religion is regard for our heroic ancestors) are not 
 amongst such men ? But our policy has been Peace, 
 the active maintenance of the actual settlement, the 
 protection of the weak, the resistance of the strong.
 
 248 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Nor has it been any knight-errant policy that we 
 called for. Our policy was to use the whole might of 
 our great nation to prevent the outbreak of war, to 
 discourage and, if need be, stand in arms against all 
 violent recasting of the map of Europe, to call round 
 us a confederation of the Powers interested in peace, 
 to strengthen the weak Power menaced, and to defeat 
 the ambition of the aggressor. It is an English, not 
 an Asiatic policy. Who can overrate the power of 
 such a nation as England, had it been consistently and 
 firmly pushed, not in defence of British interests and 
 menaced empire, but in the spirit of Elizabeth, of 
 Cromwell, of William III., to defeat the schemes of 
 aggrandisement from one side or from the other, and 
 to place itself at the head of all the Powers in Europe 
 who seriously desired the maintenance of order? Our 
 steady demand has been for a policy which might give 
 rest and calm to Europe, and turn all Governments 
 from their foreign schemes of conquest to the one 
 work that awaits them the social reorganisation of 
 industry, and the establishment of a progressive, less 
 centralised, less bureaucratic system of government. 
 
 We have protested against the encouragement of 
 any scheme of territorial aggression, however plausibly 
 veiled, and whatever the incidental gain which it 
 seemed to promise for the moment. Certainly we 
 have called out, as loudly as any, for the free develop- 
 ment of every distinct nationality, for the free 
 development of the Irish and the Indian races, as well 
 as for the free development of the races of the Balkans 
 or the banks of the Danube. We are against all 
 oppression of conquered by their conquerors ; we look 
 for the dissolution of these empires of conquest ; we 
 desire decentralisation of vast political communities, 
 and not a never-ending system of annexations ; and, 
 above all, we protest against military government in
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 249 
 
 every form. But we protest against it in Calcutta or 
 Dublin, in Algeria or Paris, in Berlin or Moscow, in 
 Rome or Madrid, quite as much as, and even more 
 than, we protest against military government in 
 Constantinople and the Balkans. We do not pick 
 and choose our oppressed nationalities to be favoured 
 with the blessings of self-government. And it may 
 be that, with bleeding hearts and almost overwhelmed 
 with the cry of horrible sufferings and slavery, we may 
 have still to turn aside from fair-seeming projects of 
 redemption, of oppressed Christians in the Balkans, or 
 in Asia Minor, when we find them but the masque of 
 a merciless lust of dominion even more dangerous to 
 the future of mankind j when we know them to be 
 the signal in Europe of a fresh epoch of conquest, war, 
 and imperial ambition ; when we see them to mean 
 the extermination of one population in the very act of 
 protecting another. 
 
 Where might Russia be at this moment, in peace 
 and prosperity ; where would Europe be, if the Czars 
 had followed the course which Auguste Comte urged 
 on their Government more than a generation since : 
 to abstain from all interference with the Western 
 nations outside their own vast dominions, and to 
 devote their power to the social elevation of their half- 
 civilised people ? Again, what a different condition 
 was in store for France, had she set herself to develop 
 her long social revolution by a policy of decentralisa- 
 tion, by freeing the labour of the workmen, by abolish- 
 ing all spiritual interference in the State, by the simple 
 maintenance of Order with full liberty of speech, of 
 association, of conscience. We who have always in- 
 sisted that the Government of France must -be pro- 
 foundly republican and essentially social, but still the 
 government of men and not of assemblies or of mobs, 
 are hardly surprised that in spite of the triumph of
 
 250 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the republic, and of Universal Suffrage, all parties 
 in France feel how much is yet to be desired. We, 
 at any rate, have never been superstitious believers 
 in Democracy. We have never thought it was 
 enough to proclaim the republic and then rush to 
 the ballot-boxes. We believe and trust that the 
 establishment of the republic in France is the signal, 
 as it is the evidence, of a new era about to open for 
 the West. But we never shall believe that the future 
 of France is secure, until she has found a Government 
 and men to direct it. 
 
 To turn to our own country, we note that the 
 three great questions which are pressing on our people 
 to-day are the three burning problems, of which for a 
 generation Positivism has called for an active treat- 
 ment the condition of productive industry, the state 
 of Ireland, the ever-growing Empire. 
 
 To-day in the midst of suffering and dejection, as 
 for so many years past in the hour of its prosperity and 
 pride, Positivism appeals to the territorial lords of this 
 soil to recognise how unwholesome and exceptional 
 a system is that on which the agricultural industry 
 of this country is based ; a system unknown in any 
 people in the world, in any age in history. To-day, 
 as for a generation, Positivism repeats its appeal to the 
 ruling class in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland, 
 that the sole condition on which the social order 
 of these islands can be maintained is by the systematic 
 recasting of the feudal and semi-military settlement of 
 industry into a social and purely industrial settlement. 
 The ornamental squire, the dependent tenant, the 
 hopeless labourer, are things of the past, of the corrup- 
 tion of chivalry, and of the degradation of industry. 
 We have been told, on high authority, that there must 
 always be three classes planted on British land, and 
 maintained out of the products of its fruits. We
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 251 
 
 repeat as firmly as ever that there is room in these 
 islands, there is justification in history (I will not say for 
 two classes only) but for t wo func tion s only that of the 
 energetic and enlightened director of manual labour, and 
 that of the disciplined and educated workman. 
 
 Again, in the hour of gloom, famine, and repression, 
 we repeat what we have claimed for Ireland in good 
 times and in bad times that she be treated as a 
 substantive people, one of the most interesting of the 
 West, entitled to a Government that shall satisfy her 
 legitimate craving for national existence. Would 
 that we could see the end of this ill-omened and 
 historic struggle to crush the Irish people into the 
 mass of the British people. This is not the place or 
 the occasion on which we can usefully consider the 
 precise scheme perhaps one may say the indefinite 
 scheme that is known as Home Rule^ much less the 
 details of any question of land reform. We who are 
 far from believing that a Parliament of any kind is the 
 panacea of a national crisis, are not prepared to think 
 that the difficulties of Ireland will be solved merely by 
 a Parliament in Dublin. 
 
 We are not about to propose we have never 
 proposed the erection of Ireland into a foreign state. 
 But we call out now with all the increased energy 
 that comes from increasing acuteness of the evil, not 
 for more bayonets, more suspension of law, more 
 menaces to the Irish people, but for a Government 
 of the Irish people in Ireland, and from Ireland a 
 Government in the interests of the Irish people, not 
 from the British point of view, or the point of view of 
 Saxonised landlords. The Irish peasant has as good a 
 claim to be protected in the enjoyment of the soil on 
 which he labours, and which his labour creates again, 
 as the corporation or squire who has been imposed 
 upon him as his landlord by a foreign law that he
 
 252 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 could not resist. We complain of the mockery of 
 forcing a system of contract, and an alien law of 
 contract, a system of competition and the higgling 
 of the market, on a people who are hardly in the 
 stage of contract or competition at all, who refuse to 
 accept that law, and who are not really free to 
 contract, nor sufficiently independent to compete. 
 By enforcing prematurely a system of contract and 
 foreign law on the Indian peasantry, they are being 
 pauperised and ruined : by a similar process the Irish 
 peasant is driven by millions into exile. 
 
 But it is chiefly, in this time of shame and afflic- 
 tion, that we would raise our voices against the 
 revival of the worst tradition of the past an empire 
 of conquest and domination. We condemn this war 
 in which the heroic Zulu people have been decimated, 
 as evil in every circumstance, instigated by ambition, 
 without a single solid reason, condemned by the very 
 Ministry which in so weak and craven a way has 
 adopted and prosecuted it. It is a war, too, carried 
 out with every circumstance of cruel injustice and 
 insolent barbarity. We condemn it not simply as 
 being an act of unprovoked war, but as distorting and 
 poisoning our whole system of relations with the 
 African races ; as laying the foundations of a new 
 African empire of crime and oppression ; as kindling 
 the worst passions throughout the fibres of our entire 
 colonial system. We condemn it furthermore on the 
 ground of the exceptional heroism of the people who 
 were its victims, and of the great man who was 
 beginning to form them into a nation. We condemn 
 it most of all because it has blotted out one of those 
 nascent peoples from whom alone the future civilisa- 
 tion of Africa can be hoped. 1 
 
 1 The Zulu war of 1879 has s ' nce been followed by many a similar 
 African war (1908).
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 253 
 
 The war for the subjugation of the Afghan races, 
 a war almost equally wanton and cruel, presents to 
 our eyes the additional element of evil that it must 
 throw back the task of administering our Indian 
 empire. A war which, to every circumstance of 
 injustice, bad faith, and barbarity, adds the crushing 
 load of exaction wrung from 200 millions of our 
 fellow-subjects, a war by which a military dominion 
 is yet further militarised, religious hatreds are kindled 
 anew, and the race feud, the secular antagonism be- 
 tween conquerors and conquered, is traced in deeper 
 and bloodier lines upon the memory : such a war is a 
 real calamity in the history of England. With all 
 our force we have protested against it ; and, again, 
 with all the strength of religious conviction, we call 
 upon the conscience of our countrymen to clear them- 
 selves from this portentous offence. 
 
 We see in this war another example of the moral 
 dangers with which our whole imperial system is 
 beset ; and we have not hesitated to make our voices 
 heard in the special circumstances of bad faith and 
 cruelty with which an unjust war has been doubly 
 stained. Having so recently criticised the particular 
 conduct of the actual operations, we need say no more 
 to-day of the almost unexampled enormity of hanging 
 as rebels and marauders the soldiers and priests who 
 resisted the invasion of an unoffending people. 1 
 
 We who look forward to a human religion can 
 hope but little from the Churches in dealing with this 
 Central Asian crime. The official priests of the old 
 faiths accept without questioning the authorised judg- 
 ment of the political Government. They are engaged, 
 in obedience to the Primate, in calling upon their God 
 of Battles (can it be, their God of Mercy ?) to keep 
 
 1 The Afghan war of 1879-80 has been followed by some similar 
 Indian expeditions, as in Burmah, Tibet, etc. (1908).
 
 254 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the British soldiers the invaders, the burners of 
 villages, the hangmen of priests in his good and holy 
 keeping. The ministers of any theological faith are 
 not prepared to argue these national undertakings with 
 the temporal power. The priests of an Establishment 
 accept the worldly policy of the official Government. 
 It will not be so with a human faith. The religion 
 of Humanity has its kingdom in this world, and it is 
 its special privilege to treat the great questions of the 
 age as matters of practical politics with full knowledge, 
 with a close and independent judgment of every argu- 
 ment in the statesman's craft. We make bold to say 
 that Positivism stands alone amongst religions in treat- 
 ing politics from the point of view of politicians, or 
 rather with the knowledge of politicians ; because it 
 is an essential part of that religion itself to judge the 
 true statesmanship from the false, and to uphold the 
 principles which lie beneath all statesmanship what- 
 ever. 
 
 But in a far deeper sense do these distant crimes 
 concern us, more than they concern the theologies of 
 the day. In the religion of Humanity there are no 
 distinctions of skin, or race, of sect or creed ; all are 
 our brothers and fellow-citizens of the world children 
 of the same great kith and kin. Whether they follow 
 God or the Prophet, Christ or Buddha, Confucius or 
 Moses, they are believers in a faith which we pro- 
 foundly venerate ; they are all sharers in the glorious 
 roll of which we would perpetuate the muster. The 
 religion of Humanity is Catholic in a sense that no 
 (Christian ever was or could be, for it can include the 
 countless millions who reject Christ, who passionately 
 cling to another phase of religious life, alien and hostile 
 to his. In this very month, which we associate with 
 the memory of Moses, the weeks are associated with 
 the names of all the great prophets and teachers who
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 255 
 
 maintain the religious life of the East : with Con- 
 fucius, Buddha, and Mahomet. We embrace them 
 all and honour them all the great patriarchs and 
 Hebrew prophets and kings ; the great founders of 
 the empires of the East, Zoroaster and his Sun 
 Worship, the Theocrats of Tibet, the Theocrats of 
 Japan, the great teachers of China, the great chiefs 
 of the Mussulman world. When these sacred and 
 heroic names are read round the altars of the Christian 
 fanes, then and then only can the religion of Christ 
 pretend to the glorious name of Catholic. 
 
 But we of the human religion which we would 
 fain call Catholic if the word Catholic itself had not 
 been so often polluted we, whilst the priests of the 
 Catholic world in its decay are calling down official 
 blessings on the heads of those who ravage and kill 
 with no just cause, we can commemorate the sufferings 
 and heroic deaths of tens of thousands of noble men 
 who gave up their lives for their homes and their race 
 in a rude sense of duty to their tribe, men of a darker 
 skin than ours, of a lower type of life, in the mere 
 beginnings of civilised existence, horribly savage it 
 may be, but still our human brothers, our own flesh 
 and blood, fired to the last with high and generous 
 souls. Nor will humanity suffer us to forget the 
 honourable men of our own people who died in this 
 same cruel work in the honest performance of their 
 duty, men who did these things of no choice of their 
 own, utterly ignorant for the most part, themselves 
 but helpless victims of perverse rulers. 
 
 No ! it is not that we have outlived the spirit of 
 patriotism and care nothing for the bond of country. 
 It is that we earnestly cling to the idea of country, 
 and honour to the utmost the brave men who so 
 nobly maintained that sacred trust. Those who have 
 wantonly crushed the Zulu nation and broken up the
 
 256 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Afghan kingdom are they who have trampled under 
 foot the duty of patriotism. It is for us to insist how 
 precious to the life of the world are these growing 
 aggregates of people when the lofty conception of 
 nation first comes to supersede the narrower idea of 
 clan or tribe. It is we who defend the sacred name 
 of country ; it is the invader and the conqueror that 
 drag it in the dust. 
 
 Above all, we would make it clear that it is in no 
 spirit of party that we speak. Our horror of these 
 foreign crimes is not bred afresh in us at the prospect 
 of a general election. To those who for a generation 
 have protested against the empire of conquest and 
 domination, it is little comfort whether Whig or 
 Tory be in power, it is little that we hope from a 
 change of party. For a generation we have called 
 out against every extension of our empire, against 
 every fresh act of military or commercial ambition, 
 against the military oppression of India, against the 
 opium wars in China, the wars to break into Japan, 
 against the opium monopoly in India, against the 
 Burmese wars, and the wars in New Zealand, in the 
 Cape, in Abyssinia, in Ashantee, in Zululand, in 
 Afghanistan : and we have called out in vain, whether 
 a Liberal or a Conservative Ministry might chance to 
 be in power. htae caret ora cruore nostro ? What 
 race, which hemisphere, what latitude, has not seen 
 the unsheathed sword of Britain ? These crimes are 
 the work of the military and commercial aristocracy 
 of England. They are not the special work of Lord 
 Beaconsfield or the party he leads. 
 
 For twenty years and more we have sought to make 
 our voices heard when Hindoos were being blown 
 from guns and hunted like wild beasts ; when negroes 
 were being flogged and hung in a ferocious and 
 ignoble panic ; when Chinese Governments were
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 257 
 
 being forced to receive a poison, and Japanese 
 Governments were being bombarded into receiving 
 our goods ; when African and Asian tribes were 
 being butchered on one worthless pretext after 
 another, the real end being always a sordid lust of 
 new markets. And to us who know all this it seems 
 like a mockery indeed to hear the new-blown horror 
 in some patriots of a war of conquest and aggression. 
 
 A party attack upon an unjust war, even a genuine 
 protest against exceptional barbarity, will tell but 
 little in the long run, whilst the governing classes of 
 this nation maintain and defend the system of military 
 empire. An empire gained by the sword, to be main- 
 tained by the sword, to be consolidated in the spirit 
 of the sword, an empire to supply the political and 
 military classes with careers, and the commercial 
 classes with markets, to be a source of profit and 
 glory, to be to England of to-day what the West 
 Indies were to Spain, what the Levant was to Venice 
 an empire which is to be above and outside of all 
 discussion, something that makes everything lawful, 
 and for which everything must be suffered, or 
 committed, or risked whilst this empire is the 
 foundation of the governing system of the entire 
 governing class, protests against particular crimes are 
 idle words. An empire built up step by step, in 
 blood and fraud, in rapacity and race ascendency, 
 without one thought of morality, or anything but 
 selfish advantage, is not likely to be maintained by 
 mere expressions of goodwill, cannot possibly exist 
 without terrible struggles and catastrophes. It is in 
 vain for a political party to invent a nickname for 
 their opponents, and to call heaven to witness that this 
 new and unheard-of depravity is the source of every 
 national offence. Imperialism is the creed of all who 
 find in the military empire the glory and the strength
 
 258 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of England. And they form the bulk of the official 
 and governing classes, under whichever political chief 
 they are sworn to serve. 
 
 To us this empire is something far other, very 
 contrary indeed to the glory and gain of England. 
 It is her grand responsibility and danger. It is an 
 anomaly, a huge excrescence, an abnormal and morbid 
 growth of this fair island and its people. It is the 
 work of that wild orgy of industrial energy that 
 marked the last century, the plunge of an energetic 
 race into a mercantile and colonial saturnalia much 
 as our neighbours in France plunged headlong into a 
 social and political saturnalia. That empire is a vast 
 collection of distant and disparate countries and races, 
 incapable of assimilation with each other or with us, 
 scattered over the planet in every phase of civilisation, 
 with every variation of history ; differing in religion, 
 manners, race, and capabilities. It is unlike every 
 empire that ever existed ; unlike the old Roman 
 empire, unlike the actual Russian empire, unlike even 
 the bad old Spanish and Venetian empires inasmuch 
 as it is ten times as vast and fifty times as complex. 
 Duly and rightly to govern, in the high and true 
 sense of the word (that is, wisely to develop the life 
 and energies of these scattered peoples), would demand 
 the strength, the wealth, the enlightenment, the 
 moral conscience of fifty Englands. Our one England 
 is utterly "incapable of this superhuman task. And it 
 is the failure in the attempt that is the shame and 
 rebuke of England. 
 
 An empire which, like that of Russia, forms in one 
 territory a homogeneous state, alike in religion, race, 
 law, and manners, has a raison d'etre, however vast 
 and unwieldy. But an empire which consists of 
 fragments geographically incapable of union ; where 
 every fact of race, religion, habit, and feeling makes
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 259 
 
 incorporation and fellow-citizenship hopeless even in 
 the most distant future ; this remains stamped as an 
 aggregate of dependencies and not an empire. But an 
 aggregate of dependencies which, is for ever disturbed 
 and menaced, and for ever awaiting or forestalling 
 attack, which contributes nothing to the home 
 government in money, or men, or resources of any 
 kind, is not a strength but an increasing weakness. 
 It must pull down the strongest race that ever trod 
 the earth ; and as it pulls them down, it will hurry 
 them from one crime to another. 
 
 What can be done is this. The government of 
 such an empire by thirty millions of men in a petty 
 island of the West is impossible. But it may be 
 garrisoned ; it may be occupied ; it may be held for 
 a few years longer with a hard mechanical pressure, 
 securing external order but repressing all true national 
 life ; it may furnish markets ; the wealth, and energy, 
 and dauntless heart of our race may keep up the 
 specious fabric for another generation or two, breaking 
 every now and again into further seas of blood, more 
 conquests, more vengeance, ever sliding down the 
 slope of tyranny, cruelty, and panic. But it cannot 
 be for ever. The unwieldy and unorganised mass 
 may break into fragments at any day under internal 
 convulsion or foreign attack. But till that day comes, 
 it may still be held by sheer force of energy, as a 
 source of profit for the moment to special classes of 
 Englishmen, corrupting the true fibre of the nation, 
 and really paralysing it for every duty in Europe and 
 at home. It is impossible to govern this empire, as it 
 ought to be governed, for the sake of its members, or 
 so as to assist in the true progress of our people ; it is 
 possible to defend it for a season, at the cost of the 
 subjects who compose it, and at the sacrifice of all 
 that is truly great in England.
 
 260 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 England is not herself, whilst she is forced thus to 
 keep anxious and suspicious watch across Africa and 
 Asia over her huge and precarious prize. Our states- 
 men, our journalists, ^ our preachers come bound to 
 every question of policy and morality by the silent 
 influence of a half-uttered thought "Come what 
 may, the empire must be saved." For this, they close 
 their ears, and harden their hearts, when black and 
 brown men are being massacred and despoiled j when 
 Cetewayo and Langabalele are shamefully kept in 
 prison, and Theodore and Shere Ali are hunted to 
 death. As a system of slavery prepares the slave- 
 holding caste for any inhumanity that may seem to 
 defend it, so an empire of subjects trains up the 
 imperial race to every injustice and deadens them to 
 any form of selfishness. 
 
 And if it hardens our politicians, it degrades our 
 Churches. The thirst for rule, the greed of the 
 market, and the saving of souls, all work in accord 
 together. The Churches approve and bless whilst 
 the warriors and the merchants are adding new 
 provinces to the empire ; they have delivered the 
 heathen to the secular arm, and they hope one day 
 to convert them to the truth. An absolute creed, 
 salvation through Christ, of necessity tend to an 
 anti-human work ; they forgive the rapacity of the 
 trader ; they inflame, instead of checking, the rage 
 of war. Christianity in practice, as we know it now, 
 for all the Sermon on the Mount, is the religion of 
 aggression, domination, combat. It waits upon the 
 pushing trader and the lawless conqueror j and with 
 obsequious thanksgiving it blesses his enterprise. 
 
 We will not believe that our sound-hearted people 
 can for ever continue in this career of evil. There is 
 a national conscience ; and when it stirs, the most 
 imposing empires totter and break up beneath it.
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 261 
 
 To us this empire is the great load upon the future 
 of our country, almost upon the future of the world. 
 It can be transformed first and shaken off at last by 
 no political party by nothing but a religious move- 
 ment. What slavery and the slave trade once were 
 to our grandfathers here, what a slave industry and a 
 slave society were to the Americans of yesterday, that 
 empire is becoming to Englishmen to-day. A cry of 
 emancipation, as of a religious duty to redress the 
 sufferings of humanity, is rising up here too. Our 
 people have no share in this guilt, as they have none 
 in the gain or the glory. A small band in a religious 
 sense of duty raised their voices against the crime of 
 slavery, and the slave trade and English slavery passed 
 away like a nightmare from our dreams. Again a 
 small band of religious believers and social reformers 
 swore in the sight of men that the slave society should 
 be purged from their nation : and slavery and the 
 slave society are a thing of the past. The strength of 
 the military empire, the fury of its partisans, have 
 nothing to compare with their parallel in the slave 
 system in the Southern States. And where is that 
 slave system now ? 
 
 We are no fanatics, no blind abolitionists : we 
 claim to be politicians, and even conservative poli- 
 ticians. We have no crude project for abandoning 
 the empire to-morrow like a leaky ship, or handing 
 it over to confusion or chance, as a prey to new 
 conquerors. We will consider all these questions, 
 each in its own field, each pro re nata^ and with all 
 the data of political science. We do not pretend that 
 the blind conquests of former ages can be resettled in 
 a day, or that we ought to fling off the tremendous 
 responsibilities with which ages of history have 
 burdened us. But this we do say : the heterogeneous 
 empire must be regarded as a passing responsibility,
 
 262 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and not as a permanent greatness of our country. It 
 must be administered with an honest desire to avoid 
 all fresh strife, and the ground of further oppression. 
 To increase its burdens and its limits should be a 
 public crime. To secure peace in it, for peace is its 
 one justification, should be the first of public duties. 
 In the meantime it must be governed in the sole 
 interest of the countless millions who compose it ; 
 and not only in their interest, but in their spirit, 
 until the time shall arrive when, part by part, it 
 may be developed into normal and national life of 
 its own. 
 
 If this cannot be done, if it cannot be begun at 
 once, would that this huge crime against mankind 
 could be ended by any means. To go on as we do 
 now from one outrage on justice to another, in the 
 vague hope that some day we may begin to do our 
 duty, when all our subjects are perfectly submissive 
 and all our neighbours are perfectly friendly, is indeed 
 mere self-delusion. We can accept neither the selfish 
 plea of national glory, nor the specious plea of a 
 civilising mission. Nothing that England can gain, 
 nothing that the world can gain from this empire, is 
 worth the frightful and increasing price that we pay 
 for it year by year in guilt, and blood, and hatred. 
 We listen with wonder to the alternate cries of 
 indignation which are raised by our two great parties 
 in the State : the one burning to tear to pieces the 
 Mahometan empire in the East, the other breathing 
 war against the aggressive empire of the Czar. 
 Would that they could remember how they and 
 their successive Governments in turn maintain an 
 empire as truly military in its basis as that of 
 Turkey or of Russia ; one which gives its subject 
 races as little free national life as is given in the 
 Ottoman system, which engages in more wars
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 263 
 
 of annexation and conquest than the Muscovite 
 monarchy itself. 
 
 This inheritance of empire, we have said, forms for 
 our England of to-day as great a moral peril as ever 
 tasked a great people ; yet it is but one of the great 
 problems which surround the future of civilisation. 
 A moral peril of some different kind hangs over other 
 nations too ; the lust of dominion, the pride of race, 
 the thirst of fame or gain, fill the air with wars and 
 rumours of wars. Within our social system there 
 rages the struggle of classes, interests, and ambitions ; 
 the passion for wealth, the restlessness of want. The 
 future of industry, the cause of education, social 
 justice, the very life of the poor, all tremble in the 
 balance in our own country, as in other countries : 
 this way or that way will decide the well-being of 
 generations to come. 
 
 Are these tremendous issues to be left to themselves 
 or chance ? Is it enough to say that the spirit of 
 Progress will work them right in the end ? Do self- 
 will and self-love ever restrain themselves by an 
 enlightened sense of their own true interest ? Verily 
 we think not ; and for this reason we are not willing 
 to abandon the greatest and the oldest of all human 
 forces the power of Religion. On religion, to-day 
 as of old, there hangs the future of mankind for good 
 or for evil. 
 
 But if on religion, on what religion ? On the 
 religions which by their errors and their failures have 
 brought us to this pass, and now stand aside with their 
 eyes fixed on things above, repeating that their kingdom 
 is not of this world ? We more and more need a 
 religion that can deal with this world, which has 
 something to say to the intellectual and social problems 
 of our age, which can show us how to live on earth, 
 not how to prepare for heaven. Can we turn to
 
 264 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Christianity in its latest phase, struggling to adapt 
 its creed to common sense, helpless in presence of our 
 social disorders, and actually stimulating the passion 
 for war and conquest ? Or shall we turn to the 
 Deisms and the Theosophies which are even more 
 devoid of social doctrine, more impotent to control 
 our acts, busy with metaphysical ingenuities about the 
 nature of the Godhead or the creation of the world ? 
 Far from it. We need a Religion that is neither 
 Mysticism nor Metaphysics, but one that can explain 
 and enforce human duty ; which can master men of 
 powerful intellect and commanding character ; which 
 can make itself felt on society : purify it, guide it, 
 transform it. 
 
 To what can we turn, in our wanderings and our 
 needs, but to the ever-present idea of Humanity as a 
 whole ? It recalls us to the sense of fellowship and 
 social duty ; it lifts us from our interests in the petty 
 group in which we live, to brotherhood with the 
 incalculable host which peoples the planet j it takes 
 us from the trivial prize of to-day to the cycle of ages 
 that make the past, the present, and the future. The 
 multiplicity of human interests in the mass restrains 
 and humbles the interest of the unit ; the vast sequence 
 of time reminds us how we grow ever to a higher 
 state. We set before our hopes the civilising and 
 humanising Power, gathering force in each new age, 
 and steadily advancing to the good and the true. We 
 watch it with our aspirations of to-day back to the 
 wild times of social and religious war in Europe, thence 
 back to the turmoil of the Middle Ages, back as it 
 emerges out of systematic war, out of the inhumanity 
 of the polytheistic ages, out of slavery, out of caste, 
 out of nomadism and fetichism and savagery, out of 
 cannibalism, and so back to the lowest degradation 
 of the human type. Humanity has sufficed to raise
 
 EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 265 
 
 herself, by slow and certain stages, from the brutality 
 of the bushman to the dignity of Shakespeare and 
 Descartes. Much more shall she suffice to free 
 herself from the ddbris of a feudal and a military 
 epoch.
 
 PART II 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 THE Second Part of this book is occupied with questions 
 of Labour, Unionism, and Socialism, which are now 
 urgent^ and promise to be even more urgent in the future. 
 Having been closely associated for forty-six years with 
 the Labour Leaders and with Industrial Reforms, I 
 now collect^ in what is largely an autobiographic volume, 
 a few of the Essays and Addresses that I made public 
 on various occasions. These were in no sense casual 
 utterances. Being all based on the Positivist theory of 
 Capital and Labour, which I have held from youth, they 
 have a systematic character. And at the same time they 
 may serve to mark the gradual development of public 
 opinion. 
 
 In 1860 1 was associated at the Working Men's 
 College with F. D. Maurice and his colleagues, Thomas 
 Hughes, J. M. Ludlow, John Ruskin, Dr. Furnivall, 
 and many others, teachers and students. In 1862 I 
 joined with T. Hughes , R. H. Hut ton, Godfrey 
 Lushington, in a public controversy upon the great 
 London lockout in the Building Trades, and I became 
 intimate with the directors of the great Amalgamated 
 Unions. In the following years I visited the northern 
 manufacturing centres, and studied the Unions, Co-opera- 
 tive, Owenite, and Industrial movements of Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire. 
 
 In 1867, without my knowledge or consent, I was 
 269
 
 2 7 o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 announced in Parliament as a Member of the Trades 
 Union Commission, on which I served in the years 
 1867-8-9 ; and I drew the Minority Report, which 
 became the basis of subsequent Legislation. The long 
 agitation to obtain a settlement of the laws affecting 
 workmen, together with frequent visits to manufacturing 
 centres, to Trades Union, Co-operative, and other Labour 
 Congresses, brought me into close relations with many 
 working-class leader 's, and gave me an intimate knowledge 
 of the working of their societies. In 1883 I organised 
 the Industrial Remuneration Conference, founded by 
 Robert Miller of Edinburgh, of which Sir Charles 
 Dilke was the President, and which was addressed by 
 him, by Lord Bramwell, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, Lord 
 Brassey, Sir Robert Giffen, Mr. John Burns, Professor 
 Bee sly, Professor A. R. Wallace, and others. 
 
 As President of the English Posit ivist Committee 
 from 1879, I continually put forward the industrial 
 scheme of August e Comte on the platform and in the press, 
 down to the settlement of the Labour legislation in 1907. 
 
 The six Essays in this Part II. deal in turn with 
 the " Orthodox " Plutonomy, which I repudiated in the 
 first volume of the Fortnightly Review in 1863, with 
 Trades Unionism, and with Co-operation -all three 
 written in the same year. They are followed by the 
 Address given to the Industrial Conference of 1885 ; by an 
 Essay on the Socialist type of Unionism, 1889 ; and finally 
 by the Address on Moral and Religious Socialism of 1891. 
 
 This sums up the views on the Labour Problem 
 which I have consistently maintained for upwards of 
 forty years (1908).
 
 I 
 
 THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY 
 
 (1865) 
 
 On the foundation of the Fortnightly Review in 1865, 
 by Anthony Trollope, W. B age hot, George H. Lewes, 
 and George Eliot, I was invited by the Editor, G. H. 
 Lewes, to write on the great Iron Trade Dispute in 
 Staffordshire. In the third numher, "June 1865, I 
 wrote the present Essay on the Limits of Political 
 Economy. It is, I think, the earliest systematic criticism 
 of the entire basis of the " Orthodox " Economy by a 
 student of that so-called '"'science" who was in close 
 relations with some of its ablest professors, and in complete 
 agreement with many of its theoretic doctrines. 
 
 77>e criticism was not at all derived from Carlyle's 
 growls about the ''dismal science" nor .from RuskMs 
 sentimental diatribes in his book Unto this Last. My 
 views were based on Comte's philosophic proof that 
 Economic dogmas become both false and mischievous when 
 detached from Social science as a whole. I was myself a 
 member of the Political Economy Club, and was in 
 relations with John Stuart Mill, Professor Cairns, and 
 other eminent economists. I fully recognised the value of 
 many economic researches if kept in strict subordination 
 to Sociology ; but I earnestly repudiated the claim to 
 
 271
 
 272 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 erect these into an independent science much less to make 
 these theories practical rules of society and life. 
 
 Now that the old Plutonomy is almost a thing of the 
 past, I re-issue what I believe was one of the earliest 
 efforts to shake off its tyranny (1908). 
 
 The " phenomena of society being more complicated than any 
 other, it is irrational to study the industrial apart from 
 the intellectual and moral" AUGUSTE COMTE. 
 
 FOR the evils which beset our industrial system several 
 partial remedies, and but one general remedy, is 
 suggested. Trades Unions, courts of arbitration, 
 limited partnership, co-operation, are obviously remedies 
 both limited in their sphere and remote in their effect. 
 That to which the cultivated public agree to look is 
 the general diffusion of the principles of economic 
 science. It becomes, therefore, essential to know 
 what economic science is ; what are its limits ; and 
 what are its functions. 
 
 Few opinions are more rooted in the mind of our 
 industrial nation than this : that there is a science of 
 production, definite, distinct, and exact the axioms 
 of which are as universal and demonstrable as those of 
 astronomy \ the practical rules of which are as simple 
 and familiar as those of arithmetic. Economists, it is 
 believed, have worked out a system of general truths, 
 which any shrewd man of business can practically 
 apply. We are very proud of our great writers who 
 have created this science, and not a little fond of the skill 
 with which it is handled by newspapers, speakers, and 
 men of business. It is the intellectual feat of our age, 
 the sign of our civilisation, and the cause of our 
 wealth. 
 
 But when we come to study the science, we 
 certainly do not find this agreement amongst its pro-
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 273 
 
 fessors. Agreement is the last thing they think of. 
 There are, indeed, few subjects of human thought on 
 which there is less. There are hardly ten generalisa- 
 tions in the whole science on which all the writers 
 are at one, and that not on the details but on the first 
 principles, not on intricate points of practice but on 
 the general laws of production. 
 
 What is the true theory of rent ? Who is right 
 about currency ? What are the laws of population ? 
 Are small farms or large farms best ? Does the 
 peasant proprietor thrive ? Define the " wages 
 fund." What decides the remuneration of labour ? 
 State some of the laws of the accumulation of profits. 
 Give the ratio of the relative increase of population, 
 and the means of subsistence. What are the 
 economical results of direct and indirect taxation ? 
 of strict entails ? of -trade unions ? of poor-laws ? of 
 Free Trade ? Let us suppose these questions asked 
 from a body of economists, and we should have them 
 at cross-purposes in a moment. M'Culloch would 
 expose " the erroneous views of Smith," Ricardo and 
 Malthus would confute each other, and scarcely one 
 would admit the philosophical bases of Mr. Mill. We 
 find ourselves not in a science properly so called at all, 
 but in a collection of warm controversies on social 
 questions. What would be the state of medicine if 
 physiologists were hotly disputing on the circulation 
 of the blood ? 
 
 No rational economist can claim for his subject the 
 title of an independent and recognised science. He 
 is content at most with systematic dissertations. The 
 greatest of all since the founder of this study in 
 England, Mr. Mill, is, in truth, not an economist 
 at all. He is a social philosopher, who has thought 
 and written on all the chief departments of the 
 philosophy of society, who in his great work deals
 
 274 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 with economic laws as part of and subordinate to social 
 laws. Neither in theory nor in practice has this 
 powerful thinker, much less have his profound pre- 
 decessors, Hume, Turgot, and Adam Smith, ever 
 countenanced the notion that the laws of production, 
 as a whole, can be studied or discovered apart from all 
 the other laws of society, without any reference to the 
 great social problems, by men who have no fixed 
 notions upon them, or none but a few unverified 
 hypotheses ; who are without a system of politics, a 
 theory of human nature, a philosophy of history, or 
 a code of social duty. 
 
 Unfortunately, this truth has not been generally 
 grasped, and the name of economist has been claimed 
 by men whose qualifications are limited to some 
 acquaintance with statistics and a talent for tabular 
 statements. There has gone abroad, too, under their 
 shelter, a very prevalent belief that economic questions 
 are fixed and defined as no other social problems are. 
 Men who hold the application of theory to politics to 
 be mischievous pedantry, men who regard the science 
 of human nature as an atheist's dream, are quite 
 content to believe that one fragment of it is a science 
 by itself; a science so simple and complete that 
 practical points of detail can be accurately deduced 
 from its rules. A whole literature of spurious 
 economics exists, wherein the postulates of the subject, 
 the great laws of human nature, are gratuitously 
 assumed without a thought or a doubt. The conse- 
 quence is a tissue of statements about industry which 
 are as true to fact as Zadkiel's almanack is true to 
 events ; and a tissue of pretended laws of industry by 
 which selfishness glosses over to itself the frightful 
 consequences of its own passions. 
 
 The truth really is (and a very moderate reflection 
 ought to show it), that whatever the difficulties of a
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 275 
 
 systematic science of society, the same difficulties 
 meet the science of industrial life ; that all the cautions 
 which are needed in applying social laws to action 
 cannot be dispensed with simply because the action in 
 question is industry. Secondly, it will appear that the 
 attempt to deal with the facts of production separately 
 from other facts of society can be carried only to a 
 very limited extent, and under very strict conditions. 
 Thirdly, that the attempt to generalise absolutely from 
 certain special phases of modern civilisation is a radical 
 and very dangerous error. It results from the com- 
 bined effect of these causes that the popular conception 
 of the functions of Political Economy is very wide of 
 its true place both in philosophy and politics. 
 
 Political economy professes to systematise the laws 
 of production and distribution. It analyses the creation 
 of wealth. It lays down the theory of material in- 
 dustry. It is obvious that every act of production, 
 all industry, in short, is due to an effort of the human 
 will. It forms a certain class of the things that men 
 do. It is determined by all the combined motives 
 which precede action. Men do not labour or ac- 
 cumulate involuntarily any more than they fight or 
 pray involuntarily. In our age we see many men 
 labouring and accumulating under the influence of 
 one leading motive, and we can hardly conceive this 
 motive ceasing to be powerful. But in one bygone 
 age we should have seen them fighting under a 
 dominant motive ; in another age, praying under a 
 dominant motive ; in another, doing both together 
 under a motive so dominant that few persons then 
 could conceive it less strong. In the ages of faith,
 
 276 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 fighting and praying seemed to come by instinct from 
 " immutable laws of society," to be natural results of 
 uncontrollable tendencies. We have lived to see that 
 men can do both or either in the most different ways, 
 under totally different motives, in opposite social states, 
 and indeed can cease in a great measure to do either. 
 
 It may be objected that a certain amount of labour 
 and accumulation to satisfy the physical wants of life 
 is necessary in a sense in which no other form of 
 activity is. Men must overcome hunger and cold 
 if they live at all. Doubtless ; but the Bushman does 
 this, and so does the Gipsy. The minimum is too 
 small to be worth consideration. All between this 
 and our modern industry is in the truest sense voluntary. 
 For all practical purposes, then, production is only a 
 branch of free human activity ; liable, like it, to every 
 modification which altered motives produce. Labour 
 and accumulation might be almost indefinitely increased 
 or diminished, as the motives in which they now 
 originate were stimulated or declined. They might 
 also remain at their present or change to any other 
 level, and spring from a totally different set of motives, 
 and under totally fresh conditions. Man of course is 
 limited by his own physical powers and the general con- 
 ditions of matter; 'but with our present intellectual 
 resources these limits are so vast in civilised countries, 
 that, practically, man's industrial life is quite at his 
 own disposal. Production, accumulation, and distribu- 
 tion might be varied almost without limit, both in 
 extent, mode, and proportion, provided we could vary 
 the motives which actuate conduct. In other words, 
 the forms of our industrial life the laws of wealth, in 
 short depend on the sum of our actual civilisation. 
 
 A truth so simple as this has been so much 
 obscured by economic sophisms that a little illustration 
 may not be out of place. In the first place, no one
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 277 
 
 who reflects can fail to see how completely our present 
 industry is the creation of our present ideas and feel- 
 ings. Men produce and accumulate incessantly around 
 us chiefly from the influence of a desire of wealth or 
 useful things. But it is obvious that this desire might 
 very easily become incalculably feebler, and that pro- 
 duction and accumulation might be indefinitely less. 
 As a matter of history, we know that in almost every 
 age of human life it has been far weaker than with us 
 now ; and that it is only in certain fractions of one 
 race of human kind that it is as strong as it is now. 
 When we compare the industrial energy of an English- 
 man or an American with that of an Arab, of a 
 modern European with that of an ancient Greek, we 
 can see hardly any limit to the variety of degree 
 in which the love of wealth may stimulate human 
 beings to action. Nor is it even the invariable 
 associate of high intelligence and cultivation. On the 
 contrary, classical and Oriental society abound with 
 examples of high intellectual condition, as religious 
 society throughout the world abounds with examples 
 of high moral condition, with a minimum of production 
 and accumulation. In a word, the instinct and the 
 habit of production are just as variable as human nature. 
 The second case, that production and accumula- 
 tion might follow from other than the prevalent 
 motives which now largely stimulate them, is some- 
 what less obvious but not less true. In vast permanent 
 societies, in long ages of history, populations such as 
 the Egyptian and the Indian, under a strict caste 
 system, have shown an astonishing degree of industry, 
 directly stimulated by habit, social feeling and religious 
 duty, and, in a very slight degree, by personal desire 
 of gain. In religious societies under very different 
 kinds of faith, very active industry, on a scale quite 
 decisive as an experiment, has been stimulated by
 
 278 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 purely religious motives. Some of the most splendid 
 results of industry ever recorded, the clearing of 
 wildernesses ; vast public works, such as bridges, 
 monuments, and temples ; the training of whole races 
 of savages into habits of toil, have been accomplished 
 by purely religious bodies on purely religious motives, 
 by monks, missionaries, and priests. In China, in 
 which there is, perhaps, the most universal of all 
 industries, labour is stimulated by motives mainly 
 domestic, partly personal, but in scarcely any degree 
 by the desire of accumulation. In practical slavery, 
 which we must never forget is or has been the basis 
 of a vast portion of human industry, labour is obviously 
 due to other motives than that of the acquisition of 
 gain : in very low cases, to force and fear ; in very 
 favourable instances of ancient slavery and modern 
 serfdom, partly to personal affection, partly to habit, 
 as we often see in the domestic animals. 
 
 These are the extremes ; but between these cases 
 and our own industry there is every shade of motive 
 and spirit from which systematic industry has sprung. 
 We are all familiar with noble instances of labour in 
 every sphere, under all conditions, from which every 
 trace of personal interest has been withdrawn. It 
 would be as degrading to suppose that the great 
 industrial benefactors of mankind, whether inventors, 
 capitalists, or labourers, have been moved by the mere 
 love of acquisition, as that our great intellectual 
 benefactors have been moved by mere motives of 
 vanity, or the practical by mere thirst for power. 
 
 Industry has never been so systematically stimu- 
 lated by motives of religious duty or affection as some 
 other forms of activity in earlier civilisations ; but no 
 historical observer would deny that it is perfectly possible 
 that it should be. If any society had been educated 
 for labour with the same consensus of moral and social
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 279 
 
 forces which trained the early Romans for war, and the 
 Israelites in the desert for worship, we should have had 
 the case of a people in whom industry was singularly 
 developed, and the desire of gain practically extinct. 
 In a word, the studies of human nature and history 
 combine to prove that industrial activity may be 
 organised, and in a great degree is now organised, on 
 moving principles, as various and complex as the 
 character of man himself. 
 
 It is nothing to the purpose to object that the case 
 just suggested is possible only under the most singular 
 conditions, and, if possible, is very far from desirable. 
 There is not the slightest probability of our seeing a 
 state of society in which industry should be solely 
 dependent on religious, moral, or social motives. In- 
 dustry and accumulation might possibly be diminished 
 by any sudden admixture of such motives. Industry, 
 as a whole, might exist where motives of self-interest 
 were supplemented, superseded, and controlled by a 
 range of various motives in almost infinite proportions. 
 We know as a fact that whole societies and races of 
 men have pursued objects far less accordant with human 
 nature than industry, under the influence of complex 
 motives, derived from many forms of human character. 
 We know as a fact that men have given themselves 
 to industry under the influence of every form of it 
 alternately, and of many forms in many combinations. 
 It would be as ridiculous to place industry on the 
 basis of one special kind of the egoistic instincts, or on 
 all together, as it would be to make another of them 
 the sole source of religion, another of politics, another 
 of thought. Human action, of which industry is but 
 a part, is moved by the sum of the human capacities 
 and instincts ; and of these such as minister to personal 
 enjoyment are not sole or paramount. Nor does 
 industry depend more on these latter than human life
 
 280 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 itself. To hold it to be inseparable from them is 
 possible only on theories of human nature which 
 revive the moral sophisms of Hobbes, or the political 
 cynicism of Machiavelli. 
 
 However much these propositions may sound like 
 truisms, it may be doubted if their full meaning is 
 present to those who deal with the labours of 
 Economists, or indeed to Economists themselves. 
 On the contrary, the logical consequences may seem 
 startling to most of them. When, for instance, it is 
 said to be a law of Political Economy that the rate 
 of wages depends on the demand and supply of labour ; 
 that capitalists will seek to pay the lowest, and work- 
 men to obtain the highest, possible wages ; that capital 
 will seek the market where there is the greatest percent- 
 age, and labour the market where there is the highest 
 remuneration, all that is meant is, that this will happen 
 where or so long as the love of gain, the effective desire 
 of accumulation, the desire of useful things, holds pre- 
 cisely the same relative position in the human motives 
 as it does to-day in England in the year 1865. 
 
 The law is gone the moment this position is 
 changed. The law is never in fact absolutely true. 
 This particular motive to labour varies as civilisation 
 varies in every conceivable degree. It is never per- 
 haps wholly absent. It is never certainly exclusively 
 dominant. Perhaps no single case can be found of 
 one capitalist or one workman whose industrial con- 
 duct is never influenced by some motive derived from 
 custom, public opinion, sense of duty, or benevolence. 
 There have been cases on the largest scale in which 
 industrial energy has been influenced almost solely by 
 these, or one of these. Precisely as these very variable 
 motives vary in efficiency, industry will be more, or 
 will be less, under the impetus of competition. 
 
 The limits of variation in both directions are
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 281 
 
 almost incalculable. We see it in the difference of 
 one age with another. We see it in the differences 
 of one people with another. And we see it in the 
 differences of one individual with another. If all 
 capitalists were as eager for accumulation as some 
 rare examples are now, capital might be enormously 
 increased. If all capitalists were as little under the 
 influence of acquisitive motives as some whom we 
 know, accumulation might be vastly reduced, other 
 influences remaining the same. Many great employers 
 of labour (such as landed proprietors) are in a very 
 slight degree governed by competition in the manage- 
 ment of their estates. Many workmen, as agricultural 
 labourers, are almost solely under the impulse of habit. 
 In parts of Europe men of activity and intelligence 
 are so little under the influence of competition, that 
 markets separated by a few miles have widely different 
 prices. 
 
 We all know that in many of our daily dealings 
 we are very largely out of its sphere. The wages of 
 the superior domestic servants are comparatively beyond 
 it. In a great many occupations (as in the public 
 services, arts, and sciences) the influence of com- 
 petition tells only very slowly and indirectly. It 
 cannot therefore be the sole regulator there. In fact, 
 there is perhaps no single trade in which the force of 
 competition, left without restraint, would not diminish 
 wages. It is also certain that the annals of the human 
 race exhibit competition as a paramount force only 
 in certain parts of Europe in very recent times. 
 These laws, therefore, of political economy depend 
 on an assumption about human character and society, 
 which is totally untrue of the great bulk of human 
 history, and not exactly true of any single community 
 or individual even now. 
 
 What is really meant by saying that wages and
 
 282 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 profits follow such and such a law, is to state that 
 which is an approximate generalisation of one par- 
 ticular form of civilisation. Of course this can in no 
 sense be a law of human society. If it were, it would 
 be true of all times and under all conditions. The 
 law that the changes of human life depend on the 
 changes of human opinion, is true universally. It is 
 true of the savage ; it is true of the child. It is based 
 on a study of human nature as a whole, and of human 
 history as a whole. But it is obvious that most of the 
 laws of Political Economy utterly fail to be realised 
 amongst some savage and some oriental races. Still 
 more signally do they fail if applied to an affectionate 
 family or a pure religious community. There the 
 assumption on which they rest has no place. 
 
 The laws therefore are entirely relative to the 
 particular state of civilisation. Unquestionably, ap- 
 proximate generalisations, having strict reference to 
 a form of society we are studying, are of great value, 
 but only on the condition that we never forget 
 their relative character. The laws of political 
 economy are essentially abstract and hypothetical. 
 In them man is conceived under conditions in which 
 he is never actually found, and which indeed could 
 not be actually realised whilst human nature remains 
 what it is. Political Economy professes to exhibit 
 man exclusively as a producing animal, which in fact 
 he never is, and under the influence of special motives, 
 by which he is never exclusively actuated. Social 
 institutions generally, moral impulses altogether, by 
 the conditions of the subject, are excluded. Other- 
 wise Political Economy would be Social or Moral 
 Philosophy. Political Economy, therefore, has two 
 postulates production as the sole end, Competition 
 as the sole motive postulates of which the human 
 race and its history can show no actual example.
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 283 
 
 Without doubt this may be no obstacle to the 
 great value of these theories to the student. The 
 intellectual or the moral forces might be similarly 
 studied. But the great, indeed the sole value of 
 these special studies, depends on their relative char- 
 acter being constantly kept in view. It may be 
 asserted, and is no doubt true, that many spheres of 
 industry are so far under the rule of Competition that 
 it may practically be said to regulate them. Broad 
 generalisations may fairly be based on what is the 
 efficient rule. It may be said also that this rule of 
 Competition is the best, the most perfect condition of 
 society, essential to the ultimate happiness of mankind, 
 and destined to be developed indefinitely in the future. 
 It may be. But this is precisely the question which 
 no economist, as such, is able to decide. Both these 
 assumptions are vital problems in the general philosophy 
 of society. This and this alone can offer a reasonable 
 answer. 
 
 The economist may be able to decide what is the 
 law of civilisation, what is the destiny of society, what 
 are the conditions of happiness, provided he has satis- 
 fied his mind on the theory of society, of history, of 
 morals of human nature as a whole and human society 
 as a whole, provided he be a social philosopher, but 
 only thus. The economist may be able to judge to 
 what degree in a particular society competition is a 
 dominant motive j where it is, where it is not para- 
 mount ; how far it is interwoven with social institu- 
 tions ; what in each case is its relative importance 
 as compared with other influences provided he has 
 analysed society as well as industry, and has traced 
 the manifold ramifications of human activity pro- 
 vided he be a politician and a moralist as well as an 
 economist, but scarcely otherwise. Without this 
 knowledge his subject-matter will be liable to varia-
 
 284 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tions which he not only cannot explain, but which he 
 cannot detect. He is working out problems depending 
 on unknown quantities which are constantly varying 
 in relative value. None of his terms are constants or 
 have a fixed power, but they sometimes represent one, 
 and sometimes another ; and he has no means of 
 ascertaining when this power is changed. 
 
 It is essential to remember that in these industrial 
 problems the unknown quantities are never constant, 
 never regular, and never calculable by the economist 
 as such. He cannot give his solutions in terms of his 
 data, leaving his unknown quantities for after investi- 
 gation. Throughout every stage of his calculations 
 new quantities may appear, which may, or may not, 
 affect the result. A man may sit down and calculate 
 the law of some branch of industry ; he may tabulate 
 laboriously the data of a certain place or time where 
 the rule of competition was almost paramount, and 
 then deduce an approximate result in relation to these 
 data. The tone of civilisation, we may suppose, is 
 changed ; a new set of ideas, habits, and principles is 
 introduced (matters wholly beyond the range of the 
 economist) the law altogether vanishes. When this 
 change occurs, why it occurs, what is its result, are 
 questions to which the economist has no clue what- 
 ever. Yet without it his reasoning is a mere exercise 
 in logic. To give it scientific truth or practical value 
 he must have some general conceptions about the 
 unknown quantities religious, moral, social ideals 
 about the other motives of human character and forms 
 of human life. In short, he must be guided by refer- 
 ence to civilisation as a whole. In other words, 
 economic researches have neither use nor reality, save 
 as they are guided by social philosophy.
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 285 
 
 II 
 
 This brings us to the objections which Mr. Mill 
 has urged to the strictures of Comte upon political 
 economy. He insists that economic studies can be 
 perfectly well carried on separately ; that science has 
 been largely aided by independent investigations into a 
 particular class of phenomena, and by abstract reason- 
 ing about a special order of conceptions. He quotes, 
 with approval, M. Littr^'s (or rather M. Comte's) 
 admirable analogy of the industrial phenomena of 
 society to the nutritive functions in biology. He tells 
 us that as the science of life has been largely promoted 
 by the study of nutrition, hypothetically conceived as 
 independent, so the science of society may be greatly 
 advanced by the study of production conceived in the 
 abstract apart. Now, without defending the attacks 
 of Comte upon economists in general (attacks founded 
 on social rather than intellectual grounds, on their 
 popular influence rather than their logical errors), the 
 answer of the disciples of Comte would be something 
 of this kind : Economic researches may to a great 
 extent be carried on independently, but only as a 
 branch of social philosophy, and therefore not by mere 
 economists. 
 
 So far as a general theory of society requires the 
 laws of production to be analysed apart, so far the 
 economic laws are a separate branch of thought. 
 What positivism would condemn would be, that mere 
 statisticians, without any fixed notion of social laws, 
 and without any reference to their paramount effect, 
 should create a body of isolated generalisations. Comte 
 never condemned the use of abstract methods and sus- 
 tained hypotheses in investigating the laws of produc- 
 tion by themselves on the contrary, he largely uses
 
 286 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 these methods himself; but he would insist that it 
 should be done as a branch of the superior science of 
 society. If economists were not all actually social 
 philosophers, the least that would be required of them 
 would be a very clear and strict notion of the limits, 
 the relativity, and the subordination of their study! 
 
 The analogy of M. Littre is beautifully just. 
 Unquestionably the nutritive functions can be in- 
 vestigated separately in biology ; but only by a 
 biologist, and only as bearing on the science of 
 biology. What would happen if nutrition were to 
 be dealt with by men wholly ignorant of the other 
 functions of life, who hardly believed that they were 
 capable of scientific treatment ? Precisely what has 
 happened when statisticians attempted to solve the 
 problems of production. When biology was struggling 
 into life as a science, there were just such a set of 
 specialists, and the chemical theory of nutrition was 
 the result. The views of the pure economist are 
 precisely such a chemical explanation of the nutrition 
 of society. Conceive a science of the Stomach ! And 
 a science of the stomach created by men who rather 
 doubted whether there was such a thing as a nervous 
 system, men who had vague ideas about the circu- 
 lation of the blood ! The theory of digestion can 
 be roughly sketched without much reference to the 
 general system of life ; so can the theory of pro- 
 duction be sketched apart from the general social 
 conditions. The chemical and mechanical processes 
 in digestion may be analysed and reduced to a system ; 
 as may also their chemical and mechanical results. 
 They can be even reproduced and imitated partially. 
 
 The laws of production can likewise be systema- 
 tised so far as they depend on the simple rule of com- 
 petition, and their results may be systematised so far 
 as this rule can be supposed universal. But this
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 287 
 
 economic theory is not the true theory of production 
 any more than the chemical is the true theory of 
 digestion. Digestion never in the living frame takes 
 place in purely chemical ways, and production never 
 in the living society takes place under the sovereign 
 rule of Competition. A theory of digestion and of 
 nutrition we may have, but only when the theories of 
 the nervous, the vascular, and the glandular systems 
 are complete ; only from men who can grasp and trace 
 the complex combination of all in compound pro- 
 cesses ; who have watched the action of nerves on 
 secretions, of blood on nerves, of gases upon blood ; 
 who know how fibre is added to fibre, how laminae of 
 bone are deposited around their centres ; who can 
 conceive the living organism j who know life as a 
 whole. 
 
 Once, in the infancy of thought, men poring over 
 a few dry bones may have fancied they could build up 
 out of them at least a theory of the skeleton by itself. 
 They little thought that no rational osteology could 
 exist until a theory of the blood had been mechanic- 
 ally, chemically, and biologically established. So 
 too, men, in some charnel houses of society, have 
 built up out of the dry bones of the social organism a 
 crude theory of production on the mechanical basis or 
 Competition. A true theory of production we may 
 have one day ; but only on the completion of the 
 various constituents of the social science ; when the 
 play of human motives and the order of the human 
 instincts is definitely solved ; when the Social 
 Organism is known as a whole, and is felt to have a 
 single and intelligible life. 
 
 Mr. Mill's great work itself is a cardinal proof that 
 if the facts of production can be separately analysed, it 
 must be by the guidance and aid of a social philosophy. 
 He is not an economist, but a social philosopher ; and
 
 288 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 his Political Economy is simply a branch of his 
 general system of Society. A large portion of his 
 treatise is occupied with reasonings which are strictly 
 political ; and there are no portions more impressive 
 than those which are strictly moral. His views rest 
 upon doctrines respecting human character and institu- 
 tions which he has systematically expounded in all 
 their leading branches. His theory of industry is 
 scarcely conceivable by one who has not mastered his 
 general theory of life. He is far from confining his 
 view to the actual forms of industry. Production, as 
 he conceives it, would rest on social and moral changes 
 vaster than those which separate the middle ages 
 from ourselves. 
 
 It is hardly recognised yet how grand a transfor- 
 mation of society underlies these apparent economic 
 theories. There are two great questions which so 
 pervade all industry that there is scarcely an economic 
 problem into which they do not vitally enter. These 
 are Population and Immovable Property. How far 
 do economists and the public adopt the theories of 
 Mr. Mill on Reproductive Abstinence ? Yet it lies 
 at the root of all his doctrines on Industry. What 
 economist and what politician accepts his view that 
 landed property in England is far from fulfilling the 
 conditions which render its existence economically 
 justifiable, and that in Ireland it does not do so at all ? 
 Yet the value of a great part of his industrial laws 
 depends on this, which rests on an axiom in the 
 general theory of social life. Mr. Mill's speculations 
 on population and landed property are important 
 chiefly because they rest on profound moral and social 
 truths. But what would be the value of the specula- 
 tions of a mere statistician who had no such guide 
 and no such preparation ? And who among statis- 
 ticians has ?
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 289 
 
 There exists an entire literature on the subject of 
 population, from which moral causes are as effectually 
 excluded as if Man were a form of aphis. But moral 
 causes are almost decisive in questions of population. 
 Theoretically, the population of the world in a few 
 generations of unlimited breeding could stretch from 
 the earth to the moon. Theoretically, if the human 
 race was in the religious condition of St. Bernard, it 
 might cease with the actual generation. Every varia- 
 tion in population between these scarcely conceivable 
 limits is due to moral, political, and social circum- 
 stances, and in a very minor degree to physical. Yet 
 these variations are our important data. The effect 
 of population is the one cardinal quantity in every 
 economic problem. What then is the rationality 
 of economic problems without a general theory of 
 population ? But a theory of population is essen- 
 tially a domestic question. It is vitally a question 
 about Family. The form of marriage, the position 
 of women, the moral duties of the pair, purity, 
 continence, are certainly the primary theories to be 
 established. Without these, theories of population 
 may be constructed in the abstract ; but they cannot 
 have much practical utility. Theories of locomotion 
 might be constructed in the abstract ; but they would 
 not carry us far if the theorist paid no attention to the 
 fact that the medium of motion might be either earth, 
 air, or water. 
 
 Few economic problems have been more debated, 
 or are more important, than that of the cultivation of 
 land. The systems of peasant proprietors, of land- 
 lords, of farmers, of metayers, of cottiers, form a 
 singular instance of a ground where economists con- 
 tradict each other not only in their conclusions, but 
 as to the facts from which they reason. But there is 
 a question which underlies the whole problem, which
 
 290 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is the social ground of property and the appropriation 
 of land. No one does, no one can treat this funda- 
 mental political principle as a purely economic ques- 
 tion. The first thing a rational philosophy has to do 
 is to establish the basis of Property ; the rights, the 
 duties, the relations of proprietors ; the political, social, 
 and moral functions which ownership in land implies. 
 Before this is done, or at least unless this is done also, 
 what is the use of the mere economic side of the 
 question ? It is, as we have said, the mere digestive 
 side of an organic problem of health. Economists 
 have pretty well proved that a very good cultivation is 
 attainable economically under any of the land systems. 
 They recommend one rather than another for political, 
 social, and moral reasons. A large portion of Mr. 
 Mill's treatise, at any rate, is thus occupied. But it 
 would not be of the slightest value unless he were at 
 the same time a profound student of political, social, 
 and moral truth. 
 
 When it is said that the rule of competition and 
 self-interest is so far practically the rule of modern 
 society as to be a sufficient basis for economic laws, it 
 may fairly be asked if these two great elements of 
 Population and Property one of them dependent 
 mainly on moral standards, the other on political 
 institutions do not radically affect every problem in 
 turn. Every other element of economy may be 
 shown to be largely under the influence of some 
 moral or some social force. But the economist 
 excludes these from his inquiries. What he does, 
 therefore, is to isolate for study a special class of 
 complex phenomena, and then to isolate for his 
 explanation of them a special class of the conditions 
 on which they depend. The relative force of the 
 other phenomena, and that of the other conditions of 
 all the phenomena, remain all the time variable but
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 291 
 
 unknown. To assume that they are fixed, to assume 
 them of a certain force, to assume them to be small, is 
 simply to assume the problems which lie at the root 
 of human society. The economist has not only a 
 special class of facts to deal with, but he has to refer 
 these to a special class of causes. An astronomer 
 might find it convenient to work out the law of the 
 centrifugal tendency of the earth ; but a mere calculator 
 could do nothing of the kind. And assuredly the 
 astronomer would not do so unless the centripetal 
 tendency were a known or certainly a fixed force. 
 
 When, therefore, the economist lays down a law 
 respecting wages, for instance, based on modern 
 civilisation and competition, or on anything but laws 
 of human character and society, what he does comes 
 to this : He states a proposition about human action 
 which can only apply to states of society with habits 
 and institutions exactly like that before him, and 
 which would be true of that particular state of society 
 if mankind acted upon certain special motives, which 
 they never exclusively do. Truly a somewhat condi- 
 tional and hypothetical law ! Very useful possibly to 
 the social inquirer, but of small value to the man of 
 business. A powerful and universal moral stimulus 
 might, it is conceivable, dispose all capitalists to give 
 just the same labour and care to their business as they 
 do, and yet consume of the profits no more than a 
 common labourer. They could then, if they pleased, 
 increase the wages of labour largely, population under 
 moral restraint not increasing. A powerful and 
 universal political stimulus might also dispose all 
 labourers to force them to do so, and, in fact, make 
 the capitalists the serfs of the labourers. In either of 
 these cases, and they may be approached in infinite 
 degrees, the law of wages would cease to apply. Nor 
 can the economist give us the slightest test as to
 
 292 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 when this tendency might begin, what would cause it, 
 what could stop it whether it is good or bad, whether 
 it is general or partial. All that he can give us is 
 the following : The actual rate of wages now and 
 formerly, some of the causes on which they depend 
 (value unknown), and what wages would tend to be if 
 something happened which never happens. 
 
 It is quite true that there is a certain order of 
 industrial questions which are in no degree affected 
 by variation of motive. The purely physical analysis 
 of capital, labour, production, and accumulation is true 
 of every body of men in all ages, of a single family, 
 and of a horde of savages. These are the fundamental 
 conditions of all material efforts, and are closely 
 dependent on physical truths. These, therefore, are 
 true laws of society. So far political economy is a 
 branch of an independent and a real science. But no 
 farther. Such laws as are wholly free from the influ- 
 ence of moral causes can be exactly stated whilst the 
 moral forces are unknown. Such laws as refer to 
 subjects which are affected by moral causes (the influ- 
 ence of these being unknown or neglected) can be 
 nothing but hypothetical. But these true laws of 
 production are very few and very general. They are 
 rather the axioms and conditions of the study than the 
 theorems. They occupy in Mr. Mill's treatise only 
 about one-third of the first volume. They are of deep 
 interest to all who think about society, but they are 
 general philosophic analyses, which are of small prac- 
 tical value, and are scarcely understood by the public. 
 These are not the economic laws to which men appeal 
 as the true guide of life. The Political Economy 
 which really acts upon men's minds is the Economy 
 which is concerned with Distribution. It is the 
 laws of Distribution which men seek to know and 
 to enforce. But into all of these the moral and the
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 293 
 
 social forces, motives, institutions, habits, invariably 
 enter. To the economist, therefore, the laws of 
 Distribution are purely hypothetical, and consequently 
 have a theoretic but no direct practical value. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We are now in a position to define the limits 
 within which political economy can be pursued as an 
 independent study. In the first place, so far as 
 physical conditions go, and up to the point where 
 moral conditions begin, strict scientific laws can be 
 established. These answer exactly to the chemical 
 conditions which limit the study of the nutritive 
 functions, or the mechanical conditions which govern 
 the laws of gravitation in physics. But even here it 
 must be remembered that the value of these economic 
 laws depends on the truth of the physical premises. 
 The economist will be unable even to analyse the 
 formation of capital, or the results of labour, or the 
 conservation of wealth, unless he have the requisite 
 knowledge of physics, of vegetable, of animal life. 
 Directly the data of the study become affected by 
 moral conditions, the conclusions of the economist as 
 such cease to be scientific laws, and are only hypo- 
 theses. Whether these hypotheses approach reality, 
 whether they can be of the slightest use, can only be 
 determined by a systematic study of the moral condi- 
 tions. That is to say, the test of the rationality of 
 these speculations is that they be relative to social 
 science. They may be carried on independently to 
 any extent which this science may require, but they 
 can only be carried on reasonably under its constant 
 guidance. It must be done, as Aristotle would say, <5s 
 >} TroAiTuay Troirycrete KOL TroAiriKws. It is legitimate in the
 
 hands of the social philosopher for the purposes of 
 social science. 
 
 Under these conditions it is of great importance 
 that these speculations should be produced. But 
 being hypotheses, they are of no practical application. 
 To pass from true abstract laws of society to practical 
 injunctions is the most arduous task of the intellect. 
 To pass to them from limited hypotheses would be 
 raving madness. Every science uses such abstract 
 fictions with advantage ; but it never applies them to 
 practice. A physiologist might find it desirable to 
 consider the body from the stomachic point of view ; 
 to throw aside all organs but one, and to conceive the 
 human frame as a simple belly. But his labours 
 would have little practical use except to a community 
 of Amoebae. In early stages of a science these 
 fictions are wonderfully suggestive, as were the cir- 
 cular hypotheses of planetary movements, and the 
 historical cycles of Vico. In the maturity of a 
 science they are powerful instruments of reasoning, 
 as the hypotheses of variation in the theory of develop- 
 ment. But until the other branches of the science 
 are similarly advanced, and the rest of the conditions 
 equally understood, their value is altogether doubtful. 
 To pursue them by themselves is mere waste of time ; 
 to systematise them apart is pedantry ; to promul- 
 gate them as realities is a crime. The business of 
 the specialist is with facts, not with hypotheses. If 
 he thinks that good can come from the crude regis- 
 tration of phenomena, from practising imaginary 
 calculations on fragmentary data, let him be careful 
 that no man look on these undigested tables as true 
 generalisations ; that society be not poisoned by 
 mistaking his idle hypotheses for absolute laws. 
 
 There is another condition which it is essential to 
 remember. The higher the nature of the subject, the
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 295 
 
 more complex it is. The facts of society are, there- 
 fore, more closely interwoven and dependent on each 
 other than any other facts. The abstractions which 
 are easy in astronomy are less so in chemistry ; they 
 become difficult in biology ; they are often impossible 
 in sociology. The ramifications of society are more 
 intricate by far than those of the body, the multi- 
 plicity more wondrous, the balance of functions more 
 delicate. Strange as is the harmony of the physical 
 organism throughout every organ and system down to 
 the microscopic cell or nerve-fibremaking all one 
 life it is nothing to the unity of the social organism 
 in its infinity, its sympathy, its variety ; wherein 
 each individual soul, each individual fibre of each 
 soul, takes and gives its share in the common being. 
 
 There is a second consequence. The more com- 
 plex are the phenomena the more they are modifiable. 
 And of all, the most modifiable are the social. The 
 variations of society in the past seem infinite. They 
 are no less infinite in the future. There is no institu- 
 tution and no instinct which has not varied vastly in 
 influence, in form, and in relative importance. Every 
 variation in each institution and in each instinct tells 
 upon the whole society. Each variation of the whole 
 society tells upon each institution, and each instinct. 
 The possible combinations are simply infinite. When, 
 therefore, we isolate for study one institution or one 
 instinct, or a set of institutions and instincts, in the 
 midst of this complex variable whole, we are dealing 
 with one combination where the possible combinations 
 are countless ; we are working out problems with the 
 knowledge of a perturbation in our subject, where the 
 perturbations are known to be infinite in number and 
 in force. So a worm might study the influence of 
 climate on vegetation ! 
 
 Now it is this amazing interdependence of the
 
 296 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 social forces on each other, and their no less amazing 
 capacity for adaptation, which the popular conception 
 of Political Economy most completely misconceives. 
 Amidst forces and conditions infinite, the effect of one 
 on the whole is never paramount. Each force may 
 be stimulated, neutralised, modified to an indefinite 
 extent. Very similar results may follow from very 
 different conditions. Almost similar conditions may 
 lead to widely different results. The thing has been 
 done constantly in politics. In this age, the satur- 
 nalia of specialists, pedants are continually giving us 
 theories of the effect of this or that institution, and 
 show how the welfare of nations depends on a repre- 
 sentative chamber or a free press or adult suffrage. 
 We are getting to feel that the welfare of nations 
 depends on a healthy social system which is the sum 
 of a multitude of moral and social forces. We have 
 yet to learn that the wealth of nations itself depends 
 on a similar aggregate. 
 
 It might be possible and useful (in reason) to work 
 out a theory of several special instincts. The de- 
 structive instinct has been in some ages more entirely 
 universal, more dominant, and more independent per- 
 haps, than any other. There have been ages when a 
 man might possibly have thought that the business of 
 Destruction was so nearly identical with human activity, 
 and the instinct of Destruction so far paramount, that 
 no other was worth considering. We can imagine a 
 science of Destruction, or the laws by which men did, 
 do, and must destroy each other, based on the assump- 
 tion that man acts exclusively on the destructive 
 instinct. This science, its laws and its postulates, 
 would have been more real in early Rome or at least 
 in modern Dahomey, than the science of Production 
 on the postulate of the selfish instinct is now in 
 Europe. The obvious objection to such speculations
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 297 
 
 would be that man had so many other capacities and 
 instincts besides those of destruction, and that again 
 destruction itself called out so many other capacities 
 and instincts beside the destructive, and that all these 
 so crossed and modified each other, and made up one 
 human life, depending on one human character, that 
 the speculation was utterly chimerical, not to say 
 demoralising. Production is far more reasonable than 
 Destruction, and the desire of getting material comfort 
 is, perhaps, superior to that of destroying one's fellows; 
 but the scientific error of singling these out of human 
 life and motives is almost as great, and only less debasing. 
 Mr. Mill protests against economists being made 
 liable for the belief that the facts of production are not 
 in human control. No man certainly could think of 
 suggesting that he was liable to the charge he, to 
 whom England largely owes the true conception of 
 sbcial laws. To Mr. Mill we owe the knowledge 
 that the facts of society are more modifiable than any 
 other, and are so precisely in the degree in which we 
 know their laws. Nor in any line of his writing is 
 this truth forgotten. But it may fairly be asked if 
 economists as a body adopt this view ; if any one of 
 them conceives it as constantly and fully as he does. 
 Unquestionably this is not the notion of the public. 
 In newspapers, pamphlets, parliament, and conversa- 
 tion, it is repeated continually in a confused and 
 uncertain form, that the facts of production and 
 accumulation are beyond human control. It is not 
 meant by this to point to the limiting conditions of 
 all production, but the special modes of distribution. 
 Let these ignorant workmen be told, we often hear, 
 that wages and profits depend on immutable laws, and 
 cannot be varied at the will of employer or em- 
 ployed. Wages, profits, population, consumption, and 
 accumulation, every branch of economy in turn, is
 
 298 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 treated by the public as if fixed by nature in permanent 
 proportions. 
 
 Within their own vast limits they are variable to 
 any extent. Change the ideas, the moral tone, the 
 habits, and all is changed. Yet this degrading 
 fatalism (as false and as deadening as Calvinism itself) 
 is seized by a materialist generation as an excuse for 
 giving free scope to its greed, just as it is seized by 
 orientals as an excuse for indulging their sloth. It 
 may be that Economists as a body have never propa- 
 gated this monstrous paradox ; but some of them 
 distinctly have fallen into it, and as a body they have 
 stood by and have never raised their voices against 
 this general perversion of their teaching. If they 
 have not taught it, they have countenanced it by 
 silence. Their teaching gave birth to this delusion j 
 it was theirs to dispel it. None of them have done so 
 but Mr. Mill and some of his followers, and that 
 because they are not mere Economists. 
 
 It may fairly be asked if the fact of an elaborate 
 system of economic laws, based on partial data, is not 
 itself a proof that whatever they professed, the econo- 
 mists believed very little in the voluntary modifiability 
 of society. What is the use of a vast body of general- 
 isations based on a special set of conditions, where the 
 conditions may vary indefinitely ? The number of 
 such possible bodies of laws is infinite. There may 
 be a million systems of Political Economy besides the 
 one we have got, all just as true if we allow their 
 data. What is the use of one more than another, 
 unless we suppose some one of the sets of conditions 
 permanent ? The actual economic laws are certainly 
 not true now, never can be true, and in the progress 
 of civilisation may become less and less true indefinitely. 
 Let it be supposed, however, that they bear some 
 relation to an actual state of society. But what if
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 299 
 
 the actual state of society changes, what is the good 
 of them then ? We should want another set in rela- 
 tion to that change, and so on. Every social system 
 might have its own economic laws. 
 
 The Socialists, the Communists, the Mormons, 
 nay, the cannibals, not to speak of every social system 
 in history and throughout the world, might have its 
 own economic laws. The Economists have absolutely 
 no scientific answer to Communism. They take one 
 special instinct ; Communism takes another. Every 
 social state that ever existed, or that could exist (and 
 they are infinite), might have its own economic laws 
 appropriate to its conditions. In a religious fraternity 
 the postulate would be the love of God, and the only 
 Competition would be to get the least wages and the 
 least profits. What, then, is the use of an elaborate 
 body of deductions, until we have agreed on the 
 conditions from which they follow ? These deduc- 
 tions, that is to say, the economic principles, do not 
 directly affect the conditions that is to say, the social 
 state ; but it directly affects them. When we have 
 got the social state we want, or at least conceive it as 
 a whole, then we can build up useful deductions from 
 it. To build the deductions on any conditions is to 
 assume them more or less permanent. Yet all reason- 
 able social inquiry now proceeds on the ground that the 
 social state requires much improvement. That which 
 can improve it must be something which affects the 
 social state, and this Economic deductions do not, or 
 do most superficially. Political Economy, therefore, 
 as an elaborate body of practical principles, rests on 
 the assumption that the social state is practically not 
 capable of improvement. Directly it is improved, 
 new Economic principles will be needed. 
 
 A school of thinkers, with an entire literature, and 
 vast social and political influence like that of the
 
 3 oo NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Political Economists, must be held responsible for the 
 social and popular results of their teaching. A body 
 of political writers who undertook to systematise the 
 laws of government on the assumption that men crave 
 only for place and power, and who rigidly excluded 
 from their view questions of religion, education, 
 morality, society, and industry who confined their 
 views to the Georgian period of the British constitu- 
 tion, and neglected all history, and all the rest of 
 mankind might construct a science of the British 
 Constitution, and a number of hypothetical laws of 
 politics, including the laws of rotten boroughs, of 
 bribery, patronage, and place-hunting ; they might 
 give us calculations of the bribes that must be given 
 and the jobs which must be perpetrated (hypothetically), 
 and how a seat in parliament depended on the number 
 of voters to be purchased compared with the length of 
 the candidate's purse. But such men could hardly 
 complain if they were accused of lowering rather than 
 elevating political morality, of systematising corruption, 
 and reducing venality to a science. It is in social 
 and moral affairs that this partial method of inquiry is 
 so frightfully dangerous. Moral systems on narrow 
 bases have constantly depraved an entire generation. 
 
 We know the disastrous effects which moral 
 theories of the supremacy of the selfish instincts have 
 at times exercised on society. Yet Political Economy 
 has, as its postulate, not the predominance merely, 
 but the exclusive supremacy, of one of the selfish 
 instincts. There was once a very remarkable instance. 
 One of the acutest of men, Machiavelli, studying one 
 of the corruptest of human societies, once conceived 
 the idea of reducing politics to a system, on the 
 assumption that men simply acted for their own 
 interests (the very assumption of the economists). He 
 drew up a wonderful body of generalisations closely
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 301 
 
 related to the special society and logically true to his 
 special assumption. His "Prince" is a sort of Bible 
 of Political Vice. It was not really true to his facts, 
 nor was his assumption literally true, or Italy would 
 have realised its poet's " Inferno." But it was 
 sufficiently true to exercise a frightful effect on his 
 contemporaries. Nor has it availed him and his 
 apologists to insist that his theories entirely rested on 
 an hypothesis which he did nothing to recommend ; 
 that the assumption was fairly near the truth where 
 he wrote ; that he was only a political thinker 
 analysing the phenomena of society. It has not 
 availed to save a man of many noble principles, a 
 martyr to his faith, from being a by-word for cynical 
 wickedness. The social body, even less than the 
 physical, cannot bear those crucial experiments of 
 scientific inquirers. 
 
 IV 
 
 We may now sum up the various conditions which 
 limit the study of the facts of Production. The first 
 and the radical condition is that it be simply a branch 
 of a general system of society. As worked out by a 
 master of the social laws by men like Hume, Adam 
 Smith, and Mr. Mill the study is of great value. 
 But even then it will be marred by the failings and 
 the errors of the social theories of which it is a part. 
 It cannot be more real or more useful than they are. 
 Secondly, that portion of its doctrines which depends 
 not on human motives but material conditions (the 
 laws which govern the production of a soap bubble 
 as much as a steamship) may be taken to be true 
 really and always, so far as the material data are 
 scientifically right. All that portion into which 
 human motives enter is real only so far as the whole
 
 3 02 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 range of motives is studied j and inasmuch as the 
 whole body of other human acts is omitted, is real 
 only relatively to them. In this portion, the bulk of 
 ordinary economy, there is but one rational predicate 
 "/V." But such words as "Ought" "must," 
 " will be" never can appear in its formulae. Thirdly, 
 its doctrines are purely provisional and ephemeral. 
 Its data being the forms of our immediate civilisation, 
 it has no bearing beyond it. It has no historical 
 truth, and therefore no future value. It had no 
 meaning in the thirteenth century ; and may have 
 none in the twentieth. Fourthly, the application of 
 these formulae to life, from the fact that it neglects 
 time and in most relations of life time is all-im- 
 portant and from the extreme complication of the 
 subject, is of all intellectual tasks the most difficult 
 and hazardous. To navigate an ocean with a know- 
 ledge of one wind or one current alone is nothing to 
 it. It may lure a nation to ruin, and demoralise it in 
 the process. 
 
 It being understood that these generalisations never 
 have absolute truth, and rarely practical value, we may 
 add some tests that these limits are observed. The 
 more systematic and complete are the social principles 
 on which they rest, the more valuable and sound will 
 be the economic deductions. They grow less and 
 less so, the less this subordination is recognised. The 
 more the economic generalisations are correct historic- 
 ally, the more likely it is that they conform to human 
 nature. What is true of all societies and times, is 
 probably true altogether. The more the special 
 economic facts are independent of general institutions 
 and habits, the more easy they are to be isolated and 
 calculated. The more they depend on special motives, 
 the more accurate will be the analysis. The more 
 temporary the human relation or effort they involve,
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 303 
 
 the easier they are to explain. The more they depend 
 on special and highly artificial processes, the more 
 independent and accurate the laws. Prices in market 
 overt, currency, bills of exchange, monetary practices, 
 insurance, restrictions on trade, taxation, form subjects 
 more or less capable of accurate generalisation and 
 very valuable principles. Man as a responsible moral 
 being, human life as a whole, is less directly affected. 
 But wages, profits, accumulation, consumption, popu- 
 lation, poor-laws, land-systems, partnership, tenancy, 
 trade-unions, co-operation, these are things which 
 involve the great human instincts, wants, and institu- 
 tions ; and they are for the most part beyond the 
 reach of a mere economist. He can deal with the 
 shell, not with the kernel of life, for of permanent 
 human relations and forces he knows nothing. But 
 what does this list of tests show but this ? that with 
 the trivial forms of existence Economy can do some- 
 thing ; with the greater, nothing that it can only 
 deal with these as it widens into Social Philosophy. 
 
 No doubt the bulk of the ordinary economists have 
 a sort of social philosophy, a general theory of society. 
 But it is one which they very loosely conceive ; and 
 would be quite unable to prove. It is certainly one 
 which the public who follow them, in its naked form 
 most sternly reject. Most of them are more or less 
 conscious adherents of that perverse phase of 
 Benthamism which places the roots of morality in 
 the selfish instincts, and the basis of society on absolute 
 non-interference. With the moral doctrine of self- 
 interest and the political doctrine of laissez-fairf 
 (vaguely understood) the pure statistician thinks him- 
 self prepared for investigating production. 
 
 But the authors of these principles were not 
 specialists. Their theories of self-interest and in- 
 dividualism were based on systematic education, on
 
 304 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 thorough moral training, on entire social reconstruc- 
 tion. To leave all these to take care of themselves is 
 to seize on the mischievous side of their doctrines 
 alone. To Bentham self-interest meant a very culti- 
 vated sense of duty ; to the economist it means a gross 
 personal appetite. He said, Let government cease to 
 force, so that men may be educated to justice. The 
 economist protests against interference, so that the 
 instinct of gain be unchecked. If his general principles 
 are right, they remain to be proved. That they be 
 true, that they be complete, that they be systematic, 
 is all essential. They are what physiology is to the 
 physician, what a creed is to the priest. If these 
 moral and social problems yet await a decision, they 
 must be judged in themselves, not insinuated in a 
 body of practical rules of life. In the meantime it is 
 intolerable that in the innocent form of a scheme for in- 
 creasing our comfort, society should be saturated with 
 principles which philosophy condemns as radically false, 
 and the moral sense rejects as profoundly degrading. 
 
 Is it that no social philosophy is needed ? Is it that 
 we need only to know how to produce more not how to 
 produce in a more human way ? Does industry need 
 no correcting, purifying, guiding? Are there not 
 things in it which make feeble souls look on material 
 progress as a curse ? Are there not quarters in our 
 big cities where two children die in place of one 
 twenty thousand, where ten thousand might have 
 been saved ; where sucking infants are drugged with 
 opium, and farmed at nurse by a hag by the score ; 
 where amidst arsenic and brimstone fumes the jaws 
 fall out, the bones rot off, lungs choke, and youths 
 and girls die faster than in Mississippian swamp ? 
 Are there no " works " reeking with cruel blots, 
 where toil is endless, foul, and crushing, where the 
 rich man's luxuries are elaborated by disease and
 
 LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 305 
 
 death, where unsexed men and women live the lives 
 of swine, where children are worn, maimed, poisoned 
 as in a "limbus infantium," stunted in soul and 
 limb, polluted and polluting r Are there not trades 
 where the safeguards against death are forbidden, that 
 lives may fall and wages rise ? Are not each year 
 one thousand lives lost in coal mines, "chiefly from 
 preventible causes " ? Are there not our million or 
 so of paupers whom neglect leaves sometimes to fester 
 to death, sometimes to die in parturition. Are there 
 not gangs of women and children driven from farm to 
 farm by an actual slave-driver ? Is there not our rural 
 labourer, the portent of England, without hope or 
 energy ; plodding wearily through life like his ox ? 
 
 And where such abominations are not, is there not 
 amidst the healthier forms of labour a deep class feud, 
 and spirit of strife, sweeping across our modern 
 industry, as the plagues and famines of the later 
 middle ages swept over Europe, gigantic outrages 
 and strikes, shaking the fabric of society, and threaten- 
 ing its very institutions ; on the one side a wild sense 
 of wrong, on the other a raging desire to be rich ? 
 These are the evils we see, and for which we need a 
 remedy j evils of moral, social kinds, coming out of 
 rotten systems of life and ungovernable passions. 
 And they tell us that the cure is to be found in a 
 knowledge of Political Economy in the study of 
 hypothetical laws^ which would be true if all men 
 followed their selfish instincts. 
 
 We need indeed a social philosophy. If one 
 instinct can be reduced to a method, others can. If 
 one form of activity can be systematised, all the forms 
 and life itself can. Where are the laws of Production 
 on the hypothesis of Duty ? Where are the principles 
 of morality and sociality : of good-feeling, of equity, 
 of protection, of good faith, of self-denial, as applied
 
 3 o6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 to Industry ? Where is the science of popular educa- 
 tion ? If there be a science of the Acquisitive 
 instinct, we need one much more of the Protecting 
 instinct. If these have not been done, it is because 
 so great a part of modern intellect and study has been 
 absorbed in analysing one phase of life and one instinct 
 of the soul a phase the most obvious to specialise, an 
 instinct the most dangerous to isolate.
 
 II 
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 
 
 (1865) 
 
 The following is part of an article published in the second 
 volume of the Fortnightly Review under the editorship 
 of Mr. George H. Lewes. 
 
 After the great lock-out in the Building Trades of 
 1862, the writer had been in close relations with the 
 secretaries and committees of the chief Unions. He had also 
 often visited the Unions at Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, 
 Halifax, Rochdale, Sheffield, and Nottingham. During 
 the Cotton Famine, together with the late Sir Godfrey 
 Lushington, he conducted a personal inquiry into the 
 condition of the Lancashire operatives' 1 societies of all 
 kinds. He had also written much in the Bee Hive, and 
 other workmen's organs, and afterwards in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 Although this sketch of Trades- Unionism is now more 
 than forty years old, as it was founded on personal 
 knowledge of the societies and on intimacy with many of 
 their managers, there is no reason to change, or even to 
 qualify, the principles here insisted upon principles which 
 the whole evidence laid before the Trades Union Commission 
 of 1867-9 amply justified and which have since been 
 adopted by the legislature (1908). 
 
 OF the features of our industrial system, none is more 
 307
 
 308 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 important to study than that most significant fact the 
 institution, growth, and power of Trades-Unionism. 
 It is in reality the practical solution of all labour 
 questions, to which the labouring classes cling. Right 
 or wrong, it is their panacea. It is in many ways by 
 far the most powerful element of our industrial system 
 that has been yet organised into an institution. It 
 thus goes to the very root of the most vital movements 
 of society. It is not too much to say that the whole 
 political, practical, and organising energies of the 
 working class are now thrown into it. If reform bills 
 languish, and agitation lingers to awake, it is because 
 they are absorbed in industrial rather than political 
 leagues. No one can suppose that the existing dead 
 calm and indecision in the political sphere really 
 represents the practical instinct and energy of English- 
 men. It is not so. Our real public movements and 
 struggles are industrial. In them powers of will and 
 sympathy are being exerted as keen as ever thrilled 
 in our hottest political convulsions. Of this move- 
 ment the heart and centre the club-life the 
 associative, initiative, and reserve force, is Unionism 
 a force, on the whole, of which the public 
 should know the whole truth and nothing but the 
 truth. 
 
 I. The first thing is to recognise the extent and 
 importance of the movement itself. For all general 
 purposes the unions can count upon the support and 
 contributions of at least an equal number of the work- 
 men who are not regular members of the society. 
 Their "war-footing," it may be said, is about double 
 that of their peace establishment. For all practical 
 purposes, therefore, the unions may be taken to 
 represent the available strength of the whole skilled 
 body of artisans. Nor are these recent or precarious
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 309 
 
 associations. Most of them have steadily increased 
 in numbers, income, and extent for the last ten or 
 fifteen years. Trades in which the most obstinate 
 struggles have taken place the engineers, the colliers, 
 the cotton-spinners, the building trades still show the 
 unions far larger and more flourishing than before. 
 Any one who will take the trouble to collect and 
 examine the latest trade circulars of the principal 
 societies will see the record of their progress. Increased 
 numbers, wider area, and larger funds are shown from 
 year to year. Everywhere organisation, consolida- 
 tion, and regularity extend. Englishmen, who never 
 mistake the signs of commercial success, can hardly 
 fail to see that there must be something at bottom to 
 make these live ; and men who know how to estimate 
 political forces will recognise the strength of an 
 institution that has an organisation to which no 
 political association in the kingdom can distantly 
 aspire. 
 
 In the face of facts like these, it does seem strange 
 that sensible men, and even sensible employers, should 
 continue to talk of unions as nests of misery, folly, 
 and ruin. Men who have to deal with these powerful 
 associations themselves can bring themselves to speak 
 of them as "cancers to be cut out," as "diseases," and 
 " madness " to be cured, and even suggest an Act of 
 Parliament to suppress all associations whatever. It is 
 like the Vatican raving at newspapers and railways. 
 Such an Act of Parliament would be simply a social re- 
 volution. It would be as easy to eradicate the " cancer " 
 of unionism as it would to eradicate the " cancer " of 
 public meetings, or the " disease " of a free press. 
 The fact that the flower of our artisan population are 
 staunch unionists, does not prove that unions are bene- 
 ficial. But it would be more reasonable if the public, 
 and certainly if employers, would think it proved them
 
 310 
 
 to be not quite pestilent and suicidal. They are, from 
 the mere fact of their importance, entitled to respect. 
 No rational man can think that the working men of 
 this country are likely to be found year after year 
 more and more devoted to any system, if it were no 
 less ruinous to themselves than vicious in principle. 
 Unionism, right or wrong, is the grand movement in 
 which the working classes have their heart. Men of 
 sense will recognise this fact, and deal with it accord- 
 ingly. It is the prevalence of misjudgments like 
 these which make these trade struggles so obstinate ; 
 and perhaps it is that which makes them so common. 
 There is a still worse form of misconception prevalent, 
 which amounts sometimes to personal calumny. It is 
 still the fashion to repeat that unions and strikes are 
 uniformly the work of interested agitators. These 
 men, in the stereotyped phrase, are supposed to drive 
 their misguided victims like sheep. We hear from 
 time to time employers giving us this account of the 
 matter in apparent good faith ; just as the Austrians 
 always thought the Italian movement was the work 
 of Mazzini. Now if there is one feature of unionism 
 which is more singular than another it is the scrupulous 
 care with which it maintains the principles of demo- 
 cratic and representative government. It would be 
 difficult to find a single trade society in England in 
 which any official or any board of managers could 
 take any important step, or, what is the same thing, 
 deal with the common funds without a regular written 
 vote from their constituents. Those who talk of the 
 action of a trade-union as if it were a body of Car- 
 bonari, must be entirely ignorant of the elaborate 
 machinery by which a union is worked. Before any 
 important step, much less before a general strike is 
 determined on, regular voting papers are sent round 
 to every member of the society ; the step is discussed
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 31 1 
 
 night after night in every separate lodge ; if the 
 subject requires it, delegates are chosen from each 
 lodge ; conferences are constantly held, often followed 
 by fresh appeals to the constituencies ; the discussions 
 often last six months, and are practically public ; the 
 result is at length ascertained by a simple comparison 
 of votes, and is often one which the secretaries and 
 managers have no means whatever of influencing or 
 even foreseeing. 
 
 In fact the vote on an important question of one 
 of the large amalgamated societies scattered over the 
 country, the separate lodges of which discuss the subject 
 under very different conditions, and the body of which 
 the secretaries have no means whatever of addressing or 
 meeting, is the purest type of democratic representation 
 of opinion. The subject is one which usually touches 
 each voter, his comfort, his family, and his future, in 
 the most vital manner ; it relates to matters with 
 which he is perfectly familiar j he is not accessible to 
 personal appeal, nor, except in a very small degree, to 
 written addresses from any central authority ; it is one 
 which he has to discuss with a small number of his 
 fellows, and on which he has to vote with a very large 
 number, but without communication ; the ordinary 
 machinery of canvassing, excitement, and party 
 agitation is simply impossible ; and the result is one 
 which it is out of the question to predict. It is a 
 species of pure democratic united with true repre- 
 sentative government. The members individually 
 vote as in an ancient republic, but generally with 
 the assistance and counsel of special representative 
 assemblies, and invariably in separate and independent 
 groups. If any system ever yet devised makes a 
 dictator or a demagogue impossible it is this. Its 
 great defect is its cumbrousness and want of con- 
 centration. But of all others it is the way to bring
 
 312 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 out the deliberate opinion of every individual member. 
 It is this not infatuation which makes a deliberate 
 strike so obstinate. There is no political institution 
 in this country which carries self-government to 
 anything like the same pitch. And, what should 
 not be forgotten, it is a system which has already 
 given the whole class a very high degree of political 
 education. 
 
 As to the managers of these associations they are 
 invariably elected periodically by the same general 
 suffrage. They are almost invariably simple members 
 of the body themselves, and their salaries scarcely 
 exceed their ordinary wages. So far as the personal 
 knowledge of the writer goes (and it is not incon- 
 siderable), they are usually honest, sensible men of 
 business, sometimes strikingly deficient in the art of 
 expression, and the powers of party agitators. The 
 men who direct a strike have usually been at their 
 work until its commencement, and would usually 
 return to it at its close, were it not that they are too 
 often chased out of their trade by all the employers 
 in concert. 
 
 The present writer, who has for years known inti- 
 mately the managers of very many societies, cannot 
 refrain from bearing his witness that amongst them 
 are to be found men as upright, enlightened, and 
 honourable as any in the community ; that the influ- 
 ence they possess is almost always the result of tried 
 ability and character ; and the instances of such men 
 living out of their followers' necessities are extremely 
 rare. For the most part they go through hard clerks' 
 routine of accounts and reports, under a good deal of 
 persecution from the employers, and are not seldom 
 the most conservative and peaceful counsellors in 
 the whole society. The union is frequently able to 
 suppress the tendency to indiscriminate strikes. It is,
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 313 
 
 indeed, notorious that the faults into which the leaders 
 of the established unions are apt to fall are routine and 
 excess of caution. I have myself seen a circular issued 
 by the council of an amalgamated society to warn the 
 members against the disposition to strike for which a 
 sudden improvement of trade had given great facilities. 
 The larger and more established the unions become, 
 the fewer causes of struggle arise. And there would 
 be no greater security for the employer and the public 
 than that the societies should be stronger, and their 
 leaders more trusted. 
 
 II. Next to the character of these societies and 
 their leaders being fairly judged, it is very desirable 
 that the truth be ascertained as to the success or non- 
 success of strikes. It used to be frequently said, and 
 it has been repeated occasionally by employers, that 
 strikes never succeed. It is only the other day that 
 the newspapers informed us of a very important strike 
 which did result in a great increase of wages. The 
 carpenters of London, a body numbering from 10,000 
 to 15,000, the majority of whom are in union, 
 demanded, and after a strike of some weeks, defeating 
 a threatened lock-out, succeeded in obtaining, an 
 advance of wages of about 10 per cent. This advance 
 is now being given to the other building trades, and 
 will soon be general. No one doubts that this rise is 
 permanent, and will never be reduced. There is here 
 an undoubted instance of a body numbering nearly 
 40,000 men obtaining a large and permanent rise of 
 wages by means of a strike. How this is economically 
 possible had better be answered by those economists 
 who first invent industrial laws, and then invent facts 
 to fit them. 
 
 The statement, indeed,- is so contrary to the 
 experience of every one who has been able to look at
 
 314 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the question from an independent point, and over a 
 wide area, that there is overwhelming proof that it is 
 entirely erroneous. Any one who will search the files 
 of a working-class organ will find accurate reports of 
 countless successful strikes over every part of England. 
 The present writer has in his possession a list of the 
 successful strikes for one single trade in one year. 
 This list contains more than eighty instances in which 
 one union in that period had by actual or threatened 
 strikes obtained increased wages, or, what is the same 
 thing, shorter hours. 
 
 The sums which are absurdly calculated as " lost " 
 in a strike are usually not lost at all, but only retained. 
 No doubt, in every prolonged strike a good deal is 
 lost, but it is chiefly in interest upon fixed capital. 
 To calculate all the sums which might have been 
 spent in wages as " lost " or " wasted " is simply 
 puerile. The wages fund, in the language of econo- 
 mists, is the sum which the capitalist devotes to the 
 payment of wages ; and since in a general strike or 
 lock-out the owners of vast and costly factories cannot 
 employ the fund (except temporarily) in any other 
 way, and their customers have to wait for their goods, 
 sooner or later the wages fund, or most of it, is paid 
 to the workmen in the trade. Whether it conies to 
 them regularly or spasmodically signifies a great deal 
 to the well-being of the recipients ; but in the long 
 run they get the gross sum, though somewhat dis- 
 counted. General and even partial strikes are usually 
 preceded and succeeded by extra production and 
 labour, which nearly equalise the rate for the whole 
 period. Very many lock-outs are simply a mode of 
 stopping production during a stagnant state of trade, 
 and are occasionally only a device of some of the more 
 powerful employers to force their own body to cease 
 production, whilst they are waiting or manoeuvring
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 315 
 
 for a rise of price. During a strike both masters and 
 men reduce all expenditure to a minimum, which by 
 itself is an obvious saving. And there are many 
 strikes and lock-outs in which the actual loss from 
 various causes is a trifle, or where it would be inevit- 
 able from other causes. But in any case, to calculate 
 the deferred expenditure of wages as "loss" is a 
 sophistical use of terms. The employer in a strike 
 suffers the loss of interest on fixed capital, and of his 
 profit (a loss which is often from other reasons inevit- 
 able) ; the workman suffers a loss of comfort which 
 is often compensated by the discipline it enforces. 
 The real loss is the loss of common interest and good 
 feeling ; but the supposed loss of wages rests generally 
 on a mere juggle of words. 
 
 A careful investigation of the subject in such 
 records as are constantly published, totally dispels the 
 prevalent idea that unions and strikes have no object 
 but that of raising wages, and in that object they in- 
 variably meet a " miserable monotony of defeat." 
 
 Strikes, of course, frequently fail. But a careful 
 comparison will show the following results : 
 
 1. Strikes to obtain a rise of wages or a reduction 
 of hours usually succeed. 
 
 2. Strikes to resist a reduction of wages usually 
 fail. 
 
 3. Strikes to enforce trade rules or to suppress 
 objectionable practices usually fail in appearance and 
 succeed in reality. 
 
 4. Lock-outs to crush unions invariably fail. 
 
 III. After that of general protection against abuses 
 and against overtime, one of the chief and the most 
 useful functions of Unionism is to resist the tendency 
 to continual fluctuations in wages. At first sight 
 nothing seems more natural than that wages should
 
 316 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 vary with the price of the product. The principal 
 objection, however, against the sliding scale of wages 
 and prices is that it associates the workmen directly 
 with the gambling vicissitudes of the market. To do 
 this is to destroy one of the benefits of civilisation and 
 the social justification of large capitals. It is of vital 
 interest to society that the actual labourer should have 
 a regular and not a fluctuating means of subsistence. 
 As he can save but little, he has no reserve to stand 
 sudden changes j and sudden loss or stoppage of his 
 wages means moral and physical degradation to him. 
 He has not the education or the means of foreseeing, 
 much less of providing against, the wider influences 
 of the market. The great gains and the great losses 
 naturally should fall to the share of the capitalist 
 alone. 
 
 He and his order can act on the state of the market, 
 and are bound to watch and know its movements. 
 Society is bound to protect them only on condition 
 that they perform this function satisfactorily. But to 
 let every little vicissitude of the market fall directly on 
 the mere labourer, who knows nothing about it, and 
 cannot affect it if he did, is simple barbarism. In 
 such a state of things the capitalist abdicates his real 
 post and becomes a mere job-master or ganger. He 
 associates his helpless workmen in every speculative 
 adventure. He leaves them to bear the effects of a 
 glut which his recklessness may have caused, or of a 
 foreign war which his prudence might have foreseen. 
 Every fall in the price of wares, fluctuating as this is 
 from a complication of accidents, mulcts the labourer 
 suddenly of ten, twelve, or fifteen per cent of his 
 living. How many middle-class families could stand 
 this every quarter ? To the labourer, who has rio 
 reserve, no credit, and no funded income, and who by 
 the necessity of the case lives from week to week and
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 317 
 
 from hand to mouth, it means the sacrifice of his 
 comforts, of his children's education, of his honest 
 efforts. There was truth, though it may be not very 
 fully expressed, in the words of the old puddler at the 
 recent conference : " He knew no reason why work- 
 ing men's wages were to be pulled to pieces to suit 
 the foreign markets." Capital, in fact, would become 
 a social nuisance if it could only make the labourer a 
 blind co-speculator in its adventures. 
 
 It is far from the writer's meaning to deny that 
 wages must in the long run be accommodated to 
 profits. From year to year, or over longer periods, 
 wages will gradually find their level. But it is a 
 totally different thing that they should fluctuate with 
 all the erratic movements incident to every market 
 price-list. A merchant will not give to his accountants 
 more than the average salaries of his business. He 
 does not, however, walk into his counting-house, and 
 tell his clerks that, having lost a ship which he forgot 
 to insure, he reduces their salaries ten per cent. The 
 wages of all the superior trades are, or might be, 
 nearly stationary for long periods together. The 
 engineers, who form a branch of the iron trade, 
 subject to amazing fluctuations, have been paid at 
 the same rates now invariably for more than ten years. 
 So till the rise of the last few months had the London 
 builders. Of course the men, to do this, must have 
 foregone every temporary or partial rise. For their 
 true good these sudden advances in wages do them 
 more real harm even than sudden reduction. Acting 
 on this principle the trades just mentioned, and most 
 of the leading trades, have maintained an unvarying 
 rate of wages, as well as suppressed those spasmodic 
 seasons of excessive production and sudden cessation 
 which form the glory of the race of industrial 
 conquerors. But to do this the workmen must
 
 318 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 have a union capable of putting them on an equality 
 with capital. 
 
 As it is this interference with what is called Free 
 Trade which is the main charge against Unionism, it 
 is important to examine this question in detail. It 
 is often asked why cannot the fifty shillings' worth 
 of puddling be bought in the same manner as fifty 
 shillings' worth of pig-iron ? Well, one thing is, 
 that the pig-iron can wait till next week or next 
 month. It is in no immediate hurry. But the fifty 
 shillings' worth of puddling cannot wait, even a few 
 days. The "human machine" in question is liable 
 to the fatal defect of dying. Nor is it in all the 
 relations of life that " each man is free to bargain for 
 himself." It is curious in how many sides of our 
 existence this liberty is curtailed. If one wants 
 ^1000 worth of horse, one can go to Tattersall's 
 and buy it without question. But if one wants 
 j^iooo worth of wife, there will be a good many 
 questions asked, and a good many people to consult. 
 The lady's relations even may wish to say something ; 
 there may be all sorts of stipulations, to say nothing 
 of settlements. A man cannot buy a place in a 
 partnership exactly in open market. He cannot go 
 to a physician or a lawyer or a priest and haggle 
 about the fee. 
 
 Wherever there are close or permanent human 
 relations, between one man and many, an under- 
 standing with all jointly is the regular course. Every 
 partnership of labour, all co-operation to effect any- 
 thing in common, involves this mutual agreement 
 between all. It is because employers fail to see that 
 manufacture is only the combined labour of many of 
 which they are the managers, that they regard the 
 whole concern, stock, plant, and " hands," as raw 
 material, to be bought and sold. The ironmaster
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 319 
 
 who buys pig-iron is not entering into permanent 
 relations with it, or even with its possessor. It 
 cannot work with him, obey him, trust him. The 
 " human machine," however, is a very surprising 
 engine. It has a multitude of wants, a variety of 
 feelings, and is capable of numerous human impulses 
 which are commonly called human nature. An iron- 
 master cannot buy in open market fifty shillings' 
 worth of puddling, because he does not want fifty 
 shillings' worth of puddling. It would be of no good 
 to him if he had it. He wants a man who will work, 
 not his fifty shillings' worth of puddling, but day by 
 day and year by year ; who will work when he is not 
 himself overlooking him ; who will work intelligently, 
 and not ruin his machinery and waste his stuff; who 
 will not cheat him, or rob him, or murder him ; who 
 will work as a chance hireling will not and cannot 
 work ; who will trust him to act fairly, and feel pride 
 in his work, and in the place. 
 
 If he cannot get men like these he knows that he 
 will be ruined and undersold by those who can. He 
 knows that fifty shillings' worth of black slave would 
 not help him, nor fifty shillings' worth of steam engine. 
 Do what he will, perfect machinery to a miracle, still 
 the manufacturer must ultimately depend on the co- 
 operation of human brains and hearts. No "human 
 machinery" will serve his end. Can a general in war 
 buy fifty shillings' worth of devoted soldiers ? Can 
 he make his bargain with each man of his army 
 separately ? They are too precious to be picked up 
 in a moment, and their efficiency lies in their union. 
 If the ironmaster had to go into the labour market 
 as often as he has to go into the iron market, and 
 haggle for every day's work as he does for every pig 
 and bar, he would be a dead or ruined man in a year. 
 He cannot buy puddling as he can buy pigs, because
 
 320 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in one word men are not pig-iron. Sentiment this, 
 perhaps, but a sentiment which cannot be conquered, 
 and produces stern facts. For the fifty shillings' 
 worth of puddling by long reflection has discovered 
 that to the making of iron goes the enduring, willing, 
 intelligent labour of many trained men ; that it is 
 work which is impossible without a permanent com- 
 bination of will and thought, but the produce of 
 which may be unfairly divided unless all act with a 
 spirit of mutual defence and protection. They see 
 their employers too often forgetting this, the under- 
 lying fact of all industry, and their answer is, 
 Unionism. Sentimental ! emotional economy ! but 
 a fact. When pigs and bars of iron exhibit a similar 
 phenomenon, an ironmaster will buy his fifty shillings' 
 worth of puddling as freely as he buys his pigs or his 
 bars, but not till then. 
 
 IV. It seems almost waste of time, in the face of 
 the prevalent tendency of working men to unite, to 
 argue that there is not the slightest necessity for it. 
 But the fact that without combination the capitalist 
 has a tremendous advantage over the labourer is so 
 important a matter in this discussion, that it may be 
 well to examine it further. Now this advantage arises 
 in at least three ways. In the first place, although 
 the workmen altogether are just as necessary to the 
 capitalist as he is to them, yet in a great factory each 
 separate workman is of infinitesimal necessity to the 
 proprietor, whilst he is of vital necessity to the work- 
 man. The employer of 1000 men can without incon- 
 venience at any moment dispense with one man or 
 even ten men. -The one man, however, if he has no 
 means or reserve to find other employment, must 
 submit on pain of destitution to himself and his 
 family. In the same way, if there were absolutely
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 321 
 
 no concert or communication between them, the 
 employer could easily deal with every one of his 
 thousand hands in succession, just as a giant could 
 destroy an army if he could get at each man separ- 
 ately. But the moment they agree to act together, 
 and to help each other in turn, the bargain is equal- 
 ised ; the need which each side has of the other is on 
 a par, and the power each has to hold its ground is 
 nearly equivalent. 
 
 In the second place, the kind of need which each 
 has of the other is very different. The capitalist 
 needs the labourer to make larger profits. A diminu- 
 tion of these, their total cessation, and positive loss, is 
 an evil ; but it is an evil which most capitalists can 
 very well sustain, and often experience, for years at a 
 time. A strike or a lock-out is a blow to a capitalist ; 
 but it is like a bad debt or a bad speculation, it 
 is an incident of his trade, allowed for and provided 
 against. But to the workman (who would not be a 
 workman if he had even a little capital) the stoppage 
 of wages, in the absence of any combination or fund, 
 means utter destruction, disease, death, and personal 
 degradation, eviction from his house and home, the 
 sale of his goods and belongings, the break-up of his 
 household, the humiliation of his wife, the ruin of his 
 children's bodies and minds. To the capitalist a trade 
 struggle is a blot in his balance-sheet. To the work- 
 man, if isolated and unaided^ it means every affliction 
 which the imagination can conceive. 
 
 Thirdly, this is a question in which time is all- 
 important. To the capitalist weeks or months at 
 most represent pecuniary loss. To the unaided 
 workman weeks often, to say nothing of months, are 
 simply starvation for himself and his family. Alone, 
 the working man must take his wages down on 
 Saturday night at a fearful discount. If he could 
 
 y
 
 322 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 wait for his money he would get them in full. The 
 Dorsetshire labourer, ignorant and hopeless, could get 
 double wages in a Northern county if he could get 
 there. He sometimes knows this ; but he will not 
 leave his wife and children to the death of the grave or 
 the workhouse. If all the labourers in England could 
 lie in bed for a month during harvest, they might get 
 any wages they liked to ask ; and a dozen of cham- 
 pagne all round. Wages questions are simply questions 
 of time, and capital means insurance against time. The 
 familiar and recognised analysis of labour and capital 
 comes only to this that capital forms the store by 
 which the workmen are supported until the joint 
 product can be utilised or exchanged ; wages are only 
 the portions of this store meted out periodically to the 
 workmen whilst they are uniting and labouring. By 
 the very essence of this arrangement the possessor of 
 this store (and in the abstract no man is the possessor 
 of it except by the free will of the rest) can wait his 
 own time. The recipients of it cannot. To any one 
 who follows out all these considerations, it may well 
 seem simple pedantry to accumulate arguments to 
 show that the capitalist and the individual workman 
 are on equal terms. It is obvious to the daily ex- 
 perience of all mankind that they are not ; and all the 
 reasoning in the world cannot make them to be so. 
 
 There remains, of course, to be noticed the com- 
 petition of the employers. This is the sole reply of 
 the other side to all the reasons just mentioned. No 
 doubt the influence of this competition is very great 
 without it the workmen would be (what they 
 occasionally are) at the mercy of the capitalists. But 
 the question is, whether its influence is so great as to 
 counterbalance all else on the other side,, and establish 
 an equality. Now this competition of the employers 
 for the workmen is subject to two very important
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 323 
 
 qualifications. The first is that there is a universal 
 and irresistible tendency in all employers, which (as 
 Adam Smith shows) is much more powerful and 
 efficient in the smaller class capitalists and sellers 
 as against the workmen and the public not to raise 
 wages or lower prices. This is the "silent combina- 
 tion," which needs no formal expression, and generally 
 becomes a point of honour. To such a pitch is this 
 carried that, for instance in the iron trade, the associa- 
 tion practically binds its members to fixed prices and 
 wages. So that in this very iron trade this competition 
 of the employers for the men does not exist. As a 
 last resort the employers will compete against each 
 other for the workmen, but they know it is a suicidal 
 measure. It is one which their small numbers, superior 
 foresight, and power of holding over, makes them able 
 to dispense with except at the last pinch. And it is, 
 therefore, but sparingly employed. In all North 
 Staffordshire, the scene of the late iron strike, there 
 are said to be but six firms, and those are in close 
 combination. Is it likely they bid against each other 
 for men ? 
 
 There is a second very important qualification, also, 
 which neutralises this competition of the capitalists 
 with each other. This is the competition of the 
 workmen with each other. Just as, if left quite to 
 itself, there may be a tendency amongst employers 
 to raise wages by bidding against each other for 
 " hands " ; so there is as strong, or a stronger, 
 tendency amongst the employed to lower wages by 
 bidding against each other for employment. Some- 
 times, if markets are very brisk, capital seeks labour ; 
 but more often in this country labour seeks capital. 
 With our redundant population and our vast reserve 
 of labour-power just struggling for life that incubus 
 of destitute and unemployed labour which lies so
 
 324 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 heavily on all efforts of our artisans, hungering for 
 their places the common state of things is that of 
 labourers competing for employment. 
 
 At any rate competition is as broad as it is long. 
 What the employer loses by it when business is 
 pressing, he gains by it when labour is plentiful. 
 And this competition, one so fluctuating and vast, is 
 outside any conceivable combination or union of the 
 men. Nothing can prevent the dregs or Helotism of 
 labour from continually underselling it. Surely this 
 use of competition in the argument is thoroughly 
 one-eyed. We are told that for the workmen's 
 protection and relief against low wages, oppression, 
 or sharp practice, there is the great compensator, the 
 competition of the masters. They quite overlook 
 the fact that this is at least counterbalanced by the 
 competition of the men. Our case is that the indi- 
 vidual workman has to struggle incessantly against 
 this competition plus the position, the opportunities, 
 the waiting and reserve power which his capital gives 
 to the employer. 
 
 Why, it is asked, is the puddler more at the mercy 
 of the great capitalist than the farmer is at the 
 mercy of the corn-dealer ? No doubt every small 
 capitalist is at a great disadvantage in dealing with a 
 very great capitalist. But the disadvantage of the 
 mere day workman in dealing with his employer is 
 out of all proportion to this. The seller of all wares 
 has a certain stock, a certain reserve power, a capital 
 of some kind, which by the conditions of his existence 
 the day labourer has not. The former can wait at 
 least for some time ; he can send his wares from 
 market to market. To the mere day worker it is 
 often this market or none this wage or none lower 
 rates or starvation. Now under all this lies the 
 fundamental fallacy which distorts the reasoning of
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 325 
 
 many capitalists and most economists. We come, in 
 fact, to the root of the matter. The labourer HAS 
 
 NOT GOT A THING TO SELL. 
 
 The labour market, as it is called by an unhappy 
 figure, is in reality totally unlike the produce market. 
 There are three grand features in which labour differs 
 from a commodity. Firstly, every seller of wares, even 
 a hawker, has by the hypothesis a stock, a realised 
 store, a portable visible thing a commodity. If he 
 were in need of immediate support that is, wages 
 he would not be a seller or trader at all. The trader 
 is necessarily relieved of all immediate and certainly 
 of all physical pressure of want. The difference here 
 between jioo and nothing is infinite. It is so 
 difficult to persuade millionaires that the whole 
 human race have not got private capitals and sums 
 in the funds. To a large class of working men, 
 however, it is a daily question and need get bread 
 to-morrow, or die. The labourer has nothing to fall 
 back upon, and a few lost hours pull him down. 
 
 In the second place, in most cases the seller of a 
 commodity can send it or carry it about from place to 
 place, and market to market, with perfect ease. He 
 need not be on the spot he generally can send a 
 sample he usually treats by correspondence. A 
 merchant sits in his counting-house, and by a few 
 letters and forms transports and distributes the sub- 
 sistence of a whole city from continent to continent. 
 In other cases, as the shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of 
 passing multitudes supplies the want of locomotion in 
 his wares. His customers supply the locomotion for 
 him. This is a true market. Here competition acts 
 rapidly, fully, simply, and fairly. It is totally other- 
 wise with a day labourer, who has no commodity to 
 sell. He must be himself present at every market 
 which means costly personal locomotion. He cannot
 
 326 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 correspond with his employer ; he cannot send a 
 sample of his strength ; nor do employers knock at 
 his cottage door. This is not a market. There is 
 but one true labour market : where the negro slave 
 is (or rather was) sold like a horse. But here, as in 
 the horse fair, the bargain is not made with the negro 
 or the horse, but with the trader who owns them, and 
 who is, strictly speaking, a merchant freely on equal 
 terms disposing of a commodity. But if the horse or 
 the negro came to sell himself, what sort of bargain 
 would he make, starving in the very market ? In a 
 word, there is no real market, no true sale of a 
 commodity, where vendor and wares are one and the 
 same and that one a man totally without resources 
 or provisions for himself with the wants of a citizen, 
 and a family at home. 
 
 Thirdly (and this is the important point), the 
 labourer has not got a commodity to sell, because 
 what he seeks to do is not to exchange products, but 
 to combine to produce. When buyer and seller meet, 
 in market or out, the price is paid, the goods change 
 hands, they part, the contract is complete, the trans- 
 action ends. Even where, as in complex dealings, the 
 bargain is prolonged, it is a dealing in specific goods. 
 It is not the formation of a continuous relation which 
 for the workman at least absorbs and determines his 
 whole life. If the trader fails to do business with one 
 customer, he turns to another. The business over, he 
 leaves him, perhaps for ever. In any case the contract 
 is a contract for the sale (i.e. simple transfer) of one 
 specific thing. How totally different is this from the 
 relations of employer and employed. This is permanent, 
 or rather continuous it involves the entire existence 
 of one at least it implies sustained co-operation. 
 This is no contract to sell something, it is the contract 
 to do something, it is a contract of partnership or
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 327 
 
 joint activity, it is an association involving every side 
 of life. The workman must live close to his work, 
 his hours must conform to it ; the arrangement of his 
 household, his wife's duties and occupations, his home 
 in every detail, are wholly dependent on the terms and 
 conditions of this work. The person by whom he is 
 employed, and certainly the class of employers, can 
 affect him for good or evil in the most constant or 
 vital manner. His whole comfort, peace, and success 
 very often his health under the factory system, 
 usually his dwelling, are in the hands of this same 
 employer. By a series of small arrangements, difficult 
 to follow in detail, this employer can make his position 
 satisfactory or intolerable. 
 
 Nothing is more fallacious than to call labour 
 questions simply a matter of wages or money. Quite 
 apart from the price of the labour, there are in most 
 trades a multitude of conditions and circumstances 
 which make the whole difference to the well-being of 
 the workmen. Do men know, for instance, the life 
 of a London bricklayer, who changes his lodging often 
 once a quarter, and often walks six miles before he 
 begins his ten-hour day at six o'clock ? Every time 
 he has to change his employer (who at most, on his 
 side, has to wait till he gets another man), the work- 
 man has to give up his home, break up his household, 
 separate from his wife, draw his children from school, 
 and suffer infinite differences affecting his comfort, 
 health, and plans. A few weeks out of work may 
 ruin the prospects of his son, injure his family's 
 health, turn them out of a familiar home, and change 
 him to a broken man. Let us remember that this 
 competition implies the constant locomotion of families. 
 And then let us trace out the moral and mental con- 
 sequences of this chance life. Even in the higher 
 branches an artisan family lead a frightfully nomad
 
 328 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 existence. Any one who has known working men in 
 their homes must have been painfully struck with the 
 difficulty of tracing them after a few months. What 
 would be the feeling of our middle classes to be subject 
 to a similar competition a competition not confined 
 to their warehouses, and affecting only their balance- 
 sheet, but one which tossed about their homes like 
 counters, brought them now and then to the gate of 
 the workhouse, and rode at random over every detail 
 of their lives ? 
 
 Much of this is of course inevitable. It is a life 
 which happily has its compensations. But what con- 
 cerns us now is to see how utterly different is this 
 state of things from the selling of a commodity. 
 What sale of a commodity affects this complex net- 
 work of human relations ? It would be as right to 
 speak of every trader needing a partner, every woman 
 ready for marriage, every applicant for a post of trust, 
 as having a commodity to sell. The followers of 
 Napoleon and Garibaldi were not simply men having 
 a commodity to sell. The engagement of a workman 
 for hire is, as completely as these cases are, an instance 
 of a voluntary combination of energies and capacities. 
 The union of capitalist and labourers is, in the highest 
 sense, a partnership involving a real equality of duties 
 and powers, they finding the strength, the patience, 
 the manual skill, the physical exhaustion, he finding 
 the management, the machinery, the immediate means 
 of subsistence, and, by rights, the protection of all 
 kinds. He and they are as necessary to each other as 
 men in any relation of life. They can affect each 
 other as intimately for good and for bad as can any 
 partners whatever. The dignity of their work and 
 lives rests in their knowing and performing their 
 mutual duties and their common tasks. Applied to 
 this noble and intimate relation of life this grand
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 329 
 
 institution of society the language of the market or 
 of barter is a cruel and senseless cant. Nor will any 
 sound condition of labour exist until the captains of 
 Industry come to feel themselves to be life-long fellow- 
 soldiers with the lowest fighter in the Battle of Labour, 
 and have ceased to speak of themselves as speculators 
 who go into one market to buy fifty shillings' worth 
 of pig-iron, and into another to buy fifty shillings' 
 worth of puddling. 
 
 It is essentially for this sort of protection that 
 Unionism is devised. Any one who regards it as a 
 simple instrument to raise wages is, as Adam Smith 
 says, "as ignorant of the subject as of human nature." 
 Unionism, above all, aims at making regular, even, and 
 safe the workman's life. No one who had not speci- 
 ally studied it would conceive the vast array of grievances 
 against which Unionism and strikes are directed. If 
 we looked only to that side of the question, we should 
 come to fancy that from the whole field of labour 
 there went up one universal protest against injustice. 
 There is a " miserable monotony " of wrong and 
 suffering in it. Excessive labour, irregular labour, 
 spasmodic overwork, spasmodic locking -out, "over- 
 time," "short time," double time, night work, Sunday 
 work, truck in every form, overlookers' extortion, 
 payment in kind, wages reduced by drawbacks, "long 
 pays," or wages held back, fines, confiscations, rent 
 and implements irregularly stopped out of wages, 
 evictions from tenements, " black lists " of men, 
 short weights, false reckoning, forfeits, children's 
 labour, women's labour, unhealthy labour, deadly 
 factories and processes, unguarded machinery, defective 
 machinery, preventible accidents, recklessness from 
 desire to save, in countless ways we find a waste of 
 human life, health, well-being, and power, which are not 
 represented in the ledgers or allowed for in bargains.
 
 330 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Let any one read such a Blue-book as that on the 
 employment of children, which contains much on labour 
 generally. It reads like one long catalogue of oppres- 
 sion. Every practice which can ruin body and spirit, 
 every form of ignorance, disease, degradation, and 
 destitution comes up in turn. The higher trades, as 
 that of the iron-workers, are free from many of these, 
 from most of them, but overwork and truck and 
 forfeits. But take the records of any trade, and it 
 will furnish a dark catalogue of struggles about one or 
 more of these grievances. Take the Reports of the 
 Medical Inspectors to the Privy Council, of the 
 Inspectors of Mines and certain classes of factories, or 
 that of the Staffordshire potteries. Take the Report 
 of the Miners' Association often cited. It reads like 
 one long indictment against the recklessness of capital 
 and the torpidity of the legislature. It is not that 
 each individual capitalist produces or even knows such 
 things. Not he, but the system is at fault. The 
 wrong each man does is not great, that which he 
 does intentionally is very small. But as a body they 
 all work out this one end blindly ; for a sophistical 
 jargon, falsely called Economic Science, has trained 
 them to think that fifty shillings' worth of puddling 
 that is, the lives of men, women, and children should 
 be bought and sold in market overt, like pigs and bars 
 of iron. 
 
 Against this state of things, as yet, the only 
 organised protection is Unionism. It is a system 
 at bottom truly conservative, mainly protective, and 
 essentially legal. It is a system still quite undeveloped, 
 and most defective, and often deeply corrupted. But 
 it is one, it must be remembered, which has as yet no 
 fair chance. It is proscribed by the legislature, and 
 as yet unrecognised. What prospect is there of these 
 institutions being healthy, well managed, and moderate,
 
 TRADES-UNIONISM 331 
 
 whilst they cannot get the legal sanction which the 
 humblest association obtains ? They can hold no 
 property, bring no action, have no assistance or pro- 
 tection from the law. Just as under the old Com- 
 bination Laws strikes were often thoroughly evil in 
 their action, so now under the Association Laws 
 unions are forced into the attitude of conspiracies. 
 These evils are mainly due to the craven injustice 
 shown to them by Parliaments of employers. But 
 even now they are, in the main, moderately, honestly, 
 and wisely directed. Their managers are sometimes 
 dishonest adventurers ; their system is sometimes 
 corrupt ; but there is not a tenth of the corruption of 
 our ordinary railway and joint-stock company system. 
 Sometimes, however, they are models of good govern- 
 ment. Occasionally they call out men of the finest 
 and noblest political instincts, men cast in the very 
 mould of Hampden. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss at length their 
 great deficiencies ; but no man is more aware how far 
 they fall short of what is wanted than the present 
 writer. In the first place, they are simply a political, 
 practical, temporary remedy for a social and moral 
 evil. The real cause of all industrial evils is the want 
 of a higher moral spirit in all engaged in industry 
 alike. Social and moral remedies alone, in the long 
 run, can change the state of things to health ; and 
 the working men on their side have as much to learn 
 in social and moral duty as their employers. All this 
 (and without it nothing permanent can be gained) 
 Unionism totally ignores, and even tends to conceal 
 and choke. Hence a keen spirit of Unionism often 
 blunts the members of a strong association to their 
 own duties and to the higher wants of their class. If 
 small, the association too often fosters a narrow, some- 
 times a most selfish spirit. Often it fosters a dull
 
 332 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 temper of indifference and comfortable disregard of all 
 others around. It often encourages the combative 
 spirit and a love of visible triumph. Occasionally, as 
 at Sheffield, it develops cruel tyranny. Above all, it 
 seriously divides trade from trade, skilled workmen 
 from unskilled, unionist from non-unionist. 
 
 These, however, are all evils not so much inherent 
 in the nature of unions as caused by their want of 
 permanent and legal position, public recognition, 
 larger extension, wider combination, and higher educa- 
 tion. The grand evil inherent in their nature is that 
 they are simply political expedients, and share all the 
 defects of political remedies applied to social diseases. 
 Still, if Reform Leagues and constitutional agitation, 
 or, in the last resort, organised resistance to oppression, 
 do not cure the maladies of the state, they are essen- 
 tially necessary and, sometimes, are the first necessity. 
 To save the people from the immediate injuries of 
 bad government is sometimes the very condition of 
 all other effort towards improvement. If working 
 men, holding by their union for simply protective 
 purposes, would turn towards other measures to im- 
 prove themselves, to learn greater self-control, higher 
 education, and purer domestic life, their ends would 
 be gained. In the meantime, as a step to them, as 
 giving a breathing time and support, Unionism is 
 indispensable. To consolidate and elevate it is, 
 perhaps, the working man's first duty. For in the 
 midst of the increasing power and recklessness of 
 capital one can see no immediate safeguard but this 
 against the ruin of the workman's life, his annihila- 
 tion as a member of society against the consequent 
 deterioration of the community, and ultimate social 
 revolution.
 
 Ill 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 (1865) 
 
 From the year 1860 I was associated with some of the 
 most ardent apostles of the Co-operative Movement, such 
 as Thomas Hughes, J. Malcolm Ludlow, Lloyd Jones, 
 Dr. Furnivall, and G. J. Holyoake ; and I shared 
 their interest and hopes for the new schemes. With 
 introductions from them and many friends in the North, 
 I visited the Pioneers in Rochdale, and attended many 
 Co-operative committees and meetings in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire. Having personal knowledge of the leaders 
 and their methods, and having made a study of their 
 printed Rules, Tables, and Balance-sheets, 1 had ample 
 means of forming an estimate of their work and prospects. 
 I saw that, whilst the system of ''Distributive Stores " 
 was a real success and was destined to a great develop- 
 ment both material and social, the attempt to found 
 Co-operative Production for the general market was a 
 petty and unstable incident which could have no future. 
 And I saw that the hope of those who looked for 
 Co-operative Production to reorganise the conditions 
 of Labour was an idle dream. Co-operation could do 
 nothing to supersede or even to reform the current 
 system of Wages-earning. 
 
 I made bold to tell this to my friends. More than 
 forty years have passed ; and, whilst the "Stores" have 
 had a marvellous growth, " Production " in the open market 
 
 333
 
 334 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is still a drop in the ocean of Labour. " Co-operation " 
 has taught more than two millions of working people to 
 supply themselves with necessaries in methods of strict 
 economy and thrift. It has not enabled the mass of the 
 proletariat to mend the conditions of Labour by more 
 than a hair's breadth. On the contrary it only draws 
 off some admirable men from turning to deeper and 
 wiser means of salvation. 
 
 The " Stores " have continued to double their numbers 
 and their business with every decade. For independent 
 " Production" i.e. manufactures sold to other than 
 " Co-operators" the result is infinitesimal. And as to 
 " Co-operative Production " benefiting workmen who are 
 not shareholders or members, the result is a pitiable 
 minimum. 
 
 The excellent account in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
 vol. xxvii., by Mr. Aneurin Williams {1902}, which 
 gives a total business of more than 75 millions, sets down 
 the profits of Productive Societies at 158,315 and a 
 Dividend on Wages of 20,545 and that is on a trade 
 of three millions and a half. 
 
 The latest work on Co-operative Industry that I 
 have seen is by Ernest Ames (1907). He tells us in 
 his chapter on the Productive Societies that " the position 
 of Labour is very similar to that which is found in 
 ordinary well and considerately managed centres of 
 industry" Again he adds : " Labour is left by the 
 great bulk of modern co-operative enterprise in an un- 
 changed economic relationship? That is exactly the 
 warning I gave in 1865 to my friends, the Cc-operators ; 
 and it is sad to relate the disappointment of such high and 
 worthy hopes (1908). 
 
 " Let us abandon all useless and irritating discussion as to 
 the origin and distribution of wealth, and proceed at once 
 to establish the moral rules which should regulate it as a 
 social function" AUGUSTS COMTE. 
 
 Two serious attempts to raise their condition are
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 335 
 
 being made by the working classes from their own 
 spontaneous efforts. Both have been conceived, 
 elaborated, and maintained by their unaided instinct. 
 One of these Unionism has been abundantly dis- 
 cussed. The other is Co-operation. The first is the 
 political, direct, immediate remedy for industrial 
 wants. The second is more nearly the social, gradual, 
 and indirect process. Unionism is an open and 
 organised resistance ; and, pushed to the extreme, 
 approaches to political insurrection. Co-operation is 
 an effort towards social reform, and in its type verges 
 on social revolution. Both have played, and are 
 destined to play, a large part in the progress of 
 industry. Each maintains most valuable truths and 
 attains many excellent results. Both are of the 
 deepest interest to the social inquirer. Each, how- 
 ever, is imperfect and somewhat one-sided. Each 
 ignores the very important side which the other 
 represents. To estimate them truly they must be 
 viewed at the same glance and judged by comparison. 
 In dealing with co-operation, it is happily possible 
 to speak in a much more judicial and critical spirit 
 than it is in speaking of unionism. Trades-unions 
 have been the object of so much ignorant abuse, that 
 a friendly writer is forced into an attitude of contro- 
 versy and almost of advocacy. With co-operation, it 
 is very desirable that its weak side should be insisted 
 on at least as fully as its strongest. Its partisans and 
 even the public are rather inclined to exaggerate its 
 importance. During Elections one sees many 
 candidates on both sides, who guard themselves from 
 betraying many definite opinions, loudly proclaim 
 themselves in favour of "co-operation." Doubtless 
 it would have been as much to the purpose to pro- 
 claim themselves staunch adherents of the penny post, 
 or ardent friends of the half-holiday movement. Of
 
 336 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 course, as the Legislature has, and can have, nothing 
 to do with co-operation, it was totally out of place 
 in candidates' addresses. And many of them would 
 have shrunk from the great revolution which "co- 
 operation " really is in the minds of its most active 
 apostles. This, however, proved that it is considered 
 a safe thing to profess ; and serves to indicate interest 
 in social questions. But as it is beset by no prejudices 
 whatever, it is only right that its value and its defects 
 be impartially brought out ; and that its adherents 
 may not mislead themselves as to its promises. 
 
 This inquiry is specially opportune, as the 
 annual return of the Registrar of Friendly Societies is 
 now before us, and we are able to take stock of the 
 co-operative movement from official authority. On 
 the 3 ist of December 1864 there were, according to 
 this return, 505 registered societies spread over almost 
 the whole of England, in town, village, and county. 
 The total number of members (several returns being 
 defective) is 129,761, the share capital is 685,072, 
 the loan capital is 89,423, the assets and property 
 amount to 891,775, the business done in the year is 
 2,742,957, and the profit realised is 225,569^ 
 As no societies neglected to send returns, these 
 figures would probably need to be corrected by an 
 addition of 10 or 15 per cent. These societies are all, 
 with very few exceptions (almost all of which decline 
 to send returns), "stores" for the sale of food and 
 clothing. The average profit, it will be seen, amounts 
 to something like 9 per cent (in one case it is 25 per 
 cent) on the business done, and something like 30 
 per cent (in some cases 50 per cent) on the share and 
 loan capital. Only thirteen of the 395 societies that 
 
 1 This has been enormously increased. The members are now in 
 excess of two millions. The capital is nearly 30 millions sterling and 
 the business 75 millions sterling (1908).
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 337 
 
 make returns fail to show a profit, and these are, with 
 one notable exception, very small or young companies 
 commencing operations. The profit may be taken as 
 enough to pay a dividend of is. yd. in the pound upon 
 all purchases after payment of expenses, gifts, deprecia- 
 tion, and ^5 per cent interest on shares and loans. 
 Many of the principal societies far exceed this, and 
 the famous Pioneers (by no means a single instance), 
 after providing for interest on loans and shares, educa- 
 tional fund, reserve fund, depreciation fund, and 
 charity, still paid last quarter 2s. 4d. in the pound on 
 members' purchases. A return this which railway 
 shareholders might study with profit, if not with 
 satisfaction ! 
 
 This success, however, which can be measured by 
 tabular statements, is far the smallest portion. The 
 indirect effect of co-operation which cannot be 
 reduced to figures is vast and pervading. In a northern 
 city which had long suffered from adulterated flour, a 
 co-operative flour-mill was established. It not only 
 supplied a perfectly pure article to its own large body 
 of members and customers, but (in order to stand their 
 ground) the other mills of the city were obliged to do 
 the same. The first thing that a well-managed and 
 extensive store does in a town is to destroy a number 
 of useless and dishonest shops all round the neigh- 
 bourhood, the second is visibly to reduce destitution 
 and the poor-rates, the third, where it is very strong, 
 is to diminish strikes and sensibly improve wages. 
 Whatever stirs the active and resolute spirits of a 
 district to fresh union, patience, and self-denial, and 
 gives them a considerable common fund and puts a 
 small sum at the free disposal of each, at once raises their 
 tone and makes them independent of instant necessities. 
 And the change is one which in different ways, but 
 with equal distinctness, makes itself felt by the em-
 
 338 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ployer, the clergyman, the schoolmaster, the publican, 
 and the policeman. 
 
 The case of Rochdale is naturally the most striking 
 that can be taken. There the Pioneers Society alone 
 now numbers 5200 members, with a capital of j 1,000, 
 and an annual business of ^200,000. Associated with 
 it is the Corn-mill Society and the Cotton Manu- 
 facturing Company, both owned and worked principally 
 by the same class. The effect of this movement on 
 the town is most obvious. During the worst times of 
 the cotton distress the Pioneers was unshaken. The 
 material prosperity and well-being of the whole town 
 has received an impetus from it. The " store " has 
 affected for good the moral, intellectual, and industrial 
 tone of a large city. Its mere existence is sufficient 
 to make it almost secured against either great de- 
 moralisation or great destitution. The importance 
 of this work is recognised by all classes of the in- 
 habitants. There have been no more zealous friends 
 of the movement than the clergy, many of the muni- 
 cipal officers, and both the late and the present repre- 
 sentative in Parliament. The Rochdale movement, 
 which dates from 1844, owes its origin and its success 
 to a knot of men of very remarkable character and 
 ability. There were amongst the founders some men 
 of real mercantile genius men who might have made 
 their own fortunes ten times over which they united 
 with the power of inspiring and directing their 
 fellows. Some of them are still at their post at Roch- 
 dale, rich in nothing but the gratitude and esteem of 
 their fellow-citizens, for whilst they might easily have 
 raised themselves amongst the great millionaires of 
 Lancashire they were contented with giving prosperity 
 to a city and new energy to the working classes of 
 England. 
 
 The effect of a very flourishing store, and even of
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 339 
 
 a small manufacturing society, in one of the northern 
 valleys, where factories are more or less shut off from 
 free correspondence with the neighbourhood, is to 
 produce a very perceptible rise of wages ; the society, 
 either as a bank, or as an employer, often as both, 
 forms a reserve, on which the workman can fall back 
 if dismissed. But of course this result is only visible 
 when isolation or local circumstances enable a single 
 society to make itself felt. Another immediate effect 
 is that of the ready-money system, which is universally 
 and very strictly enforced at the co-operative shops. 
 They form also the most complete and valuable savings- 
 bank the saving being effected continually upon 
 every daily purchase, retained out of the immediate 
 control of the investor, and usually unperceived by 
 him. Thus a member of the Rochdale store, upon 
 every pound of tea or piece of bacon which he buys, 
 drops about twelve per cent of the price (the ordinary 
 retailer's profit) into his money-box, which at the end 
 of the year comes out a respectable sum. This process 
 is locally embodied in the formula, "the more one 
 eats the more one gets." A species of savings-bank 
 with which no other can remotely compare ! Adul- 
 teration in goods is almost invariably and completely 
 checked by a store. Without exception, they may be 
 said to sell perfectly sound and fair goods ; and 
 multitudes of working people, who never knew the 
 taste of pure tea or coffee, or wholesome bread or flour, 
 have become very sharp critics as to quality, for they 
 purchase wholesale, by their agents, the very best 
 which the markets offer. 
 
 No reasonable observer, however, can imagine that 
 accumulating savings, avoiding debt, obtaining good 
 and cheap food, or the "making a pound go a long 
 way," is the sole feature, though it is the main feature, 
 of the co-operative system. Co-operation now numbers
 
 340 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 a large and highly organised band of propagandists. 
 It forms a new " persuasion " in itself, with all the 
 machinery and enthusiasm of a religious sect. There 
 are men who devote themselves to preach and extend 
 co-operation, just as there are men who devote them- 
 selves to awakening souls or advocating temperance. 
 In every society there are men who give their time, 
 labour, and often the savings of their lives, to found 
 and establish a new "store" or to bring their neigh- 
 bours to look on the system as a vital truth. The 
 " pledge," the abolition of slavery, free trade, and 
 "Bible religion," have never been preached with more 
 systematic activity than this has. It has its organ, its 
 lectures, its "conferences," its dogmas, its celebra- 
 tions, and it would not be an English institution if it 
 had not its testimonials and its subscription funds. 
 
 It has developed a style of thought and speech which 
 is strangely akin to that of a religious movement, and 
 in co-operation tracts the system is expounded in phrases 
 which are in familiar use with reference to sacred 
 subjects. The nucleus of many a flourishing society 
 consists of men who have a strong impulse for social 
 improvement, and whose motives are at least as strongly 
 the benefit of their fellows as that of themselves. No 
 one can read the Co-operator regularly without seeing 
 that it records a movement in which some of the finest 
 characters and spirits amongst the working classes, 
 from one end of England to the other, are absorbed ; 
 without admiring the energy, perseverance, sagacity, 
 and conscientiousness which these efforts display ; 
 without learning to respect the spirit of union, faith, 
 and self-sacrifice which they frequently exert. The 
 constant acts of benevolence, of unflinching patience, 
 and of well-deserved confidence, with which co-opera- 
 tive records are full, are truly touching. Co-operative 
 poetry alone forms a literature in itself; and in the
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 341 
 
 Co-operator's pages one may often read a piece full of 
 terse, vigorous lines, which, if not exactly a poem, 
 is eloquent versification. Nor can any man of feeling 
 or discernment witness a really worthy co-operative 
 celebration see those Lancashire or Yorkshire 
 workmen, with their wives and children, meet in their 
 own hall, surrounded by their own property, to con- 
 sider their own affairs hear them join in singing, 
 sometimes a psalm, sometimes a chorus listen to the 
 homely wit, the prudent advice, the stirring appeal, and 
 feel the spirit of goodwill, conviction, and resolution 
 in which they are met to celebrate, as it were, their 
 escape from Egyptian bondage, no one, if present at 
 such a meeting, can fail to recognise that co-operation, 
 if not a moral or social movement in itself, has had the 
 benefit of many high, moral, and social tendencies to 
 stimulate and foster it. 
 
 The best testimony for co-operation, in its form of 
 the "store" system, is this that in every leading 
 town, men recognised as the most able, conscientious, 
 and energetic of their order amongst the working 
 classes, will generally be found active supporters of the 
 " store " j and those amongst the independent and 
 educated classes who sympathise most earnestly and 
 wisely with the welfare of the working classes, will be 
 found to acknowledge its claims and services. No 
 man of generous feeling can help being moved to 
 admiration when he recalls the homes which have 
 been saved and brightened ; the weight of debt, 
 friendlessness, destitution, and bad habits which have 
 been relieved ; the hope and spirit which have been 
 infused into the working classes by this single agency 
 the co-operative system. It has come successfully 
 through the trial of the cotton distress ; it is spreading 
 into every corner, even every rural village in England, 
 and is firmly established in Germany and France.
 
 342 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 It is precisely the great influence which co-operation 
 now exercises, and the very high qualities which are 
 devoted to its extension, that render it the more 
 essential to examine, it closely to know exactly what 
 it can and what -it cannot do what are its defects 
 and its dangers. The men who have founded and 
 support these institutions are far too straightforward 
 and resolute to fear any honest judgment upon their 
 efforts. The last thing that they would choose would be 
 any attempt to shut out the truth from themselves, or 
 any one else, respecting the system ; and once con- 
 vinced of the fairness and goodwill of the counsellor or 
 critic, they will attend to genuine counsel or criticism 
 with patience and impartiality. In this spirit the fol- 
 lowing remarks are offered by one who has more than 
 a mere goodwill for the movement in its legitimate 
 sphere, and as a material expedient ; who has a strong 
 esteem and sympathy for it, its objects and its 
 adherents ; who recognises in it and them some of the 
 very best grounds of hope now extant ; and who 
 desires only to define somewhat more closely the true 
 scope and limits of co-operation. 
 
 Let us come at once to the key of the whole 
 position. Co-operation, it is usually said, is designed 
 to elevate the condition of labour by associating capital 
 with labour, and by giving to labour an equal interest 
 with capital in the results of production. It is also 
 said (and with truth) to be in a flourishing condition, 
 and to have firm ground to rest on. Now what is 
 the case actually ? Flourishing as co-operation clearly 
 is in a pecuniary sense (with the exception of a very 
 small number of manufacturing societies to be noticed 
 presently), the whole of the co-operative societies 
 throughout the kingdom are simply "stores," i.e. shops 
 for the sale of food, arid sometimes clothing. These, 
 of course, cannot affect the condition of industry
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 343 
 
 materially. Labour here does not in any sense share 
 in the produce with capital. The relation of employer 
 and employed remains just the same, and not a single 
 workman would change the conditions of his employ- 
 ment if the store were to extinguish all the shops of a 
 town. 
 
 In such an extreme case, the workmen would still 
 be hired for wages in the ordinary competition of 
 labour, for the shops do not employ any of them. The 
 cloth, flour, tea, and meat which the store now 
 supplies., have all been made under the same conditions 
 as before, and are simply purchased in open market 
 in the ordinary way. The cotton goods sold at the 
 store have probably been grown by the labour of 
 negroes, and manufactured under the hardest rule 
 of competition. If co-operation (so far as the stores 
 are concerned) were developed to a point beyond the 
 wildest dreams of its friends ; if it absorbed the entire 
 retail trade of the country, and there were no such 
 thing as a shop left for rich or poor, it would still, for 
 any direct effect it has, leave the " labour market " 
 just where it found it, for not a single article would be 
 produced (though all would be distributed) in a different 
 way from heretofore. Hence a "store" as such, 
 does not affect the true labour question directly. So 
 that what we mean when we say that " co-operation " 
 is a great movement, is that working men have 
 devised a highly convenient and economic plan of 
 buying their food and part of their clothing. 
 
 No doubt there is the whole indirect effect of this 
 system, the freedom from debt, the accumulation of 
 saving, the business experience, and all the countless 
 other advantages which we have set forth and urged 
 in preceding pages. No one can overlook them, and 
 scarcely can exaggerate them. But these are in them- 
 selves purely economic arrangements of practical con-
 
 344 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 venience, and cannot affect the social conditions of 
 labour otherwise than as economic arrangements can. 
 The practice of savings-banks is a highly useful 
 economic arrangement, which has done a vast amount 
 of good. So is the penny post. The ready-money 
 principle is a valuable rule. The practice of accumu- 
 lating savings, of not living up to one's income, the 
 habit of regular economy, of giving a fair price for a 
 sound article, as also the habit of early rising, are 
 excellent bits of worldly wisdom to which the success- 
 ful man often attributes his wealth. But these things, 
 useful as they are, especially as contributing to a rise 
 in life, are not vital movements of society or new 
 revelations. They form merely the mode in which 
 the capitalist classes have amassed their wealth, and 
 they are often most conspicuously practised by men who 
 have won and who use their wealth in the worst way. 
 The very men with whom labour has had the 
 hardest struggle, are just those who exemplify the 
 value of these rules. And it is significant that 
 the men who are the most earnest advocates of this 
 species of economic prudence, are just the men who 
 are known as the most hardened followers of the 
 barrenest schools of political economy, to whom Com- 
 petition is a sort of social panacea and beneficent dis- 
 pensation. It can hardly be that industry is to be 
 regenerated simply by the working classes coming to 
 practise the penny-wise economics of the getters of 
 capital. It is much to be desired that this useful kind 
 of prudence was more common. But if co-operation 
 is to end in simply putting ^5 or ^10 into safe 
 investments for working men, it is scarcely worthy 
 of the fervent language which addresses it as a new 
 gospel of the future, or of poems to celebrate its noble 
 mission upon earth. We might as well expect them 
 to be produced about a goose club.
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 345 
 
 There is no mystery about co-operation, nor, 
 indeed, anything very original. Railways and joint- 
 stock companies in general are simply co-operative 
 societies ; so is a goose club, so are all the clubs in 
 Pall Mall. The new working-men's clubs are so still 
 more, and this admirable movement possesses also a 
 great many of the advantages of the co-operative 
 system, and is free from some of its defects. In 
 fact, wherever a number of persons join their small 
 capitals into one capital, of which they manage to 
 share the profit or the benefit (a system as old at least 
 as the Romans), a true co-operative society exists. 
 No doubt there are no companies (or very few) in 
 which the subdivisions of shares are so small and the 
 facilities so great as to enable working men to invest 
 out of their savings. But that is only an accident. 
 It is quite easy to conceive a joint-stock company 
 with very small shares, for some petty local object, 
 very much connected with the working class and 
 many land and building societies are thus connected 
 which would be (many of them now are) classed 
 strictly as co-operative societies. 
 
 There are plenty of such little speculations, got up 
 by pushing men of the people, owned and managed 
 by them and their friends, which figure in the long 
 list of the co-operative roll. They are very useful 
 institutions, which bring a good dividend to the 
 prudent investor and so are gas companies. Now 
 the " stores " offer a number of useful and incidental 
 advantages which very few companies do. But in 
 principle "stores" are joint-stock companies for the 
 sale of food and clothing. As such they are doing a 
 vast amount of good ; but the industrial question is 
 not solved, or even materially affected, because work- 
 ing men have devised and developed a very useful 
 form of the joint-stock company system.
 
 346 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 But as we have shown above, a man must be very 
 short-sighted to see nothing more than this in the 
 system as it now exists. There is a great deal more, 
 only it is entirely subordinate and very indefinite. 
 There is a widespread wish for social improvement, 
 a spirit of self-sacrifice, and an unselfish enthusiasm 
 which is very general in the movement. Gas 
 companies do not subscribe to help each other in 
 difficulties. Railway companies are not given to 
 educational funds. Directors do not usually give 
 their services gratuitously. Joint -stock companies' 
 meetings, when they declare a dividend or dead loss, 
 do not straightway sing a hymn, and appeal to each 
 other, with tears in their eyes, to stand like men to 
 the Limited Liability Act. 
 
 There is something in this movement not explic- 
 able by love of cash. But all this amounts to no more 
 than that some very noble, earnest, and powerful spirits 
 have thrown themselves into the movement. It is 
 part of the social feeling and the strong sympathy 
 which mark every effort of the genuine sons of 
 labour in England, and, indeed, in Europe. But if 
 it is a true part of co-operation at all, it is a part so 
 indefinite, so ill-understood, and so very much dis- 
 puted, that it cannot be said to be more than an 
 adjunct. In itself, simply, co-operation is a joint-stock 
 system for the association of small capitals. This has 
 been practised by the rich for centuries, without any 
 particular moral or social result. The prospectuses of 
 new companies contain everything except homilies on 
 the beauty of association. But the moral and social 
 spirit which undoubtedly often accompanies co-opera- 
 tion is so very little defined, and is so devoid of any 
 principle, system, or recognised rule whatever, that it 
 cannot keep its ground beside the practical clear end 
 of a good dividend. Co-operation may mean either
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 347 
 
 the making and saving of money, or the joint labour 
 of all for all. It may also mean partly one, partly 
 the other. But if so, the relative proportions and 
 limits of these two must be determined. Until this 
 is done, co-operation is a mere form of pecuniary 
 investment. 
 
 Now this question is all the more essential because 
 no candid friend of the movement can deny that it is 
 one on which its supporters are wholly divided. Most 
 societies have within them more or less distinctly two 
 parties, the one the men who look on the system as an 
 economic, the other as a social, instrument. The first 
 are sincerely desirous to become and to see their fellows 
 become small capitalists ; and then, in the words of 
 one of the addresses, " the great problem of social 
 economy is for the working classes to keep themselves 
 with their own money." These men look on any- 
 thing else as Communism, and they are strict Political 
 Economists. The other party fervently desire to see 
 a system in which the share of capital in profit is 
 reduced, and in which capital freely devotes part of its 
 profit to labour ; and these men are disciples of some 
 kind of Socialist scheme, and very often previously 
 Owenites or actual Communists. The latter are the 
 more enthusiastic, the former are the better men of 
 business. Both are useful, but they differ, as the dis- 
 cussions and divisions in the societies show. At present 
 the economic school always carries the greatest weight 
 and a majority of votes. The result is generally a 
 friendly compromise ; and an address which opens with 
 a fervent call to the members to " elevate themselves 
 by making money," closes with a motto in verse. 
 
 Each for all, and all for each, 
 Helping, loving one another. 
 
 There is, however, a certain poetic vagueness often
 
 348 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 about the social element. Facts and acts are distinct ; 
 and, I believe, there is now no co-operative society 
 existing which gives any substantial part of its income 
 to others than the members who share the capital. 
 There are, however, unmistakably two real sections 
 in the co-operative world, and also in its friends : 
 those who desire to see the privileges and power of 
 capital extended to working men by their becoming 
 capitalists ; and those who desire to see working men 
 relieved, by capital being deprived of much of its 
 privileges and its power. These two parties, though 
 quite friendly, are widely different, and at present, in 
 the division list, the former have their way. 
 
 In the face of this great fact, which contains the 
 key of co-operation as a social system, it is needless to 
 consider the value of the general principles which are 
 vaguely supposed to be connected with it. They can 
 have no stability, for they do not rest on any accepted 
 set of truths, or any recognised principle of action. 
 One man writes to ask the Co-operator if Sunday 
 trading is not contrary to the "true principle of co- 
 operation." The editor of that useful and instructive 
 periodical plainly considers that alcohol is ; and he 
 vigorously calls to order a "store" which ventured 
 to sell beer. Of course, co-operation has no more to 
 do with teetotalism than it has with Methodism. 
 
 If "co-operation " means a general term for all the 
 moral and prudential virtues, or rather for what each 
 man takes these to be, it means nothing. Nothing 
 so vague can make any great effect. The thoughtful 
 men amongst the working classes know well that 
 for the permanent improvement of their order much 
 more remains than that some should save a little 
 money, and all buy cheaper and better food. Social 
 wants require social remedies, and such things are 
 mere delusions unless they are based on sound social
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 349 
 
 philosophy. Modern life is not so simple a thing that 
 it can be reformed by prudent maxims, with or without 
 fine sentiments. Nor is our industrial system so feeble 
 a matter that it can be moved by vague professions of 
 good-fellowship. Stripped of this, co-operation is one 
 of the best, perhaps far the best of economic expedi- 
 ents for increasing the comfort, health, and happiness 
 of the poor man's home ; but as such it cannot claim 
 to have solved or even dealt with the industrial prob- 
 lems of society. As a system under which labour is 
 to gain a new position, and stand on fairer terms with 
 capital, it has yet everything to do ; for it has neither 
 done nor even suggested anything tangible. 
 
 We have hitherto purposely kept out of view the 
 real manufacturing societies. These are co-operative 
 societies which are employers of labour. Here, then, 
 the system does grapple with the position of labour 
 and capital. But what is the result ? As a test, the 
 experiment is scarcely favourable. The manufacturing 
 societies are extremely few, they are not yet exactly 
 successful as speculations, and they do nothing but 
 pay the labourer his ordinary market wages. They 
 are chiefly flour-mills and cotton-mills. Now the 
 flour-mills have paid large and regular dividends, have 
 done a considerable business, and have been admirably 
 managed, and of course have had their hard times. 
 But these are not strictly manufacturing societies ; 
 they supply chiefly their own members and other co- 
 operative societies, and may be more properly classed 
 with the "stores." The amount expended in labour 
 is extremely small compared with that for raw material 
 and plant. They naturally employ at times workmen 
 unconnected with the society ; but I have never 
 understood that mere workmen employed by them 
 ever receive anything but the market rate of wages, 
 or any particular advantage, privilege, or perquisite.
 
 350 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Nor do I think any societies in the kingdom re- 
 munerate their ordinary workpeople in any other way 
 than the usual mode. Frequently these people are 
 shareholders, but very often are not ; and in any case 
 the society, or rather company, wanting labour, goes 
 into the market, and gives the price of labour as fixed 
 by competition ; just as a railway company does. 
 The fact that the holders of the shares in the 
 "store" or. "mill" are for the most part (they are 
 not always) real working men, is a very important 
 and interesting fact ; but it does not affect the con- 
 ditions of labour, or add appreciably to the wages of 
 their " hands." 
 
 The flour-mills apart which are very successful 
 and useful modes of making money the other manu- 
 facturing societies are insignificant, until we come 
 to the cotton-mills. Here and there an association of 
 bootmakers, hatters, painters, or gilders is carried on, 
 upon a small scale, with varying success. The plate- 
 lockmakers of Wolverhampton (who have been recently 
 carrying on a struggle with the competing capitalists 
 so gallantly) are another instance. But small bodies 
 of handicraftsmen (or rather artists) working in 
 common, with moderate capital, plant, and premises, 
 obviously establish nothing. The only true instances 
 of manufacturing co-operative societies of any im- 
 portance are the cotton-mills. During the great 
 cotton fever which preceded the distress, several mills 
 were started or projected. Some of them for a time 
 seemed promising. The great Lancashire famine, 
 however, came on them almost before they had got 
 to work j and it would be impossible to draw any 
 inference whatever from them. Some of the mills, 
 however, never got to work at all. Some took the 
 simple form of ordinary joint-stock companies, in few 
 hands. Others passed into the hands of small
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 351 
 
 capitalists, or the shares were concentrated amongst 
 the promoters. 
 
 There is now, I believe, no co-operative cotton- 
 mill owned by working men in actual operation on 
 any scale, with the notable exception of Rochdale. 
 The Rochdale mill deserves consideration by itself. 
 Rochdale, it is well known, is in a special sense the 
 cradle of co-operation. As Mr. Holyoake tells us in 
 his admirable account of its rise there in 1844, 
 " Human nature must be different at Rochdale from 
 what it is anywhere else." Its rise may be distinctly 
 traced to the influence of Owenism, and some of its 
 leading promoters there, besides being men of real 
 industrial genius, are deeply imbued with many 
 valuable principles tvhich Robert Owen upheld. The 
 Rochdale cotton-mill once bid fair to be an extra- 
 ordinary success in a commercial view. Their build- 
 ings are not surpassed by any, and equalled by few, 
 in the county ; their management has been cautious 
 and able ; their credit stands in the money-market 
 even higher than that of neighbouring capitalists ; 
 they weathered the storm of the cotton distress perhaps 
 better than any, being almost the last to close and the 
 first to open j and they are now running full time. 
 They have, in fact, proved that it is quite possible for 
 a cotton-mill (at any rate) to be worked on the largest 
 scale, with a successful result, on the co-operative 
 principle. 
 
 What, however, they have not proved is the possi- 
 bility of a mill being wholly owned by those who 
 work it, and of labour receiving more than the 
 ordinary market share of the profits. The mill was 
 founded on the principle of dividing all profits (after 
 satisfying all expenses and the interest on fixed capital) 
 equally between the shareholders and the workmen, 
 every 100 received in wages counting in the dis-
 
 352 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tribution of the dividend the same as every 100 
 invested in shares. This principle was a real experi- 
 ment to institute a new condition of labour. The 
 mill had not worked long, however, before (in 1861) 
 this principle, after a severe struggle, was abandoned, 
 and no efforts of the minority, backed by many 
 influential friends of the movement, have succeeded 
 in restoring it. This, therefore, in the great home of 
 co-operation, has for the present decided the issue. 
 The question how to give the labourer a larger share 
 of the profits has failed of solution. A body of co- 
 operative capitalists, it is there seen, hire and pay 
 their own workmen on the ordinary terms of the 
 market, and under the rule of simple competition. 
 This is the greatest blow, in fact, which the system 
 has ever yet sustained, and is one which, if it cannot 
 be reversed, stamps it as incompetent to affect per- 
 manently the conditions of industry. In spite of all 
 efforts which faith, hope, and charity make to conceal 
 it, this decision has planted a deep root of division 
 amongst the co-operative body, and has broken the 
 confidence of their most zealous friends. Some of 
 the most active friends of the movement as loudly 
 justify it as others loudly condemn it. And a long 
 controversy has been carried on with great energy 
 and no result. But a vote of the whole body of co- 
 operators would undoubtedly show for the economic 
 party an overwhelming majority. 
 
 But it may be said that, supposing co-operation 
 distinctly to surrender or disclaim every thought of 
 affecting the existing conditions and rights of capital, 
 it is fulfilling a great mission if it enables the work- 
 men to share the capital ; and the Rochdale cotton- 
 mill, although it does not divide its profits amongst 
 its workmen, still pays them as shareholders, and in 
 one way or other the workmen themselves obtain the
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 353 
 
 share of the profits, and gain the security and inde- 
 pendence of an invested fund. Unfortunately this is 
 not so. The shares of this mill are now in a very large 
 proportion held by men who are not workmen in it, and 
 not a small proportion is held by men who are not now 
 working men at all. The number of shares owned by 
 the ordinary " hands " is not sufficient to establish any 
 very important principle. And until this is the case, 
 and that permanently, nothing decisive is done. It 
 is an instructive fact that a number of men who are, 
 or have been, receiving weekly wages, should own 
 and manage important cotton-mills. But as half the 
 fortunes in Lancashire have been created by such men 
 individually, there is nothing astounding in the fact 
 that an association of them can do the same. Can 
 it be regarded as the herald of a social and moral 
 millennium that a large mill is worked by a company 
 which consists of the managers, foremen, and principal 
 workmen in it, of several well-to-do men who have 
 been working men and have accumulated savings, and 
 of some of the small shopkeepers of a town? Let all men 
 save money that can, but society need feel no special 
 enthusiasm at the fact that several hundreds of working 
 men are able to retire upon comfortable incomes. 
 
 Now to that, be it said with all regret and sober- 
 ness, the Rochdale cotton-mill seems tending under 
 its present regime. If it has not reached it yet, it 
 seems certain that in the course of time it must. The 
 process is very obvious to any one who knows how 
 these things work. A body of resolute working men, 
 full of enthusiasm and self-reliance, start a manufactur- 
 ing society together. The shares cannot, of course, 
 be inalienable, which is opposed to all modern require- 
 ments. If the concern has only a margin of profit, 
 they struggle on heroically, and often carry out their 
 principle for a long time. But then the experiment 
 
 2 A
 
 354 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is of doubtful commercial success. If the concern 
 thrives greatly and rapidly, the tendency of capital is 
 to rush in and absorb the shares as a simple invest- 
 ment. Again, the shares naturally aggregate into a 
 few hands. Both these tendencies are felt in all 
 successful manufacturing societies. They have the 
 greatest difficulty, and have devised all sorts of 
 ingenious devices, with little result, to prevent them. 
 But do what they will, the shares get more and more 
 into the hands of men of some small capital. The nearer 
 this limit is reached, the more completely does the 
 concern become a simple joint-stock company. Some 
 of the workmen suffer domestic privations, some are 
 improvident, some cease work and bequeath their 
 shares, and in countless ways the workmen cease to 
 hold the shares. 
 
 The process is very rapid, and occurs under all 
 conceivable conditions. Even if the strictest provisions 
 existed, nothing can prevent capitalists at last owning 
 shares, or shares, at best, accumulating in the hands 
 of the more fortunate or more skilful shareholders. 
 And even if this were done, nothing can prevent the 
 shareholders personally becoming richer men. A 
 capital, we may suppose, of ^50,000 is invested in a 
 mill employing 500 men, who equally own the shares at 
 the rate of^ioo a piece. If trade is very good, and 
 the profits as great as they used to be, each of these 
 men, if he retained his own shares, and was very 
 industrious, prudent, and economical and to succeed 
 most of the members must be this will own in course 
 of years several hundred pounds. Is it conceivable 
 that a body of workmen, each owning, for instance, 
 ^500, will continue one and all at the loom and the 
 spindle ? Or would they when each was worth ^1000 ? 
 Certainly not. Why should they ? Indeed, a man 
 who has shown great aptitude in employing capital
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 355 
 
 and accumulating wealth, is impelled by every instinct 
 of our nature, and habit of our civilisation, to say nothing 
 of being probably bound by every claim of domestic 
 and social duty, to devote his talent and energy to the 
 employment of capital, and to cease to spend his life in 
 running after a " mule." A working man begins to 
 own a small capital ; the qualities which have acquired 
 it soon make it a larger capital (in Lancashire very 
 soon) ; directly he is a real capitalist he ceases to be 
 one of the employed, and becomes one of the em- 
 ployers ; and as co-operation has simply enabled him 
 to become a capitalist, and refuses to alter the condition 
 of the employed, merely as such, the man soon becomes 
 an employer of the ordinary type. 
 
 It is not worth much to say that these small 
 capitalists, who have been actual working men, will 
 know and feel the position of their workmen. Unfor- 
 tunately the successful working men are not those 
 whom their class have most reason to love. It is well 
 known that the closest men of business are those who 
 have risen from the ranks, whose formula is, " What 
 was good enough for me, is good enough for them." 
 And working men well know that if the hardest 
 masters are the men who have risen out of their own 
 order, the hardest of all is a trading company of such 
 men. It does not appear that co-operative societies, 
 as a rule, have very much to boast of in their treat- 
 ment of their own workpeople. It will, perhaps, be 
 agreed that at many stores the servants are rather 
 closely and sparingly treated than otherwise. It is 
 quite natural when we remember that their employers 
 are men not accustomed to deal with large sums, or 
 make gifts, or provide for others ; are responsible 
 members of a Board ; that every detail is scrutinised, 
 and every effort made to find the best dividend. There 
 is a well-known case of a very flourishing concern
 
 356 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 which was started by a few associated workmen as a 
 co-operative society, which js now simply a company 
 in a few hands, not a single workman owning the 
 smallest share. It is notorious that this concern deals 
 with its people (to say the least) not a whit better 
 than surrounding capitalists. Yet this is nothing but 
 a co-operative society which has been wonderfully 
 successful. What would industry gain if keen-scented 
 companies like this existed in every city of the 
 kingdom ? 
 
 Professor Fawcett (in his excellent Manual) thinks 
 that the difficulty should be met by the societies 
 making a rule of employing none but shareholders. 
 This is plainly impracticable. If workmen who left 
 the mill were compelled to sell their shares, they would 
 cease to form or to give the privileges of capital. If 
 workmen to fill their places were required, it would 
 be impossible to insist that they should purchase 
 shares. It would narrow the labour market to an 
 impracticable degree, and no mill could work on such 
 terms. And if it could, what an anomaly would be 
 a society founded to ameliorate the position of the 
 labourer which made a rule of refusing employment to 
 any but those who had a sum of ready money in hand ! 
 Besides, how about the women and children ? The 
 majority of the work-people of a cotton-mill are 
 women and children wives, lads, and girls. But all 
 these (" doffers " included) could hardly have shares, 
 or at any rate could not exercise any freedom in them. 
 The young folk and children unfortunately have not, 
 as a rule, parents in the mill, and often have no parents 
 at all. This is just the class on whom capital presses 
 most hardly. To them co-operation offers nothing. 
 In short, the idea of the workmen permanently owning 
 the capital is illusory. As a partial temporary measure 
 in a petty trade like an oyster fishery it may be
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 357 
 
 possible for the workers to own the capital and plant. 
 In all the larger and complex forms of industry it is 
 impossible. The owners of valuable property will 
 not, cannot, and ought not to continue at manual 
 labour for wages. Nothing can prevent co-operative 
 manufactories from hastening rapidly to become 
 simply trading companies. And the co-operative 
 system, if it only enables a number of men to obtain 
 capital, will do nothing by means of a few vague pro- 
 fessions to touch the root of the evil the reckless and 
 selfish employment of capital. It will be a system which 
 has its uses and its abuses, like the railway system or the 
 banking system, but it will leave the moral condition 
 of society, as these do, precisely where they are. 
 
 Hitherto the question of the capacity of co-operative 
 societies for success has been kept out of sight inten- 
 tionally. It is plain that the " stores " with reasonably 
 good management and skill are certain of success, often 
 of wonderful success. But, as has been shown, the 
 success of men clubbing together to buy their own 
 food and clothing is nothing at all. We can go much 
 further. We may say that in many trades a body of 
 workmen can conduct a business with entire com- 
 mercial success. Where it is a case of exceptional 
 profits, as in the cotton trade from 1858-1861 ; of 
 very small capital or plant, as a body of painters, shoe- 
 makers, masons, etc. (such men are really artificers), 
 where very much depends on the personal skill, care, 
 and zeal of each individual workman, no doubt signal 
 success is quite within their reach. Associations of 
 the kind, well founded and honestly conducted, are 
 worthy of every help and confidence. By all means 
 let there be plenty such. But all this is a drop in the 
 ocean of industry. If there is one thing which the 
 progress of civilisation more continually develops, it 
 is that the direction of capital requires entire freedom,
 
 358 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 undivided devotion, a life of training, and innate 
 business instincts. 
 
 All our complex forms of industry involve some- 
 times, in the directors, engineering or practical genius, 
 a sort of instinct of the market, and a life -long 
 familiarity with an involved mass of considerations, 
 partly mechanical, partly monetary, partly administra- 
 tive. The head of a great production is like the 
 captain of a ship or the general of an army. He must 
 have scientific knowledge, technical knowledge, practical 
 knowledge, presence of mind, dash, courage, zeal, and 
 the habit of command. It is all very well for working 
 men to buy butter and tea prudently, and even to 
 superintend the agents who buy it for them. But it 
 is ridiculous to tell the hammermen at a forge that 
 they can successfully carry on Whitworth's engineering 
 business, or build the Great Eastern. Conceive the 
 London and North- Western Railway managed by its 
 stokers, porters, and ticket-clerks, or the Peninsular 
 and Oriental Steamboat Company carried on by a 
 committee of seamen, or the Bank of England 
 managed by its ordinary cashiers ! These are ex- 
 treme cases, but they strikingly explain the real 
 defect of the position. What is the limit ? Where 
 does the business become so simple that it can be 
 managed by the mere workmen whom it employs ? 
 Arguments on this subject are almost ridiculous, 
 were it not that the extravagant pretensions of some 
 co-operators seem to call for notice. In a word, 
 no sensible man will deny that the great industrial 
 occupations would come to disastrous ruin were it 
 not for entire secrecy, rapidity, and concentration of 
 action, and that practical instinct of trade which 
 nothing but a whole life and a very difficult education 
 can give and even that can give only to a few. 
 
 It profits little to argue that the bulk of the work-
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 359 
 
 men, though unfit to manage, are very fit to 
 superintend the management. He who is unfit to 
 manage is not fit to direct the manager. The only 
 course open to inexperienced men undertaking a 
 complex manufacture would be to trust themselves 
 blindly to a skilful director. But if they do, they are 
 simply in his hands, and the independence and value 
 of their owning the capital is at an end. It cannot 
 be turned both ways. Either the manager is con- 
 trolled by the shareholders, in which case success is 
 endangered, or he is free, and then they lose responsi- 
 bility and practical power to affect the management. 
 You cannot buy the inspiring authority any more than 
 the electric will of a great military or political chief. 
 It is impossible to hire commercial genius and the 
 instincts of a skilful trader. Nor must it be forgotten 
 that the success of great trading companies proves 
 nothing. They are companies of capitalists, the large 
 majority of whom are by the habits of their lives 
 trained to the skilful employment of capital, and 
 versed from childhood in the ways of trade. And 
 even these men practically entrust the whole manage- 
 ment blindly to a few great capitalists among them, 
 any one of whom might very well own and direct the 
 whole concern. The fact that an association of 
 capitalists can manage a gigantic interest does nothing 
 to prove that an association of workmen can. A 
 company of merchants, naval men, and financiers, 
 whose whole lives have trained them to it, can manage 
 the Peninsular and Oriental undertaking. Does that 
 prove that a company of able seamen could ? 
 
 But this is to repeat for the hundredth time the 
 objections against Socialism and Communism. There 
 is no need now, or in this country, to expose the 
 unsoundness of these. But co-operation, whilst 
 sharing in many of their defects, wholly forgets the
 
 360 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 high aims which make these systems noble in their 
 errors. The great-hearted and misjudged enthusiasts 
 who taught them, really grasped the industrial evils in 
 their fulness, and resolutely met them with a cure. 
 They saw that the root of the evil was the extreme 
 power and selfishness of capital. They met it by 
 destroying the institution of individual property, or 
 by subjecting it to new conditions and imposing on 
 it new duties. In Communism, where labour and 
 capital were alike devoted to the common benefit ; in 
 Socialism, where labour and capital are radically re- 
 organised, whatever else of evil they might contain, 
 the relative condition of the labourer must certainly 
 have improved. But co-operation is a compromise 
 which reduces none of the rights of property and 
 imposes on it no new obligation. Starting from the 
 same point as Socialism the anti-social use of capital, 
 and the prostration of the labourer before it it seeks 
 to remedy all its consequences by making more 
 capitalists. It faces all the risks which beset the 
 subdivision of capital amongst a mass of inexperienced 
 holders, and then does nothing to guarantee more 
 justice in the employment of that capital in the 
 aggregate. 
 
 The subdivision of the capital, after all, is a mere 
 mechanical expedient. It must be temporary. The 
 aggregation of capital, the accumulation of wealth in 
 the hands of the more skilful, is one of the most 
 elemental tendencies of society. The prudent will 
 grow rich, the rich will grow more rich. It is, in 
 truth, one of the primary truths about human labour. 
 Communism boldly says Let none grow rich. Co- 
 operation simply says Let more grow rich. After 
 all, how very small is the number whom it can 
 permanently make capitalists. All cannot grow rich. 
 It is puerile to suppose that all can have the advantages
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 361 
 
 of capital ; for if all had them, the advantages would 
 cease. Or at least, since they would all share capital 
 most unequally, their relative position is not much 
 altered. The weak now go to the wall, and so they 
 would if the strong had the means of getting stronger. 
 It is easy and most desirable that every family in an 
 industrial town should club to buy food, and have 
 20 at interest in the "store." But if the entire 
 industry of the country were started on the co-operative 
 system, in a generation the shareholders would be a 
 small minority, and certain knots of them would 
 doubtless develop the most formidable industrial 
 tyranny which modern Europe has seen. 
 
 Hereafter, we are always told, co-operation will 
 develop the true plan of admitting labour to a share of 
 the profits. It may be ; but no one of the elaborate 
 systems of Socialism has stood critical examination. 
 The attempt to apportion exactly that share which is 
 the right of labour, and that which is the right of 
 capital, has always ended in absurdity. 1 To apply 
 mathematical formulae to social and political questions 
 is the surest test of a low education. What arith- 
 metical ratio ought property and numbers to hold in 
 government ? What is the value of this man's or that 
 class's vote ? Such are the crudest of metaphysical 
 puzzles, and the arithmetically just share of labour in 
 the profits is one of them. Clearly the share, what- 
 ever it should be, varies in every trade ; it varies in 
 every operation, it varies to each workman. It is a 
 common idea that equity would consist in sharing 
 equally between labour and capital, every ^10 of 
 capital receiving the same dividend as every jCio 
 of wages. But why equally ? The ancient philosopher 
 says "the vulgar think that that which is equal is 
 
 1 See interminable discussions in the Co-operator on this hopeless 
 problem.
 
 362 
 
 just." But it requires a disquisition on the elements 
 of society (which are very differently estimated) to 
 show why in abstract justice the 10 of labour 
 expended in making a piece of cotton is the fair 
 equivalent of the jio of capital which bought the 
 material and machinery. All that can be said is, that 
 it is the market price the conventional measure. 
 But this is the measure of that very industrial system 
 which is declared to be so radically unjust. 
 
 Minds that do not delight in these metaphysical 
 will-o'-the-wisps will, on reflection, see that there is 
 no more ground to say that the just share of labour 
 is half than that it is double, or a third, or a tenth. 
 What is the just share of a successful general in the 
 plunder ? What is the just share of the painter of 
 a picture, and the man who wove the canvas and 
 ground the colours ? Generals win battles in spite of 
 bad soldiers, and soldiers win battles in spite of bad 
 generals : what is the share of each in the result ? A 
 capitalist of consummate skill makes a business thrive 
 in spite of every opposition ; a reckless capitalist ruins 
 the most promising business. And if labour and 
 capital share equally, what becomes of talent, so justly 
 considered in Fourierism ? Who is to estimate the 
 share which mechanical genius, instinctive sagacity, 
 and personal ascendency ought to secure for a masterly 
 trader ? All sorts of ingenious rules have been 
 suggested to determine this just share mathematically, 
 and each is a fresh absurdity. The whole subject is 
 a quicksand which defies measurement. The pro- 
 portion depends entirely on the point of view which 
 is taken as most important in civilisation. One who 
 values intellectual power will think justice gives the 
 larger share to the controlling mind. One who is 
 impressed with the importance of capital will award 
 it to property. And he who sympathises with the
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 363 
 
 sufferings and privations of manual toil will give it 
 to labour. But it is of less importance to consider 
 what proportion of profit co-operation will give to 
 labour, because at present in England it does not 
 give any. 
 
 But if we suppose the just relative shares of labour 
 and capital fixed by some sort of inspiration, they 
 would not long remain just. The proportion must 
 be fixed by some consideration of the difficulty which 
 there is in finding one or other element. In a given 
 undertaking, the relative importance of the capital and 
 the labour might be mathematically taken as equal, 
 and the proportionate value ascertained. But suppose 
 the available labourers doubled in number, or the 
 available capital halved. Some regard ought to be 
 taken of the new importance of capital, when so many 
 more needed it, or there was only half as much of it. 
 But this is only to fall back on the old rule of com- 
 petition, of supply and demand. ^10 worth of labour 
 is only equal to ^10 worth of capital, at the present 
 market rate ; if wages improved, ^10 worth of labour 
 would become ^15 worth of labour, and so on. ^10 
 worth of agricultural labour, in Dorsetshire, means 
 twenty weeks of good farm-work ; in Yorkshire, it 
 means ten weeks ; in New Zealand, it means five 
 weeks ; in Saxony, it means fifty weeks. Which of 
 these is just I But ^10 represents nearly as many 
 ploughs and spades, loaves and coats though not 
 quite in all. The labourer's wages usually fall when 
 he is in distress ; his ^10 worth of labour may become 
 ^5, without any fault of his own, and though he work 
 still harder. But the ^10 in capital never fluctuates so 
 quickly or so greatly. That is to say, the share which 
 the system of justice gives to the labourer will be least 
 precisely when and where he most needs it. Surely this 
 is competition systematised under the mask of equity !
 
 Or, suppose no regard is paid to the difficulty of 
 obtaining capital or labour which, after all, is com- 
 petition, supply, and demand and it were attempted 
 to apportion, by abstract justice, the share of labour 
 and capital how should we proceed ? Capital results 
 from saving that is, abstinence. How much ab- 
 stinence is equivalent to how much labour ? And 
 then, what sort of abstinence and what sort of labour ? 
 Under what conditions, over what period, and so 
 forth ? The abstinence of a nobleman who saves 
 ,10,000 a year out of ^20,000 is not heroic virtue ; 
 but it is a great power, and represents the labour of 
 300 men for a year. The whole thing is a pedant's 
 puzzle. We attempt to measure in figures the relative 
 values of labour and capital, and we come at once to 
 the old conventional measure the market standard. 
 We adopt it, and we incorporate with our system of 
 justice all the injustice of competition, and we stereo- 
 type all its evils. The noble enthusiasts who taught 
 Socialism at least saw this, and they determined to 
 meet it by reorganising society, and imposing new 
 conditions on property. Each fresh difficulty drove 
 them to fresh safeguards and more ingenious regula- 
 tions. The world now knows the utter failure of 
 these visions of a society drilled like a regiment and 
 tutored like a school. But with all their errors and 
 their follies, they never thought that the just claims of 
 labour could be settled " by algebra." They saw that 
 there are but two ways in which labour and capital 
 or say, rather, the human faculties and efforts can 
 receive their proportionate shares : by competition, or 
 by a radical revision of the mechanism of the whole 
 social system. 
 
 There is one other consideration (and it is of the 
 utmost importance) which co-operators usually over- 
 look. In a plain, thriving business as in the cotton
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 365 
 
 trade before the American war, when profits were 
 certain and large it seems a very simple thing to 
 divide the profit equitably. But what if there is no 
 profit, or a dead loss ? Under the rule of abstract justice, 
 it does not seem quite clear why, if a business is working 
 at a dead loss, the very wages should be paid. Yet, to 
 give capital its due, however great its losses, it pays 
 the market rate of wages to all whom it employs. 
 Now, in striking the just balance, something ought to 
 be allowed to capital for this liability, since it has 
 to bear all the loss. And yet, how is the risk, the 
 chance of dead loss, to be estimated ? If any arrange- 
 ment is devised which is to throw the loss on labour, 
 then labour ought to have a voice in the management; 
 and we should have co-operative mills managed not 
 only by committees and meetings of shareholders, but 
 joint committees and meetings of the shareholders, 
 and their workmen and workwomen. But co-operators 
 are not prepared for this, for this is Socialism, and a 
 distinct invasion of the rights of capital. 
 
 Working men, perhaps, are a little disposed to 
 undervalue the constant and enormous losses which 
 capital has to bear. How many a business, ultimately 
 thriving, has run at a dead loss for years a loss which, 
 if thrown on the workmen, would have brought them 
 to destitution. Now, capital can stand these great 
 fluctuations just because it is capital i.e. a reserve ; 
 but the fluctuations of the labourer's income, just 
 because he has only a reserve in rare cases, unsettle 
 and derange his daily comfort and his domestic life. 
 These losses, when averted, are often averted by the 
 personal sagacity and energy of the capitalist, which it 
 is impossible to estimate in figures. The whole life 
 and soul of a difficult business (as of a difficult cam- 
 paign) often depends entirely on the skill of the chief ; 
 and he would be crippled if he were a subordinate
 
 366 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 manager. There is a great deal more resemblance 
 than is often supposed between a military association 
 and an industrial one. The successful direction of 
 combined human effort requires very similar conditions, 
 whether the activity takes the form of killing an 
 enemy or of making steam-engines. It is as illusory 
 to apportion the just share of the capitalist to the 
 profits, or to subject his action to his subordinates, 
 as it would be to put an army into commission, and 
 direct it by a Board and an assembly of common 
 soldiers. 
 
 Nor is the industrial question simply one of money. 
 Labour would not be helped simply by awarding it a 
 new share of the profits j many labourers would use it 
 just as improvidently and unluckily as they do their 
 present share. The main and the just complaint of 
 labour is, not that it has too small a share of the profit, 
 but that it is too often exposed to the exorbitant power 
 of capital, and the oppressive use of that power. All 
 know that there are very many ways in which the 
 capitalist can hold the labourer gripped in a crushing 
 system, whilst remunerating him largely. Some of 
 the best -paid occupations that of colliers, coal- 
 whippers, tailors, and excavators receive very high 
 wages, although often suffering the most systematic 
 oppression. Wages are frequently enormous where 
 " truck " is a dominant institution : the money 
 question is often the least part of it. Nor would any 
 system which simply added to wages, and left capital 
 with all its power, do much to establish equity. 
 Justice is not done to the unprotected labourer simply 
 by giving him more money, if every power and right 
 which capital possesses to oppress him is left un- 
 touched. The evils which fall hardest on labour are 
 irregular work ; overtime ; exhausting, unhealthy, 
 and dangerous work ; fluctuations in earnings, place
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 367 
 
 and hours of work j forfeits ; personal, domestic, and 
 private oppression ; want of leisure, justice, and pro- 
 tection. All these, which Unionism provides for, 
 Co-operation leaves untouched ; and as to overwork, 
 rather stimulates than reduces it. Co-operation con- 
 cerns itself solely with the re-distribution of capital 
 and its produce. For the employment and the duties 
 of capital it has not a word. 
 
 Capital has its beneficent as well as its sinister side. 
 It is a power for good far more than for evil ; and if 
 co-operation too often forgets the formidable power of 
 aggregate capital, whether owned by many or by one, 
 by rich or poor, it too often puts out of sight the 
 noble functions which capital in a single hand can 
 exert. As the possession of vast and free capital in a 
 single skilful hand enables it to be used with a con- 
 centration, rapidity, and elasticity which no corporate 
 capital can enjoy ; so in a conscientious hand it is 
 capable of yet more splendid acts of protection, pro- 
 vidence, and beneficence. There is nothing chimerical 
 in such a supposition, and nothing degrading to those 
 who benefit by it. It does not consist in the giving 
 of money or the distribution of patronage. A great, 
 free, and wise capitalist and England happily can 
 show some of the noblest examples whose mind is 
 devoted to the worthy employment of his power, can 
 in countless ways, by advice, help, example, and 
 experience, promote the welfare of those about him, 
 raise their material comfort, their domestic happiness, 
 their education, their health, their whole physical and 
 moral condition ; can act almost as a providence on 
 earth, and that by means as honourable for them to 
 receive as for him to use. 
 
 Every one knows that some of the largest estates, 
 and some very large manufactories in this country, are 
 now successfully carried on in a spirit which provides
 
 368 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in a very high degree for the welfare of all concerned. 
 The feeling of honest pride, confidence, and goodwill 
 with which these efforts are met on the part of tenants 
 and workmen, is as elevating to them as it is to their 
 employers. It would be a perversion of mind which 
 could see anything mean in so noble a relation as this. 
 It would be preposterous to suppose that the sense of 
 duty could be as lively and personal on one side or the 
 other, where the capital is owned by a company. No 
 responsible manager of a society could feel or venture 
 to show the same munificent care for his people that 
 many landlords and many manufacturers now do. No 
 association could or would be ever voting sums for 
 those benevolent purposes which the conscientious 
 capitalist carries out day by day. As little could it do 
 so as the Board of Admiralty could inspire the sense 
 of sympathy and devotion which binds a captain 
 like Nelson to his men. This is a conviction almost 
 as old as society itself, which it needs more now than 
 some phrases about "Self-Help" and "Mutual Co- 
 operation " to eradicate. 
 
 Socialism, it is true, and still more Communism, 
 did claim to substitute for this spirit another as strong, 
 or even stronger. But that was by boldly recon- 
 structing the social system, by instilling new habits, 
 and instituting a moral education. But the bastard 
 Communism- of breaking capital into bits which 
 some advocate as true co-operation, leaves the whole 
 force of these sentiments out of sight. It weakens the 
 power of capital for good far more than it weakens its 
 power for evil. The morality and education of capital 
 it passes by. It subdivides it, but does nothing to 
 elevate it. Right, useful, necessary often, as the 
 principle of association and co-operation is, indispensable 
 as it may be as an adjunct and resting-point, it will 
 still remain as true as ever, that on any large scale,
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 369 
 
 and for the highest uses, concentrated and not associated 
 capital will command the greatest practical success, 
 and develop the most noble moral features both in 
 employer and employed. 1 
 
 It may be asked, is there any need so closely to 
 criticise a spontaneous economic movement which has 
 an obvious practical value ? Is it necessary again to 
 repeat objections against Socialism as a system ? The 
 answer is that there is real need for it. The co- 
 operative system is so great a success that any illusions 
 about it would be very dangerous. It is now absorb- 
 ing men of such high qualities and influence, that if 
 not well directed it will prove positively pernicious ; 
 and especially so, since it is being advocated with such 
 exclusive claims and such extravagant language as befit 
 only a new social system. The present writer yields 
 to none in his warm sympathy and respect for the 
 movement as regards the " stores " and associated 
 artificers. He knows and has seen how very much 
 good it is doing. But that good is wholly dependent on 
 its true limit and use being understood, and he has long 
 seen with regret that some of the very best leaders and 
 friends of the working classes are throwing themselves 
 exclusively into it, as if it were a new gospel, destined 
 to revolutionise the conditions of industry. As apply- 
 
 1 It will be seen that no notice is here taken of the system originating 
 in Paris, advocated by Mr. Mill, and adopted by Messrs. Briggs and 
 Messrs. Crossley, in which a portion of the profits is freely given by the 
 capitalist to the labourer, or a share in the capital is made over to him. 
 This, the most hopeful fact in our industrial system, the best of all 
 schemes of industrial improvement, is not co-operation at all. It wants 
 every feature of co-operation. It is not self-help by the people, for it is 
 a wise and spontaneous act of munificence from the capitalist. No 
 efforts of the labourers can advance its introduction. The capital is 
 not subdivided, but remains practically in one hand. The management 
 is not democratic, but remains also in one hand. The labourers are not 
 partners, and have no control for good or evil over the concern. It is 
 the free gift of a bonus to the labourer a wise, a just, and a promising 
 system but not co-operation (1865). 
 
 2 B
 
 370 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ing on any large scale to manufacturers, it seems to 
 the writer a feeble echo of Socialism, with many of its 
 defects and few of its ennobling aims. On this side 
 it is a crude compromise between the claims of labour 
 and of capital the hybrid child of Plutonomy and 
 Communism. 
 
 Things which are very good and useful when quite 
 spontaneous, become very bad and noxious when 
 fanned into a movement and preached as a revelation. 
 The Temperance principle has done good service ; 
 but as a Teetotalist fanaticism it does positive harm. 
 It is a most useful thing and a most hopeful fact, that 
 many working men's families should have a small 
 saving for a rainy day. But there is no need for 
 special exultation that a great many working men 
 become shopkeepers or small employers. And a true 
 friend of labour may well listen with dismay and 
 disgust to the appeals of an organised propaganda " to 
 save society by making money." There exists un- 
 luckily a systematic agitation which has developed a 
 special cant of its own, by which the working men are 
 beset, the burden of the cry being, Save economise 
 accumulate grow rich. " I do beseech you," cries a 
 co-operative lecturer, " to unite yourselves together, 
 with the determination to benefit yourselves by laying 
 out your money to the best advantage." This is but 
 the spirit of a thousand addresses, tracts, and articles. 
 There has grown up an entire class of professional 
 agitators, from whom nothing solid or practical is ever 
 heard but exhortations to make money, and hints how 
 to make money quickly. It is a good thing to grow 
 rich honestly and naturally. But to preach, implore, 
 and excite men to grow rich is a very bad thing. 
 
 It used to be said by them of old time that the 
 love of money was the root of all evil. Foolish as this 
 was, it is hardly true that money is the root of all
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 371 
 
 good. I do not scruple to say that this is too often 
 the tone of the professional propagandist, and that 
 much of his teaching is morally debasing. There is 
 not one moral standard for the rich and another for 
 the poor. And to teach and preach to the poor the 
 paramount duty of getting money is as demoralising 
 as to preach it to the rich. A little money, if they 
 come by it in natural course, may be useful and 
 essential to their well-being; but for them to be 
 always thinking of making a little, and then of 
 making that little more ; ever to be dealing in shares, 
 dividend, or interest ; to believe that by so doing they 
 are working out their own " elevation " and their 
 orders' regeneration, would be a pitiable self-delusion. 
 For this reason there is no modern movement more 
 full of moral danger than this. The temperance, the 
 educational, the club movement, all have and advocate 
 a definite moral object. The co-operative easily 
 degenerates into the basest material end. Material 
 efforts are no less necessary than moral efforts, for 
 the moment are often more so ; but only in so far as 
 men recognise and remember their temporary and 
 subordinate uses. 
 
 The co-operative advocate will insist that many 
 incidental objects, many moral precepts, are invariably 
 united with the material aim. It is so, and the move- 
 ment would be a poor one indeed if there were not 
 this union. But co-operation must stand or fall by 
 that which is its direct principal purpose. A material 
 aim is a good, provided it keeps its place. And the 
 direct, main, and only accomplished object of co- 
 operation, as a system, is to make money. This is 
 but slightly modified by the incidental aims j and its 
 character is not changed by vague appeals to good 
 feeling, by social celebrations, by devoting I per cent 
 out of dividends for education, by opening a reading-
 
 372 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 room, and by subscribing ^5 to the Co-operator. None 
 of these rest on any defined principle, are in the least 
 systematic or generally accepted, or have been ever 
 worked up into practical standing rules. They are 
 just as compatible in theory with a railway company 
 as with a " store." The shareholders of any business, 
 if they were good-natured people, would do as much 
 and more. What co-operation does teach emphatic- 
 ally, consistently, perpetually, and ably is how to 
 make a thriving business. It has worked out an 
 admirably ingenious and prudent system of rules to 
 increase dividends and to reduce expenditure. As a 
 commercial system, it is a masterpiece of sagacious 
 contrivances, and rests in principle on the plainest and 
 most consistent logic. By this alone can it claim to 
 be a system. What it has not yet done is to produce 
 in twenty years one plain case of labour being 
 employed on juster and more favourable principles 
 than it is, or indeed on any principles but those of 
 competition ; or even to elaborate or suggest any 
 rational scheme for employing labour on new condi- 
 tions, or for placing the use of capital on a sounder 
 and higher moral basis. 1 
 
 1 A curious proof how little co-operation provides or suggests on the 
 grand industrial question of making the use of capital consistent with 
 social obligations, may be found in the following catechism, printed in 
 the Co-operator, as part of a lecture, by its indefatigable editor, Mr. 
 Pitman, the most active and most eminent of the co-operative apostles : 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE CATECHISM. 
 
 ' What is your Name ? 
 
 ' Co-operation. 
 
 ' Who ga-ve you this Namt ? 
 
 ' My godfathers and godmothers, the Rochdale Pioneers, by whom I 
 was made prudent, provident, and persevering. 
 
 ' What did your godfathers and godmothers do for you f 
 
 ' They did promise and vow three things in my name : First, that I 
 should renounce 'the public,' and all its ways, the pomps and vanities of 
 this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 373 
 
 If this is true, working men will not long trust 
 implicitly in a system which however useful is very 
 partial and essentially subordinate. They, of all 
 others, know the social consequences of a systematic 
 spirit of money - making. Co-operators are fond of 
 homely proverbs, and they may well reflect on the 
 value of a specific which consists "of a hair from the 
 dog that bit them." They are also fond of an 
 apologue, and may think of one of the most ancient 
 and the wisest of all apologues the immortal fable of 
 the " Belly and the members." Would it be a rational 
 remedy for disorder of the digestive system if the 
 members were, not to starve, but to parcel out the 
 stomach in bits amongst them ? All the social misery 
 which is caused to the workmen by the rage of 
 amassing capital is not likely to be extinguished by a 
 
 I should believe my own principles. And, Thirdly, that I should act as 
 if I did, by keeping down expenses, buying in the cheapest market, and 
 giving no credit without ample security. 
 
 " Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe and do as the Rochdale 
 Pioneers have promised fcr thee ? 
 
 " Yes, verily : and by the reciprocal help of the shareholders and other 
 customers I will j and I heartily thank my northern friends that they 
 have called me into this happy condition, through the instrumentality of 
 their principles. And I hope to illustrate those principles by continual 
 practice unto my life's end. 
 
 " Rehearse the articles of thy belief. 
 
 " I believe that honesty is the best policy 5 that 'tis a very good world 
 we live in, to lend, or to spend, or to give in ; but to beg, or to borrow, 
 or get a man's own, 'tis the very worst world that ever was known. I 
 believe in good weight and measure, in unadulterated articles, in cash 
 payments, and in small profits and quick returns. I also believe in the 
 maxim ' live and let live ' j in free trade ; and, in short, that my duty 
 towards my neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as 
 I would they should do unto me. 
 
 " What dost thou chiefly learn in these articles of thy belief? 
 
 " First, I learn the folly of being a slave, when I may be free. 
 Secondly, I learn to save my money, as well as earn it. And, Thirdly, 
 I learn how best to spend it." 
 
 This is sensible advice with a few copybook saws worthy of a village 
 schoolmaster ; but it is not a system of social justice, or a system of 
 anything (1865).
 
 374 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 few hundred thousand workmen becoming small 
 capitalists. There is nothing in co-operation per se 
 which is to prevent a thriving co-operative company 
 from consisting of the most selfish and unscrupulous 
 men on earth. Capitalists by the very conditions of 
 human nature will not be day-labourers. And the 
 fact that 10 per cent of the working men should raise 
 themselves out of their class by ceasing to be labourers 
 is an evil rather than a good. The working man who 
 does so is generally no favourable specimen of his 
 order. The facilities and taste for this species of rise 
 in life, this displacement of class, form a very real evil. 
 They are generally bought at the price of true moral 
 and mental development. Regularity and security of 
 position are the conditions most favourable to the 
 welfare and elevation of the working man, not a rage 
 for speculation and visions of possible wealth. Let 
 him consider the following words of Comte : 
 " Governments, whether retrograde or constitutional, 
 have done all they could to divert the people from 
 their true social function (participation in public life) 
 by affording opportunities for individuals among them 
 to rise to higher positions. The moneyed classes, 
 under the influence of blind routine, have lent their 
 aid to this degrading policy by continually preaching 
 to the people the necessity of saving : a precept which 
 is indeed incumbent on their own class, but not on 
 others. Without saving, capital could not be accumu- 
 lated and administered ; it is, therefore, of the highest 
 importance that the moneyed classes should be as 
 economical as possible. But in other classes, and 
 especially in those dependent on fixed wages, parsi- 
 monious habits are uncalled for and injurious ; they 
 lower the character of the labourer, while they do little 
 or nothing to improve his physical condition ; and neither 
 the working classes nor their teachers should encourage
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 375 
 
 them. Both the one and the other will find their 
 truest happiness in keeping clear of all practical re- 
 sponsibility, and in allowing free play to their mental 
 and moral faculties in public as well as private life." 
 
 What, then, are our practical conclusions ? They 
 are these : that the co-operative system, as applied to 
 the retail of food and clothing, and to small bodies of 
 associated workmen, is a most sound, strong, and 
 valuable method of adding to the material well-being 
 of the working classes. As such it deserves all good- 
 will and confidence, and undoubtedly has a large and 
 bright future of usefulness before it. But co-operation, 
 as spreading grand social truths, or as applied to large 
 capitals and complex industries in a word, to Pro- 
 duction has riot stood, and will not stand, its ground. 
 As a social system, it has developed nothing that is not 
 at once crude and vague j and the earnest spirits 
 amongst the working and educated classes (often of 
 some shade of Socialism) who support it on this ground, 
 should reflect that it has done nothing to grapple with 
 the problems that Socialism propounds j that it has 
 done and taught nothing definite, except how to buy 
 well and how to save money. As applied to the 
 higher manufactures it is doubtless capable, in special 
 cases, of a very large measure of success, and may 
 often in the battle of labour prove valuable, as a 
 temporary rampart and refuge. It will probably 
 always remain side by side with individual capital, as 
 a vigorous rival and check. Success, however, neces- 
 sarily alters the character of co-operative manufactures, 
 and extinguishes their social purpose by converting the 
 workmen into simple shareholders. 
 
 Co-operation is deeply rooted, and may now prosper 
 by itself. To fan it into factitious activity may 
 prove a dangerous social nuisance. The Gospel 
 according to Mammon will preach itself, and can do
 
 376 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 without the assistance of philosophers and reformers. 
 The working men and their advisers who .are really 
 bent on social progress, well know that this comes 
 only of a truer civilisation, of a more vigorous morality, 
 of a wider education, of a deeper moral tone, of healthier 
 domestic life, more temperance, unity, moderation, self- 
 respect amongst employed, more sense of duty, more 
 justice, more benevolence amongst employers, more 
 sympathy and unselfishness amongst both. Were a 
 higher education of mind and feeling universal amongst 
 workmen, they could elevate their own condition in- 
 definitely. Were it universal amongst capitalists, they 
 would do so spontaneously. Moral and mental educa- 
 tion then, and a systematic promotion of it, and a 
 power to concentrate and direct opinion, is the one 
 thing truly needful in this and in all other social 
 wants. This is the true "self-help by the people," 
 and not the making of dividends, and compound 
 interest on capital. This is the only means by which 
 the working classes can elevate themselves, and it is a 
 fraud to tell them that Co-operation offers them this 
 in any serious or regular way. Everything that puts 
 this out of sight, and blinds men to its paramount 
 importance, is an evil. It is because Co-operation 
 seems tending to do so, that the writer has criticised 
 it as unreservedly and openly as he has previously 
 criticised capital. If Co-operation were ever to 
 supplant, in the interest and hopes of working men, 
 these other and far higher requirements, it would 
 become a real source of social demoralisation. In 
 itself it is good, provided it be natural, and provided 
 it keep its place. But far other things are needful 
 on which Co-operation can offer nothing definite, or 
 only as a make-weight. These things, co-operators 
 may be told, they ought to have done, and not to 
 have left the other undone.
 
 IV 
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 
 
 (1885) 
 
 In the year 1884 Mr. Robert Miller of Edinburgh, a retired 
 engineer, proposed to hold a public representative inquiry 
 into the causes of Industrial Distress and possible remedies. 
 He offered 1000 for the expenses of such a Conference 
 in London, to embrace politicians, capitalists, statisticians, 
 workmen, and delegates from many Unions, Co-operative 
 and Industrial Societies, Socialist and Reformers' bodies. 
 Together with many Economists, Unionists, and Labour 
 Associations we organised a Conference of more than one 
 hundred delegates, who met during January 1885 in 
 the Prince's Hall under the Presidency of Sir Charles 
 Dilke. 
 
 The question proposed was as follows : 
 Would the more general distribution of Capital or 
 Land, or the State management of Capital or Land, 
 promote or impair the production of wealth and the 
 welfare of the community ? 
 
 A variety of papers were read and discussed by men 
 representing nearly all the various forms of Economic and 
 Socialist schools, by men as widely separated in opinion as 
 were Mr. Arthur J. Balfour and Mr. John Burns, as 
 were Lord Brassey and Professor Francis Newman and 
 Professor Alfred R. Wallace. 
 
 377
 
 378 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 From the volume entitled The Industrial Remunera- 
 tion Conference, which reported all the papers and the 
 discussions, I extract my own address, which embodied the 
 views on the Labour problem of our Positivist School 
 (1908}. 
 
 WE have before us two methods proposed for the 
 reorganisation of the industrial system : the first, by 
 the more general distribution of Capital and of Land ; 
 the second, by the State management of Capital and 
 of Land. These two plans are in violent contrast 
 with each other. The former is merely an extension 
 of the present social system, multiplying the holders of 
 private property, imposing on private property no new 
 checks or duties, proposing nothing subversive of our 
 ordinary habits, and nothing but what is common in 
 many countries in the Old and New World. The 
 second plan involves an entire revolution in the social 
 system ; it would abolish, or at least recast, the oldest 
 institution of civilisation, private property ; and it 
 proposes an industrial system which probably has 
 never at any time been at work on any large scale on 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 But before we can properly consider any large 
 scheme for the reorganisation of our industrial system, 
 we must first be prepared with at least a general 
 answer to the wider question : " Does our industrial 
 system need to be reorganised at all ? " I shall 
 simply indicate my own answer to this question, and 
 shall then consider the two alternative proposals for 
 reform ; giving in each case results, conclusions, and 
 general estimates, the outcome of my own experiences 
 and studies. I have now for twenty-five years occu- 
 pied myself with these industrial problems in their 
 various phases, in personal contact with the move- 
 ments and their leading exponents or directors : trades 
 unions, workmen's clubs, benefit societies, co-operation,
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 379 
 
 industrial partnerships, land nationalisation, socialism, 
 communism. Time does not permit me to enter 
 into details or systematic review of arguments. I 
 shall seek only to lay before the Conference my final 
 conclusions and suggestions. 
 
 " Does our industrial system need to be re- 
 organised ? " or in words which originated this 
 Conference, " Is the present manner whereby the 
 products of industry are distributed satisfactory ? " 
 I cannot myself understand how any one who knows 
 what the present manner is, can think that it is 
 satisfactory. To me at least it would be enough 
 to condemn modern society as hardly an advance 
 on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of 
 industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 per 
 cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home 
 that they can call their own beyond the end of the 
 week ; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room, that 
 belongs to them ; have nothing of value of any kind, 
 except as much old furniture as will go in a cart ; 
 have the precarious chance of weekly wages, which 
 barely suffice to keep them in health ; are housed for 
 the most part in places that no man thinks fit for 
 his horse ; are separated by so narrow a margin from 
 destitution, that a month of bad trade, sickness, or 
 unexpected loss, brings them face to face with hunger 
 and pauperism. 
 
 In cities, the increasing organisation of factory 
 work makes life more and more crowded, and work 
 more and more a monotonous routine ; in the country, 
 the increasing pressure makes rural life continually 
 less free, healthful, and cheerful ; whilst the prizes 
 and hopes of betterment are now reduced to a 
 minimum. This is the normal state of the average 
 workman in town or country, to which we must 
 add the record of preventable disease, accident, suffer-
 
 380 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ing, and social oppression with its immense yearly 
 roll of death and misery. But below this normal 
 state of the average workman, there is found the 
 great band of the destitute outcasts the camp- 
 followers of the army of industry at least one- 
 tenth of the whole proletarian population, whose 
 normal condition is one of sickening wretchedness. 
 If this is to be the permanent arrangement of modern 
 society, civilisation must be held to bring a curse on 
 the great majority of mankind. 
 
 Is the relative area of this extreme misery growing 
 wider or smaller ? Is the normal state of the average 
 workman growing better or worse ? Is the general 
 lot of the upper ranks of the workmen rising or 
 falling ? Taking England and our own generation 
 only, I have little doubt that there is some improve- 
 ment in all. The proportion of the utterly destitute 
 is distinctly, however slowly, diminishing. The 
 average workman, on the whole, has gained in money- 
 values a real advance. The fortunate minority of 
 the most highly skilled workmen have gained very 
 considerably. The figures arrayed by consummate 
 economists are far too complete to be doubted. But 
 then this question is by no means settled by figures. 
 After all has been said as to the rise of wages, as to 
 the fall of prices, as to the cheapening of bread and 
 other necessaries, there comes in a series of questions as 
 to housing, as to permanence of employment, as to the 
 general conditions of life in cities ever more crowded, 
 and in country ever more and more enclosed, as to the 
 nature of industry in the sum. These are questions 
 that cannot be settled by statistics and comparative 
 tables. It is impossible to balance a gain of 2d. on 
 the quartern loaf against the growing unhealthiness 
 and discomforts of an increasing city. No one can 
 say if another id. per hour in wages is the equivalent
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 381 
 
 of increased strain in the industrial mill. No one can 
 exactly value all the rush and squeeze of modern 
 organised industry against the personal freedom of 
 the old unorganised labour. 
 
 These things one has to judge in the concrete, and 
 my own judgment is this : the fortunate minority 
 have gained, even in the sum total, at least as much as 
 any other class in the community ; and they are in 
 the ascendant, in the way to gain more, both positively 
 and relatively. This is due mainly, I hold, to their 
 trades unions and mutual societies. The average 
 majority of workmen have, in the sum total, gained 
 a little ; but far less than the rich or the middle- 
 classes. And that little has been gained at the 
 expense of some evils which are hardly compatible 
 with civilisation. The destitute residuum is, if rela- 
 tively diminishing, positively increasing in numbers ; 
 and, under the pressure of modern organised life, is 
 in a condition of appalling barbarism. Taking the 
 general condition of the producers of wealth as a 
 whole, it is improving, but somewhat slowly, and 
 even the improvement is of so moderate a kind, and 
 is accompanied with evils so menacing to society, that 
 the future of civilisation itself is at stake. And herein 
 I join hands with very much that is said by the earnest 
 men of the genuine Socialist schools, so far as they 
 point out the evils and dangers of our actual system. 
 
 In particular, I heartily sympathise with the critical 
 portions of Mr. Henry George's writings, especially in 
 his latest work, Social Problems. That book seems 
 to me a very powerful, and, in the main, a very just, 
 exposure of the evils of our industrial system ; though 
 I look on his pretended panacea as chimerical and 
 futile. But Mr. George, whose genius and courage 
 I cordially admire, has introduced one very important 
 consideration. He has proved, or rather directed our
 
 382 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 attention to this, viz., that the evils long familiar to 
 all in the industrial system of Europe are already in 
 full operation in America and other new societies ; 
 that they grow up with wonderful rapidity within a 
 generation under conditions utterly different from those 
 of Europe ; that they are found in primitive com- 
 munities, in democratic republics, in societies where 
 virgin soil, unbounded liberty, limitless space, social 
 equality, and an absence of all traditions, restrictions, 
 or hindrances whatever, leave an unorganised crowd of 
 free men face to face with Nature. It is impossible, 
 therefore, to attribute these evils to Government, 
 social institutions, laws, or historical conditions. 
 They are the direct growth of modern industrial 
 habits ; and they develop with portentous rapidity 
 directly industry finds a field wherein to organise 
 itself, even in the most free and the most new of all 
 modern societies. Mr. George, I say, has shown us 
 that the evils of our industrial system are the direct 
 product of the industrial system itself. 
 
 This spectacle of the growth of free industry in 
 America affords a sufficient answer to those who call 
 out for absolute freedom from State interference. In 
 the United States we have State interference at its 
 minimum, and the freedom and independence of the 
 individual citizen at its maximum. And this seems 
 precisely the field where industry breeds the evils of 
 the industrial system with the greatest rapidity. It 
 is here, where the State does the least, and where the 
 individual is most independent, that we have colossal 
 accidents, gigantic frauds, organised plunder, systematic 
 adulteration, the greatest insecurity of property and of 
 person, and commerce fast reducing itself to a science 
 of swindling. This should be enough to warn us that 
 it is impossible to make an absolute principle of the 
 doctrine of non-interference. Where the State can
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 383 
 
 usefully interfere, and where it cannot, is for each 
 society a matter to be discovered by practical experi- 
 ment. 
 
 The sticklers for absolute respect for Liberty and 
 Property have not the courage of their doctrines. If 
 they are logical they should ask for the abolition 
 of all legislation against truck, dangerous structures or 
 practices, unhealthy buildings, oppressive regulations, 
 and fraudulent devices of any kind. They ought even 
 to call for the abolition of all inspection, all compulsion, 
 all monopolies, and all State manufactures, or even 
 regulation of industry in any form. Cab-drivers would 
 be free to charge the unwary what they pleased ; girls 
 and boys would be ill-used in any way short of open 
 violence. The population would grow up a prey to 
 small -pox and all infectious diseases ; the children 
 would be untaught ; salesmen would be free to falsify 
 their weights and measures, and to adulterate their 
 goods without check ; sailors would be drowned, pit- 
 men blown to cinders, and trains wrecked entirely at 
 the mercy of certain owners ; and we should have to 
 forward our own letters, and (why not ?) protect our 
 own houses ourselves. 
 
 Society would be dissolved in the name of the sacred 
 rights of self-help and property. The limits of age, 
 sex, or special industry have no abstract force, apart 
 from convenience. If it degrades a man to have State 
 protection, it must degrade a woman ; if it is good for 
 a young person of 14 to be under compulsion or 
 inspection, it cannot be so evil for a young person 
 of 1 8 or 20 to be so also. If there be any absolute 
 doctrine of non-interference, the age of 12, 14, 17, or 
 21 cannot override it; nor does a factory girl of 16 
 differ so much from a factory lad of 16, or even of 21. 
 Once show a few cases where State control has 
 certainly made industrial life a little more human, and
 
 384 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 checked some forms of misery, and the abstract 
 doctrine of non-interference is blown to the winds. 
 But cases of successful State control abound in all 
 societies, and notably in ours. The rule of caveat 
 emptor is perfectly observed only by savages. 
 
 I turn to the first alternative proposal, the more 
 general distribution of capital and land. No one who 
 knows the working man, so to speak, at home, can 
 doubt how great an advance in well-being and inde- 
 pendence is the possession of a little capital, a bit of 
 land, however small. Only those who do know him 
 at home can truly judge how great an advance it is. 
 The workmen of such cities as Rochdale, Halifax, 
 Huddersfield, Leeds, Newcastle, and Oldham, where 
 the unions, the co-operative, building, and benefit 
 societies are in strong force, are in an altogether 
 different world from that of the average town and 
 country labourer, who on a Friday night is the owner 
 at most of a few shillings and five pounds' worth of 
 old furniture. The co-operative societies, with their 
 twenty-six millions sterling of annual sales, are only 
 one and the best known of the many agencies. The 
 trades unions, with their large reserve funds, and their 
 accident, sickness, and out-of-work benefits, are but 
 another mode of securing to workmen some of the 
 advantages of reserve capital. All the various forms 
 of insurance and benefit societies, the land and building 
 societies, do the same. 
 
 The prudent, energetic workman of our northern 
 industrial districts, who can afford to take advantage 
 of all the mutual benefit associations available to him, 
 may be said to be in a position of something like 
 security and comfort. If he is sick, out of work, or 
 meets with an accident to himself or his tools, he is 
 not forced to pawn his bedding j when he is super- 
 annuated, he is not driven to the poorhouse ; when he
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 385 
 
 dies, he is not buried by the parish. He gets whole- 
 some food, good clothing, and furniture at wholesale 
 prices ; he has a good library and club, a night school, 
 and an annual holiday ; and he comes to be master of 
 a house and garden of his own. This is the bright 
 side of the picture ; but of how few can it be said to 
 be true ! Perhaps, at the most, of 5 per cent of our 
 total working population ; and of that 5 per cent 
 almost the whole are factory artisans, who alone, 
 by their higher wages and the employment of 
 whole families, can afford the needful weekly sub- 
 scriptions. 
 
 With the rural labourer the story is very different. 
 How rare is the case where he owns anything, or has 
 the remotest hope of ever owning anything ! Every 
 ordinary misfortune of life sickness, accident, in- 
 firmity, old age to him means simply parochial relief, 
 charity, the workhouse. He drinks poisonous water, 
 eats bad and adulterated food, lives a life without 
 rational amusement, without freedom, without hope. 
 Compare the British labourer with the peasant owner 
 of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, or America, 
 and he appears to be at the opposite pole of comfort 
 and independence. It would be wasting time to 
 multiply proofs that the more general distribution 
 of capital and of land does promote the welfare of the 
 labourer. Every means which contribute to that end 
 are, in my judgment, an unmixed good, whether they 
 take the form of co-operation, trades unions, benefit, 
 building, insurance, or joint-stock societies, or peasant 
 occupation and holdings. Nay, I go much further, and 
 I insist that until the working man whether in town 
 or in country has at least as much possessory interest in 
 his home as an average middle-class man now has, and 
 until he can count on so much capital, or its equivalent, 
 as will keep him (if needs be) from destitution for a 
 
 2 C
 
 3 86 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 year at least, the first conditions of civilised industry 
 are wanting. 
 
 But the question before us is whether the re- 
 organisation of industry and the welfare of the com- 
 munity are to be found in a general distribution of 
 capital and land. And here we are met by two 
 irresistible facts. The first is, that the universal 
 tendency of organised industry, rural or urban, is 
 towards the massing, and not the dispersion, of capital. 
 The highly specialised subdivisions of all modern pro- 
 duction, the increasing use of complex machinery, 
 and the greater economy of all aggregate operations, 
 make the massing of capital more and more essential to 
 efficient production. In America and in new societies, 
 even more than in the old, the same causes are at work. 
 Increased concentration of capital is an indispensable 
 condition of modern successful industry. Even in 
 rural England, where the concentration of estates 
 seems almost to have reached a maximum, the con- 
 solidation of farms goes on ; the big industry is driving 
 out the little. The ancient controversies as to great 
 and little culture of land have now ended in this : that 
 for the largest production of cereals and stock and 
 for the highest scientific farming the big-scale culture 
 at least is indispensable, even if the ownership be 
 subdivided. 
 
 In urban industry no room is left even for debate. 
 Collective industry has almost extinguished individual 
 industry. Factory production has swallowed up home 
 production ; the spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the 
 village workshop, are now the bows and arrows of 
 modern industry. The middleman, the chapman, the 
 small trader, the petty manufacturer, the private banker, 
 the small builder, the village store, are every day 
 superseded by big companies, central agencies, or big 
 capitalists who are consolidated companies and agencies,
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 387 
 
 in themselves. In the face of this universal law of 
 modern industry, a law the more conspicuous the more 
 free and virgin be the field of industry, how idle would 
 it be to look for any regeneration of the industrial 
 system to a natural dispersion of capital or land ! In 
 the teeth of universal tendencies such as these, it is 
 rather unnatural to struggle for a revival of the equable 
 distribution of capital and land which marks the ruder 
 types of society. 
 
 The second objection is a result of the first. As 
 a fact, the possession of capital and of land is reached 
 only by an insignificant fraction of the labour popula- 
 tion. After all has been allowed for the work done 
 by trades unions, co-operation, benefit societies, and 
 the like, it touches only a fortunate few. Even the 
 most flourishing and progressive of these movements 
 hardly advance more rapidly than population and the 
 general wealth of the community : in other words, 
 they barely hold their own. Trades unionism may 
 now be said to be, as an efficient movement, about 
 fifty years old ; co-operation is forty years old j most 
 of the mutual-benefit movements are in their second 
 or third generation. It is time that the enthusiasts of 
 each recognised the very narrow limit of their real 
 work. They practically affect the fortunate minority 
 alone. Ninety per cent of the labour population 
 scarcely feel any direct benefit from them. 
 
 Co-operation, in particular, has a melancholy failure 
 to acknowledge. Too much has been made of the 
 fact that a small fraction of the labouring classes 
 (600,000 or 700,000 all told) have learned to buy 
 their tea and sugar in economical ways at stores and 
 clubs. There is no social millennium in this. Co- 
 operation started forty years ago with a mission, to 
 revolutionise industry, to abolish the wages system, 
 and to produce by associated labour, so that the
 
 388 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 labourer should share in the profit of his labour. Over 
 and over again the effort has been made to start true 
 co-operative production, all workers sharing the 
 profits. Over and over again it has failed. It has 
 been a cruel disappointment to the noble-hearted men 
 who forty years ago, and since, have hoped that they 
 had found a new social machine, to see these hopes 
 ruined by the indomitable force of personal interest 
 and the old Adam of industrial selfishness. 
 
 One after another all types of co-operative pro- 
 duction worthy of the name have disappeared. Here 
 and there a few associated artisans or artists struggle 
 on in a small business where capital is hardly needed. 
 In 1883 the united profits of all productive societies 
 in the kingdom were less than ^15,000. This does 
 not count the flour-mills, which are merely a form of 
 store for the convenient supply of food. What a drop 
 in the ocean of the total earnings of the working 
 classes, ^500,000,000, is this annual profit of ^15,000 ! 
 But co-operative employers usually, like other em- 
 ployers, give little but the market rate of wages, and 
 secure the best dividends they can. Why should they 
 not ? they ask ; for they are poor men, trying to rise. 
 Why not indeed ? Only they make it plain that 
 co-operation is simply a name for a joint -stock 
 company ; and the idea that it is about to reorganise 
 modern industry is now an exploded day-dream. 1 
 
 Trades unionism, which I have known intimately 
 for twenty-five years, is an even more important and 
 efficient engine of industrial improvement, mainly 
 because its indirect influence is at least as great as 
 its direct influence. A trades union usually benefits 
 indirectly quite as many non-members as members, 
 
 1 In 1883, the aggregate dividend paid by these productive societies 
 in England was under 5000. About 100 was devoted to educational 
 and charitable purposes, about twice as much to labour, apart from capital 
 or purchases. In 1900 the dividend to -workers was 20,545 (1908).
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 389 
 
 sometimes perhaps twice as many. A powerful trades 
 union often improves the condition of the whole trade. 
 But, at the utmost, trades unions substantially affect 
 only the minority. Of the twelve millions of earners, 
 certainly not one million are in union. In one or 
 two of the most skilled trades, the unionists are the 
 majority ; but, taking the whole labouring population 
 of these islands, the unionists are a mere fraction, the 
 aristocracy of labour. Nor is this fraction now rela- 
 tively growing. Trades unionism, in the sum, is not 
 an advancing movement. 
 
 In two generations now it has shown itself utterly 
 powerless to reach the residuum, or even materially to 
 combine the great average mass. In spite of all the 
 creditable efforts made by the larger unions, and by 
 the annual congress and the like, unionism in its 
 average, and certainly in its lower, types tends rather 
 to sectional and class interests ; it divides trade from 
 trade, members from non-members ; and especially it 
 accentuates that sinister gulf which separates the 
 skilled and well-paid artisan from the unskilled 
 labourer, and from the vast destitute residuum. Our 
 industrial competition forces these classes into per- 
 manent antagonism. Unionism too often deepens 
 this antagonism into bitter and unsocial war. 1 
 
 It is vain indeed to expect the permanent re- 
 organisation of industry from any one of the move- 
 ments which tend to the more general distribution 
 of capital or land ; nor is there any reasonable 
 probability that this will come about naturally. The 
 steady logic of facts is towards the concentration of 
 capital and not its distribution ; and all the move- 
 ments for promoting that distribution but touch the 
 topmost layers ; they scarcely affect the mass, and do 
 
 1 The New Unionism and Socialism have now much changed this 
 (1908).
 
 390 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 nothing for the lowest state of destitution. They 
 leave the general organisation of the industrial system 
 exactly as they find it. They do almost nothing to 
 moralise it, to infuse into it a new spirit ; and they 
 distinctly decline to revolutionise the industrial system 
 itself. Trades unionism indeed, the best and by far 
 the most powerful of these agencies, is a strongly 
 conservative movement, and depends for its activity 
 on the actual industrial system as it is. Compared 
 with the gigantic and deep-seated evils of our present 
 society, these various schemes for the general dis- 
 tribution of capital are mere palliatives, stop-gaps, and 
 insignificant experiments. Nine-tenths of our working 
 people, nine-tenths of their wages, are hardly affected 
 by them at all. 
 
 I turn to the various proposals for the State 
 management of capital and land, that is to say, to 
 the nationalisation of the soil, and Communism pure 
 and simple. There is nothing particularly new about 
 the proposals of Mr. Henry George. In the last 
 century, Thomas Spence, in Newcastle, proposed 
 very similar theories, and the Spencean clubs of that 
 period were quite as vigorous as the land nationalisa- 
 tion societies are now. Mr. George has, however, 
 given the discussion a new interest by his eloquence, 
 passion, and his experiences of the new societies across 
 the Atlantic. I have already expressed my admiration 
 of Mr. George's genius and energy. And I will add 
 this : his dealing with the land question has drawn 
 attention to some important truths, so valuable that 
 if all the rest of his arguments were worthless, this 
 would still make him one of the most vigorous social 
 thinkers of our time. 
 
 The greater part of his criticism of our present 
 distribution of wealth is right in principle, even if 
 exaggerated in statement. He has abundantly proved
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 391 
 
 that it is not due to any special conditions of English 
 society, law, or institutions. He has thrown fresh 
 light on the danger of permitting to the owners of 
 the soil in cities the absolute disposal of its surface 
 and the buildings on it. And in particular he has 
 done admirable service in insisting on the necessity 
 for a genuine land tax. I am prepared myself to go 
 with him so far as to see a fifth at least of our national 
 income raised by a tax on land and ground-rents, as 
 is usual in most other civilised communities. But all 
 these proposals are part of the accepted programme of 
 all radical reforms. And Mr. George has done nothing 
 to put them into practical and workable form. 
 
 When, however, he goes on to represent the 
 appropriation of the soil in private hands as the cause 
 of all social misery, and the State confiscation of the 
 soil as the panacea for every ill that afflicts society or 
 the working poor, no wilder sophism was ever uttered 
 by a sane man. I will not, in a serious gathering of 
 cultivated men, waste a word on his invocations to the 
 will of God or the rights of man. Rant of this kind 
 is more fitting to a negro camp-meeting than to an 
 industrial inquiry. I come at once to what I hold to 
 be the central error of all land nationalisation theories 
 whatever. It is assumed in all 
 
 (1) That property in land is something different 
 toto ccelo from any other kind of property. 
 
 (2) That property in land represents a mere legal 
 right, nothing of real value apart from its arbitrary and 
 fictitious value. 
 
 (3) That property in land retains its value without 
 any act or expenditure on the part of the owner. 
 
 (4) That there is some mysterious wickedness 
 about ownership of the soil, some social mischief 
 which is not at all shared in by mere permanent 
 occupation of the soil.
 
 392 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Every one of these assumptions is false. The 
 appropriation of the soil rests on precisely the same 
 grounds as any other appropriation. If there is any- 
 thing wicked and socially mischievous in private 
 property in land, the same wickedness and mischief 
 exist in any other private property. The former is 
 the appropriation of an immovable and the latter of 
 a movable ; but there the distinction ends. There 
 are things far more rare than the soil, and quite 
 as essential to human life. The appropriation of 
 all the salt in India, or of all the coal or wood 
 in England, would create a monopoly far more 
 formidable, and would sooner make the monopolist 
 master of the community than any possible appropria- 
 tion of the soil. Raffaelle's pictures and ancient 
 statues are far more rare than even the soil of these 
 islands. And fuel, ships, or iron are quite as necessary 
 to existence. 
 
 If property becomes sin, when extended to things 
 of which the supply is limited, the ownership of 
 diamonds, coal, antiquities, and ancient manuscripts 
 must be even more unholy. To lay down a social 
 law that no one shall own anything which is much 
 wanted by others, would apply in turn to almost every 
 subject of property. Food, building materials, horses, 
 minerals, even books and newspapers, become in certain 
 societies and under certain conditions, things of special 
 desire, and suddenly enrich the fortunate owners. The 
 unearned increment applies to everything in turn. 
 The window of an attic which commands the view of 
 some historical scene, the house in which Shakespeare 
 lived and died, the Times newspaper with the account 
 of the battle of Waterloo, suddenly become a fortune 
 in the hands of some lucky owner. It is as much or 
 as little criminal to own them as to own a bit of soil. 
 If rarity and a general desire to possess them make
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 393 
 
 things incapable of appropriation, the rule should apply 
 to thousands of things besides land. 
 
 Immense nonsense is afloat respecting " the un- 
 earned increment." The unearned increment is the 
 result of civilised society which gives special value to 
 various things, quite apart from any act of their 
 possessors. In a besieged city the fortunate holders 
 of food, in a war the possessors of ships, saltpetre, 
 guns, and the like, suddenly find that their property 
 has "an unearned increment." The buyers of the 
 first edition of the Modern Painters^ Turner's Liber 
 Studiorum^ or Tennyson's poems, are in the same case. 
 Those who have bought a piece of land in a spot 
 where a town begins to rise are in precisely the same 
 position. It may be quite right for the State to 
 prevent the possessors of the soil from hindering the 
 free development of the town. But why should the 
 State confiscate the " unearned increment " of the piece 
 of ground, and not the " unearned increment " of the 
 book, the grain, or the saltpetre ? 
 
 Nor is it true that land is a positively limited 
 thing. There are still boundless tracts on the earth's 
 surface not actually occupied. Land is in no sense 
 so limited as wood, iron, coal, salt, not to speak of 
 Greek statues and illuminated manuscripts. And in 
 each country, even in ours, the quantity of cultivated 
 and useful land is a constantly fluctuating amount. 
 The land in practical occupation is now probably 
 one-fifth more than it was fifty years ago; and 
 perhaps one-twentieth less than it was ten years ago. 
 The land of any country in actual occupation varies 
 from year to year very largely, far more than iron, 
 coal, wood, or old books and pictures vary in amount. 
 At this hour, there are millions of acres of the soil 
 of these islands which are perfectly at the service of 
 Mr. George and his friends, at a rental of is. an acre,
 
 394 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 if he likes to lease them, and to convert them into 
 good farms. It is untrue that the soil even of this 
 island is all allotted out and closed for ever. There 
 are millions of acres still to be had which might be 
 made perfectly serviceable to man at an outlay of so 
 much per acre. What is lacking is the capital or the 
 labour willing to convert them. For practical men 
 well know that to convert these waste lands into farms 
 would involve a ruinous loss. It would not pay one 
 per cent. Why, then, should the " State " be required 
 to make an outlay which is certain to prove a ruinous 
 loss ? 
 
 This brings us to the point that property in the 
 soil represents not a bare legal right to exclude others, 
 but the actual expenditure of capital and labour. The 
 underlying fallacy of Mr. George is to think that land 
 is a thing like the sea, and raising produce from it is a 
 simple process, like catching fish. There are excep- 
 tional cases and extreme limits. But an ordinary farm 
 is as much artificial as a house or a factory. Good 
 farm land in England is the work of enormous outlay 
 and labour. In its primitive condition it was moor,' 
 swamp, thicket, or sandy wilderness. Perhaps not a 
 twentieth part of this island in its original state (Mr. 
 George would say as God made it) was of any use 
 at all to man. There is hardly an acre of cultivated 
 land in England which has not been made cultivable 
 by a great outlay of labour and capital. It has really 
 been as much built up as a railway or a dock. 
 Immense tracts of fine farm land have been in this 
 very century slowly won from a state of barren 
 wilderness by continuous labour and the enormous 
 expenditure of capital. The whole of the corn lands 
 recently gained from the open down and moor, 
 forming large parts of eight or ten southern and 
 south-western counties, the vast and fertile regions
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 395 
 
 in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and other North- 
 Eastern counties, redeemed from salt-marsh, fen, and 
 swamp, have been made quite as completely by human 
 industry as a ship or a steam-engine. 
 
 It is idle to repeat sophistical platitudes that God 
 made the earth, but man made the ship or the engine. 
 The ship and the engine are merely materials found 
 on and in the earth, worked into useful forms, and 
 arranged by human industry to serve man's wants. 
 So is a farm. No farm in England is in the state in 
 which it is supposed that God left it at the creation of 
 the earth. It has been worked up and rearranged by 
 human labour extending over centuries. The farm is 
 also, like the ship or the engine, a mass of the earth's 
 materials so changed and placed that it can grow food. 
 Apart from that labour, an acre, say, in the Bedford 
 Level, or on the Wiltshire Downs, would be as 
 perfectly worthless as an acre on the top of Snowdon 
 or on the Goodwin Sands. It is certainly immovable, 
 whilst an engine or a ship, under conditions, and with 
 great expense and labour, is movable. But this is a 
 mere incident. A ship stranded is also immovable ; 
 and so is an engine, in the absence of capital to 
 move it. 
 
 Hence we find that large portions of the soil of 
 England have every quality possessed by other purely 
 personal property, which Mr. George does not propose 
 to touch. Even he would be scandalised at a proposal 
 to confiscate the ships and engines built and owned 
 by private persons, on the ground that their material 
 was simply a portion of the earth's soil, which no man 
 has a right to appropriate. Society judges it wise to 
 guarantee property in ships and engines to those whose 
 capital has procured them to be built, in order to 
 encourage citizens to employ their savings in a way 
 useful to the community. On precisely the same
 
 396 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 grounds it guarantees property in the Bedford Level 
 to those whose capital has procured it to be made. 
 
 The Bedford Level is no doubt an extreme case. 
 But it is only a matter of degree. Hundreds of 
 thousands of acres in England have been made by 
 human toil, skill, and capital, quite as completely as 
 the Bedford Level was made out of tidal swamps. To 
 a very great degree every cultivated acre in England 
 has also been so made. Clearing of timber and brush- 
 wood, of stones, weeds, and other growths, draining, 
 fencing, damming, bridging, making roads, barns, 
 farmsteads and the like, ponds, wells, watercourses, 
 and the hundreds of works without which the land 
 could not bear produce these costly operations were 
 necessary for every farm alike. If the people, by God's 
 law, have a right to God's earth, they can only have a 
 right to that earth in the state in which God created it. 
 
 Let us assume that Mr. George is right, and that 
 we agree to hand back the soil to the people. It 
 would be grossly unjust to hand it back to them in 
 any other state than a state of nature. Assume that 
 we could replace it in that state, in the state, say, in 
 which Julius Caesar saw it when he came over from 
 Gaul. This island then consisted of pathless tracts of 
 jungle, fen, moor, wood, and heath. The valleys of 
 the great rivers were periodically under water j the 
 estuaries on the coast were boundless salt fens ; the 
 uplands were sandy or stony wildernesses ; there were 
 only two or three varieties of tree, four or five very 
 common herbs, and about as many coarse wild fruits. 
 It would be impossible for any but hunters and coracle 
 boatmen to get about the country ; there would be 
 hardly any food for man or cattle ; neither man nor 
 beast could live anywhere except on patches here and 
 there, mostly in aquatic villages or on detached and 
 stony hills. At the utmost, one-twentieth of the soil
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 397 
 
 could be used for human produce, and that only in the 
 rudest way for a few necessaries. Nineteen-twentieths 
 of the soil would be as absolutely useless for human 
 food as Dartmoor and the Wash are now. That 
 is the condition in which God gave the soil of 
 England to the people of England ; and that is the 
 condition in which they should, by God's law, receive 
 it back. 
 
 To seize it, after centuries and centuries of labour 
 have been, by man's law, expended in utterly changing 
 its very face and nature, would be monstrously unjust. 
 We have lately by legislation remedied what most of 
 us hold to be a cruel injustice to Ireland, where the 
 labour which A had put into the soil was confiscated 
 by B. In Ireland, the mountain-side and the bog 
 had often been won into cultivation and usefulness by 
 the incessant labour of some tenant, or perhaps squatter 
 or bare occupant. Mr. George has justly inveighed 
 against the outrageous injustice done, when the farm 
 so reclaimed by the labour and capital of the peasant 
 was claimed, plus its improvements, by the mere 
 owner of the soil. We heartily agree with him. On 
 what ground ? Because we find it unjust that the 
 men who may fairly claim the soil should plunder, 
 along with the soil, the visible result of another's 
 labour and capital. In England it is not the occupant 
 but the owner, or those whom the owner represents, 
 who have expended on the soil that labour which alone 
 has made it useful to man. Mr. George, therefore, is 
 going to do in England exactly what he and we find 
 so monstrous in Ireland. Granted that the soil of 
 England belongs to the people of England. Then he 
 is calling on the people of England not only to seize 
 the soil, but to confiscate the enormous wealth repre- 
 senting the outlay by which the soil has been trans- 
 formed. He is going on a colossal scale to repeat the
 
 398 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 injustice which in a very minor form we have just 
 redressed by legislation. 
 
 Some, schools of land nationalisation propose what 
 they call compensation on this confiscation. What 
 they propose is, however, no compensation at all. It 
 is not, and never can be, any kind of equivalent for 
 the capital expended. The strict prairie value of 
 agricultural land in England would hardly amount to 
 one year's rent. The improved value, representing 
 capital expended in making the prairie cultivable, 
 would usually exceed twenty years' rent. It may be 
 doubted if ^2,000,000,000 would go any way in mak- 
 ing the soil of England what it is to-day, supposing 
 that it were in the state in which Julius Caesar, or 
 even William the Conqueror, found it. The idea 
 that the owners of the soil simply represent a parch- 
 ment-right granted ages ago by some sovereign or 
 paramount authority is almost too ridiculous to 
 discuss. 
 
 There is perhaps not a single enclosed and cul- 
 tivated acre in England on which human labour has 
 not been expended and paid for far in excess of 
 many years' rent ; it would be easy to show that in 
 some spots forty, fifty, even a hundred years' rental 
 would not cover the loss and outlay sunk in making it 
 fertile. We ought to calculate, not merely the bare 
 clearing, draining, and enclosing the particular farm, 
 but the whole of the permanent works needed to 
 make any given district cultivable as it now is the 
 vast and ancient operations of dyking rivers, estuaries, 
 and watercourses, the road-making, bridge-making, and 
 planting, the sum of those labours which make an 
 English county so utterly unlike the same soil in the 
 days of the Heptarchy. 1 It is as great a difference as 
 
 1 The works here spoken of are all the beneficial constructions for 
 the permanent improvement of the soil, made at the cost of successive
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 399 
 
 that between a frock-coat and a sheep's fleece. Mr. 
 George might as well claim the coats off our backs, 
 on the ground that God made the sheep, as the farms 
 which have been made by human capital and skill. 
 
 It is idle to seek now to unravel all the titles to 
 every plot in England. The notion that the soil of 
 England is held to-day under grants made by Norman 
 and Tudor kings is obviously childish. It would be 
 easy to show that an immense proportion of it is now 
 held by the assigns of those who paid hard money or 
 money's worth for it. Somebody gave or paid for the 
 labour ; and it would be as idle to trace back the heirs 
 of the original labourers as it would be to find the 
 men who made our coats, or the heirs of the brick- 
 layers who laid the walls of our houses. In civilised 
 society the legal ownership of an article is assumed to 
 represent the value given for the labour expended on 
 it. If every man were liable to have his coat con- 
 fiscated off his back, unless he could show that he had 
 paid his tailor, that the tailor had paid the clothier, 
 that the clothier had paid the farmer, that the farmer 
 had paid the shepherd, and so on ad infinitum, civilised 
 society would cease to exist. There is no more 
 reason in land than in anything else for calling on the 
 legal owner to show that he has personally paid the 
 value expended in making the article, be the article 
 coat or farm. As a matter of fact, a very large part 
 of the soil of England has been acquired for value 
 given within recent generations. 
 
 Even the estates of our peers, whose Norman 
 names excite Mr. George's democratic sensibilities, 
 have usually been acquired, directly or indirectly, 
 
 owners of the land. They do not include high-roads, bridges, or othef 
 works paid for by the parish, the county, or any public body. Every one 
 knows that in every large property there are occupation roads, bridges, 
 dykes, and other works necessarily paid for by the proprietor.
 
 400 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 through purchases by capitalists or marriage with the 
 children of capitalists. It was amusing to read Mr. 
 George's denunciations of the London estate of the 
 Duke of Westminster, which he told us was a grant 
 from a Norman king. Everybody knows that it 
 comes by inheritance from a worthy yeoman, who 
 farmed his own estate, and left it in due course to his 
 grandchild. The grandchild's descendant about a 
 hundred years ago obtained a title. But the right of 
 the Duke to the soil is precisely the same as Mr. 
 George's right to anything which was left to him by 
 his grandfather. There are no Norman kings in 
 America, and no land-laws made by an aristocracy. 
 And yet precisely the same evils of land monopoly 
 exist there, we are told, and the same policy of con- 
 fiscation is recommended. 
 
 Who are the people of England to whom God gave 
 the soil ? Are they the descendants of the aborigines, 
 of the first occupants, of the Britons, Saxons, or the 
 mediaeval yeomen ? Have not the Welsh, the men 
 of Cornwall, the Highlands, and the West of Ireland 
 the best title to the soil of their ancestors? And in 
 America God certainly gave the soil to the red-skin ; 
 and by the law of divine justice one would think that 
 New York, Boston, and Chicago should be restored 
 to the remnant still left in the Indian reserves. Absurd 
 panaceas can only be properly exposed by pointing 
 out the absurd consequences which logically they 
 involve. 
 
 Not only does the owner of a farm represent those 
 who have expended capital in creating it, but the 
 farm would soon cease to exist if the owner did not 
 continue to expend capital in keeping it going. 
 Next to the fallacy that the landlord has done nothing 
 to make the land, comes the fallacy that he does 
 nothing to maintain it. An ordinary estate requires
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 401 
 
 periodical expenditure, amounting at the lowest to ten 
 per cent of the rental, often twice, thrice, or four 
 times as much. Official reports from one of the 
 great estates in the kingdom show that in sixteen 
 years nearly three-quarters of a million sterling has 
 been expended. Of late years much of this outlay 
 has been incurred along with a reduction of rents. 
 It may well be that much of this expenditure is in 
 permanent improvements which will ultimately repre- 
 sent increased value. But in England an immense 
 proportion of this expenditure has nothing to do with 
 profit or speculation. It is voluntarily made by the 
 duty or pride of ownership, just as parks and gardens 
 are kept up without any view to profit. 
 
 Farmhouses, farm buildings, cottages, schools, 
 churches, clearings, plantations, and model farms are 
 placed on the soil by rich landlords out of their 
 capital. The country gains largely by this ; and the 
 reason that so many parts of England are cultivated 
 like gardens or home farms is that the owners, having 
 immense capital from resources other than agricultural 
 rents, are able to indulge their pride or their sense 
 of duty by expending enormous sums in improving 
 and beautifying their estates. One landlord in 16 
 years spent in farms, cottages, etc., ^290,000. 
 Another, in 3 years, ^60,000. Another, in 17 years, 
 ^30,000 (rental reduced). Another has, in 10 years, 
 received ^50,000, out of which he spent on the land 
 ^43,000 without increased rental. These improve- 
 ments are all in country estates, and in different 
 counties. 1 Instead of the great peers carrying off the 
 
 1 These cases have been given to me privately, and in each case with 
 exact figures supplied from the agent's office. They belong to a large 
 class of English properties which are owned by men of great wealth and 
 managed on liberal principles, without any idea of exacting the maximum 
 rental. They are not at all the strongest cases to be found. The 
 entire rental of some large estates is expended on the property. I know 
 
 2 D
 
 402 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 rentals of their farms to be consumed in extravagance, 
 the farms are often kept in their present high condition 
 because vast sums acquired elsewhere are poured into 
 them. I am certainly not prepared to utter one word 
 in defence either of our landed system or of our con- 
 centration of land in a few hands, least of all in 
 defence of the unsocial extravagance of the rich. But 
 on the whole I believe that great landlords in England 
 administer their estates with more sense of public 
 duty than bankers or merchants employ their capital. 
 
 On the whole I estimate that an annual sum of at 
 least ten millions is needed to keep our agricultural 
 land at a high level of condition, in building, draining, 
 fencing, clearing, planting, in roads, dykes, water-, 
 courses, bridges, and so forth. In a country changing 
 so rapidly as ours, and with daily advances in scientific 
 farming, this outlay is required to keep abreast of the 
 general progress. Were this not expended the fertility 
 of the land would rapidly deteriorate and ultimately 
 cease altogether. Any large tract of ordinary country 
 left to itself for a generation would return to a state 
 of nature, and in two or three generations it would be 
 as uncultivable and as uninhabitable as the moor or 
 the fen of our ancestors. An ordinary estate requires 
 a continual expenditure of capital to keep it going, 
 just as a ship, or a railway, or a cotton-mill. 
 
 The sole justification of ownership of the soil is 
 that this is done by the owner. In England it is done 
 by the owner, and, on the whole, done well. It is 
 
 myself of two properties owned by millionaires, one of 13,000, the 
 other 4000 a year, from which for years past no income has been 
 taken off" the land. I cite these cases not to claim any merit for the 
 owners, nor as a defence of the landlord system, but to prove a plain 
 economic fact, viz., that a large proportion of the estates in England 
 are managed without any reference to pecuniary profit, and that immense 
 sums are, as a fact, annually spent in improving the land by the owners. 
 The question whence that money comes is a perfectly distinct issue.
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 403 
 
 well done mainly because the soil of England is owned 
 by men, very many of whom are rich apart from their 
 rentals from farms. If an annual outlay of ten 
 millions be taken (for illustration) as the amount 
 required to keep our agricultural land in a high state 
 of productiveness, I shall assume that no less than 
 fifteen millions is annually expended on it now, if 
 we include every kind of outlay churches, schools, 
 cottages, model farms, houses, gardens, plantations, of 
 every kind : in fact, all that is not accomplished by 
 public taxation. 
 
 Where is this ten or fifteen millions annually to 
 come from if the State confiscates the soil ? To 
 throw it on the occupant or farmer is to overburden 
 him, already unable as he is to stock or work his farm 
 from want of capital. He will have, as now, to pay 
 his rent or land tax to the State. Otherwise the State 
 will derive no benefit from confiscation, and will simply 
 make a present of the land to the farmers. But if the 
 farmer, besides paying his rent, is to find the annual 
 outlay for repairs and improvements, none but capitalists, 
 or the nominees of capitalists, will be able to farm. 
 Hence, the ten or fifteen millions must come either 
 from the State or from land banks. If from the 
 State, then a large slice of the State's new land tax 
 will be cut ofF. And what a prospect of State inter- 
 vention, jobbery, and mismanagement is unfolded by 
 a scheme which puts every farm under the direct 
 management of the State ; which substitutes for all 
 the land agents and landlords in England a huge 
 department at Whitehall which would have to give 
 an order before any gate, barn, or ditch in the 
 kingdom could be repaired. 
 
 It has been suggested that the difficulty is met by 
 leasing the State land at a lower rate. This does not 
 meet the case. In the first place, the State will have
 
 404 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 to see that the sums required for improvements are 
 actually expended. That would involve minute and 
 constant inspection, followed by eviction in case of 
 default. What an endless source of discontent such 
 a system involves ! Again, a large part of the ex- 
 penditure now made by great landlords is far in excess 
 of what a public department could or would exact 
 from farmers with small capital. Yet if that expendi- 
 ture is sacrificed the country, at any rate the land, 
 would be the loser. Lastly, a large, irregular, and 
 occasional expenditure, which is easily borne by a 
 great capitalist, is not so readily met by a farmer 
 without capital. A farmer, now paying 2.00 a year 
 rental, needs, we may suppose, a new house, buildings, 
 and appurtenances, to cost ^2000. A landlord easily 
 finds that sum. It is a very different thing to call 
 on the farmer to find it, even if his rent be reduced 
 from 200 to jCioo per annum. The seamen who 
 navigate an ocean steamer could not find the capital 
 to work it, even if their wages were ^500 a year. 
 
 Suppose, on the other hand, that the State declines 
 so gigantic and so unpopular a task, and that the ten 
 or fifteen millions is found by financial corporations 
 land banks of some kind. That is to institute a 
 vast system of mortgage over the face of our country. 
 Mortgages are bad enough when created by a land- 
 lord ; they are far more ruinous when the farmer or 
 peasant is indebted. The State would be the mere 
 overlord, receiving the true rent under the name of 
 land-tax, as in India or Egypt ; and the cultivator 
 call him peasant, farmer, or lessee would be the 
 bond-slave of some money-dealer, who would be his 
 mortgagee and practical master. The place of land- 
 lord would be taken by some banking company in 
 London. 
 
 This is what happens always where the cultivator
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 405 
 
 is without capital, and yet where he has himself to 
 find the sums periodically needed to keep his land in 
 condition. This is why the Egyptian fellah, the 
 Indian ryot, the peasant in Russia and Eastern 
 Europe generally, is the bond-slave of the money- 
 lender. Even in France, Belgium, or America, 
 where the peasant has unusual qualities of industry 
 and thrift, the poorer class of farr/ers are bowed down 
 by mortgages and loans. How could it be otherwise ? 
 No magic will get rid of the need for constant outlay 
 to keep the land in condition ; nor will any magic 
 supply the small farmer call him what you will 
 with the capital needed. At present he can hardly 
 buy his stock and implements. How is he to find, 
 then, ten or fifteen millions more, if we abolish the 
 landowner, who now finds this sum ? He can only 
 find it by borrowing ; and the lender will be more or 
 less master of him and of his land. 
 
 Suppose that, by a short Act of Parliament, the 
 payment of rent were abolished, within a generation 
 the present farmers, who, as a rule, have neither large 
 capital nor the habit of accumulating a large capital, 
 would be deeply in debt for the sums required to renew 
 buildings and develop cultivation. Where there is 
 need for continual outlay of capital, borrowing is the 
 only means by which a class without capital can meet 
 that outlay, however easy be the terms on which the 
 holders may get the land. The land question is a 
 question of capital. No legislation can create capital 
 where it does not exist, and where the habit of 
 accumulating does not exist. But the nationalisation 
 scheme does not pretend to abolish rent. It only 
 converts rent into land-tax ; that is, it changes the 
 persons to whom rent is payable. The landowner 
 system is a device for getting capital on to the land. 
 If we abolish the landowner, then, as the farmer has
 
 406 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 not adequate capital, it must come either from the 
 State or from lenders. 
 
 The English schools of land nationalisation usually 
 proclaim as their aim the formation of a number of 
 small farms leased from the State, with fixity of tenure 
 in fact, the legislative creation of a system of 
 permanent peasant occupation. There are great social 
 advantages in peasant proprietorship, and in any 
 system where the actual cultivator is in free possession 
 of the soil he tills. I am wholly convinced that to 
 occupying ownership, without legal limitation on the 
 extent of the holding, we must ultimately come. But 
 the questions before us are these : First, can we create 
 such a system at a stroke by legislative compulsion ? 
 Secondly, in order to do so, need we start with such 
 a tremendous revolution as abolishing property in 
 land ? Thirdly, when we had done it, would the 
 advantages (apart from the dangers and evils) be at all 
 commensurate ? To these three questions I answer, 
 No! 
 
 If every rural labourer in England were suddenly 
 by law declared the absolute owner of ten acres, other 
 conditions remaining unchanged, within a few years 
 the productiveness of the soil would be reduced by 
 one-half, and in a few generations large properties 
 would be again the rule, and the bulk of the labourers 
 would be in a state of dependence. It is impossible, 
 in a country like ours, to force society back into the 
 primitive simplicity of Switzerland and Norway, even 
 if it were desirable. It is useless to make peasant 
 proprietors or independent farmers by law, until both 
 have the habits and the capital needed to work such 
 farms or holdings to a profit. Then, when we had 
 " planted our people on the land," we should at most 
 have provided for one million of earners out of our 
 twelve millions of earners, for if the holdings were too
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 407 
 
 small, production would be arrested. How should we 
 have improved the condition of the other eleven millions 
 of earners ? To hope that we should have abolished 
 wages, even in agriculture, is an illusion. There is 
 not a country in the world where the wage-receivers 
 do not exceed the proprietors tilling their own land. 
 And in a system of peasant ownership the wage- 
 receivers are often worse off than elsewhere. 
 
 If our soil is to be well cultivated, the lots call 
 them farms, properties, or holdings could not, at the 
 outside, exceed a million, and would probably be 
 quite small enough if they amounted to half or a 
 quarter of a million. If these lots are to be well tilled, 
 some one must have full control over each, call him 
 peasant, farmer, owner, lessee, or occupant. Unless 
 such occupant has permanent tenure, with full power 
 to transmit to his assigns and successors, he will not 
 put capital into the land. Unless he has capital of 
 his own he must borrow it. When he is a systematic 
 borrower he will cease to be a free proprietor. And 
 when financial rings hold under mortgages the soil of 
 England, we shall simply have established for the 
 landlords whom we see, and who (in England) live on 
 their estates and usually take some pride in them, 
 invisible money-dealers living in distant cities. What 
 is there in all this to transform industry, reorganise 
 our social system, and offer a millennium to the 
 thirty-five millions of these islands ? 
 
 Our English schools of land nationalisation adopt 
 the principle merely in name. Mr. George proposes 
 a genuine Communism, so far as land is concerned. 
 If his scheme is to have the grand social results which 
 he claims, he must abolish all property in the soil as an 
 institution. It is, according to him, from the sinful 
 institution whereby plots of God's earth are nefariously 
 allotted to private persons in full control that poverty,
 
 4 o8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 bad trade, rotten finance, injustice, fraud, and even 
 prostitution, spring. But the practical result of our 
 English land nationalisation movement is, not to 
 abolish, but greatly to strengthen this malignant 
 institution, the appropriation of the soil. The 
 English schools seek to make many more persons the 
 virtual masters of the soil. Nationalisation, in their 
 mouths, is reduced to a phrase. The State is to be 
 declared sole proprietor. Well, that is nothing ; such 
 is now the law of the land, a law acted on daily, when 
 land is taken under the compulsory powers of a 
 thousand Acts of Parliament. But names apart, 
 the new allottees of the farms or plots will be 
 quite as much proprietors, in the anti-social sense 
 of the term, as the Norman barons who now own 
 them. 
 
 Unless the allottees have permanent occupation, 
 with fixity of tenure, and freedom to transfer, charge, 
 and devise them, the land cannot be properly worked. 
 Some persons or other, by a law of nature, physical 
 nature and human nature alike, must have full control 
 over the soil, unless it is to waste and go to ruin 
 as land does in Turkey or Persia. But permanent 
 occupation, with fixity of tenure and freedom of 
 assignment, is proprietorship in other words. It will 
 exercise over society all the same effects. The new 
 allottees will accumulate estates, and in a few genera- 
 tions will be just as selfish, tyrannical, and indolent as 
 the Norman barons. They will be just as much the 
 enemies of the human race. Why not ? We shall 
 have changed the persons of the proprietors ; but how 
 shall we have changed the proprietor nature ? Instead 
 of Lord Wolverton, a London banker, or Lord 
 Ardilaun, a Dublin brewer, who care little for the 
 rentals of farms, we should have got a dozen small 
 capitalists who had saved money in iron, and a dozen
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 409 
 
 more who had prospered in coal, butter, or mutton, 
 and who are not likely to be easier landlords. 1 
 
 In what I have said I do not by one word accept 
 the actual land system as satisfactory, or our present 
 social condition as tolerable. I am as eager as any 
 Socialist to transform our landlordism as a permanent 
 institution and to find a higher standard for our general 
 industrial life. I see certain great advantages, chiefly 
 economical and material, in our present system of 
 landed estates ; but I am very far from believing that 
 these counterbalance its grave social evils. But these 
 are to be dealt with, I hold, by the class of measures 
 long advocated by all schools of radical land reformers. 
 I am as anxious as any man to see a large body of 
 peasant holdings freely springing up on our land. I 
 look for a large body of working farmers, with per- 
 manent interest and complete freedom in their own 
 farms. And I see social and moral evils of the worst 
 kind in any system which practically severs (as ours 
 does) the ownership of the soil from any responsibility 
 to superintend its cultivation. That is to say, there 
 are grave evils to society where estates in the mass 
 are simply leased or loaned for hire like money. These 
 evils, however, can be remedied by a reform of the 
 land laws, by abolishing all the legal and social privi- 
 leges peculiar to the ownership of land, and by a 
 resolute scheme of land taxation. 
 
 Under such a system of reform it would simply 
 not pay to be the nominal owner of a great estate. 
 
 1 In Professor Newman's paper, " written on behalf of the Land 
 Nationalisation Society," he says : " The aim of our society is to establish 
 a state of things in which small independent plots of land shall be 
 procurable everywhere." As the aim to be reached, he speaks of farms 
 " being multiplied through peasant freeholds." Now to maintain such a 
 system in England, even if it could be created by law, two things are 
 absolutely necessary (i) limitation by law of the size of holdings, (2) 
 prohibition against sub-letting. Both of these conditions are impossible. 
 To attempt them would lead to an unendurable tyranny.
 
 4 io NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 A great estate would become a mere burden, and not 
 a very honourable one, except where a man of vast 
 wealth might choose to devote a large part of it to 
 the public service, by keeping up an estate without 
 profit. However, after all the changes, I am not sure 
 that the tillers of the soil will be, in material conditions, 
 quite as well off as many are now who hold under the 
 great Bedford, Devonshire, Portland, Buccleuch, and 
 Northumberland estates. But, on the whole, the 
 social objections to the maintenance of an indebted, 
 idle, and exclusive squirearchy are so serious, that we 
 should by every legal obstacle limit the formation 
 of a landlord class whose social function is sport, 
 and whose economic function is to spend what 
 rent remains after keeping the estate in productive 
 efficiency. Economically speaking, there is some 
 social justification for dukes and millionaires as land- 
 lords, for they sometimes put almost as much on to 
 the land as they draw off, and they offer types of high 
 agricultural efficiency. It is the squireen, with one 
 or two thousand acres, with no capital, no occupation, 
 and few useful faculties, who is without any raison 
 d'etre ; being, like his own cherished fox, a survival of 
 the unfittest in modern civilisation. 
 
 In what I have said I strictly limit myself to 
 England, and to rural estates. If the system cannot 
 be applied to English farms it fails altogether. The 
 social and economical conditions of the greater part of 
 Ireland, and even of Scotland, are so very different ; 
 the social justification of the landlord there is so much 
 less even when it exists at all, that very different 
 reasoning applies to the ill-managed territories of so 
 many Irish and Scotch absentee landlords. I also 
 have been speaking exclusively of the soil in country, 
 not in cities. I am quite prepared to see the State, 
 through local authorities, assert in towns a permanent
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 411 
 
 right to control the disposition of the soil in such 
 ways as experience shall prove to be most useful to 
 the public. Abstract rights of property should no 
 more be an obstacle to laying out our cities as health 
 and convenience suggest, than they are now in 
 making a railway through an estate. What we want 
 are a set of Lands Clauses Acts applying to any soil 
 in towns, and vesting control over it in proper local 
 authorities. And we shall want very stringent pro- 
 visions to check owners from doing anything contrary 
 to public interests, or from receiving fanciful com- 
 pensation for their own laches and obstruction. 
 
 Even then we ought to see more wisdom and 
 honesty in local authorities before we can confidently 
 entrust to them the work now done for the most part 
 by great landowners. The municipalities of Paris, 
 New York, San Francisco, or Melbourne are not 
 model trustees of public interests j some think that 
 even the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan 
 Board of Works are far from all that is wanted. Is it 
 quite certain that either of them would abolish misery 
 and unhealthy dwellings the moment we had handed 
 over to them the control of the Bedford, Salisbury, 
 Portland, Portman, Grosvenor, and Cadogan estates ? 
 We may take it at least as certain that in the manage- 
 ment of these neither fraud nor oppression is directly 
 charged against the noble owners, other than such 
 fraud and oppression as Mr. George finds in the act of 
 owning land at all. To a citizen of Paris, New 
 York, or San Francisco, accustomed to associate 
 municipal government with bribery, rings, corners, 
 and public plunder, such a state of things would 
 appear an impossible Utopia. Every one who knows 
 London can see how unfounded and even ludicrous 
 are invectives against the peers who own considerable 
 districts in our city. Large as these estates are, they
 
 412 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 do not account for a quarter of the area or the popula- 
 tion. So far from these being the districts where 
 suffering is greatest, they are altogether those in 
 which it is least. The central, eastern, northern, and 
 southern districts of London, where the dukes do not 
 own a house, are those where the misery and over- 
 crowding are the worst. 
 
 Misery and overcrowding as great, if not greater, 
 are found in Paris, Berlin, Naples, Lyons, Rouen, 
 New York, and Melbourne, where there are no 
 Norman barons, no dukes owning whole quarters. 
 Everybody knows that Mr. George's famous gates 
 near Euston Square were set up for the convenience, 
 not of the duke, but of the inhabitants of the quarter. 
 They are doubtless a public nuisance, but if the soil 
 belonged to the parish we might have a dozen more 
 set up. This is a specimen of the rhetoric to which 
 Mr. George treats us. Happily our English reformers 
 do not adopt this outlandish style of reform. I am 
 certainly no friend of landlordism as an institution, 
 or of aristocratic social traditions ; I am for radical 
 land reform both in town and country ; but justice 
 forces me to say, that amongst our great landowners, 
 both in town and country, are to be found those men 
 who, of all the rich and powerful in England, I will 
 say of all the rich and powerful in Europe, administer 
 their estates with the greatest sense of social duty and 
 responsibility to public opinion. And when we have 
 got rid of them, we shall have got rid of much that it 
 will take us a long time to replace. 
 
 On the whole, whilst we must thank the Land 
 Nationalisation movement for directing attention to 
 many important truths, and whilst we may heartily go 
 along with the spirit which inspires it, we cannot 
 accept the chimerical hopes and the blind leap in the 
 dark which it offers us as a remedy for all industrial
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 413 
 
 evils. We should sacrifice for a mere dream all the 
 solid results won by radical reform and practical 
 experiments ; for it would plunge us into a social 
 revolution which might last for generations. The 
 talk about "planting the English people on the soil" 
 is surely mere words. However successful the plan, 
 it could only plant about one in ten of our families on 
 the soil. The twenty-six millions of Englishmen can- 
 not all be planted on the soil ; they are not Swiss or 
 Norwegian woodcutters, nor are they all desirous of 
 retiring to the country on a competence. And when 
 they were planted on the soil, how would they live 
 and earn a living if they have neither capital nor skill 
 to work it ? We might as well talk of planting the 
 English people in the shops, or warehouses, or offices 
 of England. What would they do when they got 
 into the offices and shops without capital or business 
 habits ? A tailor presented with a cottage and ten 
 acres would starve as quickly as a farmer would starve 
 if presented with a lawyer's business as a going con- 
 cern. There are now thousands of farms "on hand" 
 because, rent or no rent, there is no one with capital 
 and skill who cares to take them. 
 
 Of the State management of capital, i.e. of simple 
 Communism, I say little now. We have not before 
 us a definite statement of the views propounded by 
 any systematic school of Communism. There are 
 several organised bodies putting forward proposals of a 
 more or less Communistic character ; and within our 
 generation we have seen several Socialist movements 
 of a more or less systematic kind. In what I say now 
 I speak of no body in particular. I shall deal with 
 the Socialist and Communist language which is to be 
 heard nowadays in several quarters, both within and 
 without the publicly constituted bodies. There is not 
 a little floating Socialism current around us. I neither
 
 fear nor despise Communism. I am anything but 
 opposed to its motive spirit or its aspirations. I 
 honour its generous instincts, and I sympathise with 
 much in its social aims ; for undoubtedly some of the 
 noblest characters of our day are in sympathy with 
 them, and it counts in its ranks men of heroic 
 devotion to a social ideal. Nor need we undervalue 
 its forces and the future destiny before it. 
 
 On the continent of Europe it is already one of the 
 mighty factors of social evolution. We shall have it 
 here, I doubt not ; though hardly in any form that is 
 yet presented to us. But in what form, in what system, 
 with what doctrines, is Communism presented to 
 Englishmen to-day ? The Communism which alone 
 has ever had a serious following the Communism of 
 Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Lassalle, and Karl Marx 
 had a social system of some kind, a body of logical 
 doctrines, and an ideal of human society, however 
 vague and extravagant. But the Socialism in many 
 quarters now preached amongst us has none of these 
 neither economical theory, nor social scheme, nor 
 system of life of any kind. It offers nothing but 
 invectives against the rich, fancy figures for its 
 statistics, and appeals to the poor to begin a social 
 insurrection. It has no economic, social, or political 
 doctrines. It propounds no intelligible religious 
 principle no scheme of morality, of government, of 
 institutions, of education, of domestic, industrial, or 
 civic life. 
 
 Now no real insurrection was ever made by pure 
 anarchists. The people must have something to 
 believe in, to hope for, and work for, before they 
 will seriously rise. Incitements to plunder and to 
 destroy do not touch the people, who need some great 
 moral cause and some ideal in view to stir them pro- 
 foundly. But Communism, as presented in England,
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 415 
 
 offers no moral cause, no ideal. It has never faced, 
 and has nothing to say about any one of the great 
 social problems, about religion, morality, education, 
 government, public or domestic duty. It is not 
 Communism : it is mere Nihilism. Communism 
 implies the systematic organisation of life on the 
 principle of community and not of individualism. 
 This Nihilism, which pretends to be Communism, 
 simply proposes the confiscation of property. How 
 the capital so confiscated is to be worked under what 
 moral code, by what institutions, and for what social 
 aim on this it has nothing to say. 
 
 How can it have ? The small knots of propa- 
 gandists whom we find here and there some of them 
 in organised societies, some in the press, the pulpit, or 
 on platforms seem to have no agreement about these 
 things. Some are ministers of the Gospel ; some pro- 
 fess materialism pure and simple ; others belong to 
 every intermediate phase of opinion. Their views 
 about morality, education, government, and society 
 are equally various. Now, although an economist is 
 not bound, as such, to have any moral, religious, or 
 educational programme, a Communist is bound ; for 
 if people are to work in common they must be trained 
 in common. Every serious Socialist or Communist 
 school has provided for this. The interesting part 
 about true Communism is that it so fully realises the 
 impossibility of production on a Communistic basis 
 without a complete set of institutions to mould life 
 generally on a corresponding basis. 
 
 All true Communists have seen that it is impossible 
 to found a Communistic mode of industry without 
 destroying private life. Hence they begin by attempt- 
 ing to found a set of social, family, and religious insti- 
 tutions to eradicate all traces of individualism. If 
 they do not do this they know that Communism in
 
 416 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 labour is impossible. But the various groups who in 
 England to-day advocate some vague Communistic 
 proposals do none of these things. They may de- 
 nounce our social sores, they may call every man who 
 does not agree with them mere bourgeois (to these 
 young gentlemen even trades unionists and co- 
 operators are all bourgeois the real English work- 
 man does not even know the word bourgeois] ; but, 
 in the absence of any social scheme, they will not 
 penetrate the body of English workmen. 
 
 Communism in a systematic form is, perhaps, not 
 advocated amongst us. But Communistic proposals 
 and Socialist schemes have little meaning unless they 
 can be placed on a logical footing. The only 
 Communism which is worth serious notice is that, 
 complete Communism which seeks to transform all 
 private property into Collectivism, or common 
 property. It would be strange if English work- 
 men, who have laboured so long and sacrificed so 
 much in order to share with their fellows some of 
 that security and independence which the legitimate 
 use of property gives, and who have organised 
 patiently such powerful agencies for checking the 
 abuses of property, were suddenly to declare for uni- 
 versal confiscation in the blind chance that something 
 might come of it. Trades unions, co-operative, build- 
 ing, land societies, and the rest would all disappear, 
 for they all imply the institution of property. 
 
 The numerous associations of which we have here 
 the delegates would have no raison d'etre. There 
 would be no hope of a plot of ground for the country- 
 man, of secure tenure of a farm, of a homestead of his 
 own for any of us. There would be no " Union " on 
 one side and employer on the other ; no personal rela- 
 tion between any capitalist and any labourer or any 
 farmer. There would be but one employer, one
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 417 
 
 capitalist, one proprietor, one general manager of 
 everything and everybody. That one would be the 
 State. But what is the State in any intelligible sense 
 as sole landlord, sole capitalist, sole manager ? The 
 State, we know, collects taxes and manages the army 
 and the navy, and some persons are not satisfied with 
 the way that these trifles are managed. But what is the 
 meaning of the State, the possessions of which should 
 be the aggregate capital of the kingdom, and the 
 spending departments of which would have to pay 
 in earnings alone a thousand millions a year to twelve 
 millions of persons ? And on what principles, by 
 what institutions, and what machinery, is this fabulous 
 task to be accomplished ? As no one has as yet given 
 us any intelligible answer to this problem, it will be 
 wiser to adjourn so vast a question. 
 
 From all that I have said it will appear that, whilst 
 I hold as strongly as any man that our industrial 
 system is socially unjust and unsound, I look upon 
 none of the industrial schemes I have considered as 
 going to the roots of the question. Our industrial 
 system is vicious, because our moral, religious, and 
 social system is disorganised. It is impossible to 
 regenerate industry until we also regenerate society. 
 Trades unions, co-operation, and all the mutual benefit 
 movements, are useful in their way, but they only 
 touch the surface. Land confiscation could only 
 affect a minority, and would not very clearly benefit 
 them. Land confiscation is only a fragmentary and 
 partial kind of Communism ; and Communism itself, 
 as we hear of it to-day, is only a more sweeping con- 
 fiscation, and a fragmentary and partial kind of social 
 disorganisation. Property is only one of many social 
 institutions ; and industry is only one of many human 
 duties. To make property a little more common, 
 more accessible, to check some abuses of property here 
 
 2 E
 
 4 i8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and there, may be exceedingly useful when wisely 
 accomplished ; but it cannot in itself alter human 
 nature, life, and society. Even to abolish property, 
 and to make a strict code for industry, is only to get 
 rid of one social institution, and to regulate one of 
 many human duties. To expect a millennium from 
 any kind of partial remedy is like giving pills to cure 
 a fever. Industry can only be regenerated by re- 
 generating society. And society can only be regenerated 
 by sound religion, true morality, right education, wise 
 institutions, and good government. 
 
 The root of the matter is that we can only change 
 the general conditions of industry by changing the 
 spirit in which industry is carried on ; and we can 
 only gain partial and temporary improvements by 
 mending this or that industrial institution. Whilst 
 men as a rule pursue their own desires and interests, 
 the strongest and the most lucky will get the best of 
 it, and the weak and the unfortunate will be cruelly 
 used. And such is the ingenuity of human skill and 
 the force of self-interest, that, alter as we please the 
 mechanical modes in which industry is arranged, the 
 strong and the fortunate soon contrive to turn them 
 to their own advantage. The best proof of this is to 
 be found in Mr. George's own books, especially in 
 his last. He shows us that the industrial evils he 
 denounces grow to immense proportions where all the 
 social conditions and industrial arrangements are 
 varied, and society begins with a mere tabula rasa. 
 Almost the only point in which the Pacific territories 
 of America originally resembled England was this, 
 that the passion of self-interest was imperfectly con- 
 trolled by a sense of social duty, and in the case of the 
 States was even abnormally stimulated. Here then, 
 in human nature, without sufficient moral control, is 
 the source of all this evil ; and it is melancholy to see
 
 SOCIAL REMEDIES 419 
 
 a man of genius labouring by a set of sophisms, each 
 more preposterous than the last, to show that its source 
 is in property in land. 
 
 If the cause of industrial misery be traced to the 
 passion of self-interest, and to a low sense of social 
 duty, there might seem to be no more to be said. 
 We should have to wait for a general improvement in 
 civilisation. But there is more to be said. Industry 
 has managed to develop a moral code of its own. In 
 politics, philosophy, art, or manners, in domestic or 
 social life, self-interest is not canonised as the principal 
 social duty of man. In industry it is otherwise. For 
 all industrial matters, in modern Europe and America, 
 a moral code has been evolved, which makes the un- 
 limited indulgence of self-interest, pushed to the very 
 verge of liability to law, the supreme social duty of 
 the industrious citizen. To buy cheap, to sell dear, 
 to exhaust the arts of competition, to undersell rivals, 
 to extend business, to develop trade, to lend on the 
 best security, to borrow at the lowest rate, to introduce 
 every novelty, to double and to halve business at every 
 turn of the market in a word, to create the biggest 
 business in the least time, and to accumulate the 
 greatest wealth with the smallest capital this is 
 seriously taught as the first duty of trading man. 
 
 Economists, politicians, moralists, and even preachers 
 urge on the enterprising capitalist that the industrialist 
 does best his duty by society who does best his duty 
 by himself. Banker, merchant, .manufacturer, pro- 
 prietor, tradesman, and workman alike submit to this 
 strange moral law. Almost the only class of capitalists 
 in this island who do not as a rule accept it are, in 
 truth, those great landlords who are the principal 
 object of modern attack. It is assumed as beyond 
 proof that the rapid increase of business, the great 
 accumulation of wealth, is a good per se good for
 
 420 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the capitalist, good for society. No account is taken 
 of the business ruined, of the workmen thrown out of 
 employment, of the over-production, of the useless, 
 mischievous, rotten trade created, and of all the 
 manifold evils scattered broadcast amongst the pro- 
 ducers and every one within range of the work. It is 
 enough to have made business, to have accumulated 
 wealth, without coming within the grasp of the law. 
 
 Here, then, is the all-sufficient source of industrial 
 maladies. We have come, in matters industrial, to 
 treat duty to others, and duty to society, as only to be 
 found in duty to self. If all employers were as thought- 
 ful of the general welfare of those they employ as they 
 are now eager to get the most out of them j if all 
 producers were as anxious for good, sound, and 
 useful production as they are for paying production ; 
 if those who lend money considered not only the 
 security and the interest, but the purpose for which 
 the money was sought ; if those who develop new 
 works thought more of the workers than of possible 
 profits, industry would not be what we see it. In 
 other words, the solution of the industrial problem is a 
 moral, social, and religious question. INDUSTRY MUST 
 BE MORALISED infused with a spirit of social duty 
 from top to bottom, from peer to peasant, from 
 millionaire to pauper. But to moralise society is the 
 business of moralists, preachers, social teachers ; the 
 economist has but little more to add, and his field is 
 not here. But here I must pause. This Conference 
 is no place for moralising or preaching ; neither 
 religion nor social science have their pulpits here. 
 And, for myself, anything 1 could say I must reserve 
 for another place.
 
 V 
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 
 
 (1889) 
 
 The twenty-five years that had passed since the writer's essay 
 on Trades Unionism in 1863 (No. II. of this Part II.} 
 had made a great change in the Labour world. The 
 growth of Marxian Socialism in Europe reacted in 
 England, and the energy of the Social Democratic 
 Federation made its mark on English politics. The great 
 Dock Strike of 1889 made the public aware of the pro- 
 found change that was slowly taking place. Another 
 twenty years has very nearly passed, and the movement 
 has gone forward on lines much as the writer foresaw in 
 this Essay which appeared in the Nineteenth Century 
 
 (vol. XXV '/.). 
 
 The most startling result of the new Industrial move- 
 ment was seen in the enormous Liberal majority at the 
 General Election of 1906, which placed in the Cabinet 
 one of the prominent leaders of the Social Democrats, who 
 had been sent to prison for his share in the Bloody Sunday 
 riot, who led the people down Piccadilly and Hyde Park, 
 and engineered the Dockers' 1 Strike. 
 
 There are signs to-day of the inevitable reaction. 
 
 The bourgeoisie is getting uneasy at the sight of real 
 
 Socialism in Parliament and at Elections ; and the utter 
 
 incoherence of Karl Marx's dogmas and the anarchic 
 
 421
 
 422 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 language of many of his noisy followers seem destined 
 again to separate middle-class Liberalism from any present 
 type of Labour Socialism (1908). 
 
 WITHIN the last few years Trades Unionism has been 
 transformed under the influence of two main forces: 
 one being that profound social lever which is vaguely 
 known as Socialism ; the other being the transfer to 
 its side of Public Opinion. 
 
 Thirty years ago, in the 'fifties, the old orthodox 
 Economy was dominant ; it received the superstitious 
 veneration of the whole capitalist class ; and it more 
 or less overawed the leaders of the labouring class. 
 To-day the old orthodox Economy the Gospel, or 
 the Sophism, of Supply and Demand, absolute Freedom 
 for Individual Exertion, and so forth all this is 
 ancient history. "We are all Socialists now," cries 
 an eminent statesman in jest or in earnest. And the 
 jest has earnest in it, if we take Socialism to mean, 
 not the substitution of some communistic Utopia for the 
 old institutions of Capital and Labour, but rather the 
 infusion of all economic and political institutions with 
 social considerations towards social ends. Thirty years 
 ago Socialism was a mere outlandish day-dream. It is 
 now, in the new vague sense, as a modifying tendency, 
 a very real force. And it has killed the old Targum 
 about Supply and Demand the plain English of 
 which was " May the devil take the weakest ! " 
 
 In the same way, within thirty years, the enormous 
 power of Public Opinion has passed over to the side of 
 Trades Unionism. In old days a great strike was 
 invariably denounced by the combined force of the 
 cultivated and capitalist classes. The press, the pulpit, 
 the platform, society, and the legislature rang with 
 menace and invective about the innate wickedness of all 
 strikes. If here and there a clergyman, a professional 
 man, a politician, or a writer ventured to raise a voice
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 423 
 
 on behalf of the unions, he was assailed with a storm 
 of ridicule and abuse, and was often boycotted in his 
 daily life. The well-known and most successful head 
 of a certain college was almost deprived of his office 
 by the trustees for defending the unions in public. 1 
 
 When my name was proposed as a member of the 
 Trades Union Commission of 1867, the appointment 
 was hotly opposed as a dangerous precedent ; and more 
 than one eminent solicitor calmly told me that, if I 
 consented to serve, I must expect to quit the legal pro- 
 fession. If we sought to justify a strike to the public, 
 we had the greatest difficulty in getting a word into 
 the press edgewise, and a quiet statement of the true 
 facts was almost systematically suppressed. Trades 
 Unionism was spoken of much as we now hear men 
 speak of Russian Nihilism ; and a strike was con- 
 demned in the same language in which men now 
 condemn the resort to dynamite. To the last genera- 
 tion of the educated and employing classes, a Strike 
 had, indeed, all the elements of a dynamite outrage. 
 It could not raise wages one farthing ; it could only 
 increase the sufferings of its infatuated partisans ; it 
 could only annoy and embitter the capitalist ; and 
 those who abetted it were the workman's worst 
 enemies. 
 
 Things are indeed changed now. We have just 
 seen one of the greatest strikes on record carried to a 
 successful issue with, and mainly by, the support and 
 encouragement of the public. 2 The press was uni- 
 formly fair ; and, very generally, aided the movement. 
 No sooner were the docks empty than money poured 
 into the strike fund, not only from thousands of 
 British unions but from across the seas, and from the 
 wealthy and the governing classes in all directions. "We 
 
 I How different to-day after the legislation of 1907 ! (1908). 
 
 II The Dock Strike of 1889, engineered by Mr. John Burns.
 
 4 2 4 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 were pelted with cheques," says the treasurer, and in 
 a few weeks upwards of ^40,000 was given. No 
 Mansion-House Fund in a great national disaster, says 
 John Burns, could have been " responded to with more 
 extravagant generosity." In one memorable case, at 
 least, a great employer Mr. Henry Lafone himself 
 gave strike pay to his own men, when, under a sense 
 of social duty, they left his works empty. The Stock 
 Exchange raised a handsome sum towards the fund in 
 a few minutes. Merchants and merchants' clerks 
 cheered the strikers as they passed the warehouses in 
 the City. London saw, without uneasiness or ill-will, 
 50,000 men on the verge of starvation pass in procession 
 through the streets. Politicians, clergymen, writers, 
 and capitalists backed up their demands with word and 
 with purse. Churches of all creeds, educational and 
 charitable institutions, gave their help. Catholics 
 and Salvationists, Tories and Radicals for once com- 
 bined. The police for once were cheered by the 
 East-End agitators. John Burns carried his tens of 
 thousands up and down, like a Pied Piper of Hamelin, 
 amidst a sympathetic world of bystanders as of men 
 bewitched. The very dogs of journalism forgot to 
 bark. The East- End shopkeepers gave credit for 
 goods. The pawnbrokers refused interest, and lodging- 
 house keepers refused their rent. Finally a Lord 
 Mayor, a Cardinal, a Bishop of London, and some 
 prominent politicians, succeeded in bringing about 
 peace in this tremendous upheaval of industry. 
 
 Cardinal Manning, whose part in this matter shows 
 out the Catholic Church on its grandest side, a side 
 whereon, as Ireland, Liverpool, Glasgow, and London 
 can prove, it is perhaps as much alive as it ever was, 
 declares that "since the Cotton Famine of the North 
 there has been no nobler example of self-command 
 than we have seen in the last month." " In the great
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 425 
 
 and extraordinary movement just ended," writes John 
 Burns, "the cause of labour has been the popular 
 cause the whole world over." " The whole East 
 End," he adds, "rose and stood up alongside of us." 
 " The greatest struggle between Capital and Labour 
 that this generation of Englishmen has seen," writes 
 Mr. Champion, "has ended in the victory of the 
 weaker side." "It marks an epoch not merely in 
 the history of labour, but of England nay, even 
 of humanity," says Lord Rosebery in his midnight 
 address to the tram servants. And when he opens a 
 meeting to consider the formation of a new Union, 
 avowedly as Chairman of the London County Council, 
 his bold and sagacious act, so full of the new spirit 
 that animates the citizens of London, is heartily 
 approved by all but the professional critics of the other 
 party. Truly the days are changed for the better 
 since a Strike was treated as a social outrage, and to 
 advocate Trades Unions was to be marked as a " wild 
 man." 
 
 We have just witnessed not merely the greatest 
 and most rapidly successful strike of our time, but we 
 have seen an epidemic of strikes. There were at 
 one time, in August (1889), 100,000 men on strike 
 along the riverside. Hundreds of different trades took 
 part in it. Within a few months nearly 200 different 
 trades, according to John Burns, have gained an advance 
 of 10 per cent in wages with a reduction of hours. 
 More than 100,000 new members have been enrolled 
 in Unions. The labour problem has become a prime 
 political interest. Statesmen, editors, churches, and 
 leagues put labour questions in the front rank. Gas- 
 stokers, coal-whippers, sailors, tram-drivers, women, 
 are forming unions. The children in schools all over 
 the country play truant in strike. Great and stubborn 
 as were the contests maintained by the old Unionism
 
 426 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the last generation, the new Unionism of to-day 
 immensely surpasses it in extent and in energy. What 
 is the difference ? 
 
 The old ideas about Unions and strikes have been 
 entirely icversed. It used to be an axiom that the 
 unskilled labourers, singly, stood almost no chance at all. 
 Yet unskilled labourers have just won in the greatest 
 strike on record. It was a truism that no great and 
 prolonged strike could possibly succeed without a solid 
 Union behind it. Yet here a vast strike has succeeded 
 without a Union ; and the Union has followed, and 
 not preceded the strike. It used to be held, that 
 where the supply of labour is practically unlimited, the 
 idea of a strike is rank suicide. Yet here, with the 
 whole population of these islands whereon to draw 
 for unskilled labour, mighty and wealthy companies 
 have failed to fill their empty docks. 
 
 The new element is this. The trades have stood 
 by one another as they never did before. The skilled 
 workmen have stood by the unskilled workmen in a 
 wholly new spirit, and public opinion supported the 
 men as it never has done yet. In all the thirty years 
 that I have closely studied the labour movement, I have 
 never before known the best-paid and most highly 
 skilled trades strike out of mere sympathy, simply to 
 help the unskilled, where they had no dispute of their 
 own. The skilled trades have often offered generous 
 aid in money to other trades. But they never have 
 struck work themselves, without asking or expecting 
 any direct advantage for the sacrifice. In the strike 
 of the Dock labourers the whole brunt of the struggle 
 lay in the turn-out of the stevedores, lightermen, 
 sailors, engineers, and other skilled men. It was a 
 general mutiny, led and commanded by the sergeants 
 and corporals in mass. This was the cause of the ex- 
 cellent discipline and rapid organisation of the strikers,
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 427 
 
 and it was also the ground of their success. Without 
 the stevedores and other skilled officers, unskilled 
 labour, even if it could be found, would have been 
 useless in the Docks. 
 
 There has been, then, through the whole East 
 End indeed, through the whole of London and of 
 the kingdom a sympathetic combination of work- 
 men more rapid and more electric than anything seen 
 before. We have witnessed what in the Continental 
 jargon used to be called the "solidarity of labour," or 
 the " fraternity of workmen " a perfectly real and 
 very powerful force, when it can be organised and 
 brought into practical result. It simply means the 
 common interest of all the toiling millions to help 
 each other towards their social improvement. Now, 
 the old Unionism has often been charged (and not 
 without reason) with its defects on this side. The 
 older Unions have long been afflicted with the tendency 
 so often remarked in religious sects which, after man- 
 fully resisting persecution in bygone times, have grown 
 exclusive, hide- bound, retrograde, and the slaves of 
 their own investments. Some years ago (in 1885) I 
 ventured to point out in the Industrial Remuneration 
 Conference (Report^ p. 437) that in two generations 
 Unionism has shown itself powerless to reach the 
 residuum, or to combine the great average mass ; that 
 it tended to sectional and class interests ; to divide 
 trade from trade, members from non-members ; that 
 it accentuates the gulf between the skilled and well- 
 paid artisan and the vast destitute residuum. 
 
 The new Unionism is a very different thing. It 
 has welded into the same ranks skilled and unskilled : 
 it organises the average mass and takes charge of the 
 residuum ; it has extinguished sectional interests ; and 
 it is not absorbed in contemplation of its own cash 
 balances. Years and years ago we laboured to convince
 
 428 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 employers that an established Union was a strongly 
 conservative power, that it checked strikes, and often 
 tended to prevent a rise of wages. The minority 
 report of the Trades Union Commission, 1869 
 (p. xxxvi.), pointed out that the strongest and richest 
 Unions coincide with the greatest fixity in wages and 
 hours, and the fewest trade disputes. In 1883 I pointed 
 out to the Nottingham Congress that the great 
 societies for years past had not spent more than I or 2 
 per cent of their income in strikes. The permanent 
 officials of a great Union, with an income of ^50,000, 
 and cash balances of twice or three times that amount, 
 easily acquire the cautious, thrifty, contented, rest- 
 and-be-thankful temper of a bank director or a City 
 magnate. A famous old banker in Fleet Street was 
 once told by a pushing bill-discounter of the new 
 American type, that, by a very simple operation, he 
 could easily add to his profits another ^20,000 a year. 
 " But I don't want another ^20,000 a year," said the 
 worthy old man. And I knew many a Unionist 
 secretary of the old school who firmly believed that 
 the subscribers to his society did not want the 
 " tanner," and would do no good with it, if they 
 got it. 
 
 Between Unionism of that type and the Socialists 
 there has raged for some years past an internecine 
 war. Furious accusations have been bandied about 
 on both sides. Socialists charged the Unions with 
 bolstering up and stereotyping the miseries of the 
 present industrial system, by thinking more of "super- 
 annuation," " benefits," and " cash balances," than of 
 any general improvement in the conditions of labour. 
 Unionists charged Socialism with incoherent raving 
 about impossible Utopias, whilst doing nothing prac- 
 tical to protect any single trade. As usual, there was 
 a good deal of force in what was said on both sides.
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 429 
 
 Vague rant about Capital as organised plunder buttered 
 no man's parsnips, and did not take ten seconds oft the 
 working day. On the other hand, it was a poor con- 
 solation to the sweated waistcoat-hand to be told that 
 the Amalgamated Engineers had a quarter of a million 
 in the bank. 
 
 But in the course of the present year Socialism and 
 Trades Unionism have been fused ; and the new 
 Unionism is the result. At last a modus vivendi has 
 been found, with an alliance offensive and defensive 
 for the time being. Each has contributed a special 
 element of its own, and has allowed a good deal of its 
 former character to drop. Socialism has contributed 
 its dominant idea of betterment all along the industrial 
 line, whilst borrowing from Unionism its regular 
 organisation and practical tactics for securing a 
 definite trade end. Unionism has contributed its 
 discipline and business experience, whilst dropping 
 its instinct towards mutual insurance " benefits " as 
 the essential aim. And so Socialism for the nonce 
 has dropped attack on the institution of Capital. The 
 new Unions are avowedly trade societies to gain trade 
 objects. The new Socialism is bent upon objects quite 
 as practical as those of any Trade Union, and really the 
 same. The joint movement may either be described 
 as Socialism putting on the business accoutrements 
 of a Trades Union or as Unionism suddenly inspired 
 with the passion and aspirations of the Socialists. The 
 typical secretary of the old Unionism would have made 
 a respectable branch manager of a Joint-Stock Bank. 
 The typical leader of the new Unionism is a powerful 
 club orator who finds himself at the head of a great 
 political movement. 
 
 It is simple justice to acknowledge that this fusion 
 is the work of one man. It is his work both in 
 original conception and in practical application. He
 
 430 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 fully grasps it in principle, and thoroughly works it 
 out in act. Where many men, both Socialists and 
 Unionists, have honestly given good work, John 
 Burns is the one man who is equally prominent both 
 as a socialist and as a unionist. Certainly no other 
 Socialist ever raised the wages of two hundred trades 
 within a few months. And no other Unionist ever 
 brought 100,000 men into union in the same time. 
 I have often myself been strongly opposed to Mr. 
 Burns, and have been opposed by him ; and I daresay 
 the same thing will happen again. But I cannot, in 
 justice, deny that he has been the head of the most 
 extraordinary labour movement of our time. The 
 recent Strike, from a simply strategical point of view, 
 was conducted with consummate skill, surprising 
 energy and swiftness. But the ferment and passion 
 which gathered round it, and which is still rolling on 
 from its impulse, is a fact far deeper and more strange. 
 A great Strike is at best a grim, cruel, hardening tussle, 
 even when most orderly and most justifiable ; and its 
 anti-social spirit but too often rouses aversion in the 
 disinterested public. 
 
 The Strike of the Docks was accompanied with a 
 moral lift which kindled sympathy throughout the 
 English world. John Burns contrived to fire it with 
 a sense of social duty as its key-note. He stood up 
 again and again preaching about men's duty at home 
 and abroad ; and the singular hold which he has won 
 over the masses is due to the sense that he is regarded 
 more as a moral reformer than as a strike-leader. The 
 movement, as he said himself, became more like the 
 spread of a religion than the demand of a rise in wages. 
 Mothers of new-born infants had them carried to him 
 through the crowd that he might put his hand upon 
 them to bring luck. Just so I have seen women in 
 Italy bring their children to Garibaldi to be blessed.
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 431 
 
 My friend Mr. Broadhurst occasionally, I believe, ex- 
 pounds the Word, but I do not think that such an 
 incident has ever befallen him. As orator, leader, 
 teacher, and general in the field, John Burns has 
 obtained amongst the workers of London an influence 
 much like that which Gambetta had over the French 
 peasants, and by the exercise of some of the same gifts. 
 Whatever be his gifts, the public and the legislature 
 will, no doubt, soon be able to test them. 1 
 
 Right or wrong, full of promise or full of danger, 
 as it may be, the new Unionism is a very great force. 
 It has already produced the greatest upheaval recorded 
 in the history of modern industry, one which a states- 
 man of Cabinet rank has described as "an epoch in 
 the history of labour and of humanity." But as yet 
 we are only in the beginning. There are not yet a 
 million unionists in the kingdom, whilst there are ten 
 or twelve million workers of both sexes who might be. 
 The new trades union is a machine far simpler, easier, 
 more rapidly organised than the old ; and it can be 
 formed ad hoc for any given occasion. There is 
 thus an almost unlimited field for its activity, now 
 that Socialists have taken to aim at practical results by 
 borrowing the discipline and machinery of a true 
 Trades Union. 
 
 Recent events may serve to display the incredible 
 folly of the party who hoped to crush out Unionism 
 at the time of the Royal Commission in 1869. They 
 proposed compulsory legislation to divide every union 
 fund into a separate trade fund and a separate benefit 
 fund (Report^ p. cxiii.). As the minority pointed out 
 (p. Ixi.) this would merely force the Unions to devote 
 a large proportion of their resources to strikes, and 
 take away from the Union officers the strong tempta- 
 
 1 As Cabinet Minister to-day, successful head of a great department 
 of State (1908).
 
 432 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tion to avoid disputes in order to accumulate a large 
 balance. What the enemies of the Unions, with 
 suicidal folly, tried to compel the societies to become, 
 i.e. mere trade societies or fighting unions per se, that 
 the Socialists have now induced the societies to do 
 voluntarily, or rather they have founded new Unions 
 to effect that object. In the same way the enemies 
 of the Unions proposed to the legislature to make 
 " picketing " criminal. The recent Strike has shown 
 us the greatest development of Picketing ever known. 
 There were 5000 " pickets " maintained night and 
 day, over lines thirty or forty miles in extent, by land 
 and water ; and the discipline and vigilance of the 
 cordon were as exact as with the Prussians at the siege 
 of Paris. Without these " pickets " the Strike would 
 have collapsed in a week. Yet, in spite of the great 
 extent of the lines and the desperation of starving 
 men, no outrage of any serious consequence was 
 proved, and the police were not called in to interfere. 
 If "picketing" had been made illegal in 1869, the 
 recent Strike would have been suppressed by the resort 
 to cavalry, as they do so constantly abroad. 
 
 A brief review of the recent Strike is not the place 
 for a critical estimate of the new Unionism which 
 carried the Strike through and which has developed 
 out of it. We wait to see how the new Unionism 
 intends to work. Its opportuneness and its strength, 
 its dangers and temptations, are patent enough. A 
 Union having no large weekly dues, no costly deferred 
 benefits, and no complex voting machinery, is obviously 
 a more handy and more rapid instrument to wield than 
 one of the rich, endowed, conservative, mutual-insur- 
 ance Unions. On the other hand, experience has 
 shown that a mere strike society has no backbone and 
 has no reserve fund to meet a lock-out. For years 
 the unskilled trades have been forming temporary
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 433 
 
 unions which soon die out, become insolvent, or 
 encourage foolish, abortive strikes. A union with a 
 splendid balance, with benefits " up to the chin," and 
 one or two shillings a week in subscriptions, is apt to 
 get as timid of change as " the old lady in Thread- 
 needle Street." A Union, which is a mere fighting 
 Club, soon exhausts itself in defeats, and disgusts 
 those who put their trust in its promises and who 
 gave their money to its blunders. The permanent 
 success of the new Unionism still remains to be proved 
 by results j for it will depend on the judgment and 
 self-control the new leaders can show. They have 
 shown an energy, a swiftness, and a burning social 
 enthusiasm which have long been unknown in the 
 rich established Unions ; and they have thereby seized 
 a grand advantage in a favourable state of the Labour 
 Market. But they will suffer terrible reverses, if they 
 ever come to think that energy and fervour will avail, 
 when the economic conditions of the Labour Market 
 are dead against them. 
 
 What they have proved is this : and it is most 
 important. Whereas it used to be an axiom that 
 unskilled workers in an open trade could not form 
 regular unions or sustain a prolonged strike, it is now 
 shown that they can. It used to be thought that the 
 very poor, the casual labourer, those who have no local 
 employment (as sailors), and women, could never form 
 a substantial union or a serious strike, because they 
 could not afrbrd weekly subscriptions, have nothing to 
 fall back upon, and had not the endurance, discipline, 
 esprit de corps^ and patience which an obstinate struggle 
 demands. The weakness of Unionism was, that it 
 was only available to the skilled men in good wages, 
 and often injured rather than helped the great unskilled 
 mass. John Burns has lifted that reproach from it, for 
 he has had the sagacity to see that Unionism hitherto 
 
 2 F
 
 .434 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 has been presented to the unskilled in far too costly 
 and elaborate a form j and that to win sympathy, 
 Unionism must take a truly social, and not a sectional, 
 aim. If this new departure can be maintained, it 
 amounts to a revolution in industry. 
 
 The dead-weight which for generations has pressed 
 upon labour in London is the fact, that for some 
 fifteen or twenty miles on both sides of the Thames 
 there has been a floating population in irregular 
 employment, of casual habits and migratory bent. It 
 was like a great leak in the bottom of the ship. East 
 London was always growing bigger, and the greater 
 the demand for labour, the larger grew the swarm of 
 casual labourers. The great centre of disturbance 
 was the Docks. From the peculiar conditions of 
 the case, and under the fierce competition of rival 
 companies, the vast shipping business of the Port 
 of London stimulated the accumulation along the 
 riverside of a mass of labour under-paid, irregularly 
 employed, immensely over-stocked, and under the 
 incessant competition of numbers, at the mercy of 
 the pay-master. Often and often have I heard in 
 Unionist meetings indignant appeals against work- 
 men "being treated like dock-labourers." It was 
 the familiar instance of the lowest stage of industrial 
 oppression. 
 
 A new system is now to begin. May his " tanner " 
 benefit the dock-labourer ! But of far more import- 
 ance to him than his "tanner" is the mitigation of 
 his successive hours, of the irregular turns in his labour, 
 of all mere casual hour-work. And above all important 
 to him is the knowledge that he can now defend him- 
 self by combination, that he is just as capable of 
 discipline, of organised resistance, and of brotherly 
 confidence in man to man, as is the Associated Miner 
 or the Amalgamated Engineer. The grand result of
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 435 
 
 the Dock Strike is this : the traditional gulf between 
 "skilled" and "unskilled" labour has ceased. The 
 new Unionism has fused them into one. 
 
 But the new Unionism would not have done much 
 if Public Opinion had not gone over to its side. 
 Thirty or forty years ago the whole weight of English 
 literature and current opinion backed up Capital 
 always, and opposed Labour everywhere. The 
 Reform agitation, the Chartist movement, the year 
 1848, the books of Carlyle, Kingsley, Maurice, Ruskin, 
 and the later writings of Mill, shook the orthodox 
 gospel. But in the main the press, Parliament, and 
 society teemed with calumny of Unionism and all its 
 works. The great strikes of 1851-2-3 and 1858-9 
 produced a deep impression. $ut the first systematic 
 attempt to judge Unionism fairly was made by the 
 remarkable Committee of the Social Science Associa- 
 tion, which published its Report in 1860. On that 
 Committee of thirty-two may be seen the names of 
 twelve Members of Parliament, four subsequent 
 Ministers (including H. Fawcett, W. E. Forster, and 
 George S. Lefevre), five civil servants of the Crown, 
 and twelve men of letters and of science. That book 
 was the starting-point of honest study of the practical 
 labour problems. Then came the Royal Commission 
 of Trades Unions in 1867-8-9, when the extravagant 
 proposals of the economic pedants were baffled by the 
 steady good sense and the popular sympathies of two 
 peers Lord Wemyss and Lord Lichfield. 
 
 Of course the transfer of political power effected 
 in the various Reform Acts of the last twenty years 
 has exerted a profound silent revolution. And the fact 
 that the workmen are now the depositaries of power 
 has forced the rich to listen to their demands with 
 a hearing entirely new. Along with a re-casting of 
 our whole political system into a democratic form,
 
 436 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 there has gone during the last twenty years an immense 
 movement in social philosophy and social politics. 
 The Commune in France, the land struggle in Ireland, 
 the growth of Socialism on the Continent, the teach- 
 ing of Karl Marx, Henry George, Mill, Comte, and 
 those whom each of these have influenced, have con- 
 tinually broken up the old economic purism, the 
 gospel of laissez fa'tre and unlimited licence to indi- 
 vidual selfishness. Along with these have worked 
 an immense body of organised movements, with many 
 different schemes and with widely divergent creeds, 
 such as the Salvation Army, Toynbee Hall, Newton 
 Hall, the Social Democratic Federation, the Land 
 Nationalisation Societies, and all the other agrarian 
 movements in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, 
 with Guilds, Leagues, and Societies innumerable ; 
 such inquiries as those of the Industrial Conference of 
 1885, Mr. Charles Booth's Analysis of Labour in 
 East London, 1889, the Trades Union Annual Con- 
 gress, and all the various types of Christian Socialism 
 that are weekly preached in Church and Chapel. 
 
 Socialism in any systematic or definite form, as a 
 scheme for superseding the institution of Capital, has 
 not as yet in my opinion made any serious way. At 
 least I know of no coherent scheme for eliminating 
 individual ownership of property which can be said to 
 have even a moderate following of rational and con- 
 vinced adherents. The enthusiasts who, here and 
 there, put forth such schemes are not really under- 
 stood by those whom they get to listen to them. 
 But Socialism, as meaning the general desire to have 
 all the arrangements of society, economic, legislative, 
 and moral, controlled by social considerations and 
 reformed to meet paramount social obligations this 
 kind of Socialism is manifestly in the ascendant. 
 Such Socialism, I mean, as is found in Henry George's
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 437 
 
 powerful book called Social Problems^ where we have 
 his view of the problem apart from his sophistical 
 " remedy." The old satanic gospel of laissez falre 
 is dead : and, in the absence of any other gospel of 
 authority, a vague proclivity towards Socialism comes 
 to the front. 1 
 
 Whatever name we give it, a settled conviction 
 has grown up in the conscience of serious men of all 
 schools, that society in its present form presses with 
 terrible severity on the whole body of those who toil 
 in the lowest ranks of labour. And from Bismarck 
 and the Pope downwards all who bear rule, and all 
 who teach, are coming to feel that society is in a very 
 rotten state whilst that continues. We are all waking 
 up to see (what many of us have been preaching for 
 years) that it will not do, and must be mended or 
 ended. Hence when 100,000 men along the river- 
 side rose up to protest against their casual employment 
 and their miserable pay, the world very generally, 
 both of rich and poor, thought that they were right, 
 and gave them encouragement and help. People 
 knew something definite about the East End and 
 London Labour. The Mansion-House Committees, 
 the House of Lords Committee on Sweating, the 
 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, the 
 Industrial Conference of 1885, the experiences of 
 Beatrice Potter, the studies of Charles Booth and his 
 friends, and all that for years has been said and done 
 in Toynbee Hall,. Bedford Chapel, Newton Hall, the 
 Working Men's College, the Hall of Science, the 
 City Temple, and a thousand platforms, pulpits, and 
 clubs had made men think and given them matter 
 for thought. Public opinion has passed over to the 
 
 1 Twenty years have made a great difference in this as in other 
 things. But I am not disposed to make a very different estimate now 
 (1908).
 
 438 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 side of the labourer ; and when he made his effort, 
 public opinion helped him to success. 
 
 There are lessons enough for every one in what 
 has just happened. The Socialist of the Karl Marx 
 School may reflect how sterile a thing Socialism has 
 proved all these years that it has been raving out its 
 fierce conundrums about the wickedness of private 
 property, and how solid are the results to be won 
 when it consents to enter on a practical business 
 bargain. The violent assailants of Trades Unionism 
 may reflect that they have done nothing practical, 
 until they resorted to Unionism themselves and 
 adopted its familiar tactics and its well-tried machinery. 
 The old Unionist may reflect that, in forty years 
 past, the conventional Unionism has proved utterly 
 powerless to effect what in a few weeks two or three 
 prominent Socialists have done. The men who grow 
 hoarse in declaiming about the selfishness and brutality 
 of the middle-classes may think of the solid assistance 
 they had from the middle-classes in sympathy and in 
 money. And the middle-classes, who were wont to 
 regard the East-End labourer as a feckless or dangerous 
 loafer, may ponder on the discipline, honesty, endur- 
 ance, and real heroism which, in defence of what they 
 knew to be a just cause, so many thousands of the 
 poorest of the poor have shown. 
 
 The Socialist with a system and the impatient 
 reformer generally have often turned with mockery 
 from all reliance on public opinion and from any such 
 doctrine as " the moralisation of industry." When 
 they have been told that " the true socialism is this : 
 the use of Capital must be turned to social objects, just 
 as Capital arises from social combination " : when it 
 has been preached to them that "industry must be 
 moralised by opinion^ not recast by the State moralised 
 by education, by morality, by religion " the Socialist
 
 SOCIALIST UNIONISM 439 
 
 with a system and the impatient reformer goes off with 
 a laugh or a sneer. Well ! but this is what has just 
 happened. Public Opinion has been changed, and it 
 has worked great results. Capital, to a certain extent, 
 has been moralised, and Industry also has been 
 moralised. The very poor have been taught to feel 
 self-respect and self-reliance, to bear much for a 
 common cause, to practise self-denial for a social 
 benefit. The rich have been taught to listen with 
 more sympathy to the poor, and to know themselves 
 as responsible for the sufferings of those they employ. 
 What has happened is a great lesson to rich and poor, 
 to employers and employed, in the imperishable and 
 paramount force of Social Duty in the long run. 
 The immediate results are not very great. But it is 
 a beginning : and much may come of it. In the 
 meantime, the persistent appeal to the public con- 
 science on moral and social grounds has done, what 
 Trades Unionism per se has failed to do in forty years, 
 and what all the schemes for confiscating private 
 Capital and nationalising private property have only 
 succeeded in hindering and delaying being done.
 
 VI 
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 
 
 (1891) 
 
 From the foundation of Positivist centres by Dr. Gongreve in 
 1869, the writer and his colleagues had continually pre- 
 sented the industrial theories of August e Comte on the 
 platform and the press. As President of the Positivist 
 Committee down from the year 1879, he consistently 
 maintained the same views in a series of lectures, and 
 especially in the Annual Address which he invariably 
 delivered on New Tear's Day. The following Discourse 
 was part of that given by him at Newton Hall on 
 January JT, 1891. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the address here printed 
 is merely an extract ; simply part of a course of propaganda 
 which extended over more than thirty years. It is 
 obviously a sketch or brief summary of principles. If 
 it be asked in what way, by what agencies, and under 
 what religious ideal, any MORAL AND RELIGIOUS 
 SOCIALISM could be ultimately based in practice, the 
 answer is to be found in the entire synthesis of Positivist 
 Ethic and religion which has been the inspiration of the 
 writer's whole active life, and the underlying idea of this 
 book and his other works 
 
 IT is now, I think, for the sixth year in succession 
 that I have tried to direct attention to the growth of 
 
 440
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 441 
 
 Socialism in England, and I will treat it more in 
 detail on this occasion. With the general aim and 
 idea of Socialism, Positivists, of course, are in hearty 
 sympathy. With almost every word of its criticism 
 on the actual industrial condition of Europe, with its 
 indignant rejection of the pedantic formulas of the old 
 Plutonomy, we entirely concur. With its main prin- 
 ciple that all material wealth is the common product 
 of society and labour, and is never a merely individual 
 creation, we are wholly in agreement. With its 
 repudiation of absolute rights of Property, and its 
 assertion of the paramount claims of Society to dispose 
 of all that which could have no existence but for 
 Society itself, we cordially join. Positivism is, in a 
 large and true sense of the word, itself an organised 
 Socialism. Its whole scheme of life, of education, and 
 of industry is essentially a mode of socialism but 
 socialism with a difference. And that difference is, 
 that Positivism is a complete, universal, and religious 
 socialism not a socialism limited to material products. 
 It is a socialism founded on social science and inspired 
 by religion. 
 
 There is no paradox in this. From the Positivist 
 point of view, the current Socialism is essentially right 
 in idea, so far as it goes ; but it is limited and incom- 
 plete. It does not carry the idea half far enough. 
 The Socialists around us fill the air with denunciations 
 of the cruelty of Capital, of the disinherited state of 
 the labourer, of the miserable pittance which his 
 severest labour can bring. Most true ! and heartily 
 do we join in these outcries. But it is not enough. 
 There is appalling cruelty in men and women who 
 have no capital. Many a parent, many a child, many 
 a neighbour, make life a burden to those whom they 
 control or affect. Those who possess physical strength 
 often cruelly abuse it ; those who are rich only in the
 
 4.42 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 love, care, and consideration which are lavished on 
 them, cruelly waste these precious gifts. Those who 
 have any form of power, those who have rare gifts of 
 intellect, learning, or peculiar resources, often most 
 selfishly hoard or squander their store. 
 
 The poor are shamefully excluded from the laden 
 tables of the Commonwealth j but they are excluded 
 also from education, from knowledge, from art, from 
 cultivation, from a thousand things which those who 
 have them prefer to keep to themselves. Selfishness, 
 and anti-social misappropriation of the common store 
 of humanity, are not things confined to material 
 products ; nor will any re -arrangement of material 
 products extinguish them. The institutions and 
 habits that cluster round our Family Life, the 
 appliances of civilised life, the common knowledge of 
 our generation, the arts, the sciences, the manners 
 and courtesies of life are equally the product of 
 Society, as much as are factories or railways, and they 
 are often most selfishly abused or personally mis- 
 appropriated to the interest of particular individuals. 
 The cry of the Socialist, that the material things 
 produced by all should not be appropriated by the 
 few^ is most true. But it is only a part of the 
 truth. 
 
 All that Socialists urge of the injustice of the 
 social arrangements whereby, when the owner of a 
 coal-mine sets a thousand men to dig in the pit, at 
 the end of twenty years he has amassed a great fortune 
 whilst the thousand men have nothing but their worn- 
 out bodies and limbs all this is unanswerable ; it is 
 unjust, and indeed intolerable. We are wholly with 
 them when they cry that, come what may, it must, 
 and shall be changed to a more humane arrangement 
 of Society. But the Socialist puts it on far too 
 narrow a ground when he makes the claim of the
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 443 
 
 pitmen entirely rest on right. It is a confused, dis- 
 credited, and illusory basis is that of right. Legal 
 right we know : which means simply what the 
 dominant body in each State which controls its 
 legislation, chooses from time to time to enact. And 
 we krow what under democratic suffrages legal rights 
 are now in England, or in France, or in America, 
 democratic republics as they too are. But right, 
 apart from law, is a mere quicksand, torn to pieces 
 by scores of clear reasoners, a mere rag of the silly 
 Rousseauism of the last century. 
 
 The lecturer at the street-corner appeals to right, 
 by which he means what he would like to see done. 
 But trained minds know too well that right is a mere 
 phrase to juggle with, without a shadow of sound 
 philosophic basis, indeed without a trace of consistent 
 meaning. If Stradivarius makes a violin ; and 
 Beethoven composes a sonata ; and Joachim plays 
 it on the instrument what are the rights of 
 Stradivarius, Beethoven, and Joachim respectively in 
 the money which people pay to hear the performance ? 
 Every one, from a musician to a doorkeeper, would 
 differ as to the shares of the three. And who could 
 answer so ridiculous a question except by saying 
 that the rights of the instrument-maker, the composer, 
 and the player were what each might agree to allow 
 to the others ? Just so ! rights are an absolutely 
 insoluble dilemma, except on the basis of free contract. 
 And free contract is just the system which the pluto- 
 nomists now vaunt as the eternally fair system, the 
 system under which in England, in Scotland, in Ireland 
 to-day, all the cruelty and oppression is done. In 
 other words, to appeal to right is either to appeal to 
 law as it is, or else to appeal to the same legerdemain 
 of phrases, under which the most savage oppression by 
 Capital is worked on the present system.
 
 444 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The relations of man to man in a highly developed 
 society are infinitely complex, and elude everything 
 but a sound, searching, and scientific philosophy of 
 human nature and of the social organism. And do 
 the Socialists of whom we hear most pretend that they 
 have any such philosophy worthy of the name ? The 
 Socialism which we preach here does rest on such a 
 philosophy, based on universal history, on a study of 
 the human character, and an exhaustive survey of all 
 the faculties and the wants of the human body and 
 the human soul. Here we rest the claim of the 
 labourer to a full share not merely in that which his 
 hands have made but in all things which his neigh- 
 bours and fellow-citizens have their knowledge, their 
 thought, their skill, their refinement, their wisdom 
 and strength, on the indefeasible duty of all to 
 co-operate in the great social combination from which 
 all they have is ultimately derived and to which they 
 owe every faculty of their nature. 
 
 There was a memorable saying of the last genera- 
 tion : Property has its duties as well as its rights. 
 But our view of Property is this : The rights of 
 Property mean a concentration of social duties. Our 
 Socialism rests on Duty not on Right. Duty is 
 always plain j Right is a verbal mystification. A 
 man can always and everywhere do his duty. He 
 seldom can get his supposed rights without trampling 
 on the rights of others. Men wrangle incessantly as 
 to rights. They easily agree as to duties. The 
 performance of duty is always an ennobling, a moral, 
 a religious act. The struggle for rights calls out all 
 the passions of self and of combat. The curse of 
 humanity is selfishness, the interests, the lusts, the 
 pride of self. And we are now told to find the 
 blessing of humanity in constant struggle for rights 
 which can mean nothing but a deeper absorption in self.
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 445 
 
 Unhappily in the current language of Socialists we 
 too often miss two important elements which enter 
 into all products, material or intellectual, but which 
 are usually completely left aside. These are first : 
 the enormous part played in every product by the 
 society itself in which it is produced, the past workers, 
 thinkers, and managers, and the social organism at 
 present, which alone enables us to produce at all. An 
 ocean steamship could not be built on the Victoria 
 Nyanza nor could factories be established on the 
 banks of the Aruwhimi. No one in these discussions 
 as to " Rights of Labour " seems to allow a penny for 
 government, civil population, industrial habits, inherited 
 aptitudes, stored materials, mechanical inventions, and 
 the thousand and one traditions of the past and appli- 
 ances of civil organisation, without which no complex 
 thing could be produced at all. And they entirely 
 leave out of sight posterity. That is to say, Socialist 
 reasoners are apt to leave out of account Society 
 altogether. And Society, that is the Social Organism 
 in the Past plus the Social Organism of the moment, 
 is something entirely distinct from the particular 
 workmen of a given factory or pit, and indeed has 
 interests and claims quite opposed to theirs. Society, 
 which Socialists ought to be the very last to forget, 
 is the indispensable antecedent, and very largely the 
 creator, of every product. 
 
 A second element in production which is left out 
 of sight is the material, plant, and capital employed in 
 the product, the organisation of the entire business, 
 and the mental creation of the common work. We 
 often hear capital and plant spoken of as if they grew 
 in the fields, or fell down from the sky, or as if they 
 were mere bits of luxury, like a park or a yacht, 
 which rich men were bound to lend to poor men who 
 want them. But who made capital, or plant, or
 
 446 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 factories, or yards, and docks, ships, and engines, but 
 other working men who have to live out of their 
 labour, and who cannot transfer the results of their 
 labours without securing their own livelihood ? 
 Socialists talk as if the yarn spun in a cotton mill was 
 entirely produced by the labour of the spinners ; and 
 they say the mill and the machinery ought to belong 
 to the State. But the mill and the machinery are the 
 result of the labour of many more men than the 
 spinners, working many years. The capitalist (so 
 called) is simply the man who has advanced them their 
 means of living all this time. Suppose the vampire 
 capitalist suppressed. How is the State going to 
 support the builders and engineers and pitmen, who 
 build the mill and forge the machinery and dig the 
 coal, except by taking half the wages from the spinners 
 as taxes ? This seems an odd device for increasing 
 the wages of the workmen. 
 
 Again. Who made the cotton-spinning business ? 
 Who created the complex trade relations without 
 which the mill would stand idle for want of orders ? 
 Who calculates quantities, profits, prices, rise and fall 
 of markets, and the intricate and delicate organisation 
 of a paying concern ? Who but the mill-owner or 
 his predecessor in title, and one or two skilled experts 
 trained from childhood to this very difficult work. 
 Socialist lecturers sometimes say, "Of course, the 
 rights of management will be guaranteed." But this 
 is a very off-hand way of shunting the question. The 
 mills which cover the bare hillsides and glens of 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, the docks of Liverpool, or 
 of London, the pits of Durham and Northumberland 
 did not grow, and sink themselves. They were as 
 completely created by the genius and resolution of 
 particular men as the locomotive was invented by 
 Stephenson or the art of printing by Gutenberg.
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 447 
 
 Management indeed ! That is a ridiculously easy 
 way of putting it. You cannot hire a manager for 
 these things. A great business needs its general as 
 completely as an army. The battle of Waterloo 
 would never have been won without Wellington. 
 Nor would St. Petersburg have existed without Peter 
 the Great, nor Berlin without Frederick. Imagine 
 Prussians or Russians hiring a manager to create their 
 nation or found their capital. 
 
 In all these discussions men too often forget 
 altogether the indispensable part of the organising 
 mind without which most undertakings would never 
 exist at all, or would be doomed to failure. The 
 continual disasters, and at best the very trifling success 
 of those undertakings which in the last thirty years 
 have been started and carried on by the workmen 
 themselves, form the best evidence of this. And the 
 one or two cases in which a perceptible profit has 
 been made are those in which the market already 
 existed, and the whole conditions of the trade were 
 simple and notorious. There is no case on record of 
 a body of workmen creating a new market, or founding 
 an original enterprise. 
 
 Still more completely forgotten is the moralising 
 power of capital when it is directed under real social 
 impulses and in a spirit of genuine social obligation. 
 The best and most useful qualities called out in human 
 nature are incapable of acting without freedom in the 
 disposal of material power in some form, and some 
 kind of authorised appropriation of material things : 
 limited and modified it may be, but not entirely sup- 
 pressed. The domestic life of the simplest family 
 would be impossible, if they had not even a room they 
 could call their home, not a bit of furniture, not a 
 picture, or a book, not a chair, nor a bed, which they 
 could reasonably expect to occupy the next day. No
 
 448 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 man could feel himself a free and independent citizen 
 if he could not call his boots, or his shirt, or his hat 
 his own ; no man could work at his best, if he could 
 not look to keeping the same set of tools in his own 
 bag. 
 
 If room, bed, plates, cups, knives and forks, clothes, 
 tools, books, and every material thing were served out 
 to citizen No. 7695, every morning from the public 
 stores, men would feel themselves in a prison or a 
 barrack, and the noblest and most powerful qualities 
 of citizenship would be destroyed. If no man could 
 look to reap the corn which he had sown, or to plough 
 next year the same field which he farmed last year, no 
 practical farming could be done at all, and the farmer 
 would feel himself to be a slave or a convict. What 
 is it that forces all reasonable Socialists to-day to 
 accept appropriation for all such domestic and personal 
 concerns, though obviously on the strict theory of 
 Socialist right a man has no more right to a bed, or a 
 cot which he did not make, but bought in the market, 
 than a capitalist has to a mill, or a ship, which he 
 bought and did not make ? On the abstract theory 
 of rights, that things only belong to those who make 
 them, a man's coat belongs not to him, but to the 
 farmer who grew the wool, and the weaver who made 
 the stuff, and the tailor who cut it out and sewed it 
 together. We know that no reasonable Socialist 
 pushes abstract theory so far. That is to say, reason- 
 able Socialists surrender the doctrine of rights^ for the 
 sake of social convenience and by mere force of 
 human nature. 
 
 It is a question of degree where the line of appro- 
 priation is to be drawn. Every one agrees that, if 
 all kinds of appropriation of capital were absolutely 
 barred .by law, society would soon revert to a state of 
 primitive barbarism. We can all see that appropria-
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 449 
 
 tion of home, of domestic appliances, of clothes, books, 
 tools, of farms, workshops and the like, is indispensable 
 to the best activity of human life. Most Socialists 
 would add some stock of money or money's worth, 
 for few would be ready to face so complete a barrack 
 system, that a man would have to apply to the board 
 for an order, if he wished to change his house, or take 
 his family for a holiday. Here, we are prepared to 
 carry the principle further, and say : that limited 
 and qualified appropriation of farms, of mills, of 
 factories, of ships and the material instruments of 
 production is not only indispensable to anything like 
 adequate production, but is alone the means of calling 
 out the exercise of the finest forces of human nature, 
 of activities without which 'life would be mean and 
 dull indeed. 
 
 In the shameful misuse of Capital which is so 
 common around us, and in the cynical selfishness with 
 which the rights of Capital are usually asserted, we 
 hear nowadays incessant outcries about the crimes of 
 Capital, and next to nothing about the indispensable 
 services of Capital to Society. The outcry is indeed 
 abundantly justified. But the services which Capital 
 renders to Society are quite as real and quite as far- 
 reaching ; though Capitalists themselves are usually 
 too blind or too arrogant to assert them, and though, 
 in the obsequious deference that we now show to the 
 popular cry of the hour, few social reformers will 
 venture to murmur a good word for the social utility 
 of Capital in principle. Indeed, unless Capital can 
 show itself in a more social attitude, or unless social 
 philosophy can prove its necessity on better grounds 
 than those of the obsolete laws of Plutonomy, it is far 
 from impossible that the institution itself may be 
 shaken to its foundations, and suffer a temporary 
 dissolution. If it cannot reform itself in time, that is 
 
 2 G
 
 450 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 perhaps the only thing that could happen. The 
 institution will of course reconstruct itself rapidly 
 again, and it may be hoped on broader foundations 
 and with a nobler spirit. But in the interval, frightful 
 disasters would be the portion of our complex industrial 
 system ; widespread misery to the point of starvation 
 would befall our people ; and a staggering blow would 
 be delivered to the intellectual, material, and moral 
 progress of civilisation. 
 
 Capitalists themselves are usually unconscious of 
 the immense benefits which they really confer on 
 society, whilst they imagine themselves to be exerting 
 nothing but thrift, prudence, and honourable ambition. 
 Without the energy and ability which only can secure 
 industrial success, the undertakings they direct would 
 be disastrous failures, and workmen would everywhere 
 be thrown out of employment. Without the passion 
 for accumulation which makes a capitalist what he is, 
 products would be consumed as fast as they were 
 made, and no accumulation would exist. Without 
 accumulation, society would come to a standstill, and 
 at the first turn of bad times or a succession of bad 
 seasons, the people would everywhere be deprived of 
 the means of living. We hear much about the 
 immense profits which Capitalists make ; but no one 
 ever speaks of the enormous drains on capital which 
 in bad times they bear in silence. 
 
 The working masses know nothing about these 
 huge, prolonged, and alarming losses, which the 
 capitalist himself is too prudent to disclose to any one 
 but his lawyer and his banker. He struggles on with 
 courage and tenacity, as if he were making a profit ; 
 and often as not, he saves the ship at last. In the 
 meantime his workmen are being paid, sometimes year 
 after year, out of the accumulated savings, just as if 
 the business were still running at a profit. If there
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 451 
 
 were no capitalist, and the concern were managed by 
 public meetings of those who work in it, the following 
 results would arise (i) The profits in good years would 
 be consumed as they were made, and no accumulation 
 to speak of would be formed ; (2) the instability of 
 management by meeting would lead to speedy ruin ; 
 (3) the publicity involved in public management would 
 be destructive to business ; (4) in bad years, the 
 workers in meeting assembled would never submit to 
 the reduction in salaries required to meet losses, and 
 would never have the tenacity to face a long succession 
 of losses and reduction : a panic would arise, and the 
 business would be broken up. 
 
 If the " business " were the property of the State, 
 and if the management were that of a Government 
 department, what is there to show that it would be 
 managed more liberally than the Dockyards, Govern- 
 ment factories, or the Post Office, in all of which we 
 hear the loudest outcries of tyranny, which are often 
 said to be types of Public Sweating ? Socialism 
 involves, in order to give it a fair chance, an entire 
 reconstruction of our whole social system and all our 
 principles of public life. Quite so. That is our 
 point. Socialism offers no such fundamental social 
 regeneration. Positivism does. And by the time 
 the social reconstruction is effected, it will be found 
 that anti-Capitalist Socialism is no longer needed. 
 
 Capital acts as a reservoir does, which in seasons 
 of drought keeps a city supplied with water till the 
 streams begin again to flow. It is created by the 
 peculiar aptitude for management shown by a few 
 individuals having a genius for that kind of work. It 
 is maintained by the passion for accumulation urging 
 special natures to submit to great efforts and to resist 
 immediate temptations. But this genius for business, 
 this instinct of accumulation, and this dogged tenacity
 
 452 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of purpose are comparatively rare. Ninety-nine in 
 every hundred have not got these qualities, or have 
 not got them in special degree and in due combination. 
 The hundredth man is a born capitalist, or manager of 
 capital ; and, as surely as a born painter will paint 
 and a born singer will sing, he will accumulate and 
 maintain the accumulations, if you offer him the 
 chance and give him a free hand. But to suppose 
 that you can hire him to do this work at so much a 
 week, or for board, lodging, and clothing, without 
 pocket-money or luxuries of any kind, is a foolish and 
 ignorant assumption. Nor is it less foolish to suppose 
 that he will do his work as well, if you do not give him 
 a free hand at all, but have him up before the " Board " 
 or the shareholders, and give him his orders week by 
 week, as if he were merely your managing clerk. 
 
 It is commonly said that the example of Railways, 
 Banks, and other Joint-Stock concerns proves that it 
 is quite possible to carry on vast business affairs on the 
 collective principle, with elected managers and hired 
 agents. There cannot be a more transparent sophism. 
 These joint -stock concerns are not carried on or 
 managed by those whom they employ, and to whom 
 they pay weekly wages. The directors are not work- 
 men ; they have no interests other than those of the 
 shareholders ; both directors and shareholders all 
 belong to the capitalist class, not to the labouring 
 class. The whole of the shareholders, without excep- 
 tion, belong to the few who have capital, and whose 
 habits are all those of the capitalist order. They 
 were all bred more or less to business. And they 
 practically trust the interests of the concern to a very 
 few selected directors, usually men of great wealth, 
 who are also professional experts. Not a single person 
 to whom the Company pays wages, has a voice in the 
 management, either directly or indirectly. And the
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 453 
 
 whole concern is carried on by a few picked capitalists, 
 in whom a larger group of capitalists are satisfied to 
 place implicit confidence. The consequence is that 
 the Bank of England, a Railway, or a Steamship 
 Company, is carried on exactly in the same way as 
 the firm of Rothschild, Cunard, or W. Whiteley. 
 What is the analogy between the management of a 
 Joint-Stock Company by a selected Board of Capitalists, 
 and the management of a Railway by its own drivers, 
 stokers, guards, and porters ; or of an Ocean Shipping 
 line by its own seamen, firemen, shipwrights and 
 labourers ? There is no analogy at all. 
 
 The Socialist theory implies that business concerns 
 are to be carried on or controlled by those who do 
 the manual work, not by men specially trained to 
 great affairs. Does any rational man imagine that 
 the stokers and navvies employed on a Railway are 
 likely to keep down their own wages in order to 
 provide funds for new stock five years hence ; that a 
 body of ten thousand men, three-fourths of whom 
 cannot keep half-a-crown in their pockets, are going 
 to think of the next generation ; or that they are 
 likely to trust the " Board " in the way in which 
 the Chatham and Dover shareholders trust Mr. 
 J. S. Forbes and have made him dictator for life ? 
 
 Working men accustomed to the simple operations 
 of their own particular craft are prone to imagine the 
 conduct of a business to be an easy matter ; and when 
 they manage a co-operative store for the supply of 
 bacon, flour, and jam, they are told by some silly 
 friends that they have proved their fitness to direct 
 masses of accumulated capital. It is a pitiable delusion. 
 The success of a club to buy food for the members 
 at wholesale prices can prove nothing of the kind. 
 They are producing nothing for the public market, 
 nor are they competing with individual capitalists at
 
 454 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 all. The direction of a large trading or manufacturing 
 concern requires powers of will, of decision, of insight, 
 of intuition, only given to some men out of many, 
 and only brought to perfection by the training of a 
 life. The qualities required in a successful man of 
 business are somewhat like those required by a success- 
 ful general in the field. And it would be as idle to 
 expect that Armstrong's Gun Factory, the Great 
 Western Railway, or Cunard's Packet Line could be 
 successfully run by public meetings of the founders, 
 stokers, sailors, or labourers they employ, as it would 
 be to expect that Wellington's campaigns could have 
 been won by councils of war elected by universal 
 suffrage throughout his army. 
 
 The scheme of Socialism implies something quite 
 different from management by a "Board." A 
 " Board," such as we know, consists of capitalists, 
 and they do not divide profits amongst themselves. 
 Unless workmen employed at daily wages are to have 
 control of the profits, Socialism can mean nothing. 
 Its proposal is to put the distribution of the profits 
 into the control of the manual workers alone. What 
 then would happen ? The workers, who have no 
 formed habits of accumulation (for, if they had, they 
 would not be workmen), would divide amongst them- 
 selves the utmost possible farthing of profit. The 
 concern would be left without due reserves, and 
 the growth of capital would be arrested. When 
 Socialists talk of the "State," they mean nothing 
 but the decisions, from day to day, of the masses of 
 workmen in democratic assemblies. 
 
 The gain per contra^ we are told, would be that the 
 sums now personally consumed by the capitalist would 
 be saved. It is quite true that many capitalists let 
 us say most capitalists in the absence of any real 
 control, social, moral, or religious do now selfishly
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 455 
 
 and shamelessly consume disproportioned shares of the 
 profits. Their reckless egoism may yet ruin the very 
 institution of property itself; and it certainly forms 
 the greatest danger by which property is threatened. 
 But, however morally evil and publicly scandalous 
 their selfish ostentation may be, it is not socially so 
 injurious as it looks at first sight. Even wanton 
 luxury in personal expenditure by a large employer 
 of industry consumes but an insignificant part of the 
 gross returns of his business ; and it forms often but a 
 trifling fraction of what he pays in weekly wages. 
 A large employer consumes, we will say, ^5000 per 
 annum, when he pays in wages at least ^100,000. 
 If the whole of his expenditure were devoted to 
 increase wages, they would only be raised is. in the 
 pound. The workman who receives 20s. would then 
 receive 2 is. And as things now stand, we know too 
 well where the extra shilling would go. 
 
 Against this must be set the prospect that, on the 
 Socialist theory, not one man, but at least a thousand, 
 would be tempted to consume the profits year by year 
 " up to the hilt " ; and that, it must be allowed, for the 
 best of all reasons to provide bread for their children. 
 As a body, they would be without the intense passion 
 for accumulation which makes a man a capitalist, and 
 without which no business could be carried on long. 
 The world sees the wanton and selfish expenditure of 
 which capitalists are too often proud. But it sees 
 nothing of the silent indefatigable accumulation which 
 goes on alongside of the waste. Now the accumula- 
 tion on the whole is far more extensive and of more 
 importance than the waste. It is very often made 
 under intensely selfish motives : but society gains 
 equally, whatever be the motives. 
 
 Under the present system of Capital, accumulation 
 is secured, be it well or ill, and usually it is not well.
 
 456 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 It is perhaps true that the accumulation is far too 
 rapid, too spasmodic, and often ill judged. It ought 
 to be an accumulation far more regular, more cautious, 
 and more open to general social aims. But it is secured. 
 And accumulation is the condition precedent of social 
 wellbeing and of civilisation itself. But, under the 
 Socialist scheme, all accumulation would be left to 
 depend on the votes of those who, ex hypothesi^ have 
 no turn for accumulation at all, who under the pressure 
 of daily needs could not be induced to provide for the 
 future, who have no training in business, and who 
 would be open to all the motives which are wont to 
 play upon popular impatience. 
 
 Under such a state of things, we may look forward 
 to an industrial chaos and material collapse, such as 
 Europe has not seen since the Early Middle Ages. A 
 stoppage of necessary accumulation would mean what 
 the absence of all reservoirs would mean in a season of 
 drought. Production would everywhere be paralysed ; 
 business would cease ; and consequently wages would 
 not be paid. It is difficult to see how famines on a 
 gigantic scale could be averted. For, even if the 
 property of the rich were confiscated and divided, it 
 would not feed millions of workmen. The parks, 
 mansions, furniture, hot-houses, gardens, horses, and 
 carriages of the capitalists would neither feed nor 
 clothe the poor ; and in the midst of a universal 
 material crash, they would be neither useful nor 
 saleable. At present, our thirty millions of people 
 buy food from abroad with the cotton, iron, coal, 
 ships, woollens, and so forth which they make or 
 raise. They cannot make cotton, iron, ships, and 
 so forth as men can dig up potatoes, nor without 
 enormous accumulated funds to provide them with 
 costly machinery, and to pay the wages during the 
 long interval that must elapse between digging up
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 457 
 
 the coal in the pit and the receipt of payment from the 
 foreigner for the manufactured iron. And if the work- 
 men, in deference to a specious theory, choose to destroy 
 the very sources of accumulation, the inevitable result 
 must be a prolonged era of starvation, quite appalling 
 in its severity and in its extent. 
 
 There remains all the wide field of the intolerable 
 personal tyranny which any scheme of Socialism in- 
 evitably involves. We hear little now on this side of 
 the question ; because the elaborate codes for the regu- 
 lation of human life, so common in the early years of 
 the century, have long become obsolete and forgotten. 
 The despotism of Socialism does not so much alarm 
 people now, simply because Socialism now is presented 
 in a thoroughly vague and inorganic form. If, as 
 was said half in jest and half in earnest, " we are all 
 Socialists now," it is also true that Socialism now 
 means anything or everything. Many people fancy 
 they are Socialists when they only desire to see some 
 well-meant Bills for the protection of workmen passed 
 by Parliament. Legislation about hours of labour, the 
 State purchase of railways and docks, model farms and 
 lodgings maintained by taxes, and the like all this is 
 a mere playing at Socialism. I read through that 
 aesthetic but hazy work called Fabian Essays^ without 
 finding more than half-a-dozen really Socialist pro- 
 posals, or more than one real Socialist writer. 
 
 But if Socialism is to reorganise Industry, it must 
 mean the systematic, stern, and universal suppression 
 of private capital and wealth by law. There is one 
 eccentric apostle of this creed, who seems to combine 
 with it the suppression of the Family, and of most 
 other institutions of civilised man. If Socialism is 
 really to regenerate industry, it must abolish capital, 
 wages, property in all forms, and it can only do so by 
 law. The serious Socialists, of times when Socialism
 
 was not an aesthetic fad, but a Social Gospel of con- 
 suming passion, all devised elaborate schemes for 
 forcing men's lives into cast-iron formulas, in order 
 to keep capital in the state of a proscribed and illegal 
 institution. They were quite right. Unless capital 
 be sternly and universally suppressed by law, unless 
 the family life, the personal life, the social life of all 
 citizens equally be prescribed by law, as Lycurgus, 
 Baboeuf, Fourier, and Owen projected it, Capital will 
 maintain itself and make Socialism a mere impracti- 
 cable experiment. If there is to be Socialism at all, 
 serious enough to recast the conditions of labour, it 
 must be an inexorable scheme of legal compulsion : 
 affecting us all in our homes, in our social habits, and 
 in the entire disposal of our personal life. 
 
 What an appalling prospect of tyranny does this 
 open to the vision F The development of man's 
 individual capacities, the moral beauty of domestic 
 life, the progress of science, of art, of learning, of 
 religion all depend on a due measure of individual 
 freedom. But individual freedom is absolutely de- 
 pendent on the free command of a certain amount of 
 individual capital. A man can now devote himselr 
 to a long career of unremunerative study, by reason 
 that he or his parents may have accumulated enough 
 to maintain him in comfort. An artist can work out 
 ideas which the public has not learned to value, by 
 reason that a few rich men give him a fancy price for 
 pieces that they like. A man can devote himself to 
 politics, to education, to religious, social, or moral 
 reformation, because he has just enough income to 
 dispense with daily toil at a trade. The whole pro- 
 gress of civilisation lies there : inventions, learning, 
 art, poetry, philosophy, reformation. 
 
 Suppress capital and place all accumulations not at 
 the free disposal of individuals, but at the mercy of
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 459 
 
 meetings or boards of labourers, and what chance 
 would there be of a student, a poet, or a moralist 
 obtaining an order for free living ? Let us imagine 
 Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson, Burne-Jones, or 
 Thomas Carlyle appearing before the department of 
 education to ask for a dispensation from labour, in 
 order to devote themselves to biology, poetry, painting, 
 or letters ! They would be driven out of the Board- 
 room as idle malingerers. It is sometimes suggested 
 that the student, the artist, or the teacher would be 
 duly supported by the public appreciation of their 
 merits ; so that a popular painter or writer would 
 immediately receive a state pension. That is to 
 say, that art, science, literature, and education would 
 pass into the hands of those who best could hit the 
 passing fancy of the untrained public of the day. 
 
 It is quite needless to enlarge on the myriad forms 
 of tyranny which true Socialism implies, because 
 Socialism now presents itself only in a disguise which 
 might serve as a costume for a Court Ball. Our 
 attention is not called to the despotism of life that true 
 Socialism involves, simply because there is now hardly 
 ariy true Socialism before us. But it is not the less 
 true that Property, or personal appropriation of Capital, 
 is the sole condition of personal freedom. It is quite 
 true that the freedom is now brutally and cynically 
 abused by the Capitalist, but it remains true all the same, 
 and is an eternal axiom of human society : without 
 personal appropriation there can be no personal freedom. 
 
 It must also be remembered that, in the scheme 
 of Socialism, the humblest workman would feel the 
 despotism of the State quite as much as the great 
 capitalist whom he is to depose. The poorest work- 
 man to-day has a certain amount of freedom before 
 him, when he has got his week's wages in his pocket. 
 But under a strict system of Socialism, he would not
 
 460 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 be free to change his home, or his residence, or his 
 trade, or dispose of his children, as he chose. The 
 simplest detail of his life would have to be fixed by 
 order of some Board. Why ? Because a man can 
 do nothing freely without some sort of accumulation. 
 And, if you suppress all accumulation, you render a 
 man as helpless as a slave. If you suppress accumula- 
 tion on principle you must suppress all accumulation 
 even ^5 in a workman's pocket. 
 
 Thus, then, we come to the conviction that 
 Property, like Family, like Government, like the 
 separation of professions and functions, is a permanent, 
 essential, indispensable element in all civilised societies. 
 It has been cruelly perverted and abused ; it has worked 
 an enormous amount of evil j it has aroused a great 
 force of just indignation by its misdoings. The real 
 answer is not its annihilation ; but its reformation : its 
 complete regeneration by moral and religious, and not by 
 mechanical and legal agencies. Governments also have 
 frightfully abused their powers. But only Anarchists 
 ask us to abolish government, rather than to control 
 it. The problem of the future is to change the mode 
 in which capital shall be used, not the persons by 
 whom capital shall be held. Appropriation, in truth, 
 is the condition antecedent of all civilisation. 
 
 Limited and qualified appropriation, I say. For 
 we entirely agree that the unlimited and unqualified 
 appropriation which now passes current as property in 
 Capital, is an anti-social, inhuman, and barbarous form 
 of tyranny. Limited by whom ? Qualified by what ? 
 Limited by the whole force of public opinion, by law, 
 and by the voice of the commonwealth expressed in a 
 thousand modes ! Qualified by religion, and a really 
 social education, by the rise of a new morality, and 
 by a set of social institutions which will impress on 
 the conscience the paramount sense of duty from the
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 461 
 
 cradle to the grave. These modes of economic 
 reform, these types of Socialism, offer no new re- 
 sources from religion no education, no moral scheme, 
 no social institutions whatever. They rely exclusively 
 on bare redistribution in the material things, on a 
 simple re-adjustment in the right to capital. The 
 real evils are moral, social, religious, and only partly 
 material. The deeper source of the suffering, cruelty, 
 and oppression about us lies in human selfishness 
 selfishness which takes as many forms as Proteus, 
 which is as subtle as the serpent that beguiled our 
 first parents ; and which is able to elude a thousand 
 laws. How are we going to cure or mend human 
 selfishness ? For if we leave this rampant, new laws, 
 and bare material reforms, and the shifting the limits of 
 appropriation, can have but a passing or doubtful result. 
 Our answer is plain. We believe that selfishness 
 can be cured only by Religion by a social religion, 
 the aim of which is not to land the believer in Heaven 
 but to reform human nature upon earth. Religion 
 has never fairly set itself to that direct object, though 
 incidentally it has done much to promote it, often 
 without intending it, and sometimes in spite of its 
 own dogmatic precepts. Once make religion the 
 dominant force in human life, make the sole business 
 of religion to moralise men, to control self-interest 
 and to purify society, and we shall have a power equal 
 to cope with all extant forms of human selfishness. 
 Those who mock at our hopes that this, after all, is 
 the only remedy against social oppression, have but 
 little true sense of the enormous power of a really 
 social religion. Even in its forms of fictitious abstrac- 
 tion and celestial dreams, Religion has been strong 
 enough to conquer some of the deepest vices of our 
 imperfect nature, and to stimulate the development of 
 the sublimest virtues.
 
 462 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 If the tribal God of Israel, or the mythology of 
 Greece and Rome, could call out such great qualities 
 in the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman race ; if the 
 passion for godliness in Paul and his companions could 
 overcome the lust and frivolity of the ancient world ; 
 if the Catholic discipline at its best could so deeply 
 transform the ferocity and turbulence of mediaeval 
 Europe, we need not doubt the power of a truly 
 social Religion to subdue the, certainly less desperate, 
 evils of modern industrial life. Human nature and 
 society both have a subtle and complex unity, and are 
 only to be radically regenerated by a complete treatment 
 of their needs as wide as human nature and society 
 themselves. We must regenerate domestic life, per- 
 sonal life, moral life, social life,' political life, religious 
 life, and not manufacturing and trading life alone. 
 
 We need a reformed education, resting on a 
 scientific philosophy, revised and purified domestic 
 manners, a new series of social institutions, a reformed 
 and new commonwealth. But above all we need a 
 reformed Religion social in its origin, in its object, 
 and in its methods ; human, practical, and scientifically 
 true. The religion of Humanity affords us all this, 
 and will prove equal to the mighty task of regener- 
 ating even our corrupt industrial system, for it will 
 have a double aspect : the one spiritual, the other 
 material, but both entirely human and real. It will 
 be on one side of it a social religion : on the other 
 side of it a religious Socialism. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CI.ARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
 
 WORKS BY FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
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