LIBRARY 
 
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 University of California. 
 
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NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
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 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
NATIONAL AND SOCIAL 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

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 V 
 
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 GEiEBAL 
 
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 Copyright, 1908, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1908. 
 
 Norfaooli JPregs 
 
 J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN HENRY BRIDGES 
 
 IRH^^Oo 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 PART I 
 NATIONAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 I. BisMARCKisM : The Policy of Blood and Iron . 3 
 
 II. The Duty of England 35 
 
 III. France after War .70 
 
 IV. LfioN Gambetta 9S 
 
 V. The Making of Italy 113 
 
 Cavour 126 
 
 Garibaldi 142 
 
 VI. Afghanistan 15^ 
 
 VII. The Anti-Aggression League 179. 
 
 / VIII. Egypt 189 
 
 IX. The Boer War 219 
 
 X. The State of Siege 223 
 
 XI. Empire and Humanity 237 
 
 vii 
 
vm 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 I. The Limits of Political Economy 
 
 II. Trades-Unionism 
 
 III. Industrial Co-operation 
 
 IV. Social Remedies 
 V. Socialist Unionism 
 
 VI. Moral and Religious Socialism 
 
 PAGE 
 263 
 
 366 
 428 
 
J 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The essential principle of modern society is to bring all politi- 
 cal 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 1 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 prac- 
 tical 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 propound any scheme for reor- 
 ganising society. Its kingdom is not of this world ; and it 
 seldom intrudes on worldly affairs without adding to the con- 
 flicts 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 
 
 ix 
 
X NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 con- 
 cerning 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 dan- 
 gerous. 
 
 The party politician who "has put his money 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 main- 
 
INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 tained 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 con- 
 cerned 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 con- 
 sequences. So do the long series of wars, annexations, and 
 troubles in South Africa. So, too, the series of wars, annexa- 
 tions, 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 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 ex- 
 peditions have been often repeated since, and raise the whole 
 question of Imperial expansion and Imperial domination. 
 Empire, alas! is not "ancient history." It is the insoluble 
 
Xll NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 sys- 
 tematic 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 important 
 work of Lord Cromer appeared. It is a record of magnifi- 
 cent success in Imperial administration and of patient states- 
 manship. 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. 
 
 The essays in this book all deal with the year 1882 — 
 before the occupation of Egypt began. Why was that occupa- 
 tion a necessity to England, when France withdrew from it, 
 and even sacrificed her great statesman? Why was it nec- 
 essary "to crush Arabi and his party"? Why was England 
 to involve herself in international dilemmas to enable specu- 
 lators to secure their usurious dividends? The entire ad- 
 venture 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 
 
INTRODUCTION Xlll 
 
 national upheavals in the light they appeared to a contem- 
 porary 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 distorted 
 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 por- 
 trayed 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 manifestos 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 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 prac- 
 
XIV NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tical Statesmen, when not in open conflict with moral prin- 
 ciple. 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 nick- 
 names. 
 
 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 repudiate the tinsel im- 
 perialism 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 cannot 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 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 So- 
 cialist. If socialism means the abolition of personal appro- 
 priation of capital by force of law, then I look on such a 
 dream as the era of social chaos, and moral and material ruin. 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 If this seems to be a paradox, I hold it to be reconciled by 
 the combination of Comte's two correlative laws. 
 
 (i) 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 con- 
 tinuation 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 akhough 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 power- 
 ful statesman who, in two generations, has so deeply trans- 
 formed 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 1862 ; and, as he was the founder, so he is to East 
 and West, from Japan to the United States, the great exem- 
 plar of Imperial expansion and the nation in arms. 
 
 That is the key, the crux, the type of all the inmost prob- 
 lems 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 Biilow 
 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 dis- 
 pute with us our supremacy at sea. I do not pretend to 
 discuss questions of fleets and of armaments ; and I join in 
 no scare about our maritime defences or in promoting the 
 
INTRODUCTION XVll 
 
 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 ascendancy : 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 trans- 
 marine trade, a mighty fleet — even a predominant fleet — 
 is a necessity of existence as a nation whilst we hold a dis- 
 persed 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, concen- 
 trated 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 withdrawn from guard- 
 ing the Empire and protecting our supplies of food ? 
 
XVm NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 To work for that grand achievement in the future is the 
 inheritance of Bismarck to modern Germany — to modern 
 Europe. Bismarckian imperiahsm, 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 Bis- 
 marckism — 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 tem- 
 pests gathering up in East and West, and the scattered Em- 
 pire 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 
 imperiahsm. And a serious study of European complica- 
 tions 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 tran- 
 quillity 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 reached. ^^ When those 
 words were spoken the German army was acknowledged 
 
INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 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 re- 
 sources of our home defence. 
 
 Need I say that no man has a deeper admiration for the 
 intellectual eminence of the German people, their great quali- 
 ties, and their splendid achievements in science, in art, in 
 literature, in municipal government — I will even add in mili- 
 tary 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 185 1 to the present time. I have German friends, 
 and have the heartiest sympathy with all that is noble, intel- 
 lectual, sociable in the German heart and the homes of the 
 Fatherland. By education, 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 en- 
 courage 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 let us keep our 
 powder dry — and study the birth, the growth, and the future 
 of Bismarckism. 
 
XX NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Do I by this encourage any imitation of militarism ; 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 responsibilities with which the Empire burdens 
 our people and our generation. This monstrous, abnormal, 
 polyglot, 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 fore- 
 most amongst the great Powers of Europe. At the opening 
 of the twentieth century England was swallowed up in Em- 
 pire. 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 aggre- 
 gate of unstable and disparate fragments. England-plus- 
 her-colonies had ceased as a homogeneous 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 misrule, the 
 social chaos it inflicts. 
 
 I am no "little Englander." I am an Englishman of the 
 English, with British, Welsh, and Irish 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 
 
INTRODUCTION XXI 
 
 cosmopolitan dependencies. I belong to a political school 
 intensely patriotic, for on the walls of Newton Hall we in- 
 scribed 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 demoral- 
 ised 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 pos- 
 sibly lead us down into cruel ruin. 
 
 Nothing can ever make a nation out of a congeries of prov- 
 inces, 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 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 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. 
 
XXU NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 combinations 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 jeal- 
 ousies, 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 pre- 
 dominant 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 the reign 
 of the late Queen. It is a material, intellectual, and moral 
 change that has come over our kingdom. The home in- 
 terests of England, Scotland, and Ireland have become 
 secondary. Cosmopolitan adventures, interests, ideals, have 
 become primary. Napoleon III., Bismarck, Disraeli, 
 
INTRODUCTION Xxiii 
 
 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 patriotism 
 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 us how 
 "big" it is ! Is a man who weighs twenty-four stone 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 mill- 
 ions a year as happy as one who lives on five thousand ? Of 
 
XXIV 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, fear- 
 lessly, 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 pro- 
 gressive in our European neighbours, from ideals of a civili- 
 sation 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 up- 
 heaval 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 abomina- 
 tions 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 criti- 
 cal 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 phan- 
 tasmagoria called socialism would be disastrous and futile : — 
 
XXVI 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 (i) Social regeneration could only be sound and lasting if it 
 took account of all the sides of man's social life — in- 
 tellectual, 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 materi- 
 alism. 
 
 (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 untrammelled 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 makeshift 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 con- 
 
 dition indispensable to Literature, Art, to all Improve- 
 ment, 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 democratic 
 
 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 sixties by show- 
 
INTRODUCTION XXvii 
 
 ing 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 mis- 
 chievous fallacies of the orthodox economists. The "dis- 
 mal science" has now lost its vogue; but I reissue my criti- 
 cism 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 con- 
 structed a spurious code of industrial axioms on the cynical 
 assumption that all men acted on the instigation 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 neigh- 
 bours 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 use- 
 less 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 
 
XXVlll 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 reorganise 
 
 Utopias. A true and sincere socialism must 
 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 fasci- 
 nated by such childish sophisms as that "all wealth is pro- 
 duced by the manual workers"; "that the entire product 
 of Labour should be handed over day by day to the labour- 
 ers"; "that wealth is criminal in itself" — that such non- 
 sense 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 Aloral 
 and Religious Socialism, discuss these fallacies. Manual 
 Labour, left to itself, could produce 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 unfortu- 
 nate 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 
 Transfiguration could be produced by a gang of house- 
 painters, or Hamlet have been composed by the printers of 
 
INTRODUCTION XXIX 
 
 The Times. All industry rests on individual concentration, 
 personal genius, stores of accumulation, and then on mas- 
 terly rapidity in action. Napoleon's victories "were won by 
 half-an-hour." Industrial victories — even industrial suc- 
 cess — are likewise the prize of rapidity, secrecy, inspira- 
 tion, command of large reserved capital — and above all of 
 freedom. Battles are not w^on by councils of war — much 
 less by the shouts of whole battalions of Tommy Atkinses. 
 
 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 desola- 
 tion 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 de- 
 struction of credit, of mercantile skill, and of efficient manage- 
 ment of the material necessities of Hfe. 
 
 (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 particular, some evidence is given of 
 the incalculable services to society which large capitals con- 
 tinually afford, but which could not be replaced by any ad- 
 ministrative or democratic machinery. If Democracy 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 exist- 
 ing 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 subject of the whole of the 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 regeneration that 
 the nineteenth century owed to Auguste Comte. We also 
 are Socialists — but Socialists with a difference — that 
 whilst working for an entire reorganisation of industrial life, 
 we will not cease to work for the far more vital reorganisa- 
 tion of moral, intellectual, religious life. Without this, the 
 pretended reorganisation of industrial hfe, by the violent 
 confiscation of personal capital (for "compensation" is an 
 idle and mendacious phrase) — this is a suicidal, and most 
 immoral, 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 con- 
 trol 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 mischiev- 
 ous dogmatism to resist them as mere socialism; as it is a 
 fallacy to regard them as real and effective socialism. The 
 socialism which was brought over here from France and Ger- 
 
INTRODUCTION XXXI 
 
 many, 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 dominant democracy to material hfe 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 
 
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 iS'/o, 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 Govern- 
 ment 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 i8yo, 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, 
 
 3 
 
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 prepa- 
 rations of our age. But he has ever been a convinced 
 opponent of Militarism. With all his admiration 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 
 (igo8). 
 
 '^ It is desirable and necessary to improve the social and politi- 
 cal 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 watch- 
 ing 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 gladi- 
 ators 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 con- 
 
BISMARCKISM 5 
 
 sequences to civilisation, and not regard it merely as a grand 
 study of national character or some stupendous experiment 
 in modern science. It is, after all, not entirely a matter of 
 sympathy with this or that type of race. Nor does it turu^ 
 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 foreshadowed. And 
 whilst the crowd of the amphitheatre, ever siding with force 
 and success, turn down their thumbs, and cry ''Habet! 
 Hahet!" 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 land- 
 ivehrman, 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 utter- 
 ance to much unwarrantable language about the "sacred- 
 ness of French soil," "Paris the city of the world"; 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 
 
NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 on a question of boundaries. Pious ejaculations to extir- 
 pate the immorality of France sound strangely from men 
 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 dis- 
 ordered 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 himself — 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 substantial 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. 
 
BISMARCKISM 7 
 
 It concerns the future well-being of Europe. Speculations 
 into the real origin of the war are worse 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 aggrandise- 
 ment 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 
 
8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, "d- Berlin P' "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 com- 
 pensation 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. 
 
 But the matter for us is this — What does all this portend 
 
 I 
 
BISMARCKISM 9 
 
 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 commander-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 unbroken 
 a chain. Prussia proper has been the only European state 
 organised on a military basis as completely as any state of 
 antiquity. In the words of the Edinburgh Review, "No 
 nation since the Roman has ever devoted itself so wholly 
 
10 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 inter- 
 national aspect. The writer is the last person to forget the 
 splendid intellectual, artistic, and moral achievements of 
 Germany; the high cuhure, and noble qualities of individual 
 Germans ; their industry, energy, and devotion 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 been regularly organised since the palmy days 
 
 of the Roman Republic. 
 
 We hear much of the Chauvinism of the French army 
 
BISMARCKISM II. 
 
 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 instrument of the tyrant. 
 And thus Chauvinism in France, with all its shameful attri- 
 butes, 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 overween- 
 ingly proud of his brute force, and determined to exert his 
 force without — from the social point of view — mercy, 
 shame, or conscience. And such a man is the professional 
 Prussian soldier. 
 
12 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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; bullying Switzerland; bully- 
 ing Holland ; oppression in Schleswig ; oppression in Posen ; 
 oppression in Hanover, 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 
 shameless, has 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 HohenzoUern 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 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 
 
BISMARCKISM I3 
 
 resorting to arms except in urgent self-defence. Really 
 the "mild German" reminds one of the "mild Hindoo." 
 It is entirely forgotten that individual is a very different 
 thing from national character. And the quiet or jovial 
 Hans of his own fireside, under a complex set of national 
 institutions, becomes, as the unit of a nation, one of a con- 
 quering 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 pickelhaube. 
 
 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 
 l^believe it. One of the most repulsive features of this war 
 is the way in which a spirit of Pharisaism has entered into 
 the very soul of the German. Pharisaism — 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 
 
14 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 througii 
 Europe that they are only seeking a safer line of frontier. 
 They are never weary of calling Heaven to witness the im- 
 morality of France, whilst themselves waging the most 
 savage of all modern wars, with inhuman cruelty and relent- 
 less hate. They for ever cry out over the falseness of France, ;f 
 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.* 
 
 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 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 
 
 ' We now know the whole story from the cynical Memoirs of Prince Bis- 
 marck and the other ofBcial revelations (January 1908). 
 
BISMARCKISM 1 5 
 
 rulers, purging Europe from French immorality, putting 
 down military ambition, denouncing English partiality; 
 now it is the guaranteeing their own frontier. One after 
 another these shameless pretexts are taken up by word of 
 command; 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 bid- 
 ding 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 community, 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 tra- 
 ditions of Eastern barbarism. I do not intend to argue 
 any isolated case. Bazeilles, Strasburg, Ablis, may per- 
 chance 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 perfectly capable of it 
 to meet their ends ; and indeed take to it with a calm inward 
 satisfaction, and a businesslike 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." 
 
1 6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ^ 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 ; 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 military necessity, 
 but it is inhuman cruelty. Plundering citizens by threat 
 of instant death, the placing them on the engines, the mas- 
 sacre 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. ^ ^ o - 
 
 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 re- 
 mains — 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 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 
 
BISMARCKISM 1 7 
 
 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 neces- 
 sity 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 barbarous traditions of the past — the wholesale wasting 
 of an enemy's country, and the systematic massacre of 
 civilians.^ 
 
 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 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 barbarity — the wholesale 
 massacre of non-combatants, the pillaging of civil property 
 on system, the tyranny of a hateful conquest, the ferocity 
 
 *Alast in the last thirty-five years we have often seen this barbarous 
 example followed — though not in Europe. The curse of Bismarckism 
 is that it has torn up the old Law of Nations (1908). 
 
l8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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. Desolation and murder, sown broadcast, come 
 upon us naturally 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 indif- 
 ference to life, the foul professional jargon, are served up to 
 us with much patchwork word-painting, and much artificial 
 joviality. This apelike glee in mimicking the tone of war 
 is degrading the moral sense. And the most horrible of 
 human passions — the love of destruction in its most settled 
 and professional form — is nursed, and adorned, and stimu- 
 lated, 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 
 
BISMARCKISM IQ 
 
 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 fight- 
 ing 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 
 civilisation. Brutalising and senseless creed ! And this 
 we owe to Prussia.^ 
 
 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 sub- 
 stitute Bismarckism for Napoleonism would be a very small 
 gain to civilisation. And the Prussian army is vaster, more 
 anti-popular, more thoroughly professional and retrograde 
 in its tone even than the French. The French military 
 regime — Napoleonism itself — always rested on a revolu- 
 tionary basis, and existed in a revolutionary medium. It 
 was always felt that an upheaving of the people could shake 
 
 ' 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 
 
 it to its foundations, and it was obliged to respect and some- 
 times to adopt popular principles. But the Prussian army 
 rests on a feudal and monarchic basis exclusively. Patri- 
 otism in Prussia means obedience to the commander-in- 
 chief. The ranks of society mean grades in the army. 
 Thorough discipline reigns throughout it. And this, how- 
 ever 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 in- 
 dividual Prussians cannot be too highly rated, the nation, 
 as a political whole, has been ground down by drill and 
 bureaucracy, of which their very state education 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 
 
BISMARCKISM 21 
 
 influence over the action of the Monarchy and its Bu- 
 reaucracy. 
 
 Now the elevation of a spirit Hke this (a spirit the better 
 side of which is seen in the antiquated pride of the old mar- 
 tinet-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 everywhere, 
 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 suffering a standing humiliation and 
 danger? Europe would not enjoy a day of repose or peace. 
 
 There are those who look to see Prussia actually dominat- 
 ing Europe in arms. We need look for no such danger. 
 Undoubtedly there are the germs of many a sinister com- 
 bination. Denmark, no doubt, will fall one day a prey to 
 her old despoiler. A struggle for the German subjects of 
 Austria is inevitable. 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 
 succeeding to the Holy Roman Empire. Patriotic murmurs 
 will soon be raised to recall their erring German brothers 
 
22 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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.^ 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 some- 
 where. But what is to be feared is the passing of the undis- 
 puted supremacy of force to such a power as Prussia — 
 organised exclusively 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 over 
 to a generation of arming for war ; and civilisation 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 
 
 ' Brothers so judiciously rescued in 1890, and so happily restored by 
 our Imperialists (1908). 
 
BISMARCKISM 23 
 
 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 conquest in the East. Prussia is openly 
 threatening this country. She repeats, and her drilled press 
 and literature reiterate impudent charges against our neu- 
 trality. 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 swal- 
 lowed up, as the first step in this career. Holland may be 
 the next leaf in the northern artichoke. Belgium, by the 
 force of events, may be compelled to throw herself into the 
 arms of France. In a word, there is hardly a country left 
 without embroilment and danger. Europe is thrown into 
 the cauldron to be recast, and a new Holy Alliance is forming 
 on the principle of "Blood and Iron" which England must 
 meet absolutely alone. 
 
24 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 retro- 
 grade 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 Heli- 
 goland for the new Federation or for Denmark, 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 sympa- 
 thising with France, could be brought into the alliance. 
 They would be feeble hands who, using such a force, and 
 with the wTight of all Western Europe in one, could not by 
 
 ' Something like such a pacific alliance or entente has been at last secured, 
 mainly by the King (1908). 
 
 ■T 
 
BISMARCKISM 
 
 25 
 
 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 con- 
 sequences. 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 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 
 
26 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 an- 
 swer 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; 
 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 independence, 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 
 
BISMARCKISM 27 
 
 the supremacy of the sea. England rings with indignation, 
 jealousy, and fear. In an evil hour an English ministry, 
 without consulting 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 impossible 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 posses- 
 sion 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 conquerors' 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 ? 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, was heroic in the eyes of most of those who are in- 
 sulting the defiance of France. And now these hypocrites 
 
28 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 — 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 un- 
 exhausted, 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 dis- 
 honourable peace heroic. And above all, I call the defence 
 of Paris, the unity of its multiform population, and the 
 resolve of its attitude heroic. 
 
 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 dissensions 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 
 
 I 
 
BISMARCKISM 29 
 
 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 judgment, 
 that false hopes and wild speech may be as little heard as 
 ungenerous suspicions; that upon the annihilation 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 island 
 there may rise up only one cry — War to the knife, rather 
 than dishonourable peace.^ 
 
 But come what may — if France drive out the invader, 
 or sink under his weight — certain considerations remain 
 I for the statesman's attention. This war involves social 
 j changes greater than any since 1789. The war has been 
 f caused by social movements, and it must issue in still greater. 
 1 Bismarck and Napoleon were each driven to divert the 
 
 * 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 de- 
 fence; and Peace was made (1908). 
 
30 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 energy of their respective nations to foreign war by the up- 
 heaving 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 approaching, 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. Workman 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 backward 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.* 
 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 dis- 
 credited. 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 
 
 * The disintegrating process and the cause of anti-militarism have now 
 reached an ominous degree (1908). 
 
BISMARCKISM 3 1 
 
 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 mili- 
 tarism. 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 es- 
 sentially democratic. In a military sense, this may as yet 
 be a weakness ; but, in a political sense, it means the emanci- 
 pation of the people. 
 
 Even after the fall of Paris, the war may be indefinitely 
 prolonged. But it must end some day. And then, with 
 France exhausted, stripped of everything, 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, do not 
 lose much, for the simple reason that they have nothing to 
 lose. A Prussian invasion to them involves 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 
 
32 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 hurly-burly of 1793, and it will be so again after 1870. And 
 the workmen are the only people who have upheld the hon- 
 our 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 hence- 
 forth in France, but something else ; and that is, the indolent 
 extravagance of the rich. The degraded and selfish pomp 
 of the third Empire is a thing of the past. For once since 
 1793 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 republicanism 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 
 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 reactionary 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 retro- 
 grade principles ; round the French people all the progressive. 
 In this great issue, national and party questions dwindle. 
 All governments will henceforward 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. 
 
BISMARCKISM 
 
 Not that this great struggle need be one of arms and of 
 bloodshed. It is essentially a moral struggle ; one of prin- 
 ciples. 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 Bis- 
 marckism 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 un- 
 dying spirit of revenge and pride it will leave behind, the 
 industrial regime is antagonistic to the military; and the 
 increased ascendancy 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 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 impatience 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. 
 
34 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 One thing they will not suffer. They will not see their gov- 
 erning classes shrinking from any real action in Europe, and 
 timidly reducing this country to a nullity, whilst feebly patch- 
 ing 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 Bis- 
 marckism. And any feeble attempts to Prussianise this 
 country, to raise a conscription, in fact — to force the work- 
 ing people into the ranks, will be met and resisted by all 
 and every means. The attempt forcibly to enroll English 
 citizens will be stopped by every resource known to a people 
 defending their personal liberty — the ultima ratio popidi 
 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. 
 
n 
 
 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 18 ji (vol. ix.). 
 At the time of writing Paris was on the eve of capitulat- 
 ing through famine, and Gamhetta was calling on the 
 country to continue the struggle. The writer was still 
 sanguine that England would he roused to take a part. 
 He and his friends had organised a great meeting of 
 Trades Unionists in St. Jameses Hall in support of the 
 French Republic (January 10) ; 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 i8yi, nor can he admit that the 
 policy he advocated was either impracticable or unwise 
 (igo8). 
 
 The true question which this war presents for English- 
 men 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 
 
 35 
 
36 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 powerful, nor yet whether much that is vicious be not mingled 
 in French policy and the French character. The real 
 question is none of these; 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 civilisa- 
 tion, 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 retaliation 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 apologists 
 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 trampling on her provinces and her children ? The 
 greatness 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 de- 
 fiance. 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 dismembered, 
 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 and most industrious districts of 
 
38 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 popula- 
 ,tions 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 slaugh- 
 tered, with the sole object of inflicting suffering. All this 
 has been done, not in licence or passion, but by the calcu- 
 lating 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 everything 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 surrender- 
 ing Sussex and Hampshire to an invader, to be permanently 
 annexed to France. This is what Frenchmen 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 Quadrilateral, what England would be if the whole 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 
 
 39 
 
 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 permanent 
 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 greedy 
 sheep. And how can the great German and the great French 
 
40 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 per- 
 manent 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 ob- 
 jection, 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, 
 forsooth, 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 utter- 
 ance 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 w^atch his every look; how journalists and professors 
 truckle to his nod. With one consent they all tell us that 
 Germany must have at least all this, and an indefinite some- 
 thing more. If the words of official journals and publicists 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 4I 
 
 In high favour are worth anything 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 an- 
 swer every wild suggestion of an advocate whose case is 
 desperate. 
 
 Whatever Count Bismarck may find it at present con- 
 venient 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 Stras- 
 burg, 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 utterance of those Germans who had 
 the best right to know has declared, so every act in the 
 dealing with the conquered provinces has proved, that the 
 
42 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 exten- 
 sion, 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 mili- 
 tary 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 explained this to mean that she was to be placed in 
 the position of Spain. Others use the phrase "of annihilat- 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 43 
 
 ing the power" of France. The "Red Prince," as they 
 dehght 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; of an insatiable am- 
 bition, 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 lanzknecht 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 whorn and modern 
 civilisation there is a feud as deep as between backwoodsmen 
 and Sioux. These are the men — no boasters, and no mad- 
 men — 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 Ger- 
 many has seen — for my part I have seen for twenty years — 
 gathering up in the minds of the literary and military classes 
 of Prussia a hatred of France, Frenchmen, and French ideas 
 
44 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, con- 
 scious of their wonderful power both for war and in thought, 
 were stung with rage when they saw how little their unap- 
 proachable 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 em- 
 ployed 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 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. 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 45 
 
 Count Bismarck has certainly not told us his ultimate de- 
 mands. 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 Ger- 
 many 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 wounds 
 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 something as yet unconceived. It will 
 be measured, however, 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 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 
 
46 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 defence preposterously overdone ; for offence almost irresist- 
 ible. 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 be- 
 tween them and Paris not a single fortress, not a single mili- 
 tary dep6t, 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 Eng- 
 land, if Sebastopol was a standing menace to Constantinople, 
 if the Quadrilateral 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 over- 
 whelming superiority now proved in a hundred victories, pos- 
 sessing 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 for- 
 tresses of France turned over to Germany, 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 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 47 
 
 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 prov- 
 ince. 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; but not if the Prus- 
 sian 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 Barba- 
 rossa, 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 immoral- 
 ity no one comes near your true Dryasdust. So 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 Fatherland, 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 
 
48 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 indepen- 
 dent Power. Jugglery about language-boundaries and strate- 
 gic 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 Blucher was their Cato. 
 The pedants may go on maundering most beautifully about 
 Teutonic civilisation ; but the caste will pursue their end as 
 coolly as if the said pedants were actual, as well as meta- 
 phorical, bookworms. 
 
 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 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 49 
 
 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 par- 
 tition 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 helpless- 
 ness, 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 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 nowadays 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, 
 
50 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 that even this horrible war is but the first act ; and when 
 he makes peace it will be nothing but a truce/ 
 
 The prospect, then, which the statesmen of Europe have 
 before them is this : — This fearful war is but the begin- 
 ning 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 population 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 help- 
 lessness. It is easy to say that Austria gave up Venetia, 
 the kingdom of the Netherlands gave up Belgium, Italy 
 ceded Savoy, and Denmark Schleswig-Holstein. These 
 examples in no case apply. In all of them the ceded prov- 
 inces were 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 geographically ; in every sense except in 
 some wretched antiquarian 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, 
 
 * We all know now how this danger was averted — or perhaps only ar- 
 rested — by the marvellous recovery of France, and largely by the inter- 
 position of Russia. We know how a renewal of the war in 1875 was pre- 
 vented by the act of the C^ar and Queen Victoria. I wish I could think 
 the danger now passed (1908). 
 
 S 
 
 A 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 5 1 
 
 whose armies were posted in a network 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 nationality, 
 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 in- 
 tensely 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. 
 
 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 prin- 
 cipal kingdoms consisted of bundles of duchies, fiefs, and 
 principalities, 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 Ger- 
 
^2 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 man 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 terri- 
 tory. 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 nationality 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, democ- 
 ratised 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 revo- 
 lution and war. 
 
 A very eminent historian has lately put forward a defence 
 for this and other acts of the Prussian monarchy, by com- 
 paring it with what was done by 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 civilisation to repudiate and to 
 repress. They are simply Tudors and Capets in the nine- 
 teenth 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. 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 53 
 
 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 Cri- 
 mean 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 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. ^ 
 
 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 
 
 ^ 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). 
 
54 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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 Gov- 
 ernments from long continuing on the wrong side. 
 
 During the last generation there have been four great 
 questions of European importance. In all of these France 
 and England, in the main, had a common purpose. In the 
 question of Turkey and the East, 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 be- 
 come 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, emphatically of both peoples, 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 55 
 
 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 prin- 
 ciples of national right, that Italy has at length regained her 
 independence. 
 
 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 re- 
 buffed on the Polish question, declined (as we now know) to 
 join the English in active operations, the mere fact of a pro- 
 posal 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 
 
 / 
 
56 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 less injurious to it by the presence of two rival nations in 
 concert. I freely admit that there have been many ques- 
 tions 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 Government of 
 Napoleon, and at times the French people, engaged in or 
 tended towards a course fatal to progress 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 inter- 
 ests. In the Italian question, in the American Civil War, 
 in the Danubian questions, in the Mexican interference, 
 and even in the Luxemburg difficulty in 1867, where the 
 miserable 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 
 ascendancy 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 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 57 
 
 wrong. In the Crimean War she threw her undisguised 
 sympathies and her secret influence on the side of Musco- 
 vite aggression. In the PoHsh 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 enslave- 
 ment of Italy by German bayonets. Nay, more, in 1859, 
 she declared Venetia a strategic question for Germany, 
 though for her own ends, in 1866, she found means to sur- 
 render 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 Des- 
 potism which is the very embodiment of the wrong; and 
 she will find herself before that Power — alone.^ 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land 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 ascend- 
 ant. 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 regenera- 
 tion of the West. And France, we feel, has been truly passed 
 through the revolution : the social rule of caste, the dead- 
 weight of feudal institutions, the organised reaction, has 
 
 ' 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). 
 
58 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 mis- 
 deeds 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 of the Saracen; she who built up 
 the great central monarchy in Europe out of feudal chaos, 
 and inaugurated 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 val- 
 orous doings of panoplied Rittmeisters ; of the Grafs and 
 Kaisers who prolonged the Middle Ages down into the six- 
 teenth 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 ; a part which 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 59 
 
 she held of old, and holds still : her place no other can 
 supply.* 
 
 We need not thereby deny the great and noble qualities 
 of other races in Europe, much less of the massive and ener- 
 getic 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 inter- 
 ests 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 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 aggrandisement, of military power, of royal 
 prerogative, and divine right. It represents, and is proud 
 of representing, 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 ascendancy. 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 Revolu- 
 tion. 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 submission. 
 The sacred Ministers of "happy England" do not lift up 
 the eyes to dream of an alliance with the successor of Bar- 
 barossa; but they are offering him their homage at Ver- 
 
 ' 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). 
 
6o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 sailles, as if the House of Guelf were one of the mediatised 
 princes/ 
 
 Optimists, with a tincture of German literature, are fond 
 of assuring us that however little hope civilisation 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 splen- 
 did intellectual gifts. Professors, with a naive 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 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 match- 
 less mental gifts, were of almost no account as a nation; 
 whilst the Romans, in cultivation far their inferiors, were 
 foremost by the ascendancy 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 burgh- 
 
 ^ We sing a very different song to-day (1908), 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 6x 
 
 ers 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 sur- 
 prising social productions, 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 mon- 
 archy 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 subordination. It is buttressed round 
 by the serried ranks of a social hierarchy, also feudal in its 
 pretensions and in its strength, not like our own, modernised 
 and transformed 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 curi- 
 osity; 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. 
 
62 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 For my part I am not enamoured of our present form of 
 parliamentary government ; but I do maintain that a govern- 
 ment which is in no sense to be the organ of public opinion, 
 is not a free and not a progressive government. The Prus- 
 sian regime is not one which has passed beyond a parlia- 
 mentary 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 com- 
 ments, but is never to exercise control. This is the ideal 
 of government which accords with every tradition of the 
 house of Hohenzollern, which is maintained by the yet un- 
 shaken strength of a social system 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, peaceful, 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 existence 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 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 63 
 
 old lanzknecht 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 watchwords — "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 progressive 
 age, an anachronism. Scratch the Junker, and you will 
 find the lanzknecht. 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 saw his like, was when Charles Ed- 
 ward led his Highland chieftains on their raid. The dififer- 
 ence is, that the Junker is a social and political power, civ- 
 ilised 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 situa- 
 tion, 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 the 
 last century, and has debauched the spirit of patriotic de- 
 fence into a thirst for glory and domination. Who thought 
 in 1792 that the acclaims of Frenchmen for universal philan- 
 thropy (more passionate and real than those of German 
 
64 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 degradation 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 merchants still smirk before 
 the new Empire, with a tradesman's bow. To maintain 
 an attitude founded upon wrong, fresh wrongs must be ven- 
 tured. The weight of the new Despotism, threatened from its 
 birth both at home and abroad, must tell on the deluded Ger- 
 man people. And to repress their opposition, 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 patri- 
 cian 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 consummate bureaucratic ma- 
 chinery, and its bodyguard of a warlike caste, can never be 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 65 
 
 the titular chief of peaceful industrial German kingdoms. 
 It is no case of chance personal despotism, or mushroom 
 revolutionary adventurer. It is a great power, v^^hose roots 
 go deep into every pore of the tw^o upper classes of German 
 society. It is arbitrary, military, fanatical. In one v^ord, 
 it is the enemy of modern progress. Though not repre- 
 senting the German people, it has debauched and masters 
 the German people. Six months of this gigantic v^^ar 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, 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 neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that this new power has any 
 distinct vision of further conquests, or universal 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 Em- 
 pire, 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.^ 
 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 
 
 'This forecast of 1871 has a very different meaning in 1908. In 1871 
 the German navy was a quantiie negligeable. 
 
66 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 must Stand alone to defend the existence, to guarantee the 
 independence of those industrious, friendly kingdoms along 
 the northern seas, or consent to see them made the instru- 
 ments 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,^ hang upon her favour, and 
 will be determined by her interests. For as the first-fruits 
 of the new supremacy, Austria, who at first was calling out 
 for English support, is for very life drawing near in obse- 
 quious deference to the conqueror. Italy may at any mo- 
 ment 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, everything 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 su- 
 premacy 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 ad- 
 vice. European politics form a world in which the forces 
 are tremendous. To cope with them are needed great 
 
 ' 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 
 
 insight and resolute natures, and not fluent tongues. States- 
 men need something to deal with them more solid than pretty 
 essays ; 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, overshadowing 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 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 ex- 
 hortations 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 Eu- 
 rope transformed and a new principle enthroned amongst 
 nations, she is virtually its accomplice. 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 benevo- 
 lent imbecility, — "My friends, keep clear of those wicked 
 men! Wicked men, shake hands and be friends!" To 
 
68 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 offer good counsels to Prussia is to become her plaything., 
 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 
 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 intervened 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 intervention. 
 As to the balance of power, if the pedantic and jealous ad- 
 herence 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 pre- 
 ponderance 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 European 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 ser- 
 
THE DUTY OF ENGLAND 69 
 
 monising, selling arms but using none, "bellum caupo- 
 nantes, non belligerantes," droning out homilies and betray- 
 ing every duty of a nation. It will be the crowning proof 
 of the degradation of those governing orders who have bought 
 power by subservience 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 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 evacu- 
 ated by Germany. A fierce struggle under the ^^Mar- 
 shalate^^ 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 in- 
 trigues, and the existence of the Republican form 
 hung doubtfully on the divisions of the reactionary sec- 
 tions. In the meantime the German chiefs were contem- 
 plating a fresh invasion, which became imminent in 
 the following year, 1875. The peril of the Republic, 
 and even of France, was extreme {igo8). 
 
 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, despotism, Dumas, pilgrimages, Vol- 
 taire, absinthe, Malthus, or bals-masques are the theories 
 chiefly in favour. Yet there is, one would think, an explana- 
 
 70 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 7 1 
 
 tion 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 Revolu- 
 tion, 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 revolu- 
 tion. It is too late to moralise or complain 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 Revo- 
 lution 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 widen- 
 ing 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 spas- 
 modic and provisional. When we see constitution after 
 constitution torn to pieces in France, it is simply that the 
 Revolution has left the great fight of classes still undecided. 
 
72 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 If anarchical insurrections .ape 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 ^ross- 
 purpose, the dead-lock, the ceaseless repetition, 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, suffer- 
 ing, and death. On this issue hang the most momentous, 
 consequences for evil and for good, for France and for Eu- 
 rope ; 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 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 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 73 
 
 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 des- 
 perate 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 European 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 ob- 
 stinacy 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 
 
74 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 privi- 
 lege. 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 sacerdo- 
 talisms 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 
 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 ; and 
 they know it. They were the bone and blood of the up- 
 rising of '93 ; they filled the armies which threw back the 
 kings, and followed them over every country of Europe ; 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 75 
 
 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 over- 
 driven 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 fire- 
 side 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 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 
 
76 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 repre- 
 sents 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 confiscation. Horrid rumours of ancient feu- 
 dalisms have run round, and the quiet useful cure 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 thus asso- 
 ciated 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 Faid- 
 herbes, 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 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 77 
 
 cession, men's minds would turn to the image of their coun- 
 try, — 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 Water- 
 loo 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 Cham- 
 pagne 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 van- 
 quished 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 
 generation before grew personal and living round the lurid 
 image of Napoleon, so the graven memories of 1870 and 
 1 87 1 clung with a tragic pathos round the image and name 
 of the republic. 
 
 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 con- 
 ception 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 
 
78 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 occa- 
 sion had arrived when the peasant might come over to the 
 republic, when the gulf between him and the workman might 
 be bridged, and v/hen 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 re- 
 public 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 conservative temper as they were 
 of national sentiment. They had that success which be- 
 longs 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 conspirators 
 and revolutionists. Never speaking in the Chamber, he has 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 79 
 
 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 Gam- 
 betta 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, Im- 
 perialists, and Communists have been seen in a phantas- 
 magoria of conspiracies, intrigues, and coups d'etat. The 
 republic and the Left, which is its guard, alone have repre- 
 sented 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 fra- 
 ternised. 
 
 The rural districts are the true stronghold now of the 
 republicans. The Catholic West is as stout as the turbu- 
 lent 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 
 
8o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Still an arrant conservative, still bent on industrial repose, 
 still the sworn foe of all disturbers of Government, 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 prefet, cure, 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 can- 
 didate 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 demo- 
 crats, not even reformers, but simply republicans in resist- 
 ing a monarchic revolution, 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 Gambetta of reality, 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 8 I 
 
 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 rhetori- 
 cian, 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 ; by the personal ascendancy of a strong 
 nature and a clear brain, exerted silently, dafly, and uncon- 
 sciously; by sagacious counsels, based on passionate con- 
 victions; by fortitude, reticence, self-control, patience, and 
 sagacity; by dexterity 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 repression without recourse to 
 insurrection ; these are the means by which Gambetta has 
 succeeded in imposing his policy on the republican party. 
 
82 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 reorganised 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 institutions, 
 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 impa- 
 tience. Those who go to the Assembly prepared to see the 
 Left the aggressive party, have been struck by their patience 
 and reticence under every attack, their resolve to avoid all 
 discussion, their inflexible principle of recognising no con- 
 stituent powers in the Chamber; and at the head of the 
 party, intensely active but resolutely silent, persuading, 
 encouraging, calming all, but never mounting 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 con- 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 83 
 
 servatives 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 incapable of adopting a com- 
 promise. 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 arbi- 
 trary 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. 
 
 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 per- 
 fectly 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 ac- 
 
84 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 cepted 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 foot- 
 hold 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 retrograde cause has been utterly checkmated 
 by the patience, the self-control, and the far-sightedness of 
 the republican leaders. 
 
 Their parliamentary tactics have been simple in design, 
 though \ery 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 Gambetta, and 
 what the ardent democrats have attacked as open apostasy. 
 In the language of one of them, the business of the party is 
 faire le mort, to assume extinction whilst working with in- 
 tense activity and watching for every opportunity. It is a 
 policy needing first-rate organisation and mutual confidence, 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 85 
 
 great ingenuity and energy, with the power of waiting for 
 the chance. The grand aim was to bring about a dissolu- 
 tion, whilst never declaring war on the majority, or appeal- 
 ing to the people against them. Gradually it was believed 
 that the play of parties would discredit and defeat each suc- 
 ceeding government, until the failure of every combination 
 should bring about dissolution 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. At 
 any rate, the tactics which the Left have displayed in a situa- 
 tion 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 impossibility 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 
 
86 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 over- 
 whelming republican majority. According to good author- 
 ities, a direct and honest appeal to the nation, on the three 
 typical causes, would return republic, empire, and monarchy 
 in proportions 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 conservative. 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 coun- 
 try, nothing but a moderate government can hope for per- 
 manent 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. Per- 
 haps 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. Gam- 
 betta 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 
 understood as the practical statesman that he is. 
 
 All these and similar calculations would be worthless if 
 there was ground for the current belief in the success of 
 imperialist plots. Because military adventurers have so 
 often succeeded in France and elsewhere, 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 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 87 
 
 day to proclaim Napoleon IV. It may be so, and he would 
 be a bold man who felt certain that any given thing was 
 impossible in the present aspect of France. But there seems 
 little in the state of the country to justify these expectations. 
 The imperialists are powerful, or rather conspicuous, 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 pres- 
 tige 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 capi- 
 talist, soldier, or ofhcial 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 company (unlimited) for 
 military, financial, or professional speculators. The men 
 who meant to win, and who knew how to win, were all en- 
 tered as members of this 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 short- 
 sighted, though in England they bear some relation to pros- 
 pects of national prosperity. 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 
 
88 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 ac- 
 tivity. But it lacks two things now which enabled it for- 
 merly 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. 
 
 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 armv, 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 avail- 
 able; the sense of power as of a praetorian band is gone; 
 and the army itself is far more likely to fall 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, 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 89 
 
 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 opportunities 
 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 govern- 
 ment 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 them- 
 selves 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 ? 
 
 There is, however, another danger to which France is 
 exposed, perhaps more real than Socialist insurrections 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 Frank- 
 fort left France utterly exposed to a second overthrow at 
 the will of Germany. In a military sense three weeks would 
 sufhce 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 dis- 
 covers that a captive whom he has just ransomed could have 
 
QO NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 reorganisation 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.* 
 
 There is not the slightest ground for the assertion so sedu- 
 lously 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 ac- 
 cept 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 inten- 
 tion 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 9 1 
 
 they have ever done towards Germany before Sedan or 
 since. 
 
 If our statesmen in i8 15-1825 had acted on the assump- 
 tion that these inevitable protests were equivalent to a na- 
 tional 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 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 contemplating re- 
 venge; and in this sense Denmark may be said to be con- 
 templating 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 the war. Responsible 
 men of all sections, and indeed the people at large, are far 
 too conscious of their own prostration, and of the utter mad- 
 ness of the attempt, to make such a policy endurable. Of 
 
g2 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 dis- 
 close their real intentions, a party would be instantly dis- 
 credited 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 decrepi- 
 tude. There are always wiseacres who derive solid satis- 
 faction from shaking their heads over Sodom and Gomorrah, 
 and explaining the mysteries of national corruption. Curi- 
 ously 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 Eng- 
 land, the vitals of which, we were told, were eaten up with 
 pauperism, gin, and the Haymarket. At another time 
 Germany was understood to be reduced to a state of univer- 
 sal syncope by addiction to metaphysics 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 
 wholesale 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 impending over the misguided stomach, as 
 Englishmen or Germans moralise over the signs of dissolu- 
 
FRANCE AFTER WAR 93 
 
 tion in France. Just as it is the conviction of profound 
 provincials that our modern Babylon is a mystery of abomi- 
 nation, 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 cer- 
 tainly the most monotonous. 
 
 That society in France is in active convulsion and transi- 
 tion, 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 expe- 
 rienced, and which more than once she has experienced 
 herself. This does not to-day approach the state of dis- 
 organisation and apparent death in which Germany lay in 
 the Thirty Years' War, or in which Prussia lay on the mor- 
 row of Jena; nor does it approach that which France her- 
 self 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 pro- 
 duce 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 corruption, and perhaps with 
 
94 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, caf^s 
 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 settlement of France. The task which 
 she has set herself to solve is one which demands generations, 
 and in which even greater catastrophes may seem insig- 
 nificant. The passage from an exhausted to a new type of 
 society is invariably surrounded with convulsion and dis- 
 aster. And if out of the ebb and flow of the revolutionary 
 struggle we are destined to see grow up in France a perma- 
 nent 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 cheer- 
 fully and easily accepted. 
 
IV 
 
 LEON GAMBETTA 
 
 (1882) 
 
 This was a memorial address on the death of Gamhetta, 
 December ji, 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 he 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 re- 
 lations with the dead statesman, his friends, and col- 
 leagues. A long journey round the French Provinces 
 in the autumn of i8jy, during the great Electoral cam- 
 paign, to decide if Marshal MacMahon should se sou- 
 mettre 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 18 jy {igo8). 
 
 For good or for evil, L^on 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 lead- 
 ing idea in pohtics, Comte's great aphorism: "Progress 
 
 95 
 
96 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 can only arise out of the development of Order." But it 
 is not for this that Gambetta holds a place of prime impor- 
 tance 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 Republi- 
 can 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; 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 Cccsar, 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; with- 
 out special refinement of life, or sensitive delicacy of con- 
 science. We have yet no means of proving the truth of the 
 stories that we hear of the kind of men who from time to 
 
LEON GAMBETTA 97 
 
 time shared his intimacy, and of the enterprises or adven- 
 tures 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 adven- 
 turers, 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 porten- 
 tous 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 and 
 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 states- 
 man 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 wher- 
 ever we find them. And these qualities were assuredly in 
 Ldon 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 people ; thirdly, as 
 the representative of the union of order and progress ; and 
 fourthly, as representative of the secular movement in politics. 
 
98 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 judg- 
 ment 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 ofhce was an interlude. He is almost 
 the one Frenchman of our times who could fall from office 
 without disappearing from public life. Ofhce made no 
 difference to his personal power, 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 
 
LEON GAMBETTA 99 
 
 what it is without him. Right or wrong, this is power; this 
 is one of those pre-eminent personaHties 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 
 Hke 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 Gambetta was the 
 true author of the Republic : in 1868-9, '^^ 1870-1, in 1876-8. 
 For sixteen years the Empire had lain like a nightmare upon 
 France; corrupting it from above, crushing it within, weak- 
 ening 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 both wanted the tongue, the soul, 
 the heart, and they found those in Gambetta. The Jules 
 Simons, the Rocheforts, and Provost Paradols, might write 
 smart articles; Delescluze and Blanqui could conspire; 
 but neither epigrams nor conspiracies could shake the Em- 
 
lOO NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 pire. 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, un- 
 known, 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 
 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 profanation to say it, he recalled 
 
LEON GAMBETTA lOI 
 
 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 mon- 
 archies 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. "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 
 
I02 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 was an eloquent talker, and did nothing but put into elo- 
 quent 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 discoverer 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; 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, sus- 
 tained, and concentrated, the order, self-restraint, and 
 discipline of the country under a series of reckless provoca- 
 tions, the grasp over an intricate network of electoral move- 
 ments from one end of France to another, the marvellous 
 success in face of desperate 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. 
 
LEON GAMBETTA 103 
 
 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 Gambetta: 
 to his audacity in 1868, to his resolution in 1870, to his sa- 
 gacity in 1877. And to be the foremost bold man, the fore- 
 most resolute man, the foremost sagacious man of your 
 generation, is to be the great man. To 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 Kos- 
 suth, in Hungary ; 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 disappear, 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 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 
 
I04 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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; 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; 
 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 sym- 
 pathy; but he has never abandoned nor defied the old aris- 
 tocratic orders. I do not say it would be wise for an Eng- 
 lish politician to do so; but in France it is the condition of 
 true Republican force. Neither Thiers, nor Gr^vy, 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 years myself living like any young 
 beginner in literature or science, as completely a son of the 
 people as when he talked and laughed in the Cafe Procope. 
 I am far from saying that this is necessary or even desirable 
 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 
 
LEON GAMBETTA I05 
 
 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 im- 
 portance, 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 meth- 
 ods — that is to say, who was resolved to carry out the prin- 
 ciples of the Revolution, both those of 1789, 1791, and 1848, 
 by means of popular conviction, and not by coups-de-main 
 and terror. He was, as no other Frenchman in this cen- 
 tury 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 influ- 
 ence 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 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 Con- 
 servatives; men who, like Thiers and Gr^vy, influence the 
 middle class without influencing workmen at all; or men 
 like Cl^menceau, who lead the workmen, but not the rich 
 
Io6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and the peasantry. Gambetta was the one Frenchman 
 of modern times who could induce the Revolutionists to 
 follow constitutional means to their ends, whilst inducing 
 the Conservatives to face and accept a new order of govern- 
 ment. He had founded, and, had he lived, he would pos- 
 sibly have secured, what M. Lafitte has called an organic, 
 progressive. Republican party. 
 
 He had hardly succeeded, when cut short in death. Nor 
 can we be at all sure that in any case he would have suc- 
 ceeded in his task. The situation of France is extraordi- 
 narily 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 
 convictions. 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 convictions society is 
 saturated with prejudices incompatible with each other, 
 and agreeing only in being impervious to reason at all — 
 then government (by 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 
 
LEON GAMBETTA I07 
 
 we mean that government 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 Hps 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 para- 
 lysing 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 enforce- 
 ment 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 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 everybody 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 existence of a great man. A great 
 statesman is ipso facto as fatal to democracy as a great gen- 
 eral is incompatible with mutiny. I am not speaking of 
 
Io8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 govern- 
 ment will assume a personal and not a democratic 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 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 Clemen- 
 ceau has the prospect of succeeding 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 
 
LEON GAMBETTA lOQ 
 
 Democracy, in that he is himself a fanatical adherent of 
 the Democratic creed. To him the defeating of any per- 
 sonal power is the first duty of a citizen; whereas the for- 
 mation of a personal power is the first necessity of the Re- 
 public. 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 fulfilment 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 Clemenceau 
 right and Gambetta wrong, we would have held to the party 
 of Gambetta and not to that of Clemenceau. If we must 
 choose between the Irreconcilables and the Opportunists, 
 then Opportunism means practical government, and Irrec- 
 oncilability means a pedantic doctrine. To have thrown 
 over Gambetta for Clemenceau is the very type of the demo- 
 cratic frenzy.^ 
 
 The one hope for France is the rise of a great Republican 
 chief. And circumstances had so worked that for the mo- 
 ment 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, per- 
 haps; the name of Clemenceau is yet unknown to two- 
 thirds of them. The extraordinary events of 1870 had car- 
 ried the name and the fame of Gambetta into every cottage 
 
 ' How different a man is the Clemenceau of 1908 from the Clemenceau 
 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). 
 
no NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and garret in France. Nothing that Clemenceau, or Gr^vy, 
 or Jules Simon, or Rochefort, or any one of these could do, 
 could bring their names or their characters before the mass 
 of the electors. The good sense of Gr^vy, the political 
 logic of Clemenceau, are admirable forces; but they can- 
 not 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. Grdvy 
 may issue a hundred messages, and Clemenceau may de- 
 liver a hundred speeches, but not one word of these will 
 reach the dull ear of the herdsmen in the Morbihan, and the 
 vinedressers 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 workmen of Belleville, 
 and of Perrache, and of the Cannebiere, of Lille, and Bor- 
 deaux, and Rouen, and Havre — every Frenchman knew 
 it and understood it, and, more or less, was moved or influ- 
 enced by it. France is politically a bilingual nation. One- 
 half speaks a 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 understood, and he 
 alone could address France. He combined 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 Conserva- 
 tive by his instincts. Such an one was Gambetta, and for 
 my part I see no other. 
 
LEON GAMBETTA III 
 
 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 systematically 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 repu- 
 diates creeds in any shape, the first ruler of France in this 
 century who has chosen to rule on purely human sanctions. 
 Had his rejection of theology been simply negative, had he 
 been a mere sceptic like Thiers, or an empty scoffer like 
 Rochefort, it 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 reUgion 
 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 — 
 
112 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, 
 whose work he has helped, and whose great company he 
 has joined at last. And in the spirit of the immortal tradi- 
 tions 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 
 
 (i860) 
 
 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 National- 
 ist cause. At Oxford I had been the friend and pupil 
 of Count Aurelio Saffi, one of the Triumvirs at Rome 
 with Mazzini and Armellini during the defence of the 
 Republic in 184Q under Garibaldi. By Saffi I was 
 introduced to Mazzini, Campanella, Pianciani, and 
 other Italian exiles, and I travelled in Italy with intro- 
 ductions in i8jj and 1855. When the Italian cause 
 was taken up by Napoleon III. early in i8jg, I took 
 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. 
 Meetings took place in my chambers in Lincoln's Inn, 
 and we projected the formation of an Italian Association 
 to promote 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 
 
 abandonment of the campaign by the Peace of Villa- 
 
 franca {July 18 jg). In August I started off to Italy 
 
 with ample introductions, and I undertook to write letters 
 
 I 113 
 
114 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 to the Morning Post and to the Daily News as indepen- 
 dent and honorary correspondent. At Turin I made 
 the acquaintance of Senateur Matteucci, Cavoufs Flor- 
 entine associate, Baron Poerio, the prisoner of Bomba 
 in Naples, Count Mamiani, and others. With intro- 
 ductions 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., and 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 Palmerston 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 confronted 
 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 
 commenced a struggle for national existence, which it can- 
 not carry to its issue without calling into action many of 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY II5 
 
 those elements out of which states are compacted, 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 Govern- 
 ment, 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 estab- 
 lished 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 invoked to be 
 used, watched, and eventually resisted. Besides 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 internecine 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 ex- 
 isted in the rich and educated classes of Upper Italy, amongst 
 the nobility, the landowners, the professions, and the trades 
 of the towns ; men who, sometimes pedantic and often over- 
 cautious, 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 
 
Il6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 instinct towards systematic and orderly organisation, as in 
 his power of grasping and controlling the more vigorous 
 forces of the revolutionary element. 
 
 On the other side we have seen the conception of national 
 existence matured and upheld through dreary years of suffer- 
 ing by a few brilliant intellects, gradually 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-devo- 
 tion than in ability, they are impatient of the delays and 
 scruples of the party of order. Devoted to their principle 
 of national regeneration, they contemn those social influ- 
 ences 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 situa- 
 tions 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 popula- 
 tions quite incapable of adopting them, and govern alter- 
 nately with untimely violence and fatal negligence. 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY II7 
 
 Such are the elements which have been at work during 
 the whole of this recent Italian movement, occasionally 
 acting harmoniously as one, then separately 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 con- 
 duct 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, have 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 sup- 
 plied in Garibaldi. Utterly incapable of civil administra- 
 tion 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 com- 
 
Il8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 pleted a bargain which nothing but necessity (yet unproved) 
 could excuse, the voice of the bravest of the brave was heard 
 in the council of the nation choked with shame and indigna- 
 tion. 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 activ- 
 ity. 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 regen- 
 eration 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 repre- 
 sentative, 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 feeling was in danger of being lost ; 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY II 9 
 
 had he been master, it would have been ruined in futile enter- 
 prises. As in every regular act, heart and mind must con- 
 cur, the one to suggest, the other to control; 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 pro- 
 found 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 pres- 
 ent century has shown no example at all comparable.^ 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 — mate- 
 rial, political, and moral, in foreign as well as domestic 
 policy; in Parliament as in Cabinet, from one end to the 
 other of the public service — has been centred in the effort 
 
 ' In i860 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). 
 
I20 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 organisa- 
 tion, 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 complete in- 
 stance of a statesman who works out a profound policy with 
 unfailing sagacity and determination. The details of man- 
 agement have been no less admirable 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 
 soundness 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 Revolution, 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 under- 
 take 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 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 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY 121 
 
 amongst the company of William of Orange, of Frederick 11. , 
 and George Washington. Not that he in any great degree 
 resembles 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 administrators 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 government 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 imposed by pre- 
 scription 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 un- 
 happy genius who was himself the least capable of creating it. 
 To Mazzini, it is true, as thinker, poet, preacher, or agita- 
 tor — 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 however 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 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 
 
122 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 administration, 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 difficult thoroughly to 
 estimate. The defeat of Novara had left the Piedmontese 
 kingdom humiliated and weakened, and yet fatally impli- 
 cated in the insurrectionary movement which each succeed- 
 ing event in Europe contributed to discredit. There the 
 Church and a semi-feudal landed aristocracy possessed a 
 strong traditional power. The whole of the administration 
 of the little state was singularly backward and imperfect. 
 Its legal and its commercial system, its municipal institu- 
 tions, the organisation of its army, of education, of the pub- 
 lic 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 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 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY 1 23 
 
 in those of the bolder. Parties were swaying between hope- 
 less submission 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 in- 
 telligence in the people, and hoped by patient conduct and 
 ingenious management to alleviate rather than extinguish 
 the national degradation whenever the circumstances 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 amelio- 
 rate 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 par- 
 liamentary system. Opposed to this was the policy of the 
 revolutionary party, who, having their headquarters at Milan, 
 possessed no insignificant strength both at Genoa and Turin. 
 Under this head belong all those parties, whether republi- 
 can or monarchist, who looked forward to insurrection as the 
 means of restitution, and laboured by conspiracies, associa- 
 tions, 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 
 
124 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 confidence 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 coun- 
 try 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 sepa- 
 rately had a chance of success. With all their efforts towards 
 material and domestic advancement, 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 chieftain- 
 ship. They possessed no means and little taste for reach- 
 ing the popular sympathies, and were devoid of all conception 
 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 compromised with the great end 
 of all political life. Under their system Piedmont might 
 have gone on for years increasing in ignoble prosperity, dis- 
 tinguished from Belgium or Holland by a finer army or a 
 nobler soil. 
 
 Nor did the bare programme of the revolutionists offer a 
 more fortunate career. The long series of disastrous insur- 
 rections into which the unhappy illusions of Mazzini led his 
 generous but credulous followers, seems to prove beyond all 
 doubt the impossibility of really organising a national insur- 
 rection in a country so thoroughly shackled with the sanction 
 of every Government in Europe. Their appeal to the spirit 
 
THE MAKING OF ITALY 1 25 
 
 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 alway . 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 delu- 
 sion to be preaching insurrection to a people amongst whom 
 the rich and the noble held the paramount social and political 
 influence, classes who by the very conditions of their existence 
 must resent with indignation any suggestion or attempt 
 towards revolutionary 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 
 attributing 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 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 
 
126 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 paramount 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 under- 
 lie 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 with- 
 out boldly advancing on the path of organic revolution. 
 
 Cavour 
 
 The career of Count Cavour exhibits the somewhat un- 
 usual case of a politician who grows less and not more con- 
 servative 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 
 
CAVOUR 127 
 
 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, Pied- 
 mont surrendered far more advantages 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 administra- 
 tive 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 185 1, with Belgium, England, 
 Switzerland, 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 king- 
 dom, 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 
 
128 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 carried out these measures. They are pohtical 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 ad- 
 ministrative reforms under which the whole organisation of 
 the country has so marvellously expanded. That system of 
 railways which is now the completes! 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 concentra- 
 tion of the whole. And the providence and value of this 
 work was abundantly manifested in the recent campaign, 
 where we saw Turin saved from 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 Pied- 
 montese journals and information penetrated the Peninsula; 
 the reconstruction and reorganisation of the mercantile and 
 naval ports, the reform of the finances, of the banks, the 
 reassessment 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 armament of 
 
CAVOUR 129 
 
 the fortresses which formed the key of the internal defence. 
 It was by this series of administrative reforms, and the energy 
 and sagacity displayed in such repeated instances of sound 
 practical statesmanship, 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 overgoaded populations, needed 
 some more powerful engine than financial arrangements or 
 amended tariffs.^ 
 
 To exist, Piedmont must head the revolution. It was this 
 which none of the leading men of the country seemed ade- 
 quately 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, furst 
 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 
 
 * It will be remembered that the whole of these remarks applies to the 
 condition of Itay in i860 (1908). 
 
130 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the failure (at least outwardly) of the most powerful 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 car- 
 ried 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 healing were 
 suppressed. By this measure the Papacy was humiliated 
 and its strength crippled. The rapidity, firmness, and mod- 
 eration with which this great social change was effected 
 (unattended by any of those evils which have too often fol- 
 lowed 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 
 
CAVOUR 131 
 
 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 prepared 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 immedi- 
 ate 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, 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 Eng- 
 land 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 justified by facts: "From 
 
132 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 henceforth the Italian question has entered on the order of 
 European questions. The cause of Italy has been main- 
 tained, not by demagogues and revolutionaries, but by the 
 plenipotentiaries of France and England. From the Con- 
 gress it has passed to the tribunal of public opinion. The 
 struggle will be long, and needs 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 pos- 
 sessed no ordinary significance. That presented to the allied 
 Powers in April 1856, by the vigour of its attack, by its un- 
 answerable 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 con- 
 victions of thinking men. And if in the recent elevation of 
 Sardinia to the chieftainship of the nation, we see the influ- 
 ence 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 inde- 
 pendence, 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, 
 
CAVOHR 133 
 
 and preparing the way for success by a hearty co-opera- 
 tion 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 coun- 
 try with a new and indefinite weight, to have rushed unpro- 
 voked into the midst of a gigantic struggle; in a word, to 
 have undertaken a distant v/ar for the sole purpose of de- 
 riving 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 undertaken. To maintain her 
 very existence and tranquillity she was forced to show her- 
 self 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 could not hope to obtain unless by boldly identi- 
 fying herself with their foreign European policy. The Lom- 
 bard campaign was only possible after the Congress 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 preparation for 
 
134 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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. Immi- 
 nent 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 sacri- 
 fices and great efforts. The opportunity for invoking French 
 intervention in Italy will not long be wanting. The Lom- 
 bards 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 consum- 
 mation 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 independence, her tranquillity, and her throne. 
 Had not, indeed, the upper classes under their noble chief 
 placed themselves at the head of the national movement, 
 their power would in a few years have been wrenched from 
 them by the party of the revolution to renew the policy and 
 
 ■*h 
 
CAVOUR 135 
 
 disaster of No vara. What, then, were the means by which 
 the end was to be obtained? 
 
 The last campaign has proved how utterly powerless 
 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 revolutionary party insist, the insurrec- 
 tion 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 per- 
 haps undervalues, the power of insurrection. He was forced 
 then to look for some external assistance ; nor is it conceiv- 
 able that he could have persisted in a long course of provoca- 
 tion 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 popula- 
 tions. Such an idea is as much contradicted by the character 
 of the man, as by the whole history of his acts. Some ex- 
 ternal aid was indispensable. 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 con- 
 firm 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 revolu- 
 
136 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tionary 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 coun- 
 try, and of the consolidation of the social system, out of which 
 alone, as we conceive, permanent success was possible. 
 Italia fard da se was the watchword of Mazzini at the open- 
 ing of the war. But the very weapon with which, as he con- 
 ceives, 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. Hazardous 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 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 crea- 
 tion of Italy. It may be that the recent war has not ade- 
 quately solved the difhculty. 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 statesman, or even the Italian patriot, might de- 
 plore the intervention of France ; but it would be preposter- 
 ous 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 revo- 
 
CAVOUR 137 
 
 lution 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 fortu- 
 nate 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 recog- 
 nised heads of the social system, and was left to the upper 
 classes to direct by skill without any admixture of revolu- 
 tionary 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 
 aristocracy of birth and wealth, of men possessing the lead- 
 ing 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 governments 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 to the strength, authority, and ability of the con- 
 servative and wealthy classes, assisted by all the educated 
 
138 XATI0N.\1 -\XD SOCLVL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 energ\- 
 and enthusiasm; but it is not the less true that tJie whole 
 attitude, sobriety, and pertinacity of the resistance they made 
 to the Peace of Villafranca was directlv due to the sasacitv 
 of the statesman who had placed the direction of a revolu- 
 tion 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 revolu- 
 tionan- leader. The connivance in the attempt of Garibaldi, 
 and the invasion and annexation of the Papal and Neapolitan 
 territories, belong wholly to the poHcy of a man who had 
 risen to a fuU sense of a critical situation. The manner in 
 which he has used, aided, and then controlled Garibaldi; 
 the skill with which the republican energ}- has been let loose, 
 to be at the very moment of destruction reined in and paci- 
 fied; the audacity with which a starthng 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 hos- 
 tility of jealous foreign Powers, is undoubtedly a proof of 
 poUtical 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 his- 
 
CAVOUR 139 
 
 tory 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 sup- 
 pression of law ; to William the Silent duplicity and intrigue : 
 but poHticians 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 constitu- 
 tions, laws, or treaties, the heaviest responsibility must weigh, 
 to be removed alone by the verdict of history and the con- 
 scientious sanction of public opinion. 
 
 Beneath the logic of pedants and fanatics, the pubHc in- 
 stinct feels that the law of nations in no true sense could 
 apply between the provincial states of Italy, or govern rela- 
 tions which rest on a condition of virtual revolution and war. 
 WTien the Sardinian armies invaded the ISIarches 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 hj^ocritical 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 \'iolent invasion. Yet not the less must we feel ad- 
 miration 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. 
 
V 
 
 140 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Count Cavour is a politician of that high order which unites 
 the most opposite quahties, and resumes in himself the vari- 
 ous 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, in- 
 genious 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 con- 
 vincing in the Parliament, sometimes stirring the public 
 heart, sometimes 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 poHcy 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 oppression; 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 func- 
 tion. A master of party politics, he is never greater than 
 when he has ceased to be a parliamentary leader. Con- 
 servative 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. 
 
CAVOUR 141 
 
 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 hesi- 
 tates to use ; fanaticism or industry, authority or enthusiasm, 
 craft or heroism, are instruments which he employs and con- 
 trols. 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 concentration 
 of power, which he wields without selfishness, and which is 
 yielded without jealousy. In Parliament 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, some- 
 times rising into moving eloquence, sometimes overcoming 
 by inherent energy. 
 
 In the Cabinet he is master of diplomatic fence, yet his 1 
 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 I 
 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 
 
142 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 
GARIBALDI I43 
 
 dignity and virtue, and inspiring the finer tempers with un- 
 wonted 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 interest, and 
 even the convictions of their whole lives, in defence of a 
 sacred cause. We are far too apt in presence of the dis- 
 cipline which has been submitted to, and of the manifest 
 inferiority of the Southern population, to underrate the ex- 
 tent 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 volun- 
 teered 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 represents all this element of the movement. 
 With all their dexterity and experience the supporters of the 
 statesman do not adequately embody the vitality and eleva- 
 tion 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 insolence of France, — of men who, 
 like the Bandiera, Bassi, or Ciceroacchio, have been mur- 
 dered in cold blood, who have spent their lives in prison and 
 exile, and lived a long martyrdom for their cause. Without 
 
J^44 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 re- 
 quired 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 revolution 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 ascendancy with uncon- 
 querable aversion. But as agitators their influence has been 
 indispensable. It is true that in 1848 they led the na- 
 tional cause to ruin, but it is equally clear that their prin- 
 
GARIBALDI 1 45 
 
 ciples prepared it for triumph in i860. 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 and Venetian in- 
 surrections, 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 con- 
 science, 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 i860, under 
 happier and wiser guidance, the noble enthusiasm and aspira- 
 tions of 1848. But that effort was made notoriously under 
 the auspices and direction of the Republicans. If we meas- 
 ure out to them our condemnation 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 incendiaries or dema- 
 gogues. The great agitator to whom that movement owes 
 at once its energy and its unsuccess may indeed have been the 
 victim of desperate illusions, but wilful ignorance only can 
 charge him with baseness, or downright malice only repre- 
 sent 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 
 
; 
 
 146 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 possess a singleness of purpose, a strength of principle, and 
 a touching love of their country and their countrymen, which 
 surpasses 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 representative. 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 revo- 
 lutionary leaders amongst men, who forget that they thereby 
 are discrediting 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 situation. 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 incompe- 
 tence, and the noblest elevation of character cannot exclude 
 fatal intellectual errors. 
 
 It is by his character and not by his intellect that Gari- 
 baldi 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 Ufe. 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 
 
GARIBALDI 1 47 
 
 whose eye his fellow-men are seen as man to man, stripped of 
 every 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 or minister can approach. Not merely througli 
 his own country does this influence 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, worshipping 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 em- 
 bodies 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 fights in the Republics of 
 America, when he promises his sword to Hungary, or ex- 
 presses 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 poll deal 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 feels 
 
148 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 babits 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 facul- 
 ties 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 in- 
 stinctive conception of the necessity of the case and the prac- 
 tical 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 wel- 
 come which the staunchest Republicans have given to the once 
 hated House of Savoy. 
 
 He, the man to whom peasant or prince appears each in 
 his native worth as man, to whom all the trappings of social 
 life are contemptible, and the whole political system of which 
 
GARIBALDI 149 
 
 the monarchy is but the head is alien, to whom laws, tradi- 
 tion, 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 des- 
 tinies 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 aristocracy are ever likely to im- 
 plant it, receive with enthusiastic 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 commencing 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 revolu- 
 tionary. Nothing but a practical compromise in the person 
 of a beloved leader could reconcile two parties who so thor- 
 oughly misunderstand and dislike 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 adhe- 
 sion of the old party throughout Italy in 1859, and has re- 
 tained them true to their allegiance under the most trying 
 circumstances. But it is no less clear that he is heart and 
 
150 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 soul with them. The revolutionary 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 then: 
 innate honour, energy, and heroism. 
 
 It is this which makes at once his strength and his weak- 
 ness. 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 coun- 
 try and their countrymen is removed from that era of con- 
 vulsive 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 confi- 
 dence. 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 en- 
 dured 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 most his love for her must be best fitted to protect 
 her. He who in 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. 
 
GARIBALDI .15 1 
 
 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 con- 
 spiracies, 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 in- 
 trigues and artifices of professional poliiicians 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 antipathies 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 manhood and 
 its own great heart will create a nation worthy of freedom. 
 
 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 
 
152 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 Gari- 
 baldians 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 in- 
 comparable 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 insurrectionary party, still smarting under the 
 shameful sacrifice of Nice, and cherishing an inextinguish- 
 able hatred of Napoleon, Garibaldi was bent on retaining the 
 power in South Italy, and rushing with blmd 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 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 breth- 
 ren ; to yield to the will of a degrading oppressor ; to sacrifice 
 his oldest friends and most trusted followers. And last trial 
 
GARIBALDI 1 53 
 
 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 counter- 
 balance 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 inter- 
 nal state of the country would have shortly resulted in irre- 
 deemable 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 in- 
 contestable 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 de- 
 based population it was necessary not to inflame, but to calm; 
 not to impel, but to restrain. They needed the strong hand 
 of a regular and orderly Government, not the exciting stimu- 
 lus of insurrectionary committees, and the whole apparatus 
 of revolutionary action. Such a population could be con- 
 trolled only by the accustomed weight of recognised Govern- 
 ment. 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 incapacity for 
 
154 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 withdrawing altogether and abruptly from a post 
 the duties of which he profoundly misconceived. 
 
 The sacrifice of principle once made, the retirement 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. Gari- 
 baldi, if not the leader of a revolution, is nothing. To head 
 an army of heroes, to awaken the enthusiasm of a popula- 
 tion, to initiate a new order of ideas and acts, is his only duty. 
 To organise, to govern, and to compromise, to prepare by 
 patient forethought, or devise by dexterous management, is 
 above or below his power. He cannot make the laborious 
 official, or the sagacious minister, or the rigid disciplinarian. 
 His character is too lofty for the petty necessities of these 
 duties. He belongs wholly to a purer atmosphere. When 
 no unusual effort is required, there is little in which he can 
 serve his country. He retires in the calmer moments of or- 
 dinary 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 
 
GARIBALDI I55 
 
 presence a danger. Yet his retirement to his island is, per- 
 haps, the most instructive, as it is certainly the most hon- 
 ourable 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 
 rehgious 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, in- 
 stitutions, or administration. Success in the field or the coun- / 
 cil may furnish it with opportunities. True national life j 
 needs real public regeneration. It is right, then, that Gari- j 
 baldi should be felt to be the popular hero. In a prolonged i 
 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 (essen- 
 tial 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 ex- 
 ample 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 gentle- 
 ness 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, 
 
156 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 and can pity even the oppressor. Nor has this reconsecra- 
 tion of war brought back its barbarous tradition, or its retro- 
 grade instincts. He, who for the last time has made war 
 noble in Europe, has cried aloud to it with almost fa- 
 natic 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 oppres- 
 sion 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 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 char- 
 acter 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 
 
GARIBALDI I57 
 
 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 Provi- 
 dence, 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 overwrought 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 consciousness 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 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 Beaconsfleld, 
 in December i8yg, 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 expa^ision. 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, I 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 censorships^ 
 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 ac- 
 tive service. I received a long correspondence from Lord 
 
 158 
 
AFGHANISTAN 159 
 
 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. 
 
 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 of 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 reissue 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. In- 
 deed, the same crimes and follies have been continually 
 committed, and by both political parties alternately, in the 
 long series of A sian and African wars of the last thirty 
 years — down to the most recent of all — the idiotic cam- 
 paign in Tibet (1908). 
 
l60 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 "A superior race is hound 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 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. Sud- 
 denly a faction in his army mutiny; they overpower our 
 friendly prince ; they attack our embassy, and kill our en- 
 voy 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. 
 
AFGHANISTAN l6l 
 
 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 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 ; they fight battles with obstinacy ; 
 they do all that a half-armed and semi-civilised race of moun- 
 taineers can do to defend their homes and their freedom. 
 Our armies advance with skill and rapidity ; the resistance is 
 crushed out in a series of battles, bloody enough to the de- 
 feated, 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 him- 
 self 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 inde- 
 pendence. 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 
 
 M 
 
1 62 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 at resettle- 
 ment 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 por- 
 tion 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 foolhardy 
 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 
 
AFGHANISTAN 163 
 
 this year had personally dictated the treaty. It was almost 
 to invite an outrage, to make a collision inevitable. 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 mili- 
 tary 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 noth- 
 ing to dishonour the memory of a brave, but wild man. He 
 
164 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 thought that audacity might supply the 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 overwhelming 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 unrecognised pretender. He is 
 sent into a city which admits no other European on any 
 pretence ; where, as Lord Lawrence used to say, no Euro- 
 pean's life is safe for an hour, and where no Ameer could 
 protect him ; amongst wild mountaineers and fanatical Mos- 
 lems, who regard the presence of an Englishman as a personal 
 humiliation. 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 
 
AFGHANISTAN 165 
 
 punish the actual offenders itself, and to set up a government 
 of its own. But what we now complain of is, not the pun- 
 ishment 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 de- 
 fence, 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 pris- 
 oner. 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 em- 
 bassy? Where are the proofs of it? What is the evidence 
 that satisfies a court-martial, on fire with military vengeance ; 
 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 independent or civilian witness? 
 The men whom you hang, you pretend, have abetted the 
 outrages after the fact, by resisting the invaders of their coun- 
 try, by taking arms against the British forces. 
 
 By this military indictment, every soldier in the Afghan 
 armies supports the rebels; rebels are those who abet the 
 
1 66 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 mutineers ; mutineers are those who resist the British ; and 
 those who resist the British are guiky (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 un- 
 soldierlike slaughter of prisoners of war are chicanery, worthy 
 of Scroggs and Jefferies. 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 proc- 
 lamations 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 to subdue 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 Lihertas. Rule Britannia ! " 
 
 I am not making any general charge of cruelty against 
 our soldiers and generals. We have no evidence that they 
 
AFGHANISTAN 1 67 
 
 acted in the thirst for blood, nor in any lust of outrage. For- 
 tunately 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 gen- 
 erals 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 ofiicers sent to invade and conquer an inde- 
 pendent 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 difhculties 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 
 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 
 
1 68 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 moment they tell on the wrong side. In dealing with Ori- 
 ental races, it has become a settled practice with some Brit- 
 ish 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 Euro- 
 pean 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 rebel- 
 lion, 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. 
 
 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, 
 
AFGHANISTAN 1 69 
 
 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 Ceesar behaved in Gaul, 
 or Cortes in Mexico. That is to say, they are to hold them- 
 selves 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 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 mon Droit — Honi soil — 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 Barharies. 
 
lyo NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 ex- 
 clude 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 autoc- 
 racy — 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 Parliament to beware that these men 
 never shall be let loose on a province or a nation, to drag 
 the name of England through blood and dust, to shut them- 
 selves 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 indepen- 
 dent 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- 
 
AFGHANISTAN I71 
 
 honouring to a nation such as England, and it disgusts and 
 shames the manly spirit of our thoughtful 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 conspicuous 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. Per- 
 sonally 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 archangel 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 politi- 
 cal control or civilian witness, and they are simply ordered 
 to chastise the rebels, or crush the resistance. What 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 Bis- 
 marck 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 outnumbered 
 in Mexico, are sent in upon a "nigger" people, with all the 
 physical loathing of race, and the inhuman prompting of 
 
172 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 English- 
 men 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 kill- 
 ing 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, they flog 
 them by scores, they bum villages wholesale; they hold 
 drum-head courts-martial on priests and officials; they 
 proclaim martial law at their own free-will. ' 
 
 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 I say that they do these 
 things without general orders, or without a very fair show 
 
 * 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 Law (1908). 
 
AFGHANISTAN 1 73 
 
 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-civilized 
 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 govern- 
 ment 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, 
 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 Governments 
 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. 
 
174 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 "nig- 
 gers," 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 
 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, butch- 
 ered 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 
 
AFGHANISTAN 1 75 
 
 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 hon- 
 ourably treated as Europeans treat European prisoners of 
 war? What are these wars in which we never hear of pris- 
 oners, 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 ad- 
 miring 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 
 geri placuit, nullos habitura triuniphos, said the noble Ro- 
 man — there are wars too odious to deserve a triumph. 
 Our soldiers too often forget this maxim, and the stern warn- 
 ing it 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 Govern- 
 ment 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 neces- 
 sities of our Indian Empire. If this means, that having 
 a great possession in the East, its importance is such that 
 neither justice nor morality have 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 politi- 
 
176 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 cians 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 aban- 
 donment. 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 con- 
 stant wars of retribution. How is the government of India 
 ever to rise to the level of a 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 indefinitely 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 
 
AFGHANISTAN 177 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion 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; and it is, always and every- 
 where, 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 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; 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 
 
 N 
 
178 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 every- 
 where. 
 
VII 
 
 THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 
 
 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 
 Hobhouse, and many Members of Parliament, journalists, 
 and political speakers who were dissatisfied 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, in- 
 cluding 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 Anti- Aggression League Pamphlets, No. i. 
 It gave the names of some thirty-six Members and up- 
 wards of forty Professors, writers, and politicians as 
 forming the General Council. 
 
 From this Pamphlet I extract a few sentences of the 
 speech I made at the Conference (1Q08). 
 
 The vast increase of the Empire in Asia and in Africa has 
 been effected almost entirely by war. If we count up the 
 
 179 
 
l8o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 years since 1832, and set against each year the wars in which 
 we have been engaged, we should find there were more wars 
 than there were years ; 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 ; 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 i860 we were engaged in almost in- 
 cessant 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 excepting 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 ; they ceased after the great European revolu- 
 tions of 1848 and 1849; they ceased during the great Ger- 
 man 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 demands it. The 
 word is passed to our prancing pro-consuls and bold am- 
 bassadors in Asia and in Africa that they must be quiet at 
 
THE ANTI- AGGRESSION LEAGUE l8l 
 
 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 ques- 
 tions or remonstrances of independent Members of Par- 
 liament. 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 construc- 
 tive 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 coun- 
 try 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 arbi- 
 trary limitation of the Executive. We seek to make the 
 Executive conscious of its responsibility 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. 
 
l82 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Nor are we hostile to the present Government. Our move- 
 ment 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. 
 
 n 
 
 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 
 was 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 under- 
 take the control of half the human race in the name of civili- 
 sation in general and Great 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 
 
THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 183 
 
 and agents of the system remained. In a country like ours, 
 with world-wide commercial interests, with n Empire that 
 is scattered over the planet as no empire in history ever was, 
 with traditions of conquest and domination, founded by 
 war and maintained 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 viceroys 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 colo- 
 nial 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 imprison- 
 ment of the Zulu King was still enforced ; the unjust annexa- 
 tion 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 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 par- 
 liamentary 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 embarrass 
 
184 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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. Gladstone : the prin- 
 ciples 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 mas- 
 ters 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 composite 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 Aus- 
 tralia, 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 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 Empire, under Bis- 
 marck, is a model of a peaceable nation compared to Eng- 
 land ; Russia herself has not so many wars, and all the 
 military monarchies of the world put together are not so 
 
THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 185 
 
 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 Govern- 
 ment is a firm friend of peace, and every party repudiates the 
 idea of aggression. But, one after another, every Govern- 
 ment 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 com- 
 munity, 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 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 mar- 
 ket at home, bringing violent gambling in the employment of 
 capital, to be followed by gluts, reaction, and slack trade 
 upon an overstocked market and an overstimulated labour 
 
1 86 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 gunpowder and 
 brandy and loaded calicoes further and further into the wilds 
 of Africa; in order that the Czar may find himself check- 
 mated 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 oppor- 
 tunities 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 ; for it is only by peace that the con- 
 dition of the people can possibly be raised, and it is only by 
 a settled habit of peace that we can learn the habit of social 
 justice, and the true solution of all our social problems. 
 
 War, the rumour of war — the very breath of war — post- 
 pones indefinitely the work of reforming our home abuses, 
 our class anomalies, our ancient misgovernment. It post- 
 pones 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 
 
THE ANTI-AGGRESSION LEAGUE 187 
 
 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 ;i{^40oo or ;^5ooo 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 hemi- 
 sphere. Tell those noisy philanthropists who call heaven 
 and earth to witness of the "anarchy" on the Nile, the 
 "anarchy" on the Balkans, and the murderous propensities 
 of the Pacific islanders — tell them to go 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. 
 
1 88 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 Euro- 
 pean 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 preju- 
 dice ; they lose most heavily by war, both in what they im- 
 mediately 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 posts for their class. They only can speak 
 out boldly and with the irresistible voice of conscience, be- 
 cause they only have no interest in injustice, nothing to gain 
 by conquest, and everything to lose by interference. 
 
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 express- 
 ing 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 re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 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 boun- 
 ties of " civilisation" amount altogether to some ;;^i 15,000,000. 
 Then the civilisers, when they found the country utterly 
 sinking under this gigantic burden of debt, and racked by 
 the most odious misgovernment, were good enough to invite 
 
 189 
 
igo NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 themselves to fulfil various offices at large salaries to keep 
 things a little straight. By a parliamentary paper just pub- 
 lished, we learn the names, and offices, and salaries of this 
 vast army of European oflEicials paid out of the taxes of the 
 people of Egypt. Their total number is 1325; their total 
 salaries amount to £37^,704, about one-twelfth part of the 
 entire available 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 civil- 
 isers 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 bar- 
 risters 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 
 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 
 
EGYPT 191 
 
 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 tv/o foreign Chan- 
 cellors of the Exchequer, as it were, to the Egyptians. The 
 whole financial system of the country is under their super- 
 vision. They are practically in the position of the House of 
 Commons here, having ultimate control of the purse. Tech- 
 nically, 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 ;^4ooo a year, and the entire cost of this one institu- 
 tion is ;^i 4,000 a year. 
 
 There are two other Controls, so that the Egyptian people 
 pay about ;^3o,ooo 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; and the revenue of 
 this very poor people is nine or ten millions, or some ;;^i 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 4s. per head — that of the Egyptian fellah about five 
 times as much. Of this nine millions about one-half is car- 
 ried 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 year some forty millions 
 sterling out of the taxes of the country to pay Turkish, or 
 Arab, or Chinese bond-holders; and then, having paid that 
 regularly, that you had to keep a Turkish pasha and a 
 Chinese mandarin in London to control your expenditure, 
 
192 NATIONAL AISTD SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 SO that every penny of the Budget had to get the sanction of 
 their excellencies, and if Mr. Gladstone or any other Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer wished to put on or take ofif a tax, 
 down would come a fleet of ironclads from the Bosphorus into 
 the Thames, and train their 80-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 coun- 
 try. The fellah or peasant of the Nile is one of the poorest, 
 the most patient, ill-used, the most hopeless of all the culti- 
 vators 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 spolia- 
 tion of his European civilisers.^ 
 
 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 and 
 the short of it is this : Europeans having encouraged a 
 profligate and unscrupulous Turkish Pasha, the late Khedive, 
 in a career of incredible extravagance and folly, have forced 
 another profligate and unscrupulous Turk — the late Sultan 
 
 * 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 im- 
 proved — but with corresponding evils (1908). 
 
EGYPT 193 
 
 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 gov- 
 ernment 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 
 comes, and then they come into possession; they get a 
 receiver of his property ; and they squeeze his tenants to get 
 their interest. 
 
 Well, the bond-holders 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 international 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 Eng- 
 lish 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 cul- 
 tivable soil of Egypt. But does it follow, that because we 
 have an interest to sail our ships freely through the Canal, 
 that the ruler of Egypt is to be our mere puppet — that we 
 are to undertake the moral and material control of a popula- 
 tion of five 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 
 
194 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 satisfied that they are looking after our money? And all 
 this, forsooth, in order that our ships may sail through a 
 canal loo 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 reve- 
 nue) carried off to foreign bond-holders. 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 gen- 
 tleman, 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 population which had planted itself in 
 Egypt — the ring, I say, chose to treat the native movement 
 as a military rebellion. 
 
 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, provoked by their meddling, a mutiny. 
 Unhappily our public representatives took side against the 
 leaders; they misled our Foreign Office; they openly avowed 
 
EGYPT 195 
 
 their hostility to the native party. The English representa- 
 tives 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 Mussulman 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 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 
 
196 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 admirable a War Minister as Mr. Childers, or as consum- 
 mate 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 
 ;^4ooo a year out of the Egyptian taxes to prevent the Egyp- 
 tians 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 med- 
 dling go, that you will find in the Blue-books a high inter- 
 national 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) express the irri- 
 tation 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 the Khedive to crush Arabi, intriguing 
 with his pohtical 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 reac- 
 tionary 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 
 
EGYPT 197 
 
 by an ultimatum the dismissal of Arabi, his exile, the break- 
 up of his party, and the reconstitution of the old system of 
 nursing. 
 
 Lord Granville was warned on many sides that this would 
 certainly produce a dangerous excitement; 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 Europeans 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 Gov- 
 ernment 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 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 Con- 
 stantinople and crush out the rising hopes of a people strug- 
 gling into some kind of independence and life. The Gov- 
 ernment 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 un- 
 scrupulous ruffians of the Pashas, and words can hardly ex- 
 ceed that ! They were warned that the Pasha sent out was 
 
198 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 at once treacherous, reckless, and merciless. The Govern- 
 ment 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 resulted. 
 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 cele- 
 brating, 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 Alexandria 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 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 
 
EGYPT 199 
 
 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 con- 
 quered country, has broken down. I am glad it has. It was 
 a curse to Egypt, to the world, and to England.^ 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 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 
 
 ' 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). 
 
200 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 highway open to the world. 
 The covetous rivalry of European Powers to possess Egypt 
 existed long before the Canal was thought of, and will con- 
 tinue, 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 All's 
 time, there was no Canal. The French, at times, have been 
 just as eager to dominate Egypt as 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 possession 
 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 Conference, 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 
 
EGYPT 20I 
 
 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 international 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 plundering 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 loo millions, nearly as much as the 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 
 
202 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 far 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 pro- 
 test against the firing one shot or the spending one penny to 
 restore a system which has broken down, to replace Euro- 
 peans 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 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 
 paramount 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 
 
EGYPT 203 
 
 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 un- 
 scrupulous 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 heads. 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. Gladstone. 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 of a difficult 
 country as large as France or Germany on the stale and taw- 
 dry 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 
 
204 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 oj Alexandria y 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 pinion, 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 remai^i 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 {igo8). 
 
 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 statesman, 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 resting which is extraordinarily 
 great. 
 
 Almost every sentence that you uttered in the most memor- 
 able campaign of modern politics would serve my turn, if 
 criticism were my purpose. But I have too deep a sense 
 
EGYPT 
 
 205 
 
 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 complications 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 re- 
 pudiate 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 sprung from a truly religious impulse in your own heart, 
 a loathing for wickedness, a spiritual sense of moral rather 
 than material interests. 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 inter- 
 national 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 
 
206 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 say, and some of those whom you most trust, that this partic- 
 ular case is a pecuHar exception; that the real condition 
 is not the apparent one; that the true dangers and interests 
 are unknown to the pubhc; 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 exception; 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 contradictory motives 
 which we have heard so often in Turkey or Kabul, the 
 Greek islands and Cyprus. It is even greater. The ad- 
 vocates of aggression do not rely steadily on any one of these. 
 India, the Empire, British interests, commerce, our country- 
 men in personal ganger, English capital sunk in Africa, the 
 large financial interests at stake, our international obliga- 
 tions, the harmony of Europe, the cause of good govern- 
 ment, 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; 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 
 
EGYPT 207 
 
 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 con- 
 quest; 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 fore- 
 sight. "Serious" politicians, as they love to call themselves, 
 ask us volatile persons if we know all that there is behind 
 Tewfik, Arabi, and Dervisch, and what the French Consul 
 is aiming at, and what the Intelligence Department has 
 just heard. They shuffle these objects and motives back- 
 wards 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 
 diplomatic brag. When you tore up all this artificial net- 
 work 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 share- 
 holders. 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 
 
2o8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 in- 
 fluences, 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 legiti- 
 mate 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 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 inter- 
 vention. 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 
 
EGYPT 209 
 
 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 ? ^ 
 
 Again we hear of international duties, treaties, and settle- 
 ments 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 concessions wrung by England and France from two 
 Eastern governments, in order to secure for our people 
 the utmost possible advantage in their private 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 inter- 
 national 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. With- 
 draw 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 
 
 ' At Fashoda in 1898 we came within measurable distance of it (1908). 
 p 
 
2IO NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 dehver an uhimatum to the Suhan; 
 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 Afghanis- 
 tan. You, sir, have shown us that the way to restore order 
 there was to withdraw the menace. 
 
 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 dictation culminated in an act of 
 armed menace. Their safety will be secured by withdraw- 
 ing the fleet, as its presence produced their danger. There 
 is no more reason to suppose that (apart from foreign dicta- 
 tion) 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 mon- 
 strous 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 
 
EGYPT 211 
 
 disliked. Our adventurous people thrust themselves and 
 their business into every country in the globe, civilised 
 and uncivilised. The sense that the poM^er 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 pohcy 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 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 for- 
 ward as grounds for a war in Egypt is a shallow and shame- 
 less 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, 
 
212 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 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 cap- 
 ital is embarked in all of these countries. Is that a ground, 
 under any conceivable circumstances, for securing our 
 people a local domination, 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 ; 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 pre- 
 tended that these conditions in Spain or Turkey led us 
 
EGYPT 213 
 
 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 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 his country, on political as well as 
 commercial grounds. That importance, as a highway to 
 India, has been much exaggerated. But granting its im- 
 portance to be real, to what extravagant conclusions is the 
 
214 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Canal supposed to lead ! Reasonable military and inter- 
 national precautions against any interruption of the water- 
 way would be approved by public opinion in Europe, as 
 much as it 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 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 enormous 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 legiti- 
 
EGYPT 215 
 
 mate interests of the state from the personal interests of 
 private EngUshmen, and the fantastic projects of poKtical 
 dreamers. The only interest of the nation in Egypt is this, 
 that the Canal shall not be closed against us, and that no 
 European ri\al 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 obstruc- 
 tion, even if it were in the Punjab or in Ireland. What 
 a farce then to tell us 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 recon- 
 stitution of the status quo by armed intervention 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 inter- 
 est 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 
 
2l6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 per- 
 sonal interests, resting on intrigue and menace, but not on 
 acceptance and not on force. The ascendancy 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 con- 
 quest ; and it must be maintained by a protracted struggle 
 for supremacy. If that ascendancy 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 
 wild and criminal, the burdening this country with a British 
 Algeria on the banks of the Nile.^ 
 
 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 diplo- 
 matic 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 
 
 'Therein lies the present, continuous, and indestructible "unrest" in 
 Egypt, which will one day become an intolerable evil (1908). 
 
EGYPT 217 
 
 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, 
 ambassadors, and European treaties. One need not deny 
 that some temporary relief has been given to the 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 "civilisa- 
 tion," as it is understood by syndicates of bankers and 
 concessionaires, 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 tolera- 
 ble settlement of the Egyptian imbroglio, without 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 Pachi represents a national 
 or a military movement. It is certain that the domination 
 of Egypt cannot be secured to England without a desul- 
 tory war with the natives first, and a possible war with Eu- 
 rope afterwards. The permanent exploitation of Egypt by 
 
2l8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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; 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 — noiv that our country has wasted £250,000,000 
 and 20,000 lives — in the vain attempt to conquer and 
 enthral a free people {1Q08). 
 
 219 
 
220 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The foundation of Rhodesia and the mihtant phase of 
 the Chartered Company caused deep alarm in the Transvaal 
 and its neighbour. The two Boer Repubhcs 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, all 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 valu- 
 able 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 com- 
 panies 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 Out- 
 lander 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 doubt, was quite true. 
 
THE BOER WAR 221 
 
 This is not the place or time to rehearse the trite 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 monopo- 
 lies were oppressive, that their Protective tariff almost 
 outdid that of President M'Kmley; 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; 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 
 
222 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of our good name and 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 con- 
 tinent at the bidding and in the interest of cosmopolitan 
 gamblers and speculative companies, in search of bigger 
 dividends and higher premiums. 
 
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 tiuo 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 {igo8). 
 
 "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 constitution and abhorrent 
 to the principles and traditions of EngHsh 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 journal- 
 
 223 
 
224 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ists, 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 Ex- 
 ecutive 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 formidable 
 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 overboard 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. Eng- 
 lish law is of that kind that, if you play fast and loose with 
 
"'^' THE STATE OF SIEGE 225 
 
 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 withm the Empire, of what- 
 ever race, is imperilled by the breach of constitutional 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 Czar 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 for- 
 mal 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 to suspend law, to abrogate civil 
 Q 
 
226 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 rights, to assume despotic authority in general administra- 
 tion 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 Podesta 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 inva- 
 sion, 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 police- 
 man, 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 judi- 
 cial murders have been committed by soldiers in South 
 Africa, and hundreds, of sentences passed on civilians are 
 not only invalid in law, but expose those pretending to 
 exercise them to criminal process. 
 
THE STATE OF SIEGE 227 
 
 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 government of 
 a country or parts of it by mihtary tribunals, is unlcnown 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 jus- 
 tified in any exertion of physical force to suppress insurrec- 
 tion and restore order ; but they remain civilly or criminally 
 liable for any excess, and are not justified in inflicting pun- 
 ishment after resistance is suppressed, and after the ordinary 
 courts of justice can be reopened. 
 
 This view was affirmed by the Lord Chief Justice Cock- 
 burn in his charge to the Grand Jury in Reg. v. Nelson and 
 Brand (1867). He shows that the common law is the in- 
 heritance of all subjects of the realm ; that in settled colonies 
 
228 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 rebellion ; 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 com- 
 mon law." Lord Loughborough, afterwards Lord Chan- 
 cellor, said {Grant v. Gould, 1792): — 
 
 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 inaccurately 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 legislature 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 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 
 
THE STATE OF SIEGE 229 
 
 in force into a district under the rule of soldiers, the gov- 
 ernor "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 main- 
 tained, not for days, but for years, in districts where no 
 fighting exists, where the civil courts are open. Civilians 
 have been seized, imprisoned, 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; and this is 
 murder. Coke said, " If a lieutenant execute any man by 
 colour of 'martial law' this is murder, for it is against Magna 
 Charta." In the rebelhon in Canada, in 1838, Lord Camp- 
 bell and Lord Cranworth, then Attorney and Solicitor-Gen- 
 eral, 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 principles : — 
 
 1. "Martial law," as meaning the continuous govern- 
 ment 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, 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. 
 
23© 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 5. Such an official has a good defence, if his act can be 
 proved to be a direct incident of actual war; 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 Parlia- 
 ment, was illegal and criminal. Suddenly, by a bolt out of 
 the blue, the Privy Council, under the lead of the Lord Chan- 
 cellor, 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 regu- 
 larly sitting, and who has been kept in a military prison 
 untried for seven months. 
 
 The obiter dicta of the Lord Chancellor at the hearing were 
 a surprise to the Bar, recalling a Chancellor m comic opera 
 not the "keeper of the King's conscience." 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 
 
THE STATE OF SIEGE 23 1 
 
 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 professes to rest this vast revolution in the civil 
 status of all British subjects on an obscure appeal from an 
 Indian court in 18 17, 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 constitutional right to liberty of a civil- 
 ian 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 revers- 
 ing Coke, Hale, Blackstone, Campbell, Cranworth, Cock- 
 burn, Blackburn, and a host of text-writers and com- 
 mentators. 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 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 con- 
 tinuance 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 imprison- 
 ment by soldiers without warrant or authority by statute ? 
 
 There seems to be a strange confusion of thought in those 
 who now argue about salus reipiiUicae suprema lex — "the 
 prerogative of the Crown to assert peace and order" — or 
 
232 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 (what- 
 ever 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 justifica- 
 tion when challenged in law. The captain of a ship might 
 put in irons or kill any of his officers or crew whom he sus- 
 pected 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 tribunal. They remain utterly 
 illegal, but excusable on adequate proof of necessity. The 
 acts of Government in breach of law may be morally and 
 politically right, and legally excusable. But they always re- 
 main 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 
 
THE STATE OF SIEGE 233 
 
 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 constitu- 
 tion. 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 Executive of the hour can outlaw the 
 nation, and place itself above law. If this new claim of out- 
 landish 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 Britons. All Britons enjoy the same constitu- 
 tional right which is one and indivisible. And the founda- 
 tions 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 ser- 
 vants of the Crown are bound to take all measures to save 
 the state and protect their sovereign. But to tell us that 
 
234 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 soldiers are to be the sole judges of the necessity, of the con- 
 ditions and limits of their powers, are never to be account- 
 able to any civil tribunal, are to be vi^hat the King is, i.e. 
 "can do no wrong," and are judge, jury, counsel, and wit- 
 nesses in their own case ; this is enough to make Coke, Hale, 
 Blackstone, and Mansfield 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 rebelHon and 
 insurrection were legal and constitutional, and the miUtary 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 ame- 
 nable to the laws of the land, and answerable to them for their conduct 
 on every occasion. 
 
 In his judgment in the leading case of Fahrigas v. Mostyn, 
 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 propo- 
 sitions 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, plunder, affect 
 their bodies and their Hberty, and is accountable 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, un- 
 known 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 
 
THE STATE OF SIEGE 235 
 
 them legal in themselves, nor make the authors of such illegal 
 acts the sole judges of the necessity, and for ever unaccount- 
 able 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 "suspend" 
 law, or "dispense with" laws; that where they violate law 
 under an alleged "necessity," they remain liable to justify 
 a bond, fide necessity when summoned before a civil court. 
 Prerogative, official immunity, superior order, "reasons of 
 state," "martial law," are in this behalf mere fictions and 
 figures of speech, unknown to English law. The final ex- 
 pulsion 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 suspend- 
 ing 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 constitutional party have made our gracious sov- 
 ereign 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 Parlia- 
 ment and turn the British constitution upside down. He 
 
236 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 might just as well say — "If the Crown has no power to 
 tax without consent, it ought to be given that power, and in 
 the meantime we will take it." Or he might say — "If con- 
 scription is not legal, let us act as if it were, for it ought to 
 be legal." This is just what Strafford and Laud, Jeffreys 
 and James II., tried to do. They all said — if the constitu- 
 tion 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 Corpus 
 and civil courts is mere 'legal pedantry,' for the proclama- 
 tion of Martial Law by His Majesty's officers has now 'sus- 
 pended' law and 'dispensed with' the constitution and the 
 --rights ©f 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 weap- 
 ons for terrorists. Danton and Robespierre insisted that 
 foreign invasion and treason at home were sufficient author- 
 ity for the party in possession of power to kill those who 
 opposed them, with or without legal pedantry. The major- 
 ity 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 
 Posit Ivist Society at Newton Hall on January i, 1880. 
 This was towards the end of the Ministry of Lord Bea- 
 consfield, and about the epoch of Mr. Gladstone's famous 
 Mid-Lothian campaign. It was published in the Fort- 
 nightly Review, February 1880 (vol. xxvii.). 
 
 Though it is now twenty-eight years old, it is reissued 
 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 protests 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 {igo8). 
 
 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; 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 
 
 237 
 
238 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the Corsicans, to military government, to foreign wars, 
 till it awoke by a fatal reaction the military revival of Ger- 
 many, 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 prepared 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 pro- 
 claims 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 Eu- 
 rope, 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 con- 
 quest 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 mis- 
 ery 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. 
 
 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 239 
 
 and her industry bound in the fetters of military service, gov- 
 erned 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, con- 
 tinually distracted and dishonoured by an endless succession 
 of miserable wars in every quarter of the globe. ^ 
 
 Such is a picture of Europe after a generation of im- 
 perialism and of aggressive war. Who is the gainer? Is 
 the poor Russian moujik, torn from his home to die in Cen- 
 tral Asia or on the passes of the Balkans, doomed to a gov- 
 ernment of ever deepening corruption and tyranny? Is the 
 workman of Berlin the better, crushed by military oppres- 
 sion, and industrial 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 confu- 
 sion ? 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 Em- 
 press and Queen in whose name patriots and priests are being 
 hung in Kabul ? Who is the gainer by this career of blood- 
 shed and ambition ? It would be a gloomy 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 
 
 ' This was spoken in January 1880, at the close of Lord Beaconsfield's 
 ministry; and in the twenty-eight years since somewhat similar conditions 
 prevailed (January 1900). 
 
240 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 pro- 
 tested 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 So- 
 ciety, without a policy, appealing to mere repugnance 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 genera- 
 tion, if we (whose very religion is regard for our heroic an- 
 cestors) 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. 
 
 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 in- 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 24I 
 
 terested in peace, to strengthen the weak Power menaced, and 
 to defeat the ambition of the aggressor. It is an English, not 
 an Asiatic pohcy. 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 estab- 
 lishment 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 development 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 dissolu- 
 tion 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 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-govern- 
 
242 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ment. 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 man- 
 kind; 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 fol- 
 lowed the course which Auguste Comte urged on their Gov- 
 ernment 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 con- 
 dition was in store for France, had she set herself to develop 
 her long social revolution by a policy of decentralisation, by 
 freeing the labour of the workmen, by abolishing 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 insisted that the Government of France 
 must be profoundly 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 the re- 
 public, 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 243 
 
 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 treatment — the condition of produc- 
 tive 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. Posi- 
 tivism 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 corruption of chivalry, and of the 
 degradation of industry. We have been told, on high au- 
 thority, that there must always be three classes planted on 
 British land, and maintained out of the products of its fruits. 
 We 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 two functions only — that of the energetic and 
 enlightened director of manual labour, and that of the dis- 
 ciplined 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 Gov- 
 
244 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ernment 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 ques- 
 tion 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 increas- 
 ing acuteness of the evil, not for more bayonets, more sus- 
 pension 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 Saxon- 
 ised 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 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 competi- 
 tion at all, who refuse to accept that law, and who are not 
 really free to contract, nor sufficiently independent to com- 
 pete. By enforcing prematurely a system of contract and 
 foreign law on the Indian peasantry, they are being pauper- 
 ised and ruined: by a similar process the Irish peasant is 
 driven by millions into exile. 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 245 
 
 But it is chiefly, in this time of shame and affliction, 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 
 civilisation of Africa can be hoped. ^ 
 
 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 to 
 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 between con- 
 querors and conquered, is traced in deeper and bloodier 
 lines upon the memory: such a war is a real calamity in 
 
 * The Zulu war of 1879 has since been followed by many a similar African 
 war (1908). 
 
246 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the history of England. With all our force we have pro- 
 tested against it ; and, again, with all the strength of religious 
 conviction, we call upon the conscience of our countrymen 
 to clear themselves 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 circum- 
 stances 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.^ 
 
 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 judgment of the political Govern- 
 ment. They are engaged, in obedience to the Primate, in 
 calling upon their God of Battles (can it be, their God of 
 Mercy ?) to keep 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 Human- 
 ity has its kingdom in this world, and it is its special privi- 
 lege to treat the great questions of the age as matters of 
 practical politics with full knowledge, with a close and inde- 
 pendent judgment of every argument in the statesman's 
 craft. We make bold to say that Positivism stands alone 
 
 ' The Afghan war of 1879-80 has been followed by some similar Indian 
 expeditions, as in Burmah, Tibet, etc. (1908). 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 247 
 
 amongst religions in treating 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 whatever. 
 
 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 profoundly 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 maintain the religious life of the East: with 
 Confucius, 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 
 
248 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 its decay are calling down official blessings on the heads 
 of those who ravage and kill with no just cause, we can com- 
 memorate the sufferings and heroic deaths of tens of thou- 
 sands 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 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 grow- 
 ing 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 249 
 
 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. Quae caret ora cruore nostra ? 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 being forced to receive a poison, and 
 Japanese Governments were being bombarded into receiving 
 our goods ; when African and Asian tribes were being butch- 
 ered 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 maintained by the sword, to be consoli- 
 dated in the spirit of the sword, an empire to supply the 
 poHtical and military classes with careers, and the commer- 
 
250 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 cial 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 founda- 
 tion of the governing system of the entire governing class, 
 protests against particular crimes are idle words. An em- 
 pire built up step by step, in blood and fraud, in rapacity 
 and race ascendancy, without one thought of morality, or 
 anything but selfish advantage, is not likely to be main- 
 tained by mere expressions of good-will, 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 em- 
 pire the glory and the strength of England. And they form 
 the bulk of the official and governing classes, under which- 
 ever 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 excres- 
 cence, an abnormal and morbid growth of this fair island 
 and its people. It is the work of that wild orgy of indus- 
 trial 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, in- 
 capable 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 25 1 
 
 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 em- 
 pires — 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 terri- 
 tory 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 incorporation and fellow-citizenship hope- 
 less 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 
 
252 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the specious fabric for another generation or two, breaking 
 ever now and again into further seas of blood, more con- 
 quests, more vengeance, ever sliding down the slope of tyr- 
 anny, 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. 
 
 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 statesmen, our jour- 
 nalists, 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; 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 ap- 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 253 
 
 prove 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; 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. 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 
 
 movement. 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 
 
254 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 politicians. 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 ques- 
 tions, 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, 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 justifica- 
 tion, should be the first of public duties. In the meantime 
 it must be governed in the sole interest of the countless mill- 
 ions 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 submis- 
 sive 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 255 
 
 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 re- 
 member 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 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 am- 
 bitions; 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. 
 
256 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 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 
 
EMPIRE AND HUMANITY 257 
 
 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 inhu- 
 manity of the polytheistic ages, out of slavery, out of caste, 
 out of nomadism and fetichism and savagery, out of can- 
 nibalism, and so back to the lowest degradation of the human 
 type. Humanity has sufficed to raise 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 debris of a feudal and a 
 military epoch. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
PART II 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
1 
 
 1 
 
 ■% 
 
SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The Second Part of this hook is occupied with questions of 
 Labour, Unionism, and Socialism, which are now urgefit, 
 and promise to he 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 i860 I 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. Hutton, Godfrey Lushington, in a public controversy 
 upon the great London lock-out in the Building Trades, and I 
 became intimate with the directors of the great Amalgamated 
 Unions. In the following years I visited the northern manu- 
 facturing centres, and studied the Unions, Co-operative, 
 Owenite, and Industrial movements of Lancashire and 
 
 Yorkshire. 
 
 In i86j, without my knowledge or consent, I was announced 
 in Parliament as a Member of the Trades Union Commission, 
 on which I served in the years 1867-8-g; and I drew the 
 Minority Report, which became the basis of subsequent Legis- 
 
 261 
 
262 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 lation. The long agitation to obtain a settlement of the laws 
 affecting workmen, together with frequent visits to manufac- 
 turing centres, to Trades Union, Co-operative, and other 
 Labour Congresses, brought me into close relations with many 
 working-class leaders, and gave me an intimate knowledge 
 of the working of their societies. In 188 j I organised the In- 
 dustrial 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 Beesly, Professor A. R. Wallace, and others. 
 
 As President of the English Positivist Committee from 
 i8jg, I continually put forward the industrial scheme of 
 Auguste Comte on the platform and in the Press, down to the 
 settlement of the Labour legislation in igoj. 
 
 The six Essays in this Part II. deal in turn with the " Ortho- 
 dox" Plutonomy, which I repudiated in the first volume of the 
 Fortnightly Review in 1865, 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 
 i88y, by an Essay on the Socialist type of Unionism, i88g; 
 and finally by the Address on Moral and Religious Socialism 
 of 1 89 1. 
 
 This sums up the views on the Labour Problem which I 
 have consistently maintained for upwards of forty years {1908). 
 
THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 (1865) 
 
 On the foundation of the Fortnightly Review in 1865, by 
 Anthony Trollope, W. Bagehot, 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 number, June 1865, 1 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. 
 
 The criticism was not at all derived from Carlyle's 
 growls about the ''dismal science,'* nor from. Ruskin's 
 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 Cairnes, and 
 other eminent economists. I fully recognised the value of 
 many economic researches if kept in strict subordina- 
 tion to Sociology; but I earnestly repudiated the claim 
 to erect these into an independent science — much less to 
 make these theories practical rules of society and life. 
 
 263 
 
264 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Now that the old Plutonomy is almost a thing of the 
 past, I reissue what I believe was one of the earliest 
 efforts to shake off its tyranny (igoS). 
 
 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 par- 
 tial 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 culti- 
 vated public agree to look is the general diffusion of the prin- 
 ciples 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, defi- 
 nite, distinct, and exact — the axioms of which are as uni- 
 versal and demonstrable as those of astronomy ; the practical 
 rules of which are as simple and familiar as those of arith- 
 metic. Economists, it is believed, have worked out a sys- 
 tem 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 professors. Agreement 
 is the last thing they think of. There are, indeed, few sub- 
 jects of human thought on which there is less. There are 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 265 
 
 hardly ten generalisations 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 re- 
 muneration of labour? State some of the laws of the accu- 
 mulation 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 econo- 
 mists, and we should have them at cross-purposes in a mo- 
 ment. M'CuUoch 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 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 predecessors, Hume, Turgot, 
 
266 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 hmited 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 sub- 
 ject, the great laws of human nature, are gratuitously assumed 
 without a thought or a doubt. The consequence 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 pre- 
 tended 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 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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 267 
 
 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 combined 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 industry. 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 com- 
 bined motives which precede action. Men do not labour or 
 accumulate 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, 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 
 
268 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 in a sense in which no other form of activity is. Men must 
 overcome hunger and cold if they Uve 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. Produc- 
 tion, accumulation, and distribution 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 who reflects can fail to see 
 how completely our present industry is the creation of our 
 present ideas and feelings. 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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 269 
 
 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 EngHshman 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 ex- 
 amples of high moral condition, with a minimum of pro- 
 duction 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 accumulation might 
 follow from other than the prevalent motives which now 
 largely stimulate them, is somewhat 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 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, per- 
 haps, 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 
 
270 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 con- 
 ditions, 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 stimulated 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 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 princi- 
 ples, as various and complex as the character of man him- 
 self. 
 
 It is nothing to the purpose to object that the case just 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 27 1 
 
 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 seemg a state of society in which 
 industry should be solely dependent on religious, moral, or 
 social motives. Industry 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 influ- 
 ence of every form of it alternately, and of many forms in 
 many combinations. It would be as ridiculous to place in- 
 dustry 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 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 Econo- 
 mists 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 
 
272 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 depends on the demand and supply of labour ; that capitalists 
 will seek to pay the lowest, and workmen to obtain the high- 
 est, possible wages; that capital will seek the market where 
 there is the greatest percentage, 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 precisely 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 con- 
 ceivable degree. It is never perhaps wholly absent. It is 
 never certainly exclusively dominant. Perhaps no single 
 case can be found of one capitalist or one workman whose 
 industrial conduct 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 almost in- 
 calculable. 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 accumula- 
 tion as some rare examples are now, capital might be enor- 
 mously 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 re- 
 maining the same. Many great employers of labour (such 
 as landed proprietors) are in a very slight degree governed 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 273 
 
 by competition in the management 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 competi- 
 tion, 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 domes- 
 tic servants are comparatively beyond it. In a great many 
 occupations (as in the public services, arts, and sciences) the 
 influence of competition 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 profits 
 follow such and such a law, is to state that which is an approxi- 
 mate generalisation of one particular 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 sav- 
 age ; 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 affec- 
 
274 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tionate 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, approximate generali- 
 sations, 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 con- 
 ditions of the subject, are excluded. Otherwise 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. 
 
 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 character being constantly kept in view. It may 
 be asserted, and is no doubt true, that many spheres of in- 
 dustry 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 happi- 
 ness of mankind, and destined to be developed indefinitely 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 275 
 
 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 con- 
 ditions of happiness, provided he has satisfied 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 competi- 
 tion is a dominant motive ; where it is, where it is not, para- 
 mount; how far it is interwoven with social institutions; 
 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 — provided 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 variations 
 which he not only cannot explain, but which he cannot detect. 
 He is working out problems depending on unknown quanti- 
 ties which are constantly varying in relative value. None of 
 his terms are constants or have a fixed power, but they some- 
 times 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 investigation. Throughout every stage 
 of his calculations new quantities may appear, which may, 
 or may not, affect the result. A man may sit down and cal- 
 culate the law of some branch of industry ; he may tabulate 
 
276 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 whatever. 
 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 — re- 
 ligious, moral, social ideals — about the other motives of 
 human character and forms of human life. In short, he 
 must be guided by reference to civilisation as a whole. In 
 other words, economic researches have neither use nor reality, 
 save as they are guided by social philosophy. 
 
 II 
 
 This brings us to the objections which Mr. Mill has urged 
 to the strictures of Comte upon political economy. He in- 
 sists that economic studies can be perfectly well carried on 
 separately ; that science has been largely aided by indepen- 
 dent investigations into a particular class of phenomena, and 
 by abstract reasoning about a special order of conceptions. 
 He quotes, with approval, M. Littre'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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 277 
 
 (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 generalisa- 
 tions. Comte never condemned the use of abstract methods 
 and sustained hypotheses in investigating the laws of produc- 
 tion by themselves — on the contrary, he largely uses 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. Littr6 is beautifully just. Unques- 
 tionably the nutritive functions can be investigated 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 scien- 
 tific treatment? Precisely what has happened when statis- 
 ticians 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 pre- 
 cisely such a chemical explanation of the nutrition of society. 
 
278 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 circulation 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 production 
 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 systematised so far 
 as they depend on the simple rule of competition, and their 
 results may be systematised so far as this rule can be supposed 
 universal. But this 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 
 processes; who have watched the action of nerves on secre- 
 tions, 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 ; 
 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 mechanically, chemically, and biologically 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 279 
 
 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 of Com- 
 petition. 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 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 con- 
 ceivable 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 transformation 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 Prop- 
 erty. How far do economists and the public adopt the theo- 
 ries of Mr. Mill on Reproductive Abstinence ? Yet it lies at 
 the root of all his doctrines on Industry. What economist 
 
28o NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 be- 
 cause they rest on profound moral and social truths. But 
 what would be the value of the speculations of a mere statis- 
 tician who had no such guide and no such preparation? 
 And who among statisticians has? 
 
 There exists an entire literature on the subject of popula- 
 tion, 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 popu- 
 lation 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 variation 
 in population between these scarcely conceivable limits is 
 due to moral, political, and social circumstances, 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 ra- 
 tionality of economic problems without a general theory of 
 population? But a theory of population is essentially 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 popu- 
 lation 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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 28 1 
 
 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 landlords, of farmers, of 
 metayers, of cottiers, form a singular instance of a ground 
 where economists contradict 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 
 is the social ground of property and the appropriation of land. 
 No one does, no one can treat this fundamental political 
 principle as a purely economic question. 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 
 
282 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 be largely under the influence of some moral or some social 
 force. But the economist excludes these from his enquiries. 
 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 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 ten- 
 dency were a known or certainly a fixed force. 
 
 When, therefore, the economist lays down a law respecting 
 wages, for instance, based on modem civilisation and com- 
 petition, 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 man- 
 kind acted upon certain special motives, which they never 
 exclusively do. Truly a somewhat conditional and hypo- 
 l__ thetical law ! Very useful possibly to the social enquirer, 
 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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 283 
 
 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 in- 
 finite degrees, the law of wages would cease to apply. Nor 
 can the economist give us the slightest test as to 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, there- 
 fore, 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 influence of moral 
 causes can be exactly stated whilst the moral forces are im- 
 known. Such laws as refer to subjects which are affected by 
 moral causes (the influence of these being unknown or neg- 
 lected) 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 practical value, and are scarcely 
 understood by the public. These are not the economic laws 
 
284 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 Dis- 
 tribution which men seek to know and to enforce. But into 
 all of these the moral and the social forces, motives, institu- 
 tions, habits, invariably enter. To the economist, therefore, 
 the laws of Distribution are purely hypothetical, and conse- 
 quently 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 gravi- 
 tation 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 hypotheses. Whether these hypotheses 
 approach reality, whether they can be of the slightest use, 
 can only be determined by a systematic study of the moral 
 conditions. 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 reason- 
 ably under its constant guidance. It must be done, as 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 285 
 
 Aristotle would say, a>9 r) TroXtriKr] Troc^a-eie kuI ttoXltlkw. 
 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 circular 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 development. But until the 
 other branches of the science are similarly advanced, and the 
 rest of the conditions equally understood, their value is alto- 
 gether doubtful. To pursue them by themselves is mere 
 waste of time; to systematise them apart is pedantry; to 
 promulgate 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 registration of phenom- 
 ena, 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 remem- 
 ber. The higher the nature of the subject, the more complex 
 
286 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 it is. The facts of society are, therefore, more closely inter- 
 woven 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 multiplicity 
 more wondrous, the balance of functions more delicate. 
 Strange as is the harmony of the physical organism through- 
 out every organ and system down to the microscopic cell or 
 nerve-fibre — making 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 complex 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 institution and no instinct which has not 
 varied vastly in influence, in form, and in relative impor- 
 tance. Every variation in each institution and in each in- 
 stinct 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 com- 
 plex variable whole, we are dealing with one combination 
 where the possible combinations are countless ; we are work- 
 ing 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 influ- 
 ence of climate on vegetation ! 
 
 Now it is this amazing interdependence of the social forces 
 on each other, and their no less amazing capacity for adapta- 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 287 
 
 tion, which the popular conception of Political Economy 
 most completely misconceives. Amidst forces and condi- 
 tions infinite, the effect of one on the whole is never para- 
 mount. Each force may be stimulated, neutralised, modi- 
 fied, 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 saturnalia 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 representative 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 destructive instinct 
 has been in some ages more entirely universal, more domi- 
 nant, and more independent perhaps, 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 para- 
 mount, that no other was worth considering. We can imag- 
 ine a science of Destruction, or the laws by which men did, do, 
 and must destroy each other, based on the assumption that 
 man acts exclusively on the destructive instinct. This sci- 
 ence, its laws and its postulates, would have been more real 
 in early Rome or at least in modem Dahomey, than the sci- 
 ence of Production on the postulate of the selfish instinct is 
 now in Europe. The obvious objection to such speculations 
 would be that man had so many other capacities and in- 
 stincts besides those of destruction, and that again destruc- 
 
288 NATIONAX AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 tion itself called out so many other capacities and instincts 
 beside the destructive, and that all these so crossed and modi- 
 fied each other, and made up one human life, depending on 
 one human character, that the speculation was utterly chi- 
 merical, not to say demoralising. Production is far more 
 reasonable than Destruction, and the desire of getting ma- 
 terial 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 con- 
 trol. No man certainly could think of suggesting that he 
 was liable to the charge — he, to whom England largely owes 
 the true conception of social 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 con- 
 stantly and fully as he does. Unquestionably this is not the 
 notion of the public. In newspapers, pamphlets. Parlia- 
 ment, and conversation, it is repeated continually in a con- 
 fused 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 de- 
 pend on immutable laws, and cannot be varied at the will 
 of employer or employed. Wages, profits, population, con- 
 sumption, and accumulation, every branch of economy in 
 turn, is treated by the. public as if fixed by nature m perma- 
 nent proportions. 
 
 Within their own vast limits they are variable to any ex- 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 289 
 
 tent. 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 gen- 
 eration as an excuse for giving free scope to its greed, just has 
 it is seized by Orientals as an excuse for indulging their sloth. 
 It may be that Economists as a body have never propagated 
 this monstrus 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 ; 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 economist believed very 
 little in the voluntary modifiability of society. Wliat is the 
 use of a vast body of generalisations 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 the actual state of society changes, what is the good of them 
 then ? We should want another set in relation to that change, 
 and so on. Every social system might have its own economic 
 laws. 
 
290 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 eco- 
 nomic 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 deductions, 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 con- 
 ceive 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 reasonable 
 social enquiry 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. Po- 
 litical Economy, therefore, as an elaborate body of practical 
 principles, rests on the assumption that the social state is prac- 
 tically 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 Political Econo- 
 mists, 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 as- 
 sumption that men crave only for place and power, and who 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 291 
 
 rigidly excluded from their view questions of religion, edu- 
 cation, morality, society, and industry — who confined their 
 views to the Georgian period of the British constitution, and 
 neglected all history, and all the rest of mankind — might 
 construct a science of the British constitution, and a num- 
 ber 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 (hypotheti- 
 cally), and how a seat in Parliament depended on the num- 
 ber 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 par- 
 tial method of enquiry 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 remark- 
 able instance. One of the acutest of men, Machiavelli, 
 studying one of the corruptest of human societies, once con- 
 ceived the idea of reducing politics to a system, on the as- 
 sumption that men simply acted for their own interests (the 
 very assumption of the economists). He drew up a wonder- 
 ful body of generalisations closely 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 
 
292 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 enquirers. 
 
 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 de- 
 pends 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 range of motives is studied ; 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 — "w." But 
 such words as ''ought;' "must;' ''will he;' never can appear 
 in its formulae. Thirdly, its doctrines are purely provisional 
 and ephemeral. Its data being the forms of our immediate 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 293 
 
 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-important — and from the extreme complication of the 
 subject, is of all intellectual tasks the most difficult and hazard- 
 ous. To navigate an ocean with a knowledge 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 deduc- 
 tions. They grow less and less so, the less this subordina- 
 tion is recognised. The more the economic generalisations 
 are correct historically, 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, 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 mar- 
 ket 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, population, poor-laws, land- 
 
294 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 systems, partnership, tenancy, trade-unions, co-operation, — 
 these are things which involve the great human instincts, 
 wants, and institutions ; 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 something ; 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-faire (vaguely understood) 
 the pure statistician thinks himself prepared for investigating 
 production. 
 
 But the authors of these principles were not specialists. 
 Their theories of self-interest and individualism were based 
 on systematic education, on thorough moral training, on 
 entire social reconstruction. 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 
 cultivated 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 
 
LIMITS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 295 
 
 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 increasing 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 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? 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 
 
296 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 threatening 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 ; 
 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 to Industry? Where is the science of popular 
 education? 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, Brad- 
 ford, Halifax, Rochdale, Sheffield, and Nottingham. 
 During the Cotton Famine, together with the late Sir 
 Godfrey Lushington, he conducted a personal enquiry 
 into the condition of the Lancashire operatives^ 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 — prin- 
 ciples which the whole evidence laid before the Trades- 
 union Commission of iSdy-g amply justified — and 
 which have since been adopted by the legislature (igo8). 
 
 297 
 
298 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 Of the features of our industrial system, none is more im- 
 portant to study than that most significant fact — the insti- 
 tution, growth, and power of trades-unionism. It is in 
 reahty 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 lan- 
 guish, 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 Englishmen. 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 movement 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 impor- 
 tance 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 workmen 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 associations, 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 299 
 
 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 engi- 
 neers, the coUiers, the cotton-spinners, the building trades 
 — still shov^ 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, consolidation, and regularity ex- 
 tend. Englishmen, who never mistake the signs of commer- 
 cial success, can hardly fail to see that there must be some- 
 thing 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 politi- 
 cal 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 associa- 
 tions whatever. It is like the Vatican raving at newspapers 
 and railways. Such an Act of Parliament would be simply 
 a social revolution. 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 beneficial. But 
 it would be more reasonable if the public, and certainly if 
 employers, would think it proved them to be not quite pes- 
 tilent and suicidal. They are, from the mere fact of their 
 
300 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 importance, entitled to respect. No rational man can think 
 that the working-men of this country are Hkely to be found 
 year after year more and more devoted to any system, if 
 it were no less ruinous to themselves than vicious in prin- 
 ciple. 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 accordingly. 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 stereo- 
 typed 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 union- 
 ism which is more singular than another it is the scrupulous 
 care with which it maintains the principles of democratic 
 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 Carbonari, must be entirely ignorant of the elaborate 
 machinery by which a union is worked. Before any im- 
 portant 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 night after night in 
 every separate lodge; if the subject requires it, delegates 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 3OI 
 
 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 com- 
 parison 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 ; 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 ques- 
 tion to predict. It is a species of pure democratic united 
 with true representative government. The members indi- 
 vidually vote as in an ancient republic, but generally with 
 the assistance and counsel of special representative assem- 
 blies, and invariably in separate and independent groups. 
 If any system ever yet devised makes a dictator or a dema- 
 gogue impossible, it is this. Its great defect is its cumbrous- 
 ness and want of concentration. But of all others it is the 
 way to bring out the deliberate opinion of every individual 
 member. It is this — not infatuation — which makes a 
 
302 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 deliberate strike so" obstinate. There is no political institu- 
 tion in this country which carries self-government to any- 
 thing like the same pitch. And, what should not be for- 
 gotten, 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 inconsiderable), they are usually honest, sensible men 
 of business, sometimes strikingly deficient in the art of expres- 
 sion, and the powers of party agitators. The men who 
 direct a strike have usually been at their work until its com- 
 mencement, 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 intimately 
 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 com- 
 munity; that the influence 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 ten- 
 dency to indiscriminate strikes. It is, 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 amalga- 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 303 
 
 mated society to warn the members against the disposition 
 to strike for which a sudden improvement of trade had given 
 great faciHties. The larger and more estabUshed 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 occa- 
 sionally 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 lo 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 an(i 
 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 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 
 
304 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 economists, 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 comes to them regularly or spas- 
 modically signifies a great deal to the well-being of the recipi- 
 ents; but in the long run they get the gross sum, though 
 somewhat discounted. 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 occa- 
 sionally only a device of some of the more powerful employers 
 to force their own body to cease production, whilst they are 
 waiting or manoeu\Ting 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 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 305 
 
 causes is a trifle, or where it would be inevitable from other 
 causes. But in any case, to calculate the deferred expendi- 
 ture 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 
 inevitable); 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 invariably meet a "miserable 
 monotony of defeat." 
 
 Strikes, of course, frequently fail. But a careful com- 
 parison 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 objection- 
 able 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 func- 
 tions of unionism is to resist the tendency to continual fluc- 
 tuations in wages. At first sight nothing seems more natural 
 than that wages should 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 
 
306 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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; 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 vicissi- 
 tude of the market fall directly on the mere labourer, who 
 knows nothing about it, and cannot affect it if he did, is 
 simply 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 specu- 
 lative 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 compli- 
 cation 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 no reserve, no credit, and no funded 
 income, and who by the necessity of the case lives from 
 week to week and from hand to mouth, it means the sacri- 
 fice 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 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 307 
 
 conference : "He knew no reason why working-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 adven- 
 tures. 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness. 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 produc- 
 tion and sudden cessation which form the glory of the race 
 of industrial conquerors. But to do this the workmen must 
 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 
 
308 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 shil- 
 lings' 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 ;)^iooo worth of 
 wife, there will be a good many questions asked, and a good 
 many people to consuh. 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 understanding with all 
 jointly is the regular course. Every partnership of labour, 
 all co-operation to effect anything 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 iron-master 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 im- 
 pulses which are commonly called human nature. An 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 309 
 
 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 shilHngs' 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 iron-master 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 in one word men are not pig- 
 iron. Sentiment this, perhaps, but a sentiment which can- 
 not 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, intelli- 
 gent labour of many trained men; that it is work which 
 is impossible without a permanent combination of will and 
 
310 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 un- 
 derlying fact of all industry, and their answer is, Union- 
 ism. Sentimental ! emotional economy ! but a fact. When 
 pigs and bars of iron exhibit a similar phenomenon, an 
 iron-master 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 prev- 
 alent tendency of working-men to unite, to argue that there 
 is not the slightest necessity for it. But the fact that with- 
 out 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 advan- 
 tage arises in at least three ways. In the first place, although 
 the workmen altogether are just as necessary to the capi- 
 talist 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 workman. The employer 
 of I GOO men can without inconvenience at any moment dis- 
 pense with one man or even ten men. The one man, how- 
 ever, if he has no means or reserve to find other employ- 
 ment, must submit on pain of destitution to himself and his 
 family. In the same way, if there were absolutely no con- 
 cert or communication between them, the employer could 
 easily deal with every one of his thousand hands in succes- 
 sion, just as a giant could destroy an army if he could get 
 at each man separately. But the moment they agree to 
 act together, and to help each other in turn, the bargain is 
 equalised; 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. 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 3 1 1 
 
 In the second place, the kind of need which each has of 
 the other is very different. The capitaUst needs the labourer 
 to make larger profits. A diminution 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 workman, 
 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 pecu- 
 niary 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 
 wait for his money he would get them in full. The Dorset- 
 shire 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 champagne all round. Wages' questions 
 are simply questions of time, and capital means insurance 
 
312 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 work- 
 men whilst they are uniting and labouring. By the very es- 
 sence 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 considera- 
 tions, it may well seem simple pedantry to accumulate argu- 
 ments to show that the capitalist and the individual work- 
 man are on equal terms. It is obvious to the daily experi- 
 ence 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 competition 
 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 em- 
 ployers for the workmen is subject to two very important 
 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 combination," 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 asso- 
 ciation practically binds its members to fixed prices and 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 313 
 
 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 work- 
 men, but they know it is a suicidal measure. It is one which 
 their small numbers, superior foresight, and power of hold- 
 ing 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 combina- 
 tion. 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. Sometimes, 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 strug- 
 gling for life — that incubus of destitute and unemployed 
 labour which lies so 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 Helot- 
 ism of labour from continually underselling it. Surely this 
 use of competition in the argument is thoroughly one-eyed. 
 We are told that for the workman's protection and relief 
 
314 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 against low wages, oppression, or sharp practice, there is 
 the great compensator, the competitions of the masters. 
 They quite overlook the fact that this is at least counterbal- 
 anced by the competition of the men. Our case is that the 
 individual workman has to struggle incessantly against this 
 competition — plus the position, the opportunities, the wait- 
 ing 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 disad- 
 vantage in dealing with a very great capitalist. But the dis- 
 advantage 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 reason- 
 ing of 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 cer- 
 tainly of all physical pressure of want. The difference here 
 between ;)^ioo and nothing in infinite. It is so difficult to 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 315 
 
 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 commod- 
 ity can send it or carry it about from place to place, and mar- 
 ket 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 
 subsistence 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 otherwise 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 correspond with his employer; he cannot send a 
 sample of his strength; nor do employers knock at his cot- 
 tage 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. 
 
3l6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 transaction 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-opera- 
 tion. This is no contract to sell something, it is the contract 
 to do something, it is a contract of partnership or joint activ- 
 ity, 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 intoler- 
 able. 
 
 Nothing is more fallacious than to call labour questions 
 simply a matter of wages or money. Quite apart from the 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 317 
 
 price of the labour, there are in most trades a muhitude of 
 conditions and circumstances which make the whole differ- 
 ence 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 workman 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 consequences of this 
 chance life. Even in the higher branches an artisan family 
 lead a frightfully nomad 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 concerns 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 network 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 
 
3l8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 trust, as having a commodity to sell. The followers of Na- 
 poleon and Garibaldi were not simply men having a commod- 
 ity 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 capi- 
 talist and labourers is, in the highest sense, a partnership in- 
 volving a real equality of duties and powers, — they finding 
 the strength, the patience, the manual skill, the physical ex- 
 haustion, — he finding the management, the machinery, the 
 immediate means of subsistence, and, by rights, the protec- 
 tion 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 what- 
 ever. The dignity of their work and lives rests in their 
 knowing and performing their mutual duties and their com- 
 mon tasks. Applied to this noble and intimate relation of 
 Hfe — this grand 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 specially studied it would conceive the vast array 
 of grievances against which unionism and strikes are di- 
 rected. If we looked only to that side of the question, we 
 should come to fancy that from the whole field of labour 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 319 
 
 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, "overtime," "short time," double 
 time, night work, Sunday work, truck in every form, over- 
 lookers' extortion, payment in kind, wages reduced by draw- 
 backs, "long pays," or wages held back, fines, confiscations, 
 rent and implements irregularly stopped out of wages, evic- 
 tions 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, reck- 
 lessness 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. 
 Let any one read such a Blue-book as that on the employ- 
 ment of children, which contains much on labour generally. 
 It reads like one long catalogue of oppression. Every prac- 
 tice which can ruin body and spirit, — - every form of igno- 
 rance, 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 Medi- 
 cal 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 reckless- 
 ness 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 
 
320 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 pro- 
 tection is unionism. It is a system at bottom truly conserva- 
 tive, 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 insti- 
 tutions being healthy, well managed, and moderate, whilst 
 they cannot get the legal sanction which the humblest asso- 
 ciation obtains? They can hold no property, bring no 
 action, have no assistance or protection from the law. Just 
 as under the old Combination Laws strikes were often thor- 
 oughly 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 sys- 
 tem 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 gov- 
 ernment. 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 
 
TRADES-UNIONISM 3Jil 
 
 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, sometimes a most selfish spirit. 
 Often it fosters a dull temper of indifference and comfortable 
 disregard of all others around. It often encourages the 
 combative spirit and a love of visible triumph. Occa- 
 sionally, 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 education. 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 essentially necessary — and, sometimes, 
 are the first necessity. To save the people from the im- 
 mediate 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 
 
322 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 purposes, would turn towards other measures to improve 
 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 annihilation as 
 a member of society — against the consequent deteriora- 
 tion of the community, and ultimate social revolution. 
 
Ill 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 (1865) 
 
 From the year i860 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, I 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 super- 
 sede or even to reform the current system of Wages- 
 earning. 
 
 I made bold to tell this to my friends. More than 
 
 323 
 
324 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 forty years have passed; and, whilst the " S tores ^^ have 
 had a marvellous growth, '^Production" in the open 
 market is still a drop in the ocean of Labour. "Co- 
 operation" has taught more than two millions of work- 
 ing 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 haifs 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 {igo2), which 
 gives a total business of more than 75 millions, sets down 
 the profits of Productive Societies at £i58,jij — and a 
 Dividend on Wages of £20,545 — ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^ trade 
 of three millions and a half. 
 
 The latest work on Co-operative Industry that I 
 have seen is by Ernest Ames (igoy). He tells us in 
 his chapter on the Productive Societies that " the position 
 of Labour is very similar to that which is found in or- 
 dinary well and considerately managed centres of in- 
 dustry." Again he adds: "Labour is left by the great 
 bulk of modern co-operative enterprise in an unchanged 
 economic relationship." That is exactly the warning 
 I gave in 1865 to my friends, the Co-operators; and 
 it is sad to relate the disappointment of such high and 
 worthy hopes {igo8). 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 325 
 
 ^^ 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 being 
 made by the working classes from their own spontaneous 
 efforts. Both have been conceived, elaborated, and main- 
 tained by their unaided instinct. One of these — unionism 
 — has been abundantly discussed. The other is co-opera- 
 tion. 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 enquirer. Each, however, 
 is imperfect and somewhat one-sided. Each ignores the 
 very important side which the other represents. To esti- 
 mate them truly they must be viewed at the same glance 
 and judged by comparison. 
 
 In dealing with co-operation, it is hardly 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 controversy and almost of ad- 
 vocacy. 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 ex- 
 aggerate its importance. During Elections one sees many 
 
326 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 candidates on both sides, who guard themselves from be- 
 traying many definite opinions, loudly proclaim themselves 
 in favour of "co-operation." Doubtless it would have 
 been as much to the purpose to proclaim themselves staunch 
 adherents of the penny post, or ardent friends of the half- 
 holiday movement. Of 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 enquiry 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 31st 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 ;i^685,o72, 
 the loan capital is ;^89,423, the assets and property amount 
 to ;£89i,775, the business done in the year is ;^2, 742,957, 
 and the profit realised is ;^225,569.^ As no societies neg- 
 lected 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 
 
 '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 327 
 
 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 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, depreciation, 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, educational 
 fund, reserve fund, depreciation fund, and charity, still 
 paid last quarter 2s. 4d. in the pound on members' pur- 
 chases. 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 estab- 
 lished. 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 neighbourhood, 
 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 
 
328 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 employer, 
 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 num- 
 bers 5200 members, with a capital of £'j 1,000, and an annual 
 business of ;,^2oo,ooo. Associated with it is the Corn-mill 
 Society and the Cotton Manufacturing Company, both 
 owned and worked principally by the same class. The 
 effect of this movement on the town is most obvious. Dur- 
 ing 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 demoralisa- 
 tion or great destitution. The importance of this work is 
 recognised by all classes of the inhabitants. There have 
 been no more zealous friends of the movement than the 
 clergy, many of the municipal officers, and both the late 
 and the present representative in Parliament. The Roch- 
 dale 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 Rochdale, rich in 
 nothing but the gratitude and esteem of their fellow-citizens, 
 for whilst they might easily have raised themselves amongst 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 329 
 
 the great millionaires of Lancashire they were contented 
 with giving prosperity to a city and new energy to the work- 
 ing classes of England. 
 
 The effect of a very flourishing store, and even of 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 em- 
 ployer, 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 pur- 
 chase, 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 ! Adulteration in 
 goods is almost invariably and completely checked by a 
 store. Without exception, they may be said to sell per- 
 fectly 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 
 
330 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 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 themselves to awakening souls or ad- 
 vocating 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 "confer- 
 ences," its dogmas, its celebrations, 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 move- 
 ment 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 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 33 1 
 
 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-operative 
 records are full, are truly touching. Co-operative poetry 
 alone forms a literature in itself; and in the 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, some- 
 times 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 move- 
 ment 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"; 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 bright- 
 ened ; 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 
 
332 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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. 
 
 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 convinced 
 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 following 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 ad- 
 herents; 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 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION ;^T,;^ 
 
 noticed presently), the whole of the co-operative societies 
 throughout the kingdom are simply "stores," i.e. shops for 
 the sale of food, and sometimes clothing. These, of course, 
 cannot affect the condition of industry 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 employment 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 pro- 
 duced (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 busi- 
 ness experience, and all the countless other advantages which 
 
334 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 we have set forth and urged in preceding pages. No one can 
 overlook them, and scarcely can exaggerate them. But these 
 are in themselves purely economic arrangements of practical 
 convenience, and cannot affect the social conditions of labour 
 otherwise than as economic arrangements can. The prac- 
 tice 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 accumulating 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 successful 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 Competition 
 is a sort of social panacea and beneficent dispensation. It 
 can hardly be that industry is to be regenerated simply by 
 the working classes coming to practise the penny-wise eco- 
 nomics 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 ;i^io 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. 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 335 
 
 We might as well expect them to be produced about a goose 
 club. 
 
 There is no mystery about co-operation, nor, indeed, any- 
 thing 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 pos- 
 sesses also a great many of the advantages of the co-operative 
 system, and is free from some of its defects. In fact, wher- 
 ever 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 socie- 
 ties 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 working-men have devised and de- 
 veloped a very useful form of the joint-stock company system. 
 
336 NATIONAL AND SOCIA.L 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 sub- 
 ordinate and very indefinite. There is a widespread wish 
 for social improvement, a spirit of self-sacrifice, and an un- 
 selfish enthusiasm which is very general in the movement. 
 Gas companies do not subscribe to help each other in diffi- 
 culties. Railway companies are not given to educational 
 funds. Directors do not usually give their services gratui- 
 tously. 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 explicable by 
 love of cash. But all this amounts to no more than that some 
 very noble, earnest, and powerful spirits have thrown them- 
 selves into the movement. It is part of the social feeling and 
 the strong sympathy which marks 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 disputed, 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-operation is so very little 
 defined, and is so devoid of any principle, system, or recog- 
 nised rule whatever, that it cannot keep its ground beside 
 the practical clear end of a good dividend. Co-operation 
 may mean either the making and saving of money, or the 
 joint labour of all for all. It may also mean partly one, 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 337 
 
 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 
 anything 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 com- 
 promise ; 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 about 
 the social element. Facts and acts are distinct ; and, I 
 believe, there is now no co-operative society existing which 
 
^^S NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 gives any substantial part of its income to others than the 
 members who share the capital. There are, however, unmis- 
 takably 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 re- 
 lieved, 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 vigor- 
 ously 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 philosophy. 
 Modem life is not so simple a thing that it can be reformed 
 by prudent maxims, with or without fine sentiments. Nor 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 339 
 
 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 expedients 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 sug- 
 gested 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 favour- 
 able. 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 con- 
 siderable 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 property classed with the "stores." The amount ex- 
 pended 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 re- 
 ceive anything but the market rate of wages, or any particular 
 advantage, privilege, or perquisite. Nor do I think any 
 societies in the kingdom remunerate their ordinary work- 
 people in any other way than the usual mode. Frequently 
 
340 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 conditions of labour, or add appreciably to the wages of 
 their "hands." 
 
 The flour-mills apart — which are very successful and use- 
 ful modes of making money — the other manufacturing 
 societies are insignificant, until we come to the cotton-mills. 
 Here and there an association of bootmakers, hatters, paint- 
 ers, or gilders is carried on, upon a small scale, with vary- 
 ing 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 com- 
 mon, with moderate capital, plant, and premises, obviously 
 establish nothing. The only true instances of manufactur- 
 ing co-operative societies of any importance 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; 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 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 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 34 1 
 
 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 which Robert Owen 
 upheld. The Rochdale cotton-mill once bid fair to be an 
 extraordinary success in a commercial view. Their buildings 
 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 neigh- 
 bouring capitalists; they weathered the storm of the cotton 
 distress perhaps better than any, being almost the last to 
 close and the first to open; 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 possibility 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 
 ;;^ioo received in wages counting in the distribution of the 
 dividend the same as every ;^ioo invested in shares. This 
 principle was a real experiment to institute a new condition 
 of labour. The mill had not worked long, however, before 
 (in 1861) this principle, after a severe struggle, was aban- 
 doned, and no efforts of the minority, backed by many in- 
 fluential friends of the movement, have succeeded in restor- 
 
342 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 ing 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 permanently 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 exist- 
 ing conditions and rights of capital, it is fulfilling a great mis- 
 sion if it enables the workmen 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 share of 
 the profits, and gain the security and independence 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. 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 343 
 
 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 Lan- 
 cashire 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 com- 
 pany 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 soberness, 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 in- 
 alienable, which is opposed to all modern requirements. 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 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 
 
344 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 this limit is reached, the more completely does the concern 
 become a simple joint-slock company. Some of the work- 
 men suffer domestic privations, some are improvident, some 
 cease v^^ork and bequeath their shares, and in countless v^ays 
 the workmen cease to hold the shares. 
 
 The process is very rapid, and occurs under all conceiv- 
 able 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 fortu- 
 nate or more skilful shareholders. And even if this were 
 done, nothing can prevent the shareholders personally becom- 
 ing richer men. A capital, we may suppose, of ;^5o,ooo is 
 invested in a mill employing 500 men, who equally own the 
 shares at the rate of ;^ioo apiece. 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, pru- 
 dent, 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 
 ;^iooo? Certainly not. Why should they? Indeed, a man 
 who has shown great aptitude in employing capital 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 capi- 
 tal, 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 
 employers; and as co-operation has simply enabled him to 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 345 
 
 become a capitalist, and refuses to alter the condition of the 
 employed, merely as such, the man soon becomes an em- 
 ployer 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 posi- 
 tion of their workmen. Unfortunately 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 treatment of their own work-people. 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 which was started by a few associated 
 workmen as a co-operative society, which is 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 surround- 
 ing capitalists. Yet this is nothing but a co-operative society 
 which has been wonderfully successful. What would in- 
 dustry 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 
 
346 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 employing none but shareholders. This is plainly imprac- 
 ticable. 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 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 hasten- 
 ing 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. 
 
INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION 347 
 
 Hitherto the question of the capacity of co-operative 
 societies for success has been kept out of sight intentionally. 
 It is plain that the "stores" with reasonably good manage- 
 ment and skill are certain of success, often of wonderful 
 success. But, as has been shown, the success of men club- 
 bing 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 
 commercial 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, shoemakers, masons, 
 etc. (such men are really artificers), where very much depends 
 on the personal skill, care, and zeal of each individual work- 
 man, no doubt signal success is quite within their reach. 
 Associations of the kind, well founded and honestly con- 
 ducted, 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 direc- 
 tion of capital requires entire freedom, undivided devotion, 
 a life of training, and innate business instincts. 
 
 All our complex forms of industry involve sometimes, in 
 the directors, engineering or practical genius, a sort of in- 
 stinct of the market, and a life-long familiarity with an in- 
 volved mass of considerations, partly mechanical, partly 
 monetary, partly administrative. The head of a great pro- 
 duction 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 superin- 
 tend the agents who buy it for them. But it is ridiculous to 
 tell the hammermen at a forge that they can successfully 
 
348 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 man- 
 aged by its ordinary cashiers ! These are extreme 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 em- 
 ploys? Arguments on this subject are almost ridiculous, 
 were it not that the extravagant pretensions of some co-op- 
 erators 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 edu- 
 cation can give — and even that can give only to a few. 
 
 It profits little to argue that the bulk of the workmen, 
 though unfit to manage, are very fit to superintend the man- 
 agement. He who is unfit to manage is not fit to direct the 
 manager. The only course open to inexperienced men un- 
 dertaking a complex manufacture would be to trust them- 
 selves 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 controlled by the shareholder, 
 in which case success is endangered, or he is free, and then 
 they lose responsibility 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 suc- 
 cess of great trading companies proves nothing. They are 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 349 
 
 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 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 ful- 
 ness, 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 indi- 
 vidual 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 reorgan- 
 ised, 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 
 
350 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 mechani- 
 cal 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 ha^•e 
 the advantages 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 doubt- 
 less 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.^ To 
 
 ' See interminable discussions in the Co-operator on this hopeless problem. 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 
 
 351 
 
 apply mathematical formulae to social and political questions 
 is the surest test of a low education. What arithmetical 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, whatever it should be, varies in every trade ; it varies 
 in every operation, it varies to each workman. It is a com- 
 mon idea that equity would consist in sharing equally between 
 labour and capital, every ;;^io of capital receiving the same 
 dividend as every £10 of wages. But why equally? The 
 ancient philosopher says "the vulgar think that that which 
 is equal is just." But it requhes a disquisition on the ele- 
 ments of society (which are very differently estimated) to 
 show why in abstract justice the ;i£io of labour expended in 
 making a piece of cotton is the fah equivalent of the ;!^io 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 can- 
 vas and ground the colours? Generals win battles in spite 
 of bad soldiers, and soldiers win battles in spite of bad gen- 
 erals : 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 
 
352 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 is to estimate the share which mechanical genius, instinctive 
 sagacity, and personal ascendancy 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 proportion depends en- 
 tirely 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 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 Eng- 
 land 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 con- 
 sideration of the difficulty which there is in finding one or 
 other element. In a given undertaking, the relative impor- 
 tance 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 competition, of supply and de- 
 mand. ;;^io worth of labour is only equal to ;^io worth of 
 capital, at the present market rate ; if wages improved, £io 
 worth of labour would become ;i^i5 worth of labour, and so 
 on. ;^io 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 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 353 
 
 means fifty weeks. Which of these is just ? But ;^io repre- 
 sents nearly as many ploughs and spades, loaves and coats — 
 though not quite — in all. The labourer's wages usually 
 fall when he is m distress; his £io worth of labour may 
 become £5, without any fault of his own, and though he work 
 still harder. But the ;^io 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 systema- 
 tised under the mask of equity ! 
 
 Or, suppose no regard is paid to the difficulty of obtaining 
 capital or labour — which, after all, is competition, 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 abstinence 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 
 ;^io,ooo a year out of £20,000 is not heroic vktue ; 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 
 stereotype 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 safe- 
 guards and more ingenious regulations. 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 
 
 2A 
 
354 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 overlook. In a 
 plain, thriving business — as in the cotton 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 arrangement is devised which is to throw the loss on 
 labour, then labour ought to have a voice in the manage- 
 ment; 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 pre- 
 pared 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 — 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 355 
 
 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 campaign) often depends entirely 
 on the skill of the chief ; and he would be crippled if he were 
 a subordinate manager. There is a great deal more resem- 
 blance 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. La- 
 bour would not be helped simply by awarding it a new share 
 of the profits ; many labourers would use it just as improvi- 
 dently 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 crush- 
 ing system, whilst remunerating him largely. Some of the 
 best paid occupations — that of colliers, coal-whippers, tai- 
 lors, and excavators — receive very high wages, although often 
 suffering the most systematic oppression. Wages are fre- 
 quently 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 
 
356 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 pos- 
 sesses to oppress him is left untouched. The evils which fall 
 hardest on labour are — irregular work ; overtime ; exhaust- 
 ing, unhealthy, and dangerous work; fluctuations in earn- 
 ings, place and hours of work ; forfeits ; personal, domestic, 
 and private oppression; want of leisure, justice, and pro- 
 tection. All these, which unionism provides for, co-opera- 
 tion leaves untouched ; and as to overwork, rather stimulates 
 than reduces it. Co-operation concerns itself solely with the 
 re-distribution of capital and its produce. For the employ- 
 ment 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 
 concentration, rapidity, and elasticity which no corporate 
 capital can enjoy ; so in a conscientious hand it is capable of 
 yet more splendid acts of protection, providence, and benefi- 
 cence. 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 Eng- 
 land 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, theur domestic happiness, their education, their 
 health, their whole physical and moral condition; can act 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 357 
 
 almost as a providence on earth, and that by means as hon- 
 ourable 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 spurit which provides 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 reconstructing 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 sub- 
 divides it, but does nothing to elevate it. Right, useful, 
 
358 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 necessary often, as the principle of association and co-opera- 
 tion 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, and for the highest uses, concentrated and not asso- 
 ciated capital will command the greatest practical success, 
 and develop the most noble moral features both in employer 
 and employed.^ 
 
 It may be asked, is there any need so closely to criticise a 
 spontaneous economic movement which has an obvious prac- 
 tical 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 
 absorbing 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 befits 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 them- 
 
 * 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 indus- 
 trial 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 spon- 
 taneous 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). 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 359 
 
 selves exclusively into it, as if it were a new gospel, destined 
 to revolutionise the conditions of industry. As applying 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 spon- 
 taneous, become very bad and noxious when fanned into a 
 movement and preached as a revelation. The Temperance 
 principle has done good serxdce ; but as a teetotalist fanati- 
 cism 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 unluckily 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 — econo- 
 mise — 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 
 
360 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 money was the root of all evil. Foolish as this was, it is 
 hardly true that money is the root of all 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' re- 
 generation, 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 ob- 
 ject. 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 movement 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 pur- 
 pose. A material aim is a good, provided it keeps its place. 
 And the direct, main, and only accomplished object of co-op- 
 eration, as a system, is to make money. This is but slightly 
 modified by the incidental aims; and its character is not 
 changed by vague appeals to good feeling, by social celebra- 
 tions, by devoting i per cent out of dividends for education, 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 361 
 
 by opening a reading-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-op- 
 eration does teach emphatically, 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 commer- 
 cial 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 competi- 
 tion ; or even to elaborate or suggest any rational scheme for 
 employing labour on new conditions, or for placing the use 
 of capital on a sounder and higher moral basis.^ 
 
 * A curious proof how little co-operation provides or suggests on the grand 
 industrial question of making the use of capital consistent with social obli- 
 gations, 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 gave you this Name? 
 
 "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 ? _ 
 
 "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 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. 
 
362 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 conse- 
 quences 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 dis- 
 order 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 
 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. 
 
 "Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe and do as the Rochdale 
 Pioneers have promised for thee 7 
 
 "Yes, verily: and by the reciprocal help of the shareholders and other 
 customers I will; 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 0/ thy belief. 
 
 "I believe that honesty is the best policy; that 'tis a very good vcorld 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'; 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). 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 363 
 
 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 displace- 
 ment 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 : — "Gov- 
 ernments, whether retrograde or constitutional, have done 
 all they could to divert the people from their true social 
 function (participation in public life) by affording opportu- 
 nities 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 accumulated 
 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, parsimonious habits are uncalled for and inju- 
 rious ; 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 them. 
 Both the one and the other will find their truest happiness in 
 keeping clear of all practical responsibility, 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 
 
364 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of food and clothing, and to small bodies of associated work- 
 men, is a most sound, strong, and valuable method of adding 
 to the material well-being of the working classes. As such 
 it deserves all goodwill 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 not stood, and will not stand, its ground. As 
 a social system, it has developed nothing that is not at once 
 crude and vague ; and the earnest spirits amongst the work- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 pounds; 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, 
 necessarily alters the character of co-operative manufactures, 
 and extinguishes their social purpose by converting the work- 
 men into simple shareholders. 
 
 Co-operation is deeply rooted, and may now prosper by 
 itself. To fan it into factitious activity may prove a danger- 
 ous social nuisance. The Gospel according to Mammon will 
 preach itself, and can do 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 
 
INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION 365 
 
 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 
 indefinitely. Were it universal amongst capitalists, they 
 would do so spontaneously. Moral and mental education 
 then, and a systematic promotion of it, and a power to con- 
 centrate 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 com- 
 pound 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 previ- 
 ously criticised capital. If co-operation were ever to sup- 
 plant, 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 enquiry 
 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. 
 
 From the volume entitled The Industrial Remunera- 
 tion Conference, which reported all the papers and the 
 
 366 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 367 
 
 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 reor- 
 ganisation 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, multiply- 
 ing the holders of private property, imposing on private 
 property no new checks or duties, proposing nothing sub- 
 versive 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 esti- 
 mates, the outcome of my own experiences and studies. I 
 have now for twenty-five years occupied myself with these 
 industrial problems in their various phases, in personal con- 
 tact with the movements and their leading exponents or di- 
 rectors: trades unions, workmen's clubs, benefit societies, 
 co-operation, industrial partnerships, land nationalisation, 
 socialism, communism. Time does not permit me to enter 
 
368 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 reorganised?" 
 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 pre- 
 carious 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- 
 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 369 
 
 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 improvement 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 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. 
 
 2B 
 
370 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 relatively 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 accom- 
 panied 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 genu- 
 ine 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 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 371 
 
 within a generation under conditions utterly different to 
 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 freemen face to 
 face with Nature. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute 
 these evils to Government, social institutions, laws, or his- 
 torical 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 acci- 
 dents, gigantic frauds, organised plunder, systematic adultera- 
 tion, 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-inter- 
 ference. Where the state can usefully interfere, and where 
 it cannot, is for each society a matter to be discovered by 
 practical experiment. 
 
 The sticklers for absolute respect for Liberty and Prop- 
 erty have not the courage of their doctrines. If they are 
 
372 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, pitmen 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 18 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 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 373 
 
 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 independence 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, 
 HaHfax, 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 milHons 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; when 
 he is superannuated, he is not driven to the poorhouse; 
 when he dies, he is not buried by the parish. He gets 
 wholesome 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 
 
374 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 subscriptions. 
 
 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 Hfe — sickness, accident, infirmity, 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 com- 
 fort 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-opera- 
 tion, trades unions, benefit, building, insurance, or joint- 
 stock societies, or peasant occupation and holdings. Nay, 
 I go much farther, 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 destitu- 
 tion for a year at least, the first conditions of civilised industry 
 are wanting. 
 
 But the question before us is whether the reorganisation 
 of industry and the welfare of the community 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. 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 375 
 
 The highly specialised subdivisions of all modem production, 
 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 
 consoHdation of farms goes on; the big industry is driving 
 out the little. The ancient controversies as to great and 
 Httle 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 indispens- 
 able, even if the ownership be subdivided. 
 
 In urban industry no room is left even for debate. Col- 
 lective 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 manu- 
 facturer, 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 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, 
 
376 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the possession of capital and of land is reached only by an 
 insignificant fraction of the labour population. 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; most of the 
 mutual-benefit movements are in their second or third genera- 
 tion. 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 economi- 
 cal 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 aboHsh the wages system, and 
 to produce by associated labour, so that the 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 production 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 377 
 
 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 was less 
 than ;^i 5,000. 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 work- 
 ing classes, ;^5oo,ooo,ooo, is this annual profit of ;^i 5,000! 
 But co-operative employers usually, like other employers, 
 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.^ 
 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 in- 
 direct influence is at least as great as its direct influence. 
 A trades union usually benefits indirectly quite as many 
 non-members as members, sometimes perhaps twice as many. 
 A powerful trades union often improves the condition of 
 the whole trade. But, at the utmost, trades unions sub- 
 stantially 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 relatively growing. Trades-unionism, 
 in the sum, is not an advancing movement. 
 
 ' In 1883, the aggregate dividend paid by these productive societies in 
 England was under ;£5ooo. About £ioo 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 ;£2o,545 (1908). 
 
378 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 In two generations now it has shown itself utterly power- 
 less 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 espe- 
 cially 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 permanent antagonism. 
 Unionism too often deepens this antagonism into bitter 
 and unsocial war.^ 
 
 It is vain indeed to expect the permanent reorganisation 
 of industry from any one of the movements 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 movements 
 for promoting that distribution but touch the topmost layers ; 
 they scarcely affect the mass, and do 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 con- 
 servative 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 distribution of capital are mere 
 palliatives, stop-gaps, and insignificant experiments. Nine- 
 
 * The new unionism and socialism have now much changed this (1908). 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 379 
 
 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 distribu- 
 tion of wealth is right in principle, even if exaggerated in 
 statement. He has abundantly proved that it is not due 
 to any special conditions of English society, law, or institu- 
 tions. 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. 
 
380 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 enquiry. I come at once to what I hold to 
 be the central error of all land nationalisation theories what- 
 ever. It is assumed in all — 
 
 (i) That property in land is something different toto 
 ccbIo 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. 
 
 Every one of these assumptions is false. The appro- 
 priation of the soil rests on precisely the same grounds as 
 any other appropriation. If there is anything 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 mo- 
 nopoly far more formidable, and would sooner make the 
 monopolist master of the community than any possible 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 38 1 
 
 appropriation 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 things incapable of appropria- 
 tion, the rule should apply to thousands of things besides land. 
 
 Immense nonsense is afloat respecting "the unearned 
 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 
 
382 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the soil from hindering the free development of the town. 
 But why should the state confiscate the "unearned incre- 
 ment" of the piece of ground, and not the "unearned in- 
 crement" 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, 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 knov/ that to con- 
 vert 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 rep- 
 resents 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES ^8^ 
 
 the sea, and raising produce from it is a simple process, 
 like catching fish. There are exceptional 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 in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and 
 other North-Eastern counties, redeemed from saltmarsh, 
 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 af 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 
 
384 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 worthless as an acre on the top of Snowdon or on the Good- 
 win 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 prop- 
 erty, 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 grounds it guar- 
 antees 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 brushwood, of stones, weeds, and other 
 growths, draining, fencing, damming, bridging, making 
 roads, barns, farmsteads and the like, ponds, wells, water- 
 courses, 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. 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 385 
 
 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; 
 the estuaries on the coast were boundless salt fens; the up- 
 lands 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 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 culti- 
 vation and usefulness by the incessant labour of some tenant, 
 or perhaps squatter or bare occupant. Mr. George has 
 
 2C 
 
386 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 justly inveighed against the outrageous injustice done, when 
 the farm so reclaimed by the labour and capital of the peas- 
 ant 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 repre- 
 sents, 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 enor- 
 mous wealth representing the outlay by which the soil has 
 been transformed. He is going on a colossal scale to repeat 
 the injustice which in a very minor form we have just re- 
 dressed by legislation. 
 
 Some schools of land nationalisation propose what they 
 call compensation on this confiscation. What they pro- 
 pose 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 
 making 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 parchment-right granted ages 
 ago by some sovereign or paramount authority is almost 
 too ridiculous to discuss. 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 387 
 
 There is perhaps not a single enclosed and cultivated 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 
 unhke the same soil in the days of the Heptarchy/ It is 
 as great a difference as that between a frockcoat 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 im- 
 mense 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 so- 
 ciety the legal ownership of an article is assumed to represent 
 the value given for the labour expended on it. If every man 
 
 * The works here spoken of are all the beneficial constructions for the 
 permanent improvement of the soil, made at the cost of successive owners 
 of the land. It does not include high roads, bridges, or other 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. 
 
388 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 were liable to have his coat confiscated 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 infini- 
 tum, 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, through purchases by 
 capitaHsts or marriage with the children of capitahsts. 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 grand- 
 child. 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 
 confiscation 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 389 
 
 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 periodical expenditure, amounting at the 
 lowest to ID 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 represent 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 hke 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 improv- 
 ing and beautifying their estates. One landlord in i6 years 
 
390 
 
 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 spent in farms, cottages, etc., ;^29o,ooo. Another, in 3 
 years, ;^6o,ooo. Another, in 17 years, £30,000 (rental re- 
 duced). Another has, in 10 years, received ;^5o,ooo, out 
 of which he spent on the land ;^43,ooo without increased 
 rental. These improvements are all in country estates, 
 and in different counties.* Instead of the great peers carry- 
 ing off the rentals of their farms to be consumed in extrava- 
 gance, the farms are often kept in their present high condi- 
 tion 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 concentration 
 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 em- 
 ploy 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, clear- 
 ing, planting, in roads, dykes, watercourses, 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 
 
 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. Thev are not at all the strongest cases to be found. The entire 
 rental of some large estates is expended on the property. I know rnyself 
 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 svstem, 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 391 
 
 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 well done mainly be- 
 cause 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 are annually expended on it now, if we in- 
 clude 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 intervention, jobbery, and mismanage- 
 
392 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 merit 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 depart- 
 ment 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 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 dis- 
 content such a system involves ! Again, a large part of the 
 expenditure 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 expenditure is sacri- 
 ficed 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 ;^2oo a 
 year rental, needs, we may suppose, a new house, buildings, 
 and appurtenances, to cost ;i(^2ooo. 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 ;;^2oo to ;^ioo per 
 annum. The seamen who navigate an ocean steamer could 
 not find the capital to work it, even if their wages were £^^^0 
 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 are 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 landlord; they are far more ruinous 
 when the farmer or peasant is indebted. The state would 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 393 
 
 be the mere over-lord, 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 landlord would be 
 taken by some banking company in London. 
 
 This is what happens always where the cultivator is with- 
 out 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 farmers are bowed down by mort- 
 gages 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 farm- 
 ers, 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 culti- 
 vation. 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 ques- 
 tion of capital. No legislation can create capital where it 
 
394 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 not adequate capital, it must come either from the state 
 or from lenders. 
 
 The English schools of land nationalisation usually pro- 
 claim 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 occu- 
 pation. There are great social advantages in peasant pro- 
 prietorship, 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 dan- 
 gers 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 genera- 
 tions 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 proprie- 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 395 
 
 tors 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 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 occu- 
 pant. 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 
 rmgs 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 dis- 
 tant 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 
 
396 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, ac- 
 cording to him, from the sinful institution whereby plots 
 of God's earth are nefariously allotted to private persons in 
 full control that poverty, 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 gready to strengthen this malignant institu- 
 tion, 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 proprie- 
 tors, 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 free- 
 dom 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 generations 
 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 per- 
 sons of the proprietors; but how shall we have changed the 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 397 
 
 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 more 
 who had prospered in coal, butter, or mutton, and who are 
 not likely to be easier landlords/ 
 
 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 permanent interest and com- 
 plete freedom in their own farms. And I see social and 
 moral evils of the w^orst 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 privileges peculiar 
 
 'In Professor Newman's paper, "written on behalf of the Land Na- 
 tionalisation 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 multi- 
 plied through peasant freeholds." Now to maintain such a system in 
 England, even if it could be created by law, two things are absolutely neces- 
 sary — (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. 
 
398 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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. 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 produc- 
 tive efficiency. Economically speaking, there is some social 
 justification for dukes and millionaires as landlords, 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 with- 
 out 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 Scot- 
 land, are so very different; the social justification of the 
 landlord there is so rnuch 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. 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 399 
 
 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 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 provisions to check owners 
 from doing anything contrary to public interests, or from 
 receiving fanciful compensation 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; some 
 think that even the Corporation of London and the Metro- 
 politan 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 management 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 mu- 
 nicipal 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 un- 
 
4CX3 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 founded and even ludicrous are invectives against the peers 
 who own considerable districts in our city. Large as these 
 estates are, they do not account for a quarter of the area or 
 the population. 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 overcrowding 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 respon- 
 sibility 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 Nationali- 
 sation 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 40I 
 
 and the blind leap in the dark which it offers us as a remedy 
 for all industrial evils. We should sacrifice for a mere 
 dream all the solid results won by radical reform and prac- 
 tical experiments; for it would plunge us into a social revo- 
 lution 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 cannot 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? V/e 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 concern. 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 Com- 
 munism, I say little now. We have not before us a definite 
 statement of the views propounded by any systematie 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 
 
 2 D 
 
402 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 undoubt- 
 edly some of the noblest characters of our day are in sym- 
 pathy 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, Lassaell, 
 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 quar- 
 ters now preached amongst us has none of these — neither 
 economical theory, nor social scheme, nor system of life of 
 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 insti- 
 tutions, of education, of domestic, industrial, or civic life. 
 
 Now no real insurrection was ever made by pure anar- 
 chists. The people must have something to believe in, to 
 hope for, and work for, before they will seriously rise. In- 
 citements to plunder and to destroy do not touch the people, 
 who need some great moral cause and some ideal in view 
 to stir them profoundly. But Communism, as presented 
 in England, offers no moral cause, no ideal. It has never 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 4^3 
 
 faced, and has nothing to say about any one of the great 
 social problems, about religion, morality, education, gov- 
 ernment, 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 propagandists 
 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 profess materialism pure and 
 simple; others belong to every intermediate phase of opin- 
 ion. 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 edu- 
 cational programme, a Communist is bound; for if people 
 are to work in common they must be trained in common. 
 Every serious Socialist or Comm^unist 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 attempting to found a 
 set of social, family, and religious institutions to eradicate 
 all traces of individualism. If they do not do this they know 
 that Communism in labour is impossible. But the various 
 groups who in England to-day advocate some vague Com- 
 
404 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 munistic proposals do none of these things. They may 
 denounce 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 ali 
 bourgeois — the real English workman does not even knov/ 
 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 advo- 
 cated amongst us. But Communistic proposals and Social- 
 ist 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 workmen, who 
 have laboured so long and sacrificed so much in order to 
 share with their fellows some of that security and indepen- 
 dence 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 universal 
 confiscation in the blind chance that something might come 
 of it. Trades unions, co-operative, building, land societies, 
 and the rest would all disappear, for they all imply the in- 
 stitution 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 countryman, 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 relation between any capitalist and any labourer 
 or any farmer. There would be but one employer, one 
 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 405 
 
 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 prob- 
 lem, 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 ques- 
 tion. 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 confiscation, 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 ac- 
 cessible, to check some abuses of property here 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 in- 
 dustry, is only to get rid of one social institution, and to 
 
4o6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 regulate one of many human duties. To expect a millen- 
 nium from any kind of partial remedy is like giving pills to 
 cure a fever. Industry can only be regenerated by regenerat- 
 ing 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 for- 
 tunate 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 indus- 
 trial 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 w^as this, that the passion of 
 self-interest was imperfectly controlled by a sense of social 
 duty, and in the case of the states was even abnormally 
 stimulated. Here then, in human nature, without suffi- 
 cient moral control, is the source of all this evil; and it is 
 melancholy to see 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 
 
SOCIAL REMEDIES 407 
 
 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 do- 
 mestic or social life, self-interest is not canonised as the prin- 
 cipal 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 unlimited 
 indulgence of self-interest, pushed to the very verge of liabil- 
 ity to law, the supreme social duty of the industrious citizen. 
 To buy cheap, to sell dear, to exhaust the arts of competi- 
 tion, 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, proprietor, tradesman, 
 and workman alike submit to this strange moral law. Al- 
 most 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 the 
 capitalist, good for society. No account is taken of the busi- 
 ness ruined, of the workmen thrown out of employment, of 
 the overproduction, of the useless, mischievous, rotten trade 
 created, and of all the manifold evils scattered broadcast 
 amongst the producers and every one within range of the work. 
 
4o8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 mala- 
 dies. 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 thoughtful of the general wel- 
 fare of those they employ as they are now eager to get the most 
 out of them ; 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 — infuscd 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, preach- 
 ers, 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 I 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 1865 {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 Federa- 
 tion made its mark on English politics. The great 
 Dock Strike of i88g 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. xxvL). 
 
 The most startling result of the new Industrial move- 
 ment was seen in the enormous Liberal majority at the 
 General Election of igo6, 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^ Strike. 
 
 There are signs to-day of the inevitable reaction. The 
 bourgeoisie is getting uneasy at the sight of real Social- 
 ism in Parliament and at Elections; and the utter inco- 
 herence of Karl Marx^s dogmas and the anarchic lan- 
 
 409 
 
4IO NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 guage of many of his noisy followers seems destined again 
 to separate middle-class Liberalism from any present 
 type of Labour Socialism {igo8). 
 
 Within the last few years trades-unionism has been trans- 
 formed under the influence of two main forces : — one being 
 that profound social lever which is vaguely known as So- 
 cialism; 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 in- 
 stitutions of Capital and Labour, but rather the infusion of 
 all economic and political institutions with social considera- 
 tions 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 de- 
 nounced by the combined force of the cultivated and capi- 
 talist classes. The press, the pulpit, the platform, society, and 
 the legislature rang with menace and invective about the 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 41I 
 
 innate wickedness of all strikes. If here and there a clergy- 
 man, a professional man, a politician, or a writer ventured 
 to raise a voice 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.^ 
 
 When my name was proposed as a member of the Trades 
 Union Commission of 1867, the appointment was hotly op- 
 posed as a dangerous precedent; and more than one emi- 
 nent solicitor calmly told me that, if I consented to serve, I 
 must expect to quit the legal profession. 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 state- 
 ment 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 condemned in 
 the same language in which men now condemn the resort to 
 dynamite. To the last generation of the educated and em- 
 ploying 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.^ The press was uniformly fair ; and, very generally, 
 aided the movement. No sooner were the docks empty 
 than money poured into the strike fund, not only from thou- 
 sands of British unions but from across the seas, and from 
 
 * How different to-day after the legislation of 1907! (1908). 
 
 * The Dock Strike of i88g, engineered by Mr. John Burns. 
 
412 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 the wealthy and the governing classes in all directions. "We 
 were pelted with cheques," says the treasurer, and in a few 
 weeks upwards of ;;^4o,ooo 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. ^lerchants 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 capital- 
 ists backed up their demands with word and with purse. 
 Churches of all creeds, educational and charitable institu- 
 tions, gave their help. tTatholics and Salvationists, Tories 
 and Radicals, for once combined. 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 re- 
 fused 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 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 413 
 
 month." "In the great 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. Cham- 
 pion, "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 pro- 
 fessional 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. Hun- 
 dreds 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 of the last generation, the 
 
414 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 reversed. It used to be an axiom that the unskilled labour- 
 ers, 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 pos- 
 sibly 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 ad- 
 vantage for the sacrifice. In the strike of the Dock labour- 
 ers 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 
 excellent discipline and rapid organisation of the strikers, 
 and it was also the ground of their success. Without the 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 415 
 
 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 workmen more rapid and more 
 electric than anything seen before. We have witnessed 
 what in the continental jargon used to be called the "soli- 
 darity of labour," or the "fraternity of workmen" — a per- 
 fectly real and very powerful force, when it can be organised 
 and brought into practical result. It simply means the com- 
 mon 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 manfully 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 com- jt 
 
 bine 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 employers that an established 
 Union was a strongly conservative pov/er, that it checked 
 
4l6 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 Notting- 
 ham 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 
 ;^5o,ooo, 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 ;^2o,ooo a year. "But I don't want another 
 ;^2o,ooo a year," said the worthy old man. And I knew 
 many a Unionist secretary of the old school who firmly be- 
 lieved 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. Social- 
 ists charged the Unions with bolstering up and stereotyping 
 the miseries of the present industrial system, by thinking 
 more of "superannuation," "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 practical to protect 
 any single trade. As usual, there was a good deal of force 
 in what was said on both sides. Vague rant about Capital 
 as organised plunder buttered no man's parsnips, and did not 
 take ten seconds off the working day. On the other hand, 
 it was a poor consolation to the sweated waistcoat-hand to be 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 417 
 
 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 institu- 
 tion of Capital. The new Unions are avowedly trade socie- 
 ties to gain trade objects. The new Socialism is bent upon 
 objects quite as practical as those of any Trades Union, and 
 really the same. The joint movement may either be de- 
 scribed 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 him- 
 self 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 fully grasps it in prin- 
 ciple, 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 
 
 2E 
 
41 8 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 reform.er 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. My friend Mr. 
 Broadhurst occasionally, I believe, expounds 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 influ- 
 ence much like that which Gambetta had over the French 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 419 
 
 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/ 
 
 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 statesman 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 
 temptation 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 soci- 
 eties or fighting unions per se, that the Sociahsts have now 
 induced the societies to do voluntarily, or rather they have 
 founded new Unions to effect that object. In the same way 
 
 * As Cabinet Minister to-day, successful head of a great department of 
 state (1908). 
 
420 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 con- 
 stantly 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 ob- 
 viously 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 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 Threadneedle Street." 
 A Union which is a mere fighting Club soon exhausts itself 
 in defeats, and disgusts those who put their trust in its prom- 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 421 
 
 ises and who gave their money to its blunders. The perma- 
 nent success of the new Unionism still remains to be proved 
 by results ; for it will depend on the judgment and self-con- 
 trol 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 pro- 
 longed 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 afford weekly subscriptions, had nothing to 
 fall back upon, and had not the endurance, disciphne, 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 has been presented to the unskilled 
 in far too costly and elaborate a form ; and that to win sym- 
 pathy, 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 
 
422 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 Union- 
 ist meetings indignant appeals against workmen "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 importance 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 himself 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 
 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, 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 423 
 
 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 1S5 1-2-3 ^^^ 1858-9 pro- 
 duced a deep impression. But the first systematic attempt 
 to judge Unionism fairly was made by the remarkable Com- 
 mittee of the Social Science Association, which published 
 its Report in i860. 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 recasting of our whole political system into a demo- 
 cratic form, 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 teaching of Karl 
 Marx, Henry George, Mill, Comte, and those whom each 
 of these have influenced, have continually broken up the 
 old economic purism, the gospel of laissez-faire and unlim- 
 ited licence to individual selfishness. Along with these 
 have worked an immense body of organised movements, 
 
424 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 with many different schemes and with widely-divergent 
 creeds, such as the Salvation Army, Toynbee Hall, Newton 
 Hall, the Social Democratic Federation, the Land Nation- 
 alisation Societies, and all the other agrarian movements 
 in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, with Guilds, 
 Leagues, and Societies innumerable ; such enquiries as those 
 of the Industrial Conference of 1885, Mr. Charles Booth's 
 Analysis of Labour in East London, 1889, the Trades Union 
 Annual Congress, 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 convinced 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 So- 
 cialism, as meaning the general desire to have all the arrange- 
 ments 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 powerful book called Social Problems, where we 
 have his view of the problem apart from his sophistical 
 "remedy." The old satanic gospel of laissez-faire is dead: 
 and, in the absence of any other gospel of authority, a vague 
 proclivity towards Socialism comes to the front. ^ 
 
 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 
 
 * 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). 
 
, SOCIALIST UNIONISM 425 
 
 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 riverside 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 
 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 Union- 
 ism may reflect that they have done nothing practical, until 
 they resorted to Unionism themselves and adopted its famil- 
 iar tactics and its well-tried machinery. The old Unionist 
 
426 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 may reflect that, in forty years past, the conventional Union- 
 ism 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, endurance, 
 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 morali- 
 sation of industry." When they have been told that — 
 " the true socialism is this : the use of Capital must he turned 
 to social objects, just as Capital arises from social combina- 
 tion^^ : — when it has been preached to them that "industry 
 must he moralised by opinion, not recast by the State — mor- 
 alised by education, by morality, by religion^' — the Socialist 
 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 Hsten 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 
 
SOCIALIST UNIONISM 427 
 
 I 
 
 in the long run. The immediate results are not very great. j 
 
 But it is a beginning: and much may come of it. In the \ 
 
 meantime, the persistent appeal to the public conscience ! 
 
 on moral and social grounds has done, what trades union- '■ 
 
 ism per se has failed to do in forty years, and what all the \ 
 
 schemes for confiscating private Capital and nationalising I 
 
 private property have only succeeded in hindering and delay- ; 
 
 ing being done. i 
 
VI 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 
 
 (1891) 
 
 From the foundation of Positivist centres by Dr. Congreve in 
 i86q, the writer and his colleagues had continually pre- 
 sented the industrial theories of Auguste Comte on the 
 platform and the press. As President of the Positivist 
 Committee down from the year iSyg, he consistently 
 maintained the same views in a series of lectures, and 
 especially in the Annual Address which he invariably 
 delivered on New Yearns Day. The following Discourse 
 was part of that given by him at Newton Hall on Janu- 
 ary I, i8gi. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the address here printed 
 is merely an extract; simply part of a course of propa- 
 ganda which extended over more than thirty years. It is 
 obviotisly 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 So- 
 cialism 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 (igoS). 
 
 It is now, I think, for the sixth year in succession that I 
 have tried to direct attention to the growth of SociaHsm in 
 
 428 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 429 
 
 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 principle 
 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 exist- 
 ence 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 incomplete. 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, makes 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 love, care, and con- 
 sideration which are lavished on them, cruelly waste these 
 
430 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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; 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 misap- 
 propriation of the common store of humanity, are not 
 things confined to material products ; nor will any rearrange- 
 ment of material products extinguish them. The institu- 
 tions 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 misappropriated 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 arrange- 
 ments whereby, when the owner of a coal-mine sets a thou- 
 sand 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 unanswer- 
 able; 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 pitmen entirely rest on right. 
 It is a confused, discredited, 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. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCL\LISM 43 1 
 
 chooses from time to time to enact. And we know 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 plutonomists now vaunt as the eternally fair sys- 
 tem, 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. 
 
 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 
 
432 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 neighbours 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 generation: 
 Property has its duties as well as its rights. But our view 
 of Property is this : The rights of Property mean a concentra- 
 tion of social duties. Our Socialism rests on Duty not on 
 Right. Duty is always plain; Right is a verbal mystifica- 
 tion, 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 strug- 
 gle 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. 
 
 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, 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 433 
 
 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 appliances 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 some- 
 thing 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 crea- 
 tion 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 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 spin- 
 ners; and they say the mill and the machinery ought to 
 
 2F 
 
434 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 spin- 
 ners 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 quan- 
 tities, 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 Lancashke 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 resolu- 
 tion of particular men as the locomotive was invented by 
 Stephenson or the art of prmting by Gutemberg. Manage- 
 ment indeed ! That is a ridiculously easy way of putting it. 
 You cannot hire a manager for these things. A great busi- 
 ness 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 capitals. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 435 
 
 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 
 actmg 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 suppressed. 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 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. 
 
436 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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, reasonable 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 appropriation is 
 to be drawn. Every one agrees that, if all kinds of appropria- 
 tion of Capital were absolutely barred by law, society would 
 soon revert to a state of primitive barbarism. We can all 
 see that appropriation 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 fur- 
 ther, and say : — that limited and qualified appropriation of 
 farms, of mills, of factories, of ships and the material instru- 
 ments of production is not only indispensable to anything 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 437 
 
 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 can- 
 not reform itself in time, that is perhaps the only thing that 
 could happen. The institution will of course reconstruct 
 itself rapidly again, and it may be hoped on broader founda- 
 tions 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 
 
438 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 undertakings they direct would be disastrous failures, and 
 workmen would everywhere be thrown out of employment. 
 Without the passion for accumulation which makes a capital- 
 ist 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, pro- 
 longed, 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, some- 
 times year after year, out of the accumulated savings, just 
 as if the business were still running at a profit. If there 
 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. 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 439 
 
 what is there to show that it would be managed more liber- 
 ally than the Dockyards, Government factories, of the Post 
 Office, in all of which we hear the loudest outcries of tyranny, 
 which are often said to be types of Public Sweating ? Social- 
 ism involves, in order to give it a fair chance, an entire recon- 
 struction 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 manage- 
 ment 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 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 accumu- 
 late 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. 
 
440 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 
 workmen; 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 exception, 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 whole concern is carried on 
 by a few picked capitalists, in whom a larger group of capi- 
 talists are satisfied to place implicit confidence. The con- 
 sequence is that the Bank of England, a Railway, or a Steam 
 Ship 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 em- 
 ployed on a Railway are likely to keep down their own wages 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 44I 
 
 in order to provide funds for a 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 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 successful 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 success- 
 fully 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 
 
442 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 work- 
 men), would divide amongst themselves 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 cotiira, 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 and shamelessly con- 
 sume 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, ;^5ooo per annum, when he pays in wages at 
 least ;^ 1 00,000. If the whole of his expenditure were de- 
 voted to increase wages, they would only be raised is. in 
 the pound. The workman who receives 2gs. would then 
 receive 21s. 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 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 443 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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 ac- 
 cumulation which goes on alongside of the waste. Now 
 the accumulation 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. It is 
 perhaps true that the accumulation is far too rapid, too 
 spasmodic, and often ill judged. It ought to be an accumu- 
 lation far more regular, more cautious, and more open to 
 general social aims. But it is secured. And accumulation 
 is the condition precedent of social well-being and of civilisa- 
 tion itself. But, under the Socialist scheme, all accumula- 
 tion 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 neces- 
 sary accumulation would mean what the absence of all 
 reservoirs would mean in a season of drought. Production 
 
444 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 car- 
 riages 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 accumu- 
 lated funds to provide them with costly machinery, and to 
 pay the wages during the long interval that must elapse 
 between digging up the coal in the pit and the receipt of 
 payment from the foreigner for the manufactured iron. 
 And if the workmen, 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 inevitably involves. 
 We hear little now on this side of the question; because 
 the elaborate codes for the regulation 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 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 445 
 
 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 proposals, 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 
 consuming 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 
 impracticable 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 ! 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 
 
446 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 a due measure of individual freedom. But individual 
 freedom is absolutely dependent on the free command of 
 a certain amount of individual capital. A man can now 
 devote himself 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 progress 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 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 
 t)n:anny 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 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 44^ 
 
 to the despotism of life that true Socialism involves, simply 
 because there is now hardly any [true Socialism before us. 
 But it is not the less true that Property, or personal appro- 
 priation 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 per- 
 sonal appropriation there can he 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 workman 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 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 
 accumulation on principle you must suppress all accumula- 
 tion — even ;^5 in a workman's pocket. 
 
 Thus, then, we come to the conviction that Property, 
 like Family, like Government, like the separation of pro- 
 fessions and functions, is a permanent, essential, indispensable 
 element in all civilised societies. It has been cruelly per- 
 verted and abused; it has worked an enormous amount 
 of evil; 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 
 
448 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 appro- 
 priation 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 cradle to the grave. These modes of 
 economic reform, these types of Socialism, offer no new 
 resources 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 be- 
 guiled 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 
 
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM 449 
 
 itself to that direct object, though incidentally it has done 
 much to promote it, often without intending it, and some- 
 times 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 abstraction and celestial dreams. Religion 
 has been strong enough to conquer some of the deepest 
 vices of our imperfect nature, and to stimulate the develop- 
 ment of the sublimest virtues. 
 
 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 re- 
 generate domestic life, personal 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 common- 
 wealth. But above all we need a reformed Religion — 
 
 2G 
 
450 NATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 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 regenerating 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. 
 
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