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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 ^ . '
 
 DEMOCKAOY A1TO LIBERTY 
 
 VOL. L,
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 NEW YOKE 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 1903
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 FIRST EDITION, MARCH, 1896 
 REPRINTED MAY, JUNE AND OCTOBER, 1896 
 
 SEPTEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1896 
 FEBRUARY, 1900, NOVEMBER, 1903
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I HAVE availed myself of the opportunity which the ap- 
 pearance of a New Edition gives to revise carefully this 
 book, correcting such inaccuracies as I have been able 
 to discover and, without attempting to re-write any 
 portion of it, introducing into the text or notes a few 
 lines relating to controversies which were pending at the 
 time of its original publication and mentioning salient 
 facts which have since occurred and which had a direct 
 and important bearing on the subjects I have treated. 
 The task of following in detail the later legislation on 
 those subjects in the many different legislatures of the 
 world must be left to other writers, but it is not, I 
 think, inappropriate to devote a few pages to examining 
 how far the experience of the last three years has con- 
 firmed or disproved the general principles I have laid 
 down. 
 
 In some of its most melancholy predictions this work 
 has, I fear, been but too well confirmed. A great por- 
 tion of it is devoted to describing the declining respect 
 for parliamentary government and the great difficulty 
 of reconciling this form of government with extreme 
 democracy. I have pointed out the tendency of 
 modern democratic parliaments to break up more and 
 more into small groups with the inevitable consequence 
 of enfeebling the executive ; destroying or dislocating 
 
 v 
 
 "1S2344
 
 VI INTRODUCTION 
 
 the party system; giving a disproportionate power to 
 extreme, self-seeking and skilfully organised minorities; 
 turning important branches of legislation into some- 
 thing little better than a competition of class bribery, 
 and thus lowering the tone of public life and the char- 
 acter and influence of public men. I have argued that 
 parliaments of this type are much less truly representa- 
 tive of the best elements of the nation than parliaments 
 established on a less democratic basis; that they are 
 peculiarly apt to lose the power of directing and guid- 
 ing public opinion, and that except in countries where 
 a long experience of free government has produced an 
 unusually high standard of political intelligence they 
 are very unfit to exercise uncontrolled and commanding 
 power, or to deal efficiently with the more difficult prob- 
 lems of politics. 
 
 Less than three years have passed since these views 
 were put forward, yet in that short time how many 
 illustrations of them have occurred ! Two of the noblest 
 works of statesmanship accomplished in Europe during 
 the second half of the nineteenth century were the unity 
 of Italy and the transformation and consolidation of the 
 Austrian Empire into a free and constitutional power. 
 Both of these achievements were eminently beneficial to 
 Europe and both under the influence of high suffrage 
 parliaments seemed to have been definitely and perma- 
 nently accomplished. *It is impossible to deny that the 
 events of the last years have filled the well-wishers both 
 of Italy and Austria with profound misgiving. The 
 furious and sanguinary riots almost amounting to civil 
 war that have taken place in Italian towns; the crush- 
 ing and ever-growing weight of taxation; the steady 
 growth of Italian Socialism ; and the manifest incapacity 
 of a democratic parliament to command the confidence 
 of the Italian people are signs that it is impossible to
 
 INTRODUCTION Vll 
 
 misread, while in the Austrian Empire race warfare has 
 broken out with renewed intensity, and the Parliament 
 at Vienna has presented a scene of anarchy and riot 
 which seems to make it scarcely possible that parliamen- 
 tary government on its present basis can long continue. 
 In the French Parliament there has been a similar, 
 though less prolonged, outbreak; another general elec- 
 tion has shown the incapacity of the electorate to put 
 an end to the system of small and isolated groups which 
 makes ministerial stability impossible, and public opin- 
 ion in connection with the Dreyfus case has shown ten- 
 dencies in which good observers see clearer signs of na- 
 tional decadence than in anything that has taken place 
 in France since 1870. In Germany a strong execu- 
 tive exercises much power independently of parliamen- 
 tary control, but there too another general election has 
 only accentuated that division into many groups which 
 reduces the Reich stadt to comparative impotence and 
 it has again illustrated two of the most ominous charac- 
 teristics of continental democracy, the increased and dis- 
 proportionate political power of Ultramontane Cathol- 
 icism and the steady growth of Socialism. 
 
 Other influences than pure democracy have no doubt 
 contributed to these things, but no competent judge 
 will deny that the connection is real and close, nor can 
 it be doubted that they have greatly increased through- 
 out Europe the distrust of parliamentary institutions. 
 On the other side of the Atlantic Brazil, which during 
 the period of its empire was a model of financial sol- 
 vency and integrity, has passed, as was predicted in this 
 work, and without the pressure of any foreign war, into 
 the ranks of defaulting States. 
 
 If we turn to the great English-speaking democracies, 
 we find ourselves in presence of communities long and 
 thoroughly acquainted with the habits of freedom, and
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 possessing to the highest degree the energy of character 
 and the soundness and flexibility of judgment that are 
 fitted to deal with the great problems that are before 
 them. It has never been my intention to write of them 
 in a pessimistic spirit, though I have endeavoured to 
 point out certain evils which appear to me to be grow- 
 ing, and which seem likely to lead to grave difficulties 
 and transformations in the future. There may be 
 some difference of opinion about the justice and the 
 necessity of the war which the United States has re- 
 cently waged with Spain, but there can be no question 
 that this war has furnished another conspicuous proof 
 not only of the energy and resource, but also of the 
 moderation, self-restraint and humanity of the Ameri- 
 can people. It is not improbable that the acquisition 
 of foreign territory may react powerfully upon their in- 
 ternal politics, and it has brought them face to face 
 with a problem of great interest and difficulty the pos- 
 sibility of a pure democracy, without any previous ex- 
 perience, governing successfully an alien people wholly 
 uusuited to a democratic representative system. 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied that in the internal 
 affairs of the United States some of the evils pointed out 
 in the present work have, since its publication, rather 
 increased than diminished. The admirable provisions in 
 the American constitution guaranteeing the security of 
 contracts have been indirectly menaced on the largest 
 scale by the silver party which advocates the payment of 
 all debts in a depreciated coinage. It is true that the last 
 Presidential election resulted in their defeat and showed 
 the essential soundness and integrity of American opin- 
 ion, but it is impossible to observe without misgiving 
 the ascendency which that party has obtained not only 
 in the Southern States where former slavery may have 
 depressed the moral level, but also in the Western States
 
 INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 which are likely to gain a greatly increased power in the 
 future. It is not indeed difficult to explain the fact. 
 The rate of mortgages on land which had long prevailed 
 in the Western States was so far higher than that in the 
 Eastern States that when agricultural depression came 
 payment became impossible, and insolvent farmers not 
 unnaturally grasped at the chance of extricating them- 
 selves from their difficulties, and it is certainly not sur- 
 prising that the Southern States should have resented 
 bitterly the enormous scandal and injustice of the Pen- 
 sion list, which is supported from the taxation of the 
 whole country, but from the benefits of which the States 
 inhabited by the old Confederates are excluded. 
 
 Another and very serious event has been the triumph 
 of Tammany in New York. It has .undoubtedly thrown 
 back that movement towards municipal reform which has 
 been one of the most satisfactory and one of the most 
 needed improvements in American life. It is true that 
 the contest was not solely, though it was very largely a 
 contest between corruption and municipal reform. The 
 Puritanical spirit which irritated the German population 
 by interfering with the sale of beer on Sunday introduced 
 a new and powerful element into the conflict. But 
 when all allowance for this has been made, it is impossi- 
 ble to deny the melancholy significance of an election 
 which placed the government of the greatest city in 
 America in the hands of a party with such a record of 
 gigantic, notorious, undisguised corruption. Nor, as 
 far as I can judge, have the events of the last few years 
 at all diminished the belief of the most competent 
 Americans that there has been a marked decline in the 
 character of the American senate. 
 
 In Great Britain the course of things has been some- 
 what different. Few persons who had watched English 
 politics since Mr. Gladstone dislocated the Liberal party
 
 X INTEODUCTION 
 
 on the question of Home Eule doubted that the Election 
 of 1895 would involve the Home Kule party in disaster, 
 but very few persons accurately measured the extent and 
 the duration of the disaster. It was not simply that a 
 Unionist Government came into power with a larger 
 majority than that of any other Government since 1832. 
 The Opposition which confronted it was so divided, dis- 
 integrated and discredited that it was in reality far 
 weaker than might appear from its nominal numerical 
 strength. In the three sessions that have elapsed since 
 the election, the dominant power has committed several 
 mistakes and sometimes shown much weakness, but, in 
 spite of many predictions, the unity of the party re- 
 mains unbroken and unforced, while its opponents have 
 hitherto totally failed to attain any real or even apparent 
 consolidation. There has been, indeed, scarcely any 
 organised opposition, and the whole working of party 
 government has been enfeebled by the fact. The chief 
 difficulties of the Government have been the obstruction 
 of small groups who knew that under existing conditions 
 the only possible form of efficacious opposition was the 
 waste of parliamentary time, and the difficulties of man- 
 agement and arrangement that arise out of the incapacity 
 of the front Opposition Bench to answer for the many 
 divergent groups behind them. There has been at the 
 same time a great revival of commercial prosperity, 
 accompanied by great disquiet in foreign affairs, and 
 both of these influences have contributed to turn the 
 minds of v men from internal politics. The result of all 
 this has been a period of parliamentary peace such as has 
 not existed in England since the death of Lord Palm- 
 erston and it has been strengthened by the generally 
 good relations existing between the two front benches 
 in the House. 
 
 One of its consequences has been that some of the ten-
 
 INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 dencies of Democracy which have been most dwelt on in 
 the present work have, for a time, almost disappeared. 
 The group system certainly does not now dominate in 
 English politics, for the Government have been able to 
 count upon a vast and substantially homogeneous ma- 
 jority. The pressure of the Caucus, which was such a 
 great and growing force in the Parliaments that pre- 
 ceded 1895, has manifestly diminished. No one can 
 complain in England of a feeble executive and an un- 
 stable government, and close observers of parliamentary 
 life seem agreed that one of its most characteristic re- 
 cent features has been the greatly increased power of 
 the Cabinet. Like most changes, this has been largely 
 influenced by personal character. Whatever criticism 
 may be passed on the later leadership of the House, no 
 one can question that it has been carried on with singu- 
 lar tact, and in a spirit of great courtesy and conciliation, 
 both to the Opposition at large and to the able, and for 
 the most part moderate, men who are its leaders. Mis- 
 takes have sometimes been made, by-elections have been 
 occasionally lost, ministerial measures have been severely 
 criticised on both sides of the House, but on the whole 
 the Government have been able to do almost absolutely 
 what they like, and parliament and the country have 
 acquiesced with very little protest in what they do. 
 
 If this state of things were likely to prove permanent, 
 much that is said in the present work about the ten- 
 dency of democracy to impair the stability of govern- 
 ment and the working of parliamentary institutions 
 might appear inapplicable to England. Nobody, how- 
 ever, can suppose that the present enormous dispropor- 
 tion of parties can continue, and the law which is com- 
 ing to be popularly known as the law of the pendulum 
 will continue to work. It means that in England since 
 the great lowering of the suffrage a very large body of
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 voters will vote alternately for the opposite parties, not 
 simply because they desire new lines of policy; not sim- 
 ply because they are influenced by the mistakes which 
 the existing government has committed, by the inter- 
 ests which it has injured or offended, or by the deserved 
 or undeserved misfortunes that have occurred during its 
 reign, but also because they are wholly indifferent to 
 party politics and think the turn about system the most 
 fair. The existence of a large body of voters in English 
 constituencies who vote habitually on this principle and 
 justify themselves by saying " these men have had their 
 innings, it is now the turn of the others " is clearly rec- 
 ognised by practical politicians, though such voters are 
 not common either in Scotland or Ireland. Political 
 prediction is of all things the most fallible, but the 
 strong probability appears to be that, before many years, 
 a government resting upon a small majority will be 
 again in power. Under such circumstances the disin- 
 tegration of one side of the House into a number of 
 small groups cannot fail to have a great effect on Eng- 
 lish politics. 
 
 Another fact which is very conspicuous in our present 
 parliament is the complete reconciliation of the Union- 
 ist and Conservative party with Democracy. The old 
 idea of a good Conservative government was a govern- 
 ment which systematically discouraged great organic 
 changes, and which aimed at a wise, frugal, moderate 
 and skilful administration of affairs on the existing 
 lines, remedying such minor defects in our institutions 
 as experience might disclose, but putting aside all ex- 
 periment and leaving to its opponents all measures of 
 wide and ambitious reform. The modern idea of a Con- 
 servative government which takes its origin in a great 
 degree from the policy of Disraeli in 1867 is essentially 
 different. It is to take up one by one the great demo-
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 cratic questions which seem manifestly impending and 
 to solve these questions on a broad democratic basis, 
 with such conditions as may safeguard the special in- 
 terests of which a Conservative Government is the trus- 
 tee. Democracy is accepted as an inevitable fact. The 
 fear or distrust of it which so long prevailed in Con- 
 servative ranks has in a great degree passed away. It 
 has been discovered that the Church, the Aristocracy 
 and the landed interests, if they descend into the arena 
 are fully able to hold their own in the competition for 
 popular favour, and that some of the tendencies and doc- 
 trines which are specially associated with Conservative 
 traditions are peculiarly fitted to blend with democratic 
 politics. And the result is that on questions of De- 
 mocracy there is no longer a party whose business is to 
 initiate and a party whose business is to restrain. Within 
 wide limits the two parties move on the same lines, and 
 are more like competitors in a race than adversaries in 
 the field. The old ideal of conservative policy is indeed 
 seldom likely to be realised except under a weak radical 
 government confronted and controlled by a powerful 
 opposition. Few graver experiments in democracy have 
 been made than the Irish local Government Act of the 
 last session, which has placed the whole local govern- 
 ment of a country which is profoundly disaffected to 
 British rule and which returns more than eighty Home 
 Rule members to parliament on the basis of the parlia- 
 mentary franchise. It was a measure introduced in ful- 
 filment of distinct pledges and it contains very skilful 
 provisions intended to protect existing interests. But 
 when all is said, it means a great transfer of power and 
 influence from the loyal to the disloyal and it goes in 
 the direction of democracy far beyond anything that a 
 few years ago would have been accepted either by the 
 Conservatives or by the moderate Liberals.
 
 XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 Much the same thing may be said of the Industrial 
 Legislation of the present parliament. In this respect, 
 indeed, the Tory party has changed less than its oppo- 
 nents. The Tudor regulations of industry which in 
 part survived till the present century were chiefly asso- 
 ciated with this party and it bore a larger part than its 
 opponents in the enactment of the early factory laws, 
 while the Manchester School which desired to contract 
 to the utmost the limits of Government interference 
 with industry, was long regarded as the purest type of 
 liberal orthodoxy. On both sides of the House, how- 
 ever, the policy of interfering with, regulating and pro- 
 tecting labour by legislative enactment continues with 
 an uninterrupted popularity and the Compensation for 
 Accidents Act of 1896 has in some ways gone further in 
 this direction than any preceding measure. The Em- 
 ployers' Liability Act of 1880 granted compensation to 
 all workmen who suffered from accidents due to the 
 negligence of the employer, of his superintendent or of 
 any one whose orders the workmen were bound to obey. 
 The recent Act, while leaving the workman at liberty 
 to claim his compensation if he pleases under the Act 
 of 1880, provides that in some of the most dangerous 
 employments, he has an absolute right to compensation 
 from his employer in all cases of accidents " arising out 
 of and in the course of the employment " and not due 
 to his "serious and wilful misconduct." The element 
 of negligence is altogether eliminated. It is not neces- 
 sary to show that the accident is even in the smallest 
 degree the fault of the employer or of any one in his ser- 
 vice. If, for example, an earthquake has destroyed a 
 mine and killed or wounded the miners employed in it, 
 the claim of these men or their representatives to com- 
 pensation from the employer is indefeasible. The mea- 
 sure does not apply merely to industrial employments
 
 INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 established after its enactment, but extends to those 
 which had long been established under the system of free 
 contracts, and the masters and men have only the small- 
 est power of contracting themselves out of its provisions". 
 The liberty of contracting out, for which the Conserva- 
 tive party had so strenuously contended, is indeed not 
 formally taken away, but it is only granted in cases in 
 which the chief Eegistrar of Friendly Societies has cer- 
 tified that the master has granted to the persons in his 
 employment a scheme of compensation not less favour- 
 able than that provided in the Act. The whole matter 
 is thus taken out of the domain of free contract; the 
 employer loses his power of deciding on what terms or 
 conditions he will grant employment to his workmen, 
 and by a provision which was not either in the Act of 
 1880 or in the Common law, in case of the death of the 
 employer the claim for compensation arising out of the 
 Act will stand against his estate. 
 
 It is obvious how largely such a measure extends the 
 area of State intervention in industry. By excluding 
 all consideration of negligence as the ground for com- 
 pensation, it introduces a new principle, and a principle 
 which is certain to grow. A scale of compensation is 
 laid down, but as it rests on no definite principle it is 
 always possible that it may be raised. The Act applies 
 to railways, mines, docks, factories and some other in- 
 dustries in which mechanical forces are employed, but 
 it can scarcely be questioned that it is likely to be ex- 
 tended to other industries. The measure undoubtedly 
 in the first instance confers an immense benefit on the 
 British workmen, but if the burden it imposes on native 
 industries proves excessive it must end by driving many 
 of them from employment, and its success or failure de- 
 pends mainly upon the rate at which it will be possible 
 for the employer to insure himself against the new
 
 XVI INTKODUCTION 
 
 claim a question on which it is still too early to pro- 
 nounce. It cannot, however, be doubted that this mea- 
 sure may easily lead to another and very grave extension 
 "of State obligation and responsibility. The tendency 
 of modern industry is to take more and more the form 
 of limited liability companies, and this tendency the 
 new law will certainly accelerate. If, however, some 
 great colliery accident brings down a ruinous claim for 
 compensation upon such a company, it will probably go 
 into liquidation, and a great body of workmen will be 
 deprived of their promised compensation. Can it be 
 doubted that under such circumstances the demand for 
 State Insurance will speedily arise ? 
 
 It is a significant fact that this most important mea- 
 sure was carried with the concurrence of both of the 
 great parties in the State. The representatives of men- 
 aced interests, it is true, opposed it, but the bulk of the 
 Opposition was distinctly favourable to it. Their chief 
 criticism was that it did not go far enough ; that impor- 
 tant industries and large bodies of workmen remained 
 excluded from its scope; that it retained some faint 
 shadow of the liberty of contracting out; that the credit 
 of it belonged more to their own party than to the Gov- 
 ernment. The great majority of both parties were 
 thoroughly committed by this system of legislative pro- 
 tection of workmen at the cost of the employer and under 
 such circumstances efficacious resistance was impossible. 
 One of the most prominent members of the Opposition 
 observed that it was a gratifying fact that from no sec- 
 tion of the house was the old language about grand- 
 motherly legislation interfering with the industry of 
 grown-up men any longer heard. So completely, for the 
 present, have the doctrines of the Manchester School 
 been eclipsed. Whether the report of the recent com- 
 mission alleging that there are insuperable objections to
 
 INTRODUCTION Xvil 
 
 the still larger scheme of old age pensions will lead to an 
 abandonment of that measure is a question which still 
 lies in the future. 
 
 The same uniformity of principle exists to a large ex- 
 tent on questions of finance. It is true that the present 
 government has done something to give special finan- 
 cial relief to interests which it specially represents. 
 The long period of agricultural depression has been met 
 on the Continent by duties favouring native agriculture, 
 but the free trade policy of England makes such duties 
 impossible; and in later English politics the interests of 
 the country and of agriculture have, in a large degree, 
 been sacrificed to the interests of the towns and of 
 manufactures, which tinder this legislation have at- 
 tained an unexampled prosperity. The present Govern- 
 ment has done something to mitigate this injustice by a 
 slight remodelling of taxation in favour of agriculture, 
 and it has in the same spirit given additional assistance 
 from the Consolidated fund to the Voluntary Schools 
 which are chiefly Church of England and denomina- 
 tional. These Schools are manifestly the most popular 
 and efficient in the country districts, as the Board 
 Schools are the most popular and efficient in the towns, 
 and the maintenance of the two distinct types of educa- 
 tion meets the wishes of a very large proportion of the 
 English people. As long as free education was confined 
 to the children of paupers, the Voluntary Schools, 
 though unsupported by the rates, were able without 
 much difficulty to meet the competition of the Board 
 Schools. The establishment, however, of free educa- 
 tion in the Board Schools, and the introduction into 
 them of higher standards of education and higher scales 
 of salaries, as well as the increased requirements of the 
 Education Board, had made it impossible for schools 
 which could not fall back upon the rates to withstand
 
 XV111 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the competition of rate supported schools. An addi- 
 tional grant, chiefly though not exclusively going to the 
 Voluntary Schools, gives them at least a chance of pro- 
 longed existence. 
 
 But the most important recent change in our financial 
 system continues substantially unchanged. Th ere could 
 hardly be a greater departure from what used to be 
 called orthodox political economy than the death duties 
 of Sir William Harcourt. The first principle of taxation 
 according to the older economists, is that it qught to 
 fall upon income and not upon capital. In England 
 one of the two largest direct taxes annually raised is now 
 a highly graduated tax falling directly upon capital. It 
 was introduced by a weak radical government which, 
 perceiving the impossibility of carrying any great radi- 
 cal measure through the House of Lords, selected as its 
 chief innovation a financial measure over which the 
 House of Lords had no control. The Government, 
 however, which followed was obliged to accept it. It 
 was said that it brought an enormous sum into the Ex- 
 chequer; that with the immense increase of Naval ex- 
 penditure it was impossible to dispense with such a sum; 
 that in the great probability of party governments alter- 
 nating with each general election, each government 
 must accept in its bulk the legislation of its predecessor, 
 though it may do something to modify or mitigate its 
 details. Some slight mitigations relating to works of 
 historic interest and to the jointures of Avidows have 
 been introduced and carried, but in its broad lines the 
 financial system of the former government remains. Its 
 most oppressive features are that there is no time limit, 
 so that in the not improbable event of two, three or 
 even four owners of a great property dying in rapid suc- 
 cession, the tax has the effect of absolute confiscation, 
 and that no distinction is drawn between property which
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 produces income and is easily realisable and the kinds of 
 property which produce little or no income and which 
 it is difficult or impossible to realise. The strongest 
 Government of our day has done nothing to remedy 
 these defects. It has, however, extended the principle 
 of graduation in the income tax by the partial exemp- 
 tion of incomes up to 700 a year. It has extended to 
 new classes of tenancies the Irish Land legislation which 
 is the most evident instance of confiscatory violation of 
 contract in modern legislation, thus convincing the Irish 
 people that there is no finality in the land question and 
 that no government, however powerful and however 
 Conservative, can be trusted to abstain from tampering 
 with the rights of property in Ireland ; and it has abol- 
 ished without compensation the saleable value of next 
 presentations in the Church a kind of property which 
 probably ought never to have been created, but which 
 was at least fully recognised by law. This last measure 
 was defended by arguments which would be equally ap- 
 plicable to the sale of advowsons. It will appear espe- 
 cially significant of the tendency of the times when it is 
 remembered that in Gladstone's Act disendowing the 
 Irish Church, the pecuniary value of lay Church patron- 
 age was fully recognised and its owners were amply com- 
 pensated. 
 
 It is, I think, evident from these things that the kind 
 of tendencies which it is the object of the present work 
 to criticise, are still dominant in England and that it 
 would be a great mistake to suppose that the change 
 which has taken place in the disposition of parties has 
 seriously affected them. For good or for ill they are 
 likely, for a considerable time to come, to be the regu- 
 lating influences in English politics. 
 
 Since this book was originally published, a great fig-
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 ure, closely connected with many of the subjects on 
 which I have written, has passed away. The time has 
 not yet come when the definite verdict of history can 
 be pronounced upon the work and upon the highly 
 complex character of Mr. Gladstone, but some passages 
 in this book are so little in harmony with the language 
 of indiscriminating eulogy which followed his death, 
 that a few pages on the subject can hardly be thought 
 misplaced. In some respects I believe posterity is likely 
 to underrate him. No one who judged only from his 
 published speeches could fully appreciate his extraordi- 
 nary rhetorical powers. In mere literary form those 
 speeches rank far below those of Bright or Canning, or 
 of some of the great orators of France, and the reader 
 will look in vain in them for the profound and original 
 thought, the gleams of genuine imagination, the pas- 
 sages of highly finished and perennial beauty that place 
 the speeches of Burke among the classics of the lan- 
 guage. There was, indeed, a curious contrast between 
 Gladstone and Burke. Both of them carried into po- 
 litical questions a passion seldom found among States- 
 men, and also a range and versatility of knowledge that 
 far surpassed that of their contemporaries, but Glad- 
 stone was incomparably superior to Burke in the power 
 of moving great masses of men, dominating in parlia- 
 mentary debate, catching the tone and feeling of every 
 audience he addressed, and carrying an immediate issue. 
 On the other hand the texture of his intellect was com- 
 monplace. The subtleties and ingenuities of distinction 
 in which he was inexhaustibly fertile were nearly always 
 the mere subtleties of debate. His long and involved 
 sentences and the extreme redundancy of his language 
 scarcely impaired the effect of his speeches when they 
 were set off by his clear, powerful and musical voice and 
 by his admirable skill in enunciation and emphasis, but
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to the reader they will often appear intolerably verbose. 
 He seemed sometimes to be labouring to show with how 
 many words a simple thought could be expressed or ob- 
 scured, and with few exceptions those being chiefly 011 
 finance even his most effective speeches will be seldom 
 found to carry with them any great instruction. Even 
 as an orator he was not indisputably the first. Many, 
 if not most of the best judges placed Bright in his 
 greatest speeches on a higher level, and old men like 
 Lord Eussell and Lord Brougham used to maintain that 
 in pure oratory Plunket and Canning soared to a greater 
 height than any of their successors. 
 
 But ib is not too much to say that for one great speech 
 made by Bright, Gladstone must have made fifty, and 
 he had a range and variety of rhetorical powers which 
 neither Canning nor Plunket could approach. Not a 
 little of his influence was due to physical gifts which in 
 a great orator as in a great actor count for much. Pitt, 
 Fox and Burke were painted by the best portrait paint- 
 ers that England has produced, but I much question 
 whether a stranger who saw their portraits with no 
 knowledge of the men they represented would recognise 
 in any one of them a man of pre-eminent power. No 
 one could stand before a good portrait of Gladstone 
 without feeling that he was in the presence of an ex- 
 traordinary man. Yet the greatest painter could only 
 represent one of the many moods of that ever-changing 
 and most expressive countenance. Eew men have had 
 so many faces, and the wonderful play of his features 
 contributed very largely to the effectiveness of his speak- 
 ing. It was a countenance eminently fitted to express 
 enthusiasm, pathos, profound melancholy, commanding 
 power and lofty disdain; there were moments when it 
 could take an expression of intense cunning, and it often 
 darkened into a scowl of passionate anger. In repose it
 
 XX11 INTRODUCTION 
 
 did not seem to me good. With its tightly compressed 
 lips arid fierce, abstracted gaze it seemed to express not 
 only extreme determination, but also great vindictiveness, 
 a quality, indeed, by no means wanting in his nature, 
 though it was, I think, more frequently directed against 
 classes or parties than against individuals. He had a 
 wonderful eye a bird of prey eye fierce, luminous and 
 restless. " When he differed from you," a great friend 
 and admirer of his once said to me, " there were mo- 
 ments when he would give you a glance as if he would 
 stab you to the heart." There was something, indeed, 
 in his eye in which more than one experienced judge 
 saw dangerous symptoms of possible insanity. Its pierc- 
 ing glance added greatly to his eloquence, and was, no 
 doubt, one of the chief elements of that strong per- 
 sonal magnetism which he undoubtedly possessed. Its 
 power was, I believe, partly due to a rare physical 
 peculiarity. Boehm, the sculptor, who was one of the 
 best observers of the human face I have ever known, 
 and who saw much of Gladstone and carefully studied 
 him for a bust, was convinced of this. He told me that 
 he was once present when an altercation between him 
 and a Scotch professor took place and that the latter 
 started up from the table to make an angry reply when 
 he suddenly stopped as if paralysed or fascinated by the 
 glance of Gladstone, and Boehm noticed that the pupil 
 of Gladstone's eye was visibly dilating and the eyelid 
 round the whole circle of the eye drawing back, as may 
 be seen in a bird of prey. 
 
 In conversation, as well as in public, these physical 
 gifts added greatly to his impressiveness. He spoke 
 with slow, constant emphasis, sometimes, indeed, in 
 private conversation too like a regular speech. I have 
 never known any one who by look, gesture, emphasis 
 and manner could make a sentence which was common-
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 place in thought, knowledge and even in language ap- 
 pear for a moment so impressive. 
 
 There are few kinds of eloquence which he did not 
 possess. He excelled in noble, dignified declamation 
 appealing to the loftiest motives. No English politician 
 indeed so frequently introduced into the perorations of 
 his political and even party speeches God, duty, honour, 
 justice, moral obligation, Divine guidance, and no one 
 who knows the English people will wonder that this 
 kind of speaking stirred a fibre of enthusiasm that runs 
 very deeply through the English nature. He was also 
 supremely great in what may be called ornamental or 
 decorative speaking. In the language of compliment, 
 in tributes to departed statesmen, on the occasion of 
 some great public function his speeches were almost 
 always perfect. He scarcely ever failed to strike the 
 true note and he never deviated into bad taste. He was 
 pre-eminently a gentleman, and although in public life 
 he could be in a high degree imperious, and intolerant 
 of opposition, he never descended to scurrility and very 
 seldom to personal invective, and in his language and 
 his manner he always upheld the dignity of the House 
 of Commons. In after-dinner speeches and in the kin- 
 dred forms of oratory, he was less successful. Wit, 
 humour, the- light touch, the tone of good-natured, 
 well-bred banter in which Disraeli excelled, were not 
 among his many gifts. "It is a great impediment to 
 public business," Disraeli once said, "that Mr. Glad- 
 stone cannot be made to understand a joke. " Some- 
 times, however, in his lighter speeches and often in his 
 conversation he would relate reminiscences of his early 
 years, and he could do this with an inimitable charm 
 and without the slightest tinge of egotism. 
 
 In the eloquence of elaborate statements and especially 
 in his financial statements, he had no contemporary
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 rival. The younger Pitt and also Sir Robert Peel were 
 supreme masters of the art of financial statement, but it 
 is difficult to believe that any one can have surpassed 
 Gladstone in the art of arranging great masses of com- 
 plicated facts, illuminating financial details by happy, 
 well told historical episodes and carrying his audience 
 with him through all the technicalities of a budget 
 speech. The only real criticism that could be made on 
 these speeches is that they were apt to be inordinately 
 long on one or two occasions extending to five hours. 
 It cannot be doubted that a very great part of his finan- 
 cial reputation was due not to the accuracy of his fore- 
 casts, which often proved remarkably erroneous; nor to 
 the wisdom of his financial measures, which were some- 
 times very disputable, but to the almost unsurpassed 
 rhetorical skill with which he introduced them. 
 
 He was also a debater of the very highest order. He 
 made his mark in this field from the moment when, 
 fresh from the Oxford Union, he entered the House, 
 though for many years he was not regarded as the great- 
 est. The reader will remember the emphatic language 
 in which Macau lay assigned this place to Lord Stanley, 
 and as far as we can judge there were qualities of a de- 
 bater in which Charles Fox must have surpassed all suc- 
 cessors. But in complete command of spontaneous and 
 well-chosen language, in the power of following a long 
 speech but just delivered, point by point, and argument 
 by argument; in quickness of argument; in subtlety of 
 distinction, in abundance and readiness of knowledge he 
 was unrivalled. His knowledge, though not always ac- 
 curate, was very great, but what struck men most was 
 that it seemed always available at the moment. This 
 was also one of the great gifts of Macaulay. " Other 
 men," Dean Milman once said to me, "might have a 
 larger balance at their banker's Macaulay always
 
 INTRODUCTION XXV 
 
 seemed to have his whole fortune in his breeches 
 pocket." 
 
 The same thing was eminently true of Gladstone, and 
 it was accompanied by a skill in drawing subtle distinc- 
 tions and refinements of argument which was immensely 
 useful in debate. This, which was one of the most 
 marked characteristics of his mind, was probably in 
 great degree fostered by the circumstances of his educa- 
 tion. It is said to be a specially Oxford gift, and Ox- 
 ford left its impression very deeply on his mind. It 
 never was carried to a higher point at Oxford than in 
 the early days of the Tractariau movement, and at the 
 time when Newman was its most splendid intellect. 
 Gladstone, it is true, had left Oxford just before the 
 Tractarian movement was formally started, but it rose 
 to its height during his early manhood, and in those 
 years it profoundly influenced him. Though already in 
 Parliament, he found time to write two elaborate books 
 on Church questions; his most successful speeches were 
 connected with them and he was for some years much 
 more really absorbed in theological speculation than in 
 secular politics. The early Tractarian school was a 
 great school of casuistry. The object of its leading in- 
 tellects was to maintain by subtle distinctions an unnat- 
 ural and, in truth, an untenable position; to maintain 
 in a .Church which denounced the central doctrine of 
 the Church of Rome as blasphemous and idolatrous and 
 which for more than a century had been at deadly war 
 with that Church, doctrines which on most essential 
 points were truly Roman or were only divided from Ro- 
 man doctrines by the finest shades of difference. Hence 
 the distinctions drawn between Roman and Tridentine 
 doctrines and the monstrous casuistry of Tract XC. 
 But beyond this there were deeper questions relating to 
 the foundations of belief which gave rise to a school of
 
 XXVI INTKODUCTION 
 
 thought that was elaborated with extraordinary in- 
 genuity by one of the subtlest intellects England has 
 ever produced. The object of Newman was to reconcile 
 what he believed the duty of arriving at a state of abso- 
 lute certitude in religious belief with an intellectual per- 
 ception that evidence could never lead him further than 
 probability. Those who have read his writings on this 
 subject culminating in that most remarkable product of 
 his old age " The Grammar of Assent " will appreciate 
 the extraordinary powers of refined and subtle reasoning 
 he devoted to the task. 
 
 It might seem at first sight a paradox to draw any 
 comparison between Newman and Gladstone. The one, 
 though he was essentially the leader of a great and en- 
 during movement of thought, spent all his life in a sin- 
 gle groove and most of it in profound and unambitious 
 seclusion. The other was perpetually in the arena and 
 mixed more widely, more variously and more passion- 
 ately than almost any of his contemporaries with the 
 affairs and the contentions of men. Newman also was 
 one of the great masters of English prose, while of the 
 vast library of books, essays and pamphlets that issued 
 from the pen of Gladstone, it is more than doubtful 
 whether there is any one that will be hereafter valued 
 either for the beauty of its expression or for the intrinsic 
 wisdom of its contents. But both men were by nature 
 extraordinary masters of the art of casuistry; both cul- 
 tivated their talent to the highest point, and both had 
 the characteristic temptations of that class of mind. 
 There is such a thing as an honest man with a dishon- 
 est mind. There are men who are wholly incapable of 
 wilful and deliberate untruthfulness, but who have the 
 habit of quibbling with their convictions and by skilful 
 casuistry persuading themselves that what they wish is 
 right. Newman, at a comparatively early age, passed
 
 INTRODUCTION XXvil 
 
 into the Church to which his character and intellect 
 naturally belonged, and this temptation in a great de- 
 gree ceased. Gladstone was reserved for other destinies. 
 The essentially theological cast of his mind was clearly 
 recognised by all good observers. There was no subject 
 on which he read more and wrote more and which he 
 followed with more absorbing passion, and theology was 
 the one great department of thought in which through 
 the whole of his long career his opinions remained sub- 
 stantially unchanged. To the end of his life questions 
 like Divorce and Ritualism on which politics and reli- 
 gion touched, always awoke in him a passionate interest. 
 His theology was a strongly accentuated High Church 
 Anglicanism, profoundly separated from the non- 
 Episcopal conception of Christianity, but at the same 
 time very anti-Papal, and much in sympathy with the 
 Old Catholic movement of Dollinger, and with the 
 Ritualistic school at home. It used to be said of him 
 during the Vatican Council that his interest in it was so 
 intense that he would gladly have thrown up the great- 
 est English political position if he could have made a 
 speech in the Council. And in his political reasoning 
 it is curious to notice how often the methods of the 
 theological controversialist seemed to prevail. The 
 habit of pushing to extreme logical consequences prin- 
 ciples which in some small and inconsistent way had 
 been admitted as a matter of expediency or a matter of 
 compromise into institutions the tendency to excessive 
 refinement of reasoning and excessive subtlety of dis- 
 tinction which is so apparent in controversial theology, 
 never left him. There was something strangely tortuous 
 in his methods of reasoning, whether he was writing 
 elaborate books on Church principles, or dealing with 
 Homeric problems, or discussing some great question of 
 present politics. In his published correspondence with
 
 XXV111 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce a good critic will often observe the 
 contrast between the Statesman who was naturally a theo- 
 logian and the Bishop who was naturally a statesman. 
 
 By constant practice the power of ingenious, subtle, 
 refined controversy attained in Gladstone an almost pre- 
 ternatural perfection. No one could compare with him 
 in dexterity of word-fencing and hair-splitting and in 
 the evasive subtleties of debate. He gave the impres- 
 sion that there was no question or side of a question 
 that he could not argue, no contradiction that he could 
 not explain, no conclusion, however obvious, that he 
 could not evade or refine away. Nothing was more 
 curious than to hear him make a speech on a subject on 
 which he did not wish to give an opinion. The long 
 roll of sonorous and misty sentences, each statement so 
 ingeniously qualified, each approach to precision so skil- 
 fully shaded by some calculated ambiguity of phrase, 
 speedily baffled the most attentive listener. He had 
 rhetorical devices, not, I think, of the kind that in- 
 spires confidence, which became familiar to careful stu- 
 dents of his methods. There was the sentence thrown 
 out in the midst of an argument or statement of policy, 
 of the nature of a back door enabling the speaker to re- 
 tire hereafter from his position, if it was not convenient 
 to adhere to it. There was the obscure and apparently 
 insignificant phrase, wrapped up in redundant verbiage, 
 attracting no attention and committing the speaker to 
 nothing, but yet faintly adumbrating a possible change 
 of policy, and destined to be referred to hereafter to 
 justify his consistency in taking some step which had 
 never been suspected or anticipated. There was the 
 contradiction or the statement, apparently so positive, 
 so eloquent, so indignant, that it carried away his audi- 
 ence, but when carefully examined it was found that the 
 sentences were so ingeniously constructed that they did
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 not quite cover all the assertions they appeared to con- 
 tradict or quite bind the speaker to all they appeared to 
 imply, and it was soon found that this limitation was 
 carefully intended. There was the slight change of 
 issue so skilfully managed as at first to be almost im- 
 perceptible, which turned an inconvenient debate, as it 
 were, on a new pair of rails, while masses of detail and 
 side issues were made use of to mask or perplex the 
 main question. Unexpected subtleties, distinctions of 
 interpretation without number, ingenious plausibilities 
 invented for the mere purpose of debate would, always 
 if needed, rise to the surface of his mind as fast as the 
 bubbles in a simmering cauldron as fast, and often as 
 unsubstantial too. There seldom was a speaker from 
 whose words it was so difficult to extricate a precise 
 meaning; who so constantly used language susceptible 
 of different interpretations; who so often seemed to say 
 a thing and by seeming to say it raised hopes and won 
 influence and applause without definitely binding him- 
 self to it. True eloquence is like the telescope which 
 brings vividly before us things that are remote and ob- 
 scure Gladstone could when he pleased reverse the 
 telescope and make what to ordinary apprehensions was 
 plain and near, appear dubious and dim. 
 
 It was characteristic of his mind that almost the only 
 form of eloquence in which he did not excel was the 
 plain, direct, terse and unambiguous. So great a 
 master of debate could not indeed be incapable of it, 
 but in this he had many equals or superiors. His mind 
 seemed naturally to move in curves. Bright, Cobden, 
 Eoebuck, Disraeli, Lord John Eussell, Lord Palmerston 
 different as they were in other respects, had all very 
 eminently the art of simplifying complicated questions 
 by bringing the main and central issues into clear relief. 
 Gladstone's mastery of detail was prodigious and it was
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 at once his weakness and his strength. " When I 
 speak," Bright once said, "I sail from promontory to 
 promontory. When Gladstone speaks he sails all round 
 the country and occasionally goes up a navigable river 
 and down again." His love of details and his love of 
 episodes constantly obscured in his speeches the main 
 question. He delighted in arguing on side issues and a 
 strange want of mental perspective was one of his most 
 marked defects. 
 
 Passion and casuistry seem naturally incompatible, 
 but in Gladstone they were most curiously combined. 
 No other great politician so habitually steeped his poli- 
 tics in emotion, and this was one great cause of his wide 
 popular influence. Yet in his most burning eloquence, 
 in his most impassioned appeals, the casuistic strain, the 
 skilful qualification or reservation was rarely wanting. 
 
 Nature had bestowed on him not only great mental 
 powers but also a noble voice, an impressive counte- 
 nance, an iron physical frame, and he came into the 
 House with every advantage that fortune could give. 
 The son of a very wealthy merchant and slave-owner, 
 he had the best education that Eton and Oxford could 
 furnish. He mixed from his earliest youth with the 
 governing classes of the country and had every oppor- 
 tunity of catching their tone and spirit. He was brought 
 into Parliament at twenty-three, when his mind had still 
 all its flexibility; at twenty-five he began his long official 
 training, as Junior Lord of the Treasury; a year later 
 he rose to the important office of Under Secretary for 
 the Colonies and he entered the Cabinet at thirty-three. 
 What a contrast to the long struggle with adverse cir- 
 cumstances that falls to the lot of most men of genius! 
 to the lives of Burke, or Disraeli, or Carlyle! But if 
 fortune had given him much, he improved by untiring 
 industry every opportunity. Seldom, indeed, has there
 
 INTRODUCTION XXxi 
 
 been a harder worker, and if Carlyle was right in describ- 
 ing genius as a great faculty for taking pains, this, at 
 least, cannot be denied to Gladstone. Simple, abstemi- 
 ous, irreproachable in private and domestic life, his in- 
 ordinate love of work never left him from early youth 
 to extreme old age; with the exception of Sir Cornewall 
 Lewis he was probably more learned in matters uncon- 
 nected with politics than any other Cabinet minister, 
 and no politician was more deeply versed in official work. 
 There were, it is true, wide tracts of knowledge with 
 which he had no sympathy. The whole great field of 
 modern scientific discovery seemed out of his, range. 
 An intimate friend of Faraday once described to me 
 how, when Faraday was endeavouring to explain to 
 Gladstone and several others an important new discov- 
 ery in science Gladstone's only commentary was "but, 
 after all, what use is it?" "Why, sir," replied Faraday, 
 " there is every probability that you will soon be able to 
 tax it!" Most persons who read Gladstone's contro- 
 versy with Huxley about the Mosaic cosmogony will 
 agree that he was about as remote from the scientific 
 spirit of his age as an able man could well be. Except 
 in theology his knowledge was perhaps more remarkable 
 for its wide superficies than for its profundity and those 
 who had made special studies of any one subject were 
 rather apt to be impressed by his knowledge of all 
 others. " What a wonderful man Gladstone is," Boehm 
 once said to me with his usual quiet humour, " he seems 
 to me to understand everything except art. " " What- 
 ever else Mr. Gladstone may leave a reputation by," said 
 Mr. Grote, "it will not be by what he has written on 
 Greek subjects." In this last case, however, the ad- 
 verse criticism was not elicited by want of knowledge 
 on the part of Gladstone for he was an admirable 
 classical scholar but by the perverse and most character-
 
 XXX11 INTRODUCTION 
 
 istic ingenuity with which he maintained the existence 
 in Greek Mythology of a Divine Eevelation adumbrating 
 doctrines of the Christian faith. He wrote much about 
 the ancient mythologies, but his views on this subject 
 have never, I believe, found acceptance from really com- 
 petent scholars. But on purely literary questions his taste 
 was excellent; he was a good critic, and his sympathies 
 were very wide. He had a genuine love and passion for 
 literature and he had usually some book Sister Dora 
 John Inglesant George Eliot's Life Purcell's life of 
 Manning, which seemed to have taken complete hold 
 of his nature. For some books Newman's " Dream of 
 Gerontius " was a conspicuous example his enthusiasm 
 sometimes seemed to me to approach to extravagance, 
 and he not unf requently spoke of men greatly inferior in 
 intellectual power to himself in a strain of humility which 
 it was difficult to believe was altogether sincere, though 
 it is probable that at the moment it was so. There was 
 indeed in his nature a strange mixture, or rather a 
 strange alternation of extreme humility and excessive 
 self-confidence, and each of these aspects of his charac- 
 ter was frequently apparent. In literature, as in other 
 matters, his likes and dislikes were not altogether " dry 
 light." It was curious to contrast the solemn horror 
 with which he spoke of the dangerous character of the 
 writings of Matthew Arnold who was by no means a 
 worshipper at the Gladstonian shrine with his warm 
 sympathy for another illustrious writer whose opinions 
 on theological subjects were certainly not less subversive 
 or less strongly expressed, but who happened to be one 
 of his own most devoted followers. 
 
 A great source both of his attraction and of his power 
 was his extraordinary gift of concentration. Versatility 
 of tastes never weakened, as it does with most men, the 
 strength of his will. One of the charms of his conver-
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXlil 
 
 sation was that on whatever subject he spoke to you, he 
 spoke as if it was the subject in the whole world that 
 interested him the most. He could throw off most 
 completely the thoughts, the cares, the responsibilities 
 of politics. It was said that on his Italian journeys he 
 could scarcely be induced to look at an English news- 
 paper. When he was Prime Minister, and two days 
 before the meeting of the Parliament which wrecked his 
 ministry on the Irish University question, I have heard 
 him at a little party of seven or eight persons discours- 
 ing for a whole evening on certain Cyprus antiquities 
 which were supposed to throw light on the Homeric age, 
 with such a fire and passion that a stranger might have 
 imagined that he was in the presence of some ardent 
 antiquary Avho had never come into contact with any of 
 the practical affairs of life. After the most exciting 
 debate, after a long and brilliant political speech, he 
 would turn to subjects of a totally different order with 
 a freshness and an ardour that astonished his hearers. 
 Often he would appear in a dining club where he some- 
 times found himself surrounded by political opponents, 
 and it was amusing to watch the skill with which he 
 dropped into the 16th Century, or into those early rec- 
 ollections with which he never failed to charm. But 
 when he was engaged in politics he threw his whole 
 nature with an intense and concentrated passion into its 
 dryest and most complicated details. " It seemed as if 
 the souls of all the compound householders in England 
 had entered into him," was the criticism of a good judge 
 who had heard him in one of the debates on Disraeli's 
 Reform Bill. Nearly at the same time, Sir John Kars- 
 lake, who was Disraeli's Attorney- General, spoke of the 
 extraordinary contrast between that statesman's skill in 
 dealing with main questions and his curious incapacity 
 for mastering business details. " I believe that during
 
 XXXIV INTKODUCTION 
 
 the whole of the debates, he never really understood 
 what a Compound householder is." 
 
 This power of throwing off past impressions and clos- 
 ing'the doors of his mind against painful subjects, stood 
 Gladstone in good stead. It was, no doubt, largely a 
 physical gift closely connected with his happy power 
 of profound sleep. He abandoned in the course of his 
 life almost every political opinion which, in his early 
 years, he had most passionately held, but few men seem 
 to have suffered less from the pain which usually accom- 
 panies great revolutions and transformations of opinion. 
 Nor, as far as the world could see, did the sacrifice of 
 the oldest friendships of his life through the Home Eule 
 Schism, or the ruin and misery which some parts of his 
 policy brought on great numbers ever cost him a qualm 
 of remorse. 
 
 He had, however, the extreme sensibility of a great 
 orator to the political atmosphere around him. He was 
 in this sense profoundly impressionable and profoundly 
 sympathetic, and he carried into every political cam- 
 paign an untiring energy, a sanguine and hopeful spirit 
 habitually overrating advantages and underrating diffi- 
 culties and dangers, and above all an indomitable cour- 
 age. He had every kind of courage the courage that 
 despises physical danger, which made the police precau- 
 tions that were at one time considered indispensable, 
 intolerably irksome to him the courage that never 
 feared to face a hostile audience, to lead a forlorn hope, 
 to defend a desperate cause, to assume a great weight of 
 responsibility the fatal courage which did not hesitate 
 to commit his party by his own imperious will to new 
 and untried policies. 
 
 It is not surprising that a man combining so many of 
 the elements of greatness should have been a great force 
 Mid should have filled a great space in the politics of his
 
 ' INTRODUCTION XXXV 
 
 time, and the extreme prolongation of his political life 
 added to his power. The respect for old age is one of 
 the strongest of English instincts, and it is often carried 
 so far that it will be found that men only attain their 
 maximum of influence at a time when their faculties are 
 manifestly declining. A speech which would attract no 
 notice if delivered by a man in the prime of life becomes 
 a phenomenon and therefore an influence if delivered 
 in extreme old age. More than once in his long career 
 Gladstone alienated the House of Commons by gross 
 defects of judgment and policy, but he remained to the 
 very end its most wonderful figure, and although at 
 last the nation decisively withdrew its confidence from 
 his policy and his party his personal popularity only 
 grew with age. He delighted in popularity, and in 
 this, as in all other respects, unlike that strange, silent, 
 impassive man of genius who for so many years con- 
 fronted and defied him his exuberant energies were 
 incessantly poured into every channel where it could be 
 obtained. And the pathos of his death silenced for a 
 time all criticism on his faults. 
 
 Whether, however, impartial history, which judges 
 men mainly by the net result of their lives, will ulti- 
 mately place him among the great statesmen of Eng- 
 land, seems to me very doubtful. It is well known that 
 Prince Bismarck, who was no admirer of his English 
 contemporary, was accustomed to say that the tempera- 
 ment of a rhetorician is not only different from but 
 essentially incompatible with that of a true statesman. 
 The susceptibility to every passing impression, the con- 
 stant regard to immediate issues and immediate popu- 
 larity, the habit of looking less to facts than to the pres- 
 entation of facts, seemed to him all to belong to a type 
 essentially alien to the cold, calm, sagacious judgment 
 of a real statesman, to the power he should possess of
 
 XXXVI INTKODUCTIOlSr 
 
 detaching himself from present circumstances and fore- 
 seeing, judging and influencing the future. Certain it 
 is that in some of the qualities that are most needed for 
 the wise government of men Gladstone was conspicu- 
 ously deficient. A sound, temperate, dispassionate judg- 
 ment; a due sense of the proportion of things, a real 
 knowledge of men and a power of foreseeing the future 
 were gifts in which he was wholly wanting. Few men 
 made to themselves more illusions about men and things. 
 Few men shewed in a long political life less prescience. 
 Few men had less insight into individual character or 
 less power of understanding and judging alien types of 
 national character. No prominent English statesman 
 has so fundamentally changed his convictions, has so 
 often taken courses of which his own earlier words are 
 the strongest condemnation, has combined so remark- 
 ably extreme confidence in his own infallibility with the 
 utmost instability of judgment. If the world could be 
 wisely governed by skilful rhetoric, he would have been 
 one of the greatest of statesmen. In truth no man is 
 more dangerous in a State than he who possesses in an 
 eminent degree the power of moving, dazzling and fas- 
 cinating his contemporaries, while in soundness of judg- 
 ment he ranks considerably below the average of edu- 
 cated men. 
 
 The extreme distrust both of his judgment and char- 
 acter that prevailed, even in the earlier stages of his 
 career, is very evident in the traditions and the confi- 
 dential correspondence of the time. There were few 
 more acute yet few kinder judges of men than Lord 
 Palmerston, but there was no one of whom he spoke 
 with so much dislike and distrust as Gladstone, and it 
 is remarkable how fully his sentiments were shared by a 
 man so different, and so competent as Lord Shaftesbury. 
 In the letters and diaries of this period there are con-
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXV11 
 
 stant indications of this distrust and even those who 
 were most attached to Gladstone had often much doubt 
 about his future. No one questioned his great ability, 
 his extraordinary industry, his deep and genuine piety, 
 but with all this there went a belief in the incurable 
 falseness of his judgment and in the impossibility of 
 forecasting his future. His mind seemed always on an 
 inclined plane. However much he might try to dis- 
 guise it from others and perhaps from himself by 
 professions of humility, his love of power was inordi- 
 nate, and it was displayed by his constant restlessness 
 and his fierce criticism whenever he was out of office. 
 And with this was joined an extraordinary power of self- 
 persuasion which at every period of his life was clearly 
 seen by his more intelligent contemporaries to be one of 
 his most marked characteristics. " The Right Honour- 
 able Gentleman," W. E. Forster once said of him, " can 
 persuade most men of most things. He can persuade 
 himself of almost anything." " His intellect," said his 
 old friend Dean Lake, " can persuade his conscience of 
 any thin g. " "His conscience, ' ' predicted another friend 
 in his early youth, "is so tender that he will never go 
 straight." Lowell noticed his "wonderful power of 
 improvising convictions." A witty prelate is credited 
 with the saying that though Gladstone never failed to 
 follow his conscience, it was sometimes as the man who 
 is driving a gig follows his horse. Carlyle, who, what- 
 ever else he was, was at least a very keen judge of char- 
 acter, always spoke of him with a degree of antipathy 
 which he can hardly be said to have bestowed on any 
 other of his contemporaries. He believed that his nature 
 was organically disingenuous that he was perpetually 
 "playing false with his intellect" persuading him- 
 self that what was his interest was his duty. The reader 
 will remember in Shooting Niagara a significant sen-
 
 XXXV111 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tence which to those who knew Carlyle expressed 
 much. 
 
 This power of self -persuasion is in itself no rare thing 
 in politics, 1 though Gladstone possessed it to an extraor- 
 dinary degree. Whatever may have been the case in the 
 first moment of inception, I, at least, have little doubt 
 that in the subsequent stages of his policies, he was not 
 only genuinely sincere, but also in a high state of moral 
 incandescence. But his mind was almost infinitely fer- 
 tile in producing arguments on each side of any ques- 
 tion, and it seemed as if a slight touch of will could de- 
 cide the preponderance. And it was part of his ora- 
 torical temperament that when he adopted a cause, his 
 whole moral nature speedily took fire and he was soon 
 passionately persuaded that he was acting almost or alto- 
 gether under a Divine impulse. What he willed he 
 willed very strongly, and in order to attain it he would 
 do things from which men much less largely endowed 
 with moral scruples would have shrunk. We have an 
 example of it in the following pages in the manner in 
 which, in 1874, he made use of a promise to abolish the 
 income tax as an election cry to win the income tax 
 payers to his side. We have others in his conduct when 
 the House of Lords rejected his Bill for the abolition of 
 purchase in the army and delayed the repeal of the 
 paper duty. A Court of Appeal had been created by 
 Parliament to which it was expressly provided that 
 
 '"On les accuse sou vent victions passageres suivant leurs 
 
 d'agir sans conviction ; mon passions et leurs interests du 
 
 experience m'a montre que cela moment, et ils arrivent ainsi 
 
 etait bien moins frequent qu'on a faire assez honneternent des 
 
 ne 1'imagine. Ils possedent choses assez peu honnetes." 
 
 seulement la faculte precieuse Tocqueville. Souvenirs, p. 124- 
 
 et ineme quelquefois necessaire 125. 
 en politique de se creer des con.
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXIX 
 
 judges only should be eligible. Gladstone wished to 
 appoint his Attorney- General, who was not a Judge, 
 and he accordingly promoted him for two days to the 
 Bench in order that he should qualify for the post. He 
 acted in a very similar manner when he wished to ap- 
 point a clergyman who was a member of one University 
 to a living which was restricted by law to members of 
 another. Cases of this kind, though they were very sig- 
 nificant were not very important, but in his later Irish 
 policy he shewed only too conclusively how easily he 
 could cast contracts, pledges, promises, consistency and 
 scruples to the wind. 
 
 It was long extremely doubtful on which side his 
 great moral and intellectual gifts would finally be en- 
 listed. The Peelites hung ambiguously between the 
 two parties. Gladstone has written and spoken both 
 with the bitterest hostility and with the warmest eulogy 
 of Lord Palmerston, 1 though on the whole the note of 
 dislike was unquestionably the strongest. Sir Eobert 
 Peel and Lord Aberdeen were the two statesmen with 
 whom he had real sympathy, and they were the states- 
 men under whom his official life till his fiftieth year had 
 been almost wholly passed. With the exception of about 
 three weeks after the fall of Lord Aberdeen when he con- 
 sented, with extreme reluctance,' to hold his former 
 office of Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord 
 Palmerston he had never served under a Whig leader. 
 When he seceded from this government he at once passed 
 into the most embittered opposition ; 3 he took part in 
 the coalition which defeated Lord Palmerston on the 
 
 1 See the passages collected a Greville Memoirs, vii. 239- 
 
 by Mr. Jennings in his very 243. 
 
 remarkable book on Mr. Glad- 3 "Gladstone seems to have 
 
 stone and by Mr. George Russell been so inflamed by spite and 
 
 in his life of Gladstone. ill humour that all prudence and
 
 xi INTRODUCTION 
 
 quarrel with China in March, 1857, and in the coalition 
 which a year later drove Lord Palmerston from office on 
 the pretext that by introducing his bill to amend the 
 law of conspiracy to murder he showed himself unduly 
 subservient to French dictation. In an article in the 
 Quarterly Review he exulted in no generous spirit on 
 what he deemed his irretrievable fall. Like all the 
 Peelites he was an earnest free trader but free trade had 
 now ceased to be a dividing line between the two parties 
 and up to the end of 1858 his speeches and his writings 
 had on the whole leant much more to the side of the 
 Conservatives than to the side of the Liberals. He was 
 member for the University of Oxford which was an 
 intensely Tory constituency. He remained a member 
 of the Carl ton Club the representative club of the Tory 
 party till 1859. He was not really pledged or com- 
 mitted to either side; he had more than once shown his 
 independence, and he was much distrusted and disliked 
 in the Conservative party, 1 but it was evident that he 
 still retained his strong conservative instincts, especially 
 on the side of the Church. In the opinion of some of 
 the most sagacious judges, during several years of the 
 fifties his great ambition was to become the Conservative 
 leader, and rightly or wrongly they believed that the 
 real obstacle to his joining the Conservatives was that 
 the leadership of the party in the House of Commons 
 was not vacant, but was in the hands of Disraeli, who 
 was too strong to be displaced or controlled. The posi- 
 tion of Disraeli in Lord Derby's Government of 1858 is 
 the one plausible reason that can be assigned why Glad- 
 stone refused the offer of Lord Derby to join that Gov- 
 
 discretion forsook him; he ap- set the Government." Jb. vol. 
 
 pears ready to say and do any- viii., p. 94. 
 thing and to act with everybody ' Ib. p. 70-71, 95-6. See too 
 
 if he can only contribute to up- Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs.
 
 INTRODUCTION xli 
 
 ernment. He accepted, however, from Lord .Derby the 
 post of High Commissioner to the Ionian Isles, and 
 he voted with the Conservative Government on the mo- 
 tion of want of confidence which destroyed that Govern- 
 ment in the summer of 1859. But when contrary to his 
 expectation Lord Palmerston once more rose to power 
 at the head of the Liberal party, and offered him the 
 Chancellorship of the Exchequer, he accepted the office * 
 and this step decided his course. He had not, it is 
 true, the smallest real sympathy with his chief. The 
 two men were utterly dissimilar in character and ten- 
 dencies. Lord Palmerston complained that Gladstone 
 never acted to him like a faithful colleague, and he 
 found him a constant opponent in the Cabinet. But 
 Palmerston though still in the height of his popularity 
 was now a very old man. Lord John Russell was nearly 
 seventy and he soon passed into the House of Lords. 
 By joining the Liberal Ministry Gladstone secured to 
 himself a speedy reversion of the leadership of the 
 House and it became certain that he would soon succeed 
 as leader of the party. In spite of his tory antecedents 
 it was not likely that he would long maintain the mod- 
 erate and conservative Liberalism of Lord Palmerston. 
 Having once decisively thrown in his lot with the 
 Liberal party it was fully in accordance with his nature 
 that he should gravitate steadily and with strong con- 
 viction towards its more earnest, more active and more 
 radical wing. From this time his advance in the direc- 
 tion of democracy greatly stimulated, as Lord Palmer- 
 ston had predicted would be the case, by his ejection 
 from Oxford was continuous. 
 
 If we attempt to estimate what he accomplished dur- 
 
 1 It appears that he expressed offered, at once gave way to 
 a desire lor it, and SirC. Lewis, him. Lewis' Letters, p. 372. 
 to whom it had originally been
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing his long political life we shall at once see that he 
 belongs to a wholly different category of statesmanship 
 from his illustrious contemporaries Cavour and Bis- 
 marck. The unity of Italy and the unity of Germany 
 will stand out to the end of time among the chief land- 
 marks of 19th Century history, and the names of 
 these two great statesmen will live for ever in connec- 
 tion with them. There was no such work to be accom- 
 plished in England, and Gladstone's most fervent ad- 
 mirers will hardly place his reputation on his excursions 
 into foreign politics and international affairs. These 
 are fields which cannot be governed or largely influenced 
 by mere persuasive words. Two things may be truly 
 said. He had a real and lifelong hatred of acts of 
 cruelty and wrong. This was shown alike in his early 
 denunciations of the tyranny at Naples and in his last 
 passionate outbursts about the Armenian Massacres. It 
 is also true that although he was a leading minister in 
 the Government which made the Crimean War, and 
 although he was directly or indirectly responsible for 
 much bloodshed in other lands, he had a deep, genuine 
 love of peace. As he once happily said to a French 
 friend he did not like " les gloires saignantes." One of 
 his most contested acts was his surrender of the Trans- 
 vaal after the defeat of a British force at Majuba Hill 
 and at a time when that defeat could have been easily 
 repaired. Whatever judgment may be formed of its 
 wisdom, this act can have been inspired by no motive 
 other than a sincere sense of duty, and it needed in a 
 British Statesman much more real courage than a con- 
 tinuation of the War. In the same spirit in order to 
 induce the Americans to consent to submit the question 
 of the Alabama Claims to arbitration and thus to close 
 a long standing dispute, he consented to make prelim- 
 inary concessions about the terms of the arbitration
 
 INTRODUCTION xliii 
 
 which were exceedingly and manifestly disadvantageous 
 to England and to which neither Lord Derby nor Lord 
 John Eussell would consent. At the same time, his 
 vacillation and inconsistency during the Crimean war 
 and in his policy in Egypt and in the Soudan; his com- 
 plete misconception of the Civil War in America and 
 the indiscretion with which he expressed it; the total 
 failure of his negociation with the Ionian Isles; the 
 absolutely unrestrained violence of his utterances on 
 Eastern questions and the indiscriminate and almost 
 hysterical fury with which he assailed every act of Lord 
 Beaconsfield in foreign, Colonial and Indian affairs, 
 entirely regardless of the effects of his language upon 
 national interests, convinced all good judges both at 
 home and abroad that he was utterly without the 
 qualities of a foreign minister. 
 
 Fortunately when he was in office he had very com- 
 petent foreign ministers at his side, but his own inroads 
 into thifr department were always watched with alarm. 
 There are few more humiliating incidents in modern 
 English politics than his furious attack on Austria in 
 the campaign which he directed against Lord Beacons- 
 field in 1880 followed by his almost abject apology to 
 the Austrian Ambassador as soon as that campaign had 
 proved successful and he found himself in the responsi- 
 bility of office. I do not think that any candid histo- 
 rian can acquit him of having when in opposition made 
 large use of foreign complications for party purposes, 
 and greatly aggravated the difficulties of English foreign 
 policy by the recklessness of his language. He seems to 
 have known curiously little of foreign countries, and he 
 sometimes drew pictures of the virtues of semi-barba- 
 rous tribes and of the philanthropy of not too disinter- 
 ested governments which filled diplomatists and foreign 
 statesmen with amazement. He witnessed with well-
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 deserved disapprobation the gigantic spread of militar- 
 ism ou the Continent, but he appears to have been 
 wholly blind to the necessity of- making a proportionate 
 increase of the defensive forces of the Empire. It was 
 always his object to reduce them to the lowest possible 
 point and for several years they sank far below what 
 was necessary for security. It was long his custom to 
 make a simple comparison between the aggregate ex- 
 penditure of different ministries a leading topic of his 
 party speeches, and as corrupt expenditure in England 
 had almost wholly ceased the only practical field for large 
 retrenchment lay in the army and the navy. It thus 
 became a strong party interest on both sides to reduce 
 the defences of the nation at a time when the armaments 
 of all great foreign powers were being enormously in- 
 creased ; when the necessary expense of the navy through 
 new inventions, was advancing with gigantic strides; 
 and when the rapidity of wars and the decisive rapidity 
 of steam made it the vital interest of every nation to be 
 so prepared as to be invulnerable in the first weeks of a 
 war. 
 
 Fortunately for the Empire he had colleagues who 
 realised the danger of such a policy and insisted on great 
 augmentations of the navy, but Gladstone never seems 
 to have seen the necessity, and to the last he deplored 
 the increasing expenditure as a kind of mania. The 
 Imperial sentiment which takes a pride in the power and 
 influence and greatness of the Empire was almost wholly 
 wanting in his nature and amid all the changes of his 
 opinions he never seems to have abandoned the old doc- 
 trine of the Manchester school about the uselessness of 
 Colonies. 
 
 As a Financial Minister he will rank far more highly 
 though, as l' have said, a great part of his reputation is 
 due to the extraordinary eloquence he introduced into a
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 department which is naturally much more akin to the 
 business of a merchant's counting house than to oratori- 
 cal display. It cannot, however, be reasonably denied 
 that he carried out the policy initiated by Sir Eobert 
 Peel of revising the whole system of our tariffs on the 
 basis of free trade with extraordinary skill, industry and 
 success. No one was more completely master of all the 
 details of a highly complicated system of finance and 
 many of his reductions and abolitions of duties had social 
 effects of much importance. He abolished during his 
 ministries a large number of injudicious and burden- 
 some taxes, and no minister ever maintained more 
 strenuously the duty of maintaining a proper balance 
 between revenue and expenditure; of making great sacri- 
 fices to meet each year's expenditure out of that year's 
 revenue. In a good many instances, it is true, his 
 financial estimates and predictions were falsified by the 
 event. There have always been very considerable 
 financiers who have doubted whether it was a really wise 
 policy to concentrate all indirect taxation on an extremely 
 small number of articles. The extension of the Income 
 Tax to Ireland and the raising of the spirit duties at a 
 time when that country was but just recovering from 
 the ruinous effects of the great famine, and when its 
 property was crushed by the new poor law, had the 
 effect of imposing on the poorest part of the Empire a 
 wholly disproportionate amount of taxation, in flagrant 
 opposition to the spirit of the Union, which was 
 intended in the words of Lord Castlereagh, to give Ire- 
 land "the utmost possible security that she cannot be 
 taxed beyond the measure of her comparative ability 
 and that the ratio of 'her contribution must ever cor- 
 respond with her relative wealth and prosperity." Nor 
 did Gladstone contribute largely to those grants from 
 Imperial funds to Irish purposes, which have of late
 
 xlvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 years done much to mitigate the grievance. But look- 
 ing at it as a whole, his financial legislation was a great 
 and beneficial work and it is, I believe, upon it that his 
 reputation for statesmanship will chiefly rest. The 
 extension of the succession duty to real and settled 
 property, throwing a larger proportion of taxation upon 
 laud, was neither unjust nor excessive; except in cases 
 where the exigencies of his later Irish policy reversed 
 all his earlier opinions, he had sound views about 
 economy, self-reliance, freedom of contract, equality of 
 taxation, and he had a genuine dislike to Socialistic or 
 semi- Socialistic tendencies. 
 
 Whether as Prime Minister, even in the period that 
 preceded the disruption of 1886, he was equally great 
 may be much doubted. He was, it is true, a command- 
 ing minister, exacting and obtaining great submission in 
 his cabinet and his party, exercising a strong and con- 
 stant control over all departments and mastering with 
 indefatigable industry the details of every measure, and 
 his great ministry which extended from December 1868 
 to February 1874, though it ended by alienating a House 
 of Commons in which he had an overwhelming majority, 
 and by a crushing defeat in the country, was at least 
 marked by extraordinary activity and by a rich harvest 
 of important legislation. It was this Ministry which 
 introduced the ballot into our parliamentary elections; 
 abolished in defiance of the vote of the House of Lords, 
 and by a high-handed and arbitrary exercise of the powers 
 of the Crown the system of purchase in the army and 
 swept away those university tests of which Gladstone 
 had once been the most fervent defender. The credit 
 of the Education Act, which is its most really valuable 
 measure, belongs to Forster, but the disestablishment 
 and disendowment of the Irish Church and the Irish 
 Land Bill of 1870, as well as the abortive measure for
 
 INTRODUCTION xlvii 
 
 the establishment of a Catholic University in Ireland 
 were all introduced by Gladstone himself and they were 
 mainly his work. 
 
 It was a strange irony of fate that the author of the 
 treatises on " the State and Church " and on " Church 
 Principles" which were among the most extreme and 
 elaborate defences of Church Establishments the states- 
 man who was distinguished beyond all others for his 
 love of Churches and theologies and who had once rep- 
 resented the defence of the Irish Church Establishment 
 as one of the highest of religious duties ' should have 
 been the man to destroy that Church. In truth, how- 
 ever, his act was less inconsistent than was alleged. His 
 defence of the Irish Church had been chiefly based on 
 the old tory theory of the necessary connection between 
 Church and State which regards it as the duty of the 
 State to endow invariably and exclusively the Church 
 which is true, and this theory had long since been given 
 up. As early as 1845 Gladstone had resigned his seat 
 in the Cabinet because in opposition to this theory Sir 
 Eobert Peel had increased the Maynooth grant, but 
 having made this very real and considerable sacrifice to 
 consistency he recognised the necessity of abandoning 
 the theory, by himself voting as a private member in 
 favour of the grant. In the March of 1865, when a 
 Eadical member brought in a resolution condemnatory 
 of the Irish Church, Gladstone, who was then Chancel- 
 
 1 " Upon us of this day has stone's State and Church (4th 
 
 fallen (and we shrink not from ed.), ii. .p. 13. Disraeli in 1868 
 
 it, but welcome it as a high and said with little exaggeration 
 
 glorious though an" arduous that Gladstone had held power 
 
 duty) the defence of the Re- for a quarter of a century and 
 
 formed Catholic Church in Ire- "had never done anything for 
 
 land.* as the religious establish- Ireland, but make speeches in 
 
 meat of the country." Glad- favour of the Irish Church."
 
 xlviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 lor of the Exchequer under Lord Palmerston, made a 
 speech which was profoundly significant. He refused 
 to vote for the Resolution, but only on the ground that 
 it would pledge the Government to a course it was not 
 in their power to follow. He' said that the Irish Church 
 was in a false and unsatisfactory position and minis- 
 tered to only one-eighth or one-ninth of the whole com- 
 munity; and he spoke of tythes as national property 
 which should be dealt with for the advantage of the 
 whole community. His opponents clearly saw that he 
 no longer believed in the justice of maintaining the Irish 
 Church and that his mind was moving in the direction 
 of disestablishment; and when he was challenged with 
 this he neither affirmed nor denied it, but replied that 
 the question was " remote and apparently out of all bear- 
 ing on the practical politics of the day; " that there was 
 " a broad distinction between the abstract and the prac- 
 tical views of the subject " and that he scarcely expected 
 to be ever called upon to take part in any measure deal- 
 ing with the Irish Church. 
 
 The strongly Evangelical character of that Church 
 made it very unsympathetic to him and several succes- 
 sive events pushed the question of its disestablishment 
 into the foreground. In 1865 he lost his seat for the 
 University of Oxford. The death of Lord Palmerston 
 speedily followed and it removed a great restraining in- 
 fluence. The battle of the Eef orm Bill had been fought, 
 and by an extremely skilful but extremely unscrupulous 
 policy Disraeli had succeeded in carrying the eminently 
 democratic Kef orm Bill of 1867; by doing so, he took 
 the question of Parliamentary Reform out of the hands 
 of the Liberal party and seemed likely for some time to 
 be in power, and the withdrawal of Lord Derby in Feb- 
 ruary 1868 placed him in the coveted post of Prime Min- 
 ister. Of all living men it may be said with confidence
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Disraeli was the man whom Gladstone most detested, 
 and the majority in Parliament was Liberal, though it 
 had been profoundly divided by the question of Eeform. 
 Ii it was to be united some new cry must be found. 
 Disraeli had barely become Prime Minister when his 
 rival declared that we owed Ireland a debt of justice 
 and that the Irish Church as a State Church must cease 
 to exist. "In the name of truth and light," he said, 
 " we shall go forward. The hour is come Justice de- 
 layed is justice denied." 
 
 " It is a bad business," wrote his enthusiastic admirer, 
 Bishop Wilberforce, "and I am afraid Gladstone has 
 been drawn into it from the unconscious influence of his 
 restlessness at being out of office. I have no doubt that 
 his hatred to the low tone of the Irish branch has had a 
 great deal to do with it." Disraeli observed with quiet 
 sarcasm that he was indeed the most unfortunate of 
 ministers, for he had no sooner become Prime Minister 
 than an Irish grievance which had lasted for seven cen- 
 turies became suddenly intolerable. Gladstone, however, 
 placed the question upon the very highest plane of re- 
 ligious duty and the superb eloquence with which, in 
 accents of the most passionate conviction, he enforced 
 this duty electrified the country. It was a tone utterly 
 unlike that of mere secular minded politicians. Unfor- 
 tunately when he was asked why it was that a question 
 which in 1865 he pronounced outside practical politics 
 had become one of the most urgent necessity in 1868, he 
 gave as his reason the Fenian attempt to blow up the 
 Clerkenwell Jail and the shooting of a policeman on the 
 occasion of the rescue of Fenian prisoners in Manches- 
 ter. These things, he said, called the attention of Eng- 
 lish public opinion to Irish grievances and brought the 
 Irish Church question into the range of practical poli- 
 tics. In the then existing condition of Ireland it would
 
 1 INTRODUCTION 
 
 have been difficult for a responsible politician to have 
 used language more dangerous or indeed more culpable. 
 It was a direct, powerful and rnost efficacious encour- 
 agement to the conspirators in America, who hoped by 
 successive dynamite outrages to wring Home Kule and 
 Separation from England. 
 
 Considered, however, as a party measure if we may 
 be permitted to regard it in this light the Irish Church 
 policy *was a brilliant success. It gave Gladstone a 
 speedy victory in the House of Commons and the disso- 
 lution that followed on the question gave him an enor- 
 mous majority. He carried the measure through all its 
 stages with a splendour of eloquence and a mastery of 
 details which astonished and delighted his hearers, and 
 also, it must be added, with a manifest desire to protect 
 existing interests and to injure as little as possible the 
 Church which he disendowed. To Irishmen it was 
 not surprising that the measure utterly failed to pro- 
 duce the pacification which English Statesmen pre- 
 dicted. Since the tithes had been commuted into a 
 land tax paid by the landlord class, the hostility to the 
 Church had almost wholly gone down and the question 
 excited little interest. If it had been made the occasion 
 of a large system of concurrent endowment involving 
 the partial payment of the priests, the result might have 
 been different, and it would have attained an object 
 which a long succession of the wisest English statesmen 
 had desired. Perhaps even at this late period and for 
 the last time in Irish history it would have been possible 
 for a minister of commanding power to have carried 
 such a measure 'in spite of its unpopularity with British 
 Nonconformists. But it would have needed a disinter- 
 ested as well as a strong statesman who was prepared for 
 such an object to risk or sacrifice much party influence. 
 
 I have already in this book expressed my opinion of
 
 INTRODUCTION li 
 
 the Land Act of 1870, and of the other agrarian meas- 
 ures of Gladstone, and I do not propose to enter at 
 length into the later phases of his Irish policy. The 
 Ministry which began in 1880, when having emerged 
 from his temporary retirement he rode back to power 
 on the Eastern question, was marked, among other 
 things, by the reduction of the franchise in the agricul- 
 tural districts which was another great stride in the 
 direction of Democracy, but the troubles in Egypt and 
 the fierce anarchy in Ireland, which was rather increased 
 than diminished by the Land Act of 1881, threw all 
 other questions into the shade. The Ministry fell in 
 the summer of 1885, and the dissolution at the end of 
 that year and the events that immediately followed are 
 among the most memorable in English party history. 
 On the opinion which is formed of the conduct of Glad- 
 stone during that period, the ultimate verdict of history 
 on his character will largely depend. As is well known, 
 he went to that election with an urgent appeal to the 
 country to return a Liberal majority sufficiently strong 
 to make him independent of the Conservatives and Par- 
 nellites combined. At this time neither his party, nor 
 the country, nor such intimate colleagues as Bright, 
 Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain ever doubted 
 that he was a convinced and determined opponent of 
 Home Eule and at the election the whole body of the 
 Irish Nationalists voted against the Liberals. The re- 
 sult of the election was that although the Liberals were 
 more numerous than the Conservatives, the English 
 parties were so closely balanced, that if they remained 
 unchanged and in their old attitude of hostility it was 
 in the full power of the Irish Nationalists to determine 
 which party should govern the country. Within a few 
 weeks of the election Gladstone declared himself a Home 
 Ruler, and resolved to place the government of Ireland
 
 Jii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in the bauds of the men he had so long and so vehe- 
 mently denounced as apostles of public plunder and 
 inveterate enemies of the Empire. 
 
 If be believed, as he probably did, that he could carry 
 his party with him in this entirely unexpected change, 
 it was a strong proof of his confidence in the strength 
 of party discipline and in the overwhelming influence 
 of his own great personality. If he had succeeded he 
 would have obtained by the assistance of his new allies 
 such a majority that, for a time at least, the destinies 
 of the Empire would have been in his hands. Tbe 
 secession of a great body of the most respected Liberals, 
 under the guidance of Bright, Chamberlain, Lord Derby, 
 the Duke of Argyle and Lord Hartington, defeated his 
 hopes. An amendment on the address brought Glad- 
 stone into office when Parliament reassembled in Jan- 
 uary, 1886, but in April his Home Rule Bill was in- 
 troduced, in June it was defeated, and in the dissolution 
 that immediately followed the country, by a majority of 
 more than 100 ratified its condemnation. 
 
 From this time he was the most passionate of Home 
 Rulers. Once more, in 1893, he obtained, by the assist- 
 ance of the Irish vote, a short period of precarious power 
 and made one more effort to carry his new policy into 
 effect. But the wand of the enchanter was at last 
 broken. A government which depended for its small 
 majority on the Irish vote had no power to coerce the 
 House of Lords into accepting the Bill, and in 1894 he 
 finally abandoned the House. He left that great Party 
 which he had found so powerful and which had trusted 
 him so largely, mutilated, dislocated and discredited, 
 and the whole working of party government in Eng- 
 land, in consequence, impaired. 
 
 Yet in spite of all defects and inconsistency he re- 
 mained to the last a great personality in English poli-
 
 INTRODUCTION Hii 
 
 tics, and the belief in him and the admiration for him 
 among vast masses of his countrymen never seriously 
 diminished. His splendid gifts, his long services, his 
 indefatigable energy, his deep if somewhat ostentatious 
 piety, captivated the English mind and he who began 
 his political life as " the hope of the unbending tories " 
 closed it as the greatest and most representative figure in 
 the democratic movement. The democratic transforma- 
 tion of English politics is not, it is true, due to any one 
 statesman or one party. Some of its most powerful 
 causes lie altogether outside the range of Parliamentary 
 politics and most of what Gladstone did in this field 
 would have been done if he had never lived ; but the 
 ballot, the lowering of the suffrage, the establishment 
 of a cheap press, the abolition of compulsory Church 
 rates and of purchase in the army, the foundation of a 
 broad system of national Education are all closely asso- 
 ciated with him ; his repeal of the duties on many arti- 
 cles of first necessity had been a real boon to the suffer- 
 ing poor, and he was the first English minister who was 
 accustomed, on a large scale, to bring his policy in 
 great meetings directly upon the people. He was one 
 of the greatest of platform speakers. He completely 
 discarded the old tradition that a leading minister or 
 ex-minister should confine himself almost exclusively to 
 Parliamentary utterances and should only on rare occa- 
 sions address the public outside. He delighted in plac- 
 ing himself in touch with the masses of his fellow-coun- 
 trymen. He flew from platform to platform with an 
 almost dazzling rapidity, pouring out to vast audiences 
 empassioned appeals which seldom failed in their effect 
 on those whom he addressed, which added enormously 
 to the depth and area of his own personal popularity 
 and which on one or two occasions materially modified 
 the course of national opinion. He had an extraordi-
 
 liy INTRODUCTION 
 
 nary influence over that large and growing class in 
 whose politics sentiment, impulse, enthusiasms and ad- 
 mirations play a greater part than serious reasoning and 
 sober calculations; and his figure gradually assumed 
 almost mythical proportions in the popular imagination. 
 An excessive love and admiration of rhetoric is one of 
 the diseases to which democratic communities are most 
 liable, and few men have done more to stimulate it or 
 have more largely profited by it than Gladstone. 
 
 The strongest characters are seldom wholly proof 
 against the intoxicating influence of the constant and 
 enthusiastic applause of vast multitudes, and Gladstone, 
 if he was in one sense one of the strongest, was also one 
 of the most impulsive and impressionable of men. The 
 Demagogue in his nature steadily grew. The old con- 
 scientious scrupulosity with which he had once weighed 
 his words manifestly declined. His later speeches con- 
 tain lamentable attempts to create class warfare by set- 
 ting the "masses" against the "classes"; attempts to 
 kindle separatist feelings and to revive old discontents 
 not only in Ireland, but in Scotland and Wales; scanda- 
 lous palliations of the hideous crimes which were being 
 perpetrated in Ireland and which had been largely in- 
 stigated by men who were now his allies. His confi- 
 dence in himself was unbounded, and his determination 
 to subordinate all other considerations to his Home Kule 
 policy only too apparent. He lived in his latter years 
 in an unhealthy atmosphere of constant publicity. His 
 simplest movements were daily chronicled as in a kind 
 of Court Circular. Excursion trains brought crowds to 
 visit his house and even to hear him read the lessons in 
 his Church. The trees which he amused himself by 
 cutting down became an object of eager desire, and a 
 somewhat grotesque relic worship grew up. It was car- 
 ried to such a point that a printed circular was issued
 
 INTRODUCTION Iv 
 
 at Hawarden, stating that in consequence of the appli- 
 cations from all parts of the country requesting chips 
 from trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, " it has been found 
 necessary to make in all cases a uniform charge for the 
 wood referred to namely Is. 6d. for a small log and 3s. 
 per cubic foot, exclusively of railway carriage." The 
 newspapers solemnly chronicled the dimensions of the 
 trees that were felled and the names of the guests who 
 were present. He was consulted on all subjects and his 
 letters and post cards filled the newspapers. He was 
 treated as a kind, of advertisement agent, men of the 
 most various kinds who wished to push themselves and 
 their wares writing to him and printing his replies. He 
 lent himself too readily to all this and his name was 
 kept daily, incessantly, obtrusively before the public. 
 
 His versatility of tastes and interests and his amazing 
 industry continued almost to the last, and when his 
 voice failed him his pen was still active. Few professed 
 authors have written more or more variously. Pam- 
 phlets on Ritualism, on Vaticanism, on Bulgarian Atroci- 
 ties elaborate books in defence of the Christian relig- 
 ion, a metrical translation of Horace, countless articles 
 of the most miscellaneous character followed each other 
 in swift succession. Mere expression, whether in writ- 
 ing or speaking seems to have cost him nothing, and it 
 was characteristic of him that the book which he called 
 his " Gleanings " extended to some seven or eight vol- 
 
 'Times, Oct. 17, 1887. Sir raarck if he had any message 
 
 William Richmond, who has to send to his English colleague, 
 
 painted both Bismarck and "Tell him," was the reply, 
 
 Gladstone, was once visiting "that I find my pleasure in 
 
 the former in his country house planting. He finds his in cut- 
 
 and found him deeply interested ting down." It was certainly 
 
 in forestry. In the course of not of trees alone that the great 
 
 the conversation he asked Bis- German statesman was thinking.
 
 Ivi INTRODUCTION 
 
 urnes. Considering the life he led the literary produc- 
 tion of his last years is truly wonderful, though it shews 
 a kind of intellect that was much more wonderful in 
 quantity than in quality. Perhaps the nearest modern 
 parallel to his many-sided activity and to his astonish- 
 ing copiousness of expression is to be found in Henry 
 Brougham, who was once deemed the most extraordi- 
 nary of Englishmen, though he is now little more than 
 a name. 
 
 It was happy for his reputation that there were a few 
 quiet years between his retirement from party politics 
 and the end. They added to his old age a dignity which 
 had been sadly wanting. Animosities went down. Men 
 had time to forget much, and infirmities and sufferings 
 borne with a touching humility and resignation gave a 
 deep pathos to the closing scene. It is not too much to 
 say that no Englishman of the generation was followed 
 to the grave by such an outburst of popular emotion or 
 by so many expressions of unqualified and extravagant 
 admiration. 
 
 Time alone places men and things in their true per- 
 spective and it is only when the papers of those who 
 had worked with him most closely in public life have 
 been published that his career can be fully judged. 
 That his place in History will be a very different one 
 from that which his recent eulogists have assigned him I, 
 at least, believe. But with all his strength and weak- 
 ness he will long be remembered as one of the most 
 prominent and interesting figures of the 19th century 
 and his name will be indissolubly associated with some 
 of the democratic tendencies which it is the object of 
 this book to describe. 
 
 October, 1898.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 MANY years ago, when I was deeply immersed in the 
 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, I re- 
 member being struck by a saying of my old and illus- 
 trious friend, Mr. W. R. Greg, that he could not 
 understand the state of mind of a man who, when so 
 many questions of burning and absorbing interest were 
 rising around him, could devote the best years of his 
 life to the study of a vanished past. I do not think 
 the course I was then taking is incapable of defence. 
 The history of the past is not without its uses in 
 elucidating the politics of the present , and in an age 
 and country in which politicians and reformers are 
 abundantly numerous, it is not undesirable that a few 
 men should persistently remain outside the arena. 
 But the study of a period of history as recent as that 
 with which I was occupied certainly does not tend to 
 diminish political interests, and a writer may be par- 
 doned if he believes that it brings with it kinds of 
 knowledge and methods of reasoning that may be of 
 some use in the discussion of contemporary questions. 
 
 The present work deals with a large number of these 
 questions, some of them lying in the very centre of 
 party controversies. I had intended to introduce it 
 with a few remarks on the advantage of such topics 
 being occasionally discussed by writers who are wholly 
 unconnected with practical politics, and who might 
 therefore bring to them a more independent judgment
 
 Iviii PREFACE 
 
 and a more judicial temperament than conld be easily 
 found in active politicians. This preface I cannot now 
 write. At a time when the greater portion of my 
 book was already in the printers' hands an unexpected 
 request, which I could not gratefully or graciously 
 refuse, brought me into the circle of parliamentary 
 life. But although my own position has been altered, 
 I have not allowed this fact to alter the character of 
 my book. While expressing strong opinions on many 
 much-contested party questions, I have endeavoured 
 to treat them with that perfect independence of judg- 
 ment, without which a work of this kind can have no 
 permanent value. Nor have I thought it necessary to 
 cancel a passage in defence of university representation 
 in general, and of the representation of Dublin Uni- 
 versity in particular, which was written when I had no 
 idea that it could possibly be regarded as a defence of 
 'my own position. 
 
 One of the principal difficulties of a book dealing 
 with the present aspects and tendencies of the political 
 world in many different countries lies in the constant 
 changes in the subjects that it treats. The task of the 
 writer is often like that of a painter who is painting 
 the ever-shifting scenery of the clouds. The great 
 tendencies of the world alter slowly, but the balance 
 of power in parliaments and constitutions is continu- 
 ally modified, and, under the incessant activity of 
 modern legislation, large groups of subjects are con- 
 stantly assuming new forms. I have endeavoured to 
 follow these changes up to a very recent period ; but in 
 dealing with foreign countries this is sometimes a mat- 
 ter of no small difficulty, and I trust the reader will 
 excuse me if I have not always altogether succeeded. 
 
 LONDON : February , 1896.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PACT 
 
 English Representative Government in the Eighteenth Century 
 
 Objects to be attained . 2 
 
 Taxation and representation . ... 2 
 
 Power of landed property 3 
 
 And of the commercial classes ... 3 
 
 Aristocratic influence 3 
 
 Diversities in the size of constituencies and qualification 
 
 of electors . .... 5 
 
 The small boroughs ..... .5 
 
 Dislike to organic change . . .7 
 
 Merits of English government . ... 8 
 
 The founders of the American Republic aimed at the 
 
 same ends ... 9 
 Judge Story on the suffrage . . .10 
 
 / 
 
 Rousseau's conception of government essentially dif- 
 ferent 12 
 
 Review of the French constitutions, 1789-1830 . 12 
 
 Ascendency of the middle class in France, 1830-1848 15 
 
 English Reform Bill of 1832 Its causes ... 15 
 
 Fears it excited not justified by the event . . 20 
 
 Place of the middle class in English government 21 
 
 The period from 1832 to 1867 . 21 
 
 Votes not always a true test of opinion . 21 
 
 Motives that govern the more ignorant voters . 23 
 
 Dangers of too great degradation of the suffrage 25
 
 Ix CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Growth of Rousseau's doctrine in England The Irish 
 
 representation ... 27 
 
 University representation .... .28 
 
 The new form of sycophancy 30 
 
 Attacks on plural voting ...... 30 
 
 Equal electoral districts . . . . . . .31 
 
 Taxation passing wholly under the control of numbers 32 
 
 Successful parliaments mainly elected on a high suffrage 33 
 
 Instability of democracies 34 
 
 When they are least dangerous . 35 
 
 French Democracy 
 
 Favourable circumstances under which it has been tried 35 
 
 Manhood suffrage in 1848 ... 36 
 
 Restricted in 1850 37 
 
 Re-established by Louis Napoleon The Coup d'Etat 
 
 and the plebiscite 37 
 
 Universal suffrage under the Second Empire ... 38 
 
 Last days of the Empire ...... 39 
 
 Democracy and the Franco-German War ... 40 
 
 The Third Republic 42 
 
 Weakness of the President .... 42 
 
 Decline of political ideals . .... 43 
 
 Ministerial instability .... . . 45 
 
 The permanent service . . . ' . 45 
 
 The Republic and liberty ...... 47 
 
 French Finance, 1814-1870 49 
 
 French Finance during the Republic .... 54 
 
 Forms of corruption and extravagance ... 56 
 
 Good credit of France ....... 58 
 
 Financial dangers 59 
 
 Scherer on French political life ..... GO 
 
 Lowered political tone ...... 62 
 
 American Democracy 
 
 Characteristics of the American Constitution ... 63 
 Its framers dreaded democracy ..... 66 
 Advantageous circumstances of America ... 67 
 Growth of democratic influence in the Presidential elec- 
 tions .... 68 
 
 Elections for the Senate Characteristics of that body . 69 
 
 The lowering of the suffrage ..... 70
 
 CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME Ixi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Elected judges . 73 
 
 The ' Molly Maguires ' 74 
 
 Corruption of the judicature 74 
 
 Growth of the spoils system ..... 78 
 Political assessments on office-holders . . . .81 
 
 Connection of the spoils system with democracy . 83 
 
 American party warfare 85 
 
 Attempts to restrict the spoils system .... 86 
 
 The ballot in America 89 
 
 Lax naturalisation ....... 90 
 
 The Know-Nothing party 91 
 
 The Irish vote 92 
 
 Enfranchisement of negroes 93 
 
 Corruption in New York 95 
 
 Municipal corruption general in the great cities . . 97 
 
 Measures of Reform 
 
 Judges made more independent ..... 101 
 
 Power of local legislatures limited .... 102 
 
 Increased authority of the mayors .... 105 
 
 Mr. Bryce on American corruption . 107 
 
 American acquiescence in corruption . . . 113 
 
 The best life apart from politics 114 
 
 Summary by Mr. Bryce . . . . . . 115 
 
 Protective strength of the Constitution .... 116 
 
 American optimism 118 
 
 Influence of the separation of Church and State on po- 
 litical morals . . . . . . . . 118 
 
 Public spirit during the War of Secession . . 119 
 
 And after its conclusion . . . . . . 120 
 
 Excellence of general legislation in the United States 121 
 
 Tocqueville's judgments Changes since he wrote . . 122 
 
 Corruption in railroad management .... 125 
 
 Abolition of slavery Its influence on foreign policy . 126 
 
 Intellectual side of American civilisation . . . 127 
 
 Democracy not favourable to the higher intellectual life 131 
 
 The prospects of the Republic ..... 132 
 
 Protection 133 
 
 The Pension List 134 
 
 Lessons to be drawn from American experience . , 136
 
 Ixii CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Majorities required in different nations for constitutional 
 
 changes . - . 137 
 
 Attempt to introduce the two-thirds majority system in 
 
 New South Wales 138 
 
 Small stress placed in England on legislative machinery 138 
 
 The English belief in government by gentlemen . . 140 
 De'clining efficiency of parliamentary government 
 
 throughout Europe ....... 142 
 
 England has not escaped the evil .... 144 
 
 Increasing power and pretensions of the House of Com- 
 mons 145 
 
 The Parish Councils Bill of 1894 .... 146 
 
 Excess of parliamentary speaking Its causes . . 146 
 
 Its effects on public business ..... 149 
 
 Growth of the caucus fatal to the independence of the 
 
 House of Commons ....... 149 
 
 The relation of the House to Government Disintegra- 
 tion of parties ........ 150 
 
 Results of the group system . . . . . 151 
 
 Increase of 'log-rolling 153 
 
 And of the appetite for organic change . . . 153 
 
 Both parties have contributed to this .... 154 
 
 Conservatism in English Radicalism .... 155 
 
 Growth of class bribery ...... 155 
 
 Rendered easy by our system of taxation . . . 156 
 Sir Cornewall Lewis on the best taxation Indirect 
 
 . taxation 157 
 
 Remissions of direct taxation sometimes the most bene- 
 ficial 158 
 
 Exaggeration of Free Trade The corn registration duty 
 
 The London coal dues 159 
 
 The abolition of the income tax made an election cry in 
 
 1874 History of this election 160 
 
 Appeals to class cupidity by the Irish Land League . 167 
 
 Its success has strengthened the tendency to class bribery 167 
 
 Irish Land Question 
 
 Peculiar difficulties to be dealt with in Ireland . . 167 
 
 Tenants' improvements 168
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME \ x [[{ 
 
 FAQB 
 
 Sharman Crawford's proposals 169 
 
 The Devon Commission 169 
 
 Abortive attempts to protect improvements . . .171 
 
 Land Act of 1860 171 
 
 And of 1870 Its merits and demerits .... 172 
 
 Paucity of leases and tenants' improvements How 
 
 viewed in Ireland . . . . . . . 177 
 
 Bents in Ireland before 1870 not generally extortionate 178 
 But such rents did exist, and most tenancies were preca- 
 rious . . ... 180 
 
 i'he Act of 1881 182 
 
 Absolute ownership of land under the Incumbered Es- 
 tates Act 182 
 
 Circumstances under which this Act had been carried 
 
 Its nature ......... 182 
 
 It guaranteed complete ownership under a parliamentary 
 
 title 184 
 
 Confiscation of Landlord Rights by the Act of 1881. The 
 
 purchased improvements 185 
 
 Fixity of tenure given to the present tenant . . 185 
 Which could not honestly be done without compensating 
 
 the owner ......... 186 
 
 Inseparable rights of ownership destroyed . . 187 
 The New Land Court and its proceedings . . .188 
 
 * Judicial decisions '....... 190 
 
 Eights of the Legislature over landed property Mill . 191 
 
 Dishonest character of Irish land legislation . . 192 
 
 The defence of the Act of 1881 193 
 
 Misconception of its effects ..... 194 
 
 The language of Mr. Gladstone 195 
 
 The Act failed to pacify Ireland Effects of the Home 
 
 Kule agitation 197 
 
 The Land Act of 1887 198 
 
 Tendency of subversive principles in legislation to grow 200 
 Landlord claim for compensation . . . . .201 
 Effects of the land legislation on Irish capital and con- 
 tracts 202 
 
 On the ultimate position of tenants .... 203 
 
 Moral effects of this legislation ..... 204 
 
 The Evicted Tenants Bill .,,... 206
 
 Ixiv CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The worst form of robbery, legal robbery . . . 209 
 Dangers of the Irish precedent . . . . . 210 
 Mr. George's comparison of Irish and American land- 
 lordism 210 
 
 Where should State intervention stop ? . . . 212 
 
 Other Attacks on Property 
 
 Theories of Mr. George 212 
 
 Mill's doctrine of the ' unearned increment ' . . 213 
 
 English land no longer the source of English food . 216 
 
 Attacks on national debts . . . . . . 216 
 
 On mining royalties ....... 218 
 
 On literary property .... . 218 
 
 Nationalisation of railroads, &c. ..... 220 
 
 Cautions in dealing with such questions Is democracy 
 
 suited to the task? 222 
 
 The worship of majorities . . .... 223 
 
 Old and New Jesuitism 224 
 
 Influence of philosophical speculation on politics . . 225 
 Character in public life How far democratic election 
 
 secures it 226 
 
 The Home Kule alliance Compared with the coalition 
 
 of North and Fox 228 
 
 Effects of the lowering of the suffrage on political mo- 
 rality 229 
 
 And of the increased hurry of modern life . . . 230 
 
 Personal and class interests in politics . . 230 
 
 Inadequate sense of the criminality of political misdeeds 231 
 
 The ethics of party 233 
 
 Nonconformist ministers and Mr. Parnell . . . 236 
 Relative importance of private and public morals in 
 
 politics 237 
 
 Growth of the professional politician .... 238 
 
 Democratic local government Its good and evil . . 238 
 
 Place of wealth in modern politics .... 240 
 
 Measures that must strengthen the professional politician 241 
 
 High standard of political integrity in Great Britain . 242 
 
 Probity of the permanent service .... 243 
 
 Better side of the House of Commons .... 243 
 
 Competitive examinations Their drawbacks . . 243 
 
 Their great use in restraining corruption . . . 246
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME Ixv 
 
 PAOK 
 
 The character of a nation not always shown by its public 
 
 life 246 
 
 Evidence that English character has not declined Its 
 
 moral and philanthropic side . . 247 
 
 Its robuster qualities 249 
 
 The governing capacity Egypt and India . . . 249 
 
 Dangers to India in democratic government . . 250 
 
 High character of English municipal government . . 252 
 
 Political influence of the provincial towns . . 252 
 
 Influence of the telegraph on politics Provincial press . 253 
 
 Modern England not barren in great men . . . 254 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Democracy an inevitable fact 256 
 
 Is not uniformly favourable to liberty . . . 256 
 
 Illustrations from Roman and French history . . 256 
 
 Equality naturally hostile to liberty .... 256 
 
 Love of democracy for authoritative regulation . . 257 
 Effects of the increase of State power Taxation and 
 
 liberty 258 
 
 Other dangers to liberty ...... 259 
 
 Party system hastened the transformation . . . 260 
 
 Some Suggested Remedies 
 
 Change in the Irish representation 261 
 
 Class representation Its history and decline . . 264 
 
 Representation of minorities ...... 266 
 
 An educational franchise ...... 272 
 
 Mill's suggestions for mitigating dangers of universal suf- 
 frage 273 
 
 Repudiated by modern Radicalism The ' fancy ' fran- 
 chises 276 
 
 The Swiss Referendum Its history and influence . . 277 
 
 Its recent adoption in the United States . . . 280 
 
 Attempt to introduce it into Belgium .... 285 
 
 Arguments for and against it 286 
 
 Belief that a low suffrage is naturally conservative . 293 
 
 Extension of the power of .committees . . . 294 
 
 The American committee system ..... 295
 
 Ixvi CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The French system 297 
 
 English parliamentary committees Devolution . . 297 
 Proposal that Governments should only resign on a vote 
 
 of want of confidence ...... 299 
 
 Arguments against it 299 
 
 Probability that democratic Parliaments will sink in 
 
 power 300 
 
 Democratic local government Success of English local 
 
 government ........ 301 
 
 Largely due to property qualifications . . . 302 
 Almost all of them now abolished Act of 1894 . . 303 
 This is the more serious on account of the great in- 
 crease in taxation ... .... 303 
 
 The local debt . 304 
 
 Increase of State Taxation in Europe Its Causes 
 
 Military expenditure Standing armies . . . 305 
 Buckle's prediction of the decline of wars . . . 307 
 The commercial spirit now favours territorial aggran- 
 disement 308 
 
 Growing popularity of universal military service . . 309 
 
 Arguments in its defence ...... 309 
 
 Importance of the question to the English race . . 312 
 
 Arguments against it . . . . . . . 312 
 
 Conscription and universal suffrage connected . . 315 
 But the military system may come into collision with the 
 
 parliamentary system 316 
 
 National education Its social and political effects . 317 
 Primary education assuming the character of secondary 
 
 education ........ 322 
 
 Sanitary reform 323 
 
 Reformatories and prison reform .... 327 
 Increased taxation due to increased State regulation 
 
 Herbert Spencer's views 328 
 
 Necessity for some extension of State control . . 329 
 
 Advantages of State action in some fields . . . 330 
 Government credit Enterprises remunerative to the 
 
 State 331 
 
 Unremunerative forms of literature and art . . 332
 
 CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME Ixvii 
 
 , PAGE 
 
 Subsidies to the theatre ...... 333 
 
 Dangers of State regulation and subsidies . . . 333 
 Change in the character of democracy since Joseph 
 
 Hume 335 
 
 Motives that have led to State aggrandisement . . 335 
 
 Mr. Goschen on its extent ...... 335 
 
 Attempts to push it still further The Manchester school 
 
 repudiated 337 
 
 Tendency to throw all taxation on one class . . 337 
 Tocqueville and Young on English taxes in the eigh- 
 teenth century 337 
 
 Progressive taxes of Pitt 338 
 
 Abolition of taxes on the necessaries of life . . . 339 
 
 Bentham, Mill, and Montesquieu on exempted incomes 339 
 
 Lord Derby's description of English taxation . . 340 
 Taxation mainly on the rich and chiefly for the benefit 
 
 of the poor 340 
 
 Adam Smith on the rules for taxation . . . 341 
 
 Thiers on the same subject 341 
 
 Advantages of taxation of luxuries .... 343 
 Growing popularity of graduated taxation Its early 
 
 history 343 
 
 Taxation in Switzerland 344 
 
 In the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, and the United 
 
 States 345 
 
 Arguments against graduated taxation . . . 346 
 
 Probability that it will increase . 349 
 
 Its effect on the disposition of landed property . . 349 
 
 On the position and habits of the upper classes . . 350 
 
 On personal property 354 
 
 Wealth dissociated from duties 355 
 
 Democracy not indifferent to wealth .... 359 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ARISTOCRACIES AND UPPER CHAMBERS 
 
 Dangers of government by a single Chamber . . 361 
 
 Countries where it exists 363 
 
 Lessons derived from the Commonwealth . . . 364
 
 Ixviii CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From the United States 364 
 
 From France 364 
 
 Early History of the House of Lords 
 
 Effects of the Reformation and the Rebellion . . 365 
 
 Of the Revolution of 1688 365 
 
 Importance of the small boroughs in sustaining its in- 
 fluence 366 
 
 The Peerage Bill of Stanhope 366 
 
 The Scotch Union 367 
 
 The Resolution of 1711 367 
 
 Creations of George III. The Irish Union . . 368 
 
 Position of the spiritual peers 369 
 
 The House of Lords under George III. not unpopular 370 
 
 Power of personal interest on its members before 1832 . 371 
 
 Their influence in the House of Commons . . 373 
 
 Attitude of the peers towards the Reform Bill of 1832 . 373 
 
 Change in their position effected by the Bill . . 374 
 Importance of the House of Lords in making legislation 
 
 harmonise with the popular will ..... 374 
 In diminishing the too great influence of party in legis- 
 lation 375 
 
 In protecting minorities ...... 376 
 
 Its ecclesiastical policy 376 
 
 Its general moderation ....... 378 
 
 Attacks on the Lords after the Reform Bill of 1832 . 378 
 
 The Hereditary Element 
 
 Advantages of special education for politics . . . 379 
 Influences that maintain the character of the British 
 
 aristocracy 380 
 
 Their energy and power of adaptation .... 386 
 
 Large amount of ability among them . . . 386 
 
 Advantages the nation derives from an aristocracy . 387 
 
 Representative character of the House of Lords . 389 
 Popularity of the aristocracy in England . . .391 
 
 Its good and evil sides 392 
 
 Aristocracy and plutocracy ...... 392 
 
 Debility and apathy of the House of Lorda . . 398
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME Ixix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Causes of its Debility 
 
 The small quorum Proxies 399 
 
 Discouraging influences in the House . . . 400 
 Jealousy of the House of Commons of Bills originating 
 
 in the Lords 402 
 
 Financial impotence of the Lords .... 402 
 
 Sole right of the Commons to originate Money Bills . 403 
 The Lords deprived of their old right of amending 
 
 them . 403 
 
 Difficulty of maintaining this rule Its relaxation . 404 
 
 The right of rejecting Money Bills .... 406 
 
 Repeal of the paper duties in 1860 .... 407 
 The different provisions of the Budget combined ia one 
 
 Bill 413 
 
 Connection of taxation and representation . . 414 
 
 Powers of foreign Senates over finance .... 415 
 Dangers of the concentration of all financial power in 
 
 one House Its mitigations in England . . . 415 
 
 The House of Lords cannot overthrow Ministers . . 416 
 
 Its Judicial Functions 
 
 Its origin and abuses 417 
 
 Attempts to make lawyers life peers .... 419 
 
 The peerage of Lord Wensleydale (1856) . . . 419 
 
 Later attempts to create life peers ..... 422 
 
 Lord Selborne's Court of Appeal (1873) ... 423 
 Lord Cairns's new Appellate Court in the House of 
 
 Lords 423 
 
 Success of this measure 424 
 
 Its modification in 1887 424 
 
 Excessive and increasing number of new peerages . 425 
 
 Elements from which they are drawn . . . 426 
 
 Imperfect recognition of non-political eminence . . 428 
 
 One-sided political influence in the House of Lords . 430 
 
 This fact a recent one Its causes 432 
 
 Parliamentary history, 1892-1895 .... 432 
 
 The crusade against the Lords 433 
 
 The election of 1895, and its lessons .... 436
 
 Ixx CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PASS 
 
 The importance of a reform of the House of Lords not 
 
 diminished 438 
 
 Foreign Upper Houses 
 
 The Eoman Senate 439 
 
 The Senate of the United States . ... . . 440 
 
 The French Senate 448 
 
 The German Bundesrath 449 
 
 Upper Houses in Prussia and Austria . . 451 
 
 In Italy 452 
 
 In Spain and Switzerland 452 
 
 In the Netherlands 454 
 
 In Belgium 454 
 
 Colonial Constitutions 
 
 Their general character 456 
 
 The Canadian Senate . 456 
 
 The Newfoundland Constitution .... 457 
 
 African colonial Governments The island colonies . 457 
 
 Upper Chambers in Australia and New Zealand . 458 
 
 Proposals for reforming the House of Lords 
 
 Advantages of retaining a limited hereditary element . 459 
 
 Life peers 462 
 
 Proposals for a larger introduction of the representative 
 
 principle 462 
 
 The limitation of the veto 464 
 
 Eight of ministers to sit in both Houses . . . 466 
 
 Advantages and disadvantages of carrying unfinished 468 
 
 legislation into a second session 
 
 This should at least be done in the case of amendments 
 
 in the Lords . 470 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NATIONALITIES 
 
 Changes in the basis of international politics . . . 471 
 The rights of nationalities in the French Revolution . 472 
 Completely ignored after the fall of Napoleon . . 472
 
 CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME Ixxi 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Signs of revival before 1830 French Revolution of that 
 
 year 473 
 
 And of 1848 473 
 
 Italian writers on nationality 474 
 
 Nationality not necessarily a democratic idea . . 476 
 
 Ambiguities about the elements that constitute it . 476 
 
 Plebiscites 478 
 
 Good and evil sides of the doctrine of nationalities . 479 
 
 Not applicable to uncivilized nations .... 480 
 
 Plebiscites frequently deceptive .... 480 
 Dangers of pushing the nationality doctrine to its full 
 
 consequences 481 
 
 America a Test Case 
 
 Its annexations 483 
 
 The secession of the South ...... 484 
 
 Analysis of English opinion on the War of Secession . 485 
 
 The Northern case for repressing the revolt . . . 489 
 Nearly all European predictions about the war proved 
 
 false 490 
 
 The Italian Question 
 
 Impulse it gave to the doctrine of nationalities . . 490 
 
 Invasions of Naples and Eome . . . . . 491 
 
 The Peace of Villafranca and the Roman question . 492 
 
 The Italian policy of England 493 
 
 Lord J.. Russell's estimate of the plebiscites . . . 494 
 
 Success of the English policy 495 
 
 Policy of Napoleon III 496 
 
 And of England 497 
 
 The unity of Italy dearly purchased .... 498 
 
 The unity of Germany The agglomeration of race ele- 
 ments 500 
 
 Conflicting tendencies towards agglomeration and to- 
 wards local unities 501 
 
 Increased value attached to national languages . . 501 
 
 The military system accentuates national differences . 502 
 Difficulties of reconciling local aspirations with imperial 
 
 interests 502 
 
 Influences that are weakening the nationalist spirit . 604
 
 Ixxii CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGK 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 
 
 Nations differ in their conceptions of liberty and in the 
 kinds of liberty they value ...... 505 
 
 Importance of taking stock of our conceptions of liberty 509 
 
 Religious Freedom 
 
 Its growth in English law 509 
 
 And in public opinion Causes of increased tolerance . 510 
 Contrast between Catholic opinion in England and that 
 
 in Rome and Canada ...... 511 
 
 Abolition of religious disqualifications in the United 
 
 States 513 
 
 In France ......... 513 
 
 In Belgium, and Prussia 514 
 
 Slow progress of the movement in England The Catho- 
 lic question ........ 514 
 
 Disqualifications of Nonconformists, Jews, Atheists, &c. , 
 
 gradually abolished ...... 514 
 
 Higher education thrown open to Dissenters Its effects 515 
 The Established Church Arguments for and against it 
 
 changed . 519 
 
 The modern case for an establishment . . . 520 
 
 Strengthened by abolition of disqualifications . . 522 
 Enlargement of the limits of the Church Relation of 
 
 Nonconformists to it . . . . . 522 
 Subscription to Articles Indelibility of orders De- 
 cisions of Privy Council 524 
 
 Decline of intolerance in Continental legislations . 525 
 
 Sweden and Austria 526 
 
 Spain and Portugal 527 
 
 Limitation or modification of religious liberty . . 529 
 
 India 
 
 Early religious policy of the East India Company . 530 
 
 Admission of missionaries in 1813 . . . . . 531 
 
 Prohibition of infanticide and human sacrifices . 532 
 
 Abolition of the suttee . , 532
 
 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME Ixxiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Attitude of Government towards caste and idolatrous 
 
 worship 535 
 
 Measures of 1833 and 1838 535 
 
 Changes in the laws of inheritance and marriage 536 
 
 Memorandum of Colonel Herbert Edwardes . . . 537 
 
 Queen's Proclamation in 1858 ....... 537 
 
 Philanthropic tendencies hostile to the old beliefs . . 538 
 
 Indian education and its effects 539 
 
 Mormonism 
 
 Polygamy not its original doctrine 540 
 
 Early history of Mormonism 540 
 
 Murder of Joseph Smith 542 
 
 Emigration to the Salt Lake 542 
 
 Utah becomes an American Territory Its early history 543 
 
 Should polygamy be tolerated? ..... 545 
 
 Congress undertakes to stamp it out .... 547 
 
 - The Edmunds law 548 
 
 Other measures against polygamy .... 550 
 
 Conflicting opinions about their success .... 552 
 
 Influences within Mormonism hostile to polygamy . 553 
 
 Polygamy abandoned by the Mormons .... 554 
 
 Utah made a State ....... 556 
 
 Anglo-Saxon democracy favourable to religious liberty . 557 
 
 The sentiment of nationality sometimes hostile to it . 557 
 
 The Anti-Semite movement 558 
 
 The Bussian persecution 559
 
 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE most remarkable political characteristic of the lat- 
 ter part of the nineteenth century has unquestionably 
 been the complete displacement of the centre of power 
 in free governments, and the accompanying changes in 
 the prevailing theories about the principles on which 
 representative government should be based. It has 
 extended over a great part of the civilised world, and, 
 although it has had all the effects of a profound and 
 far-reaching revolution, it has, in some of the most 
 conspicuous instances, been effected without any act of 
 violence or any change in the external framework of 
 government. I have attempted in another work to de- 
 scribe at length the guiding principles on which the 
 English parliamentary government of the eighteenth 
 century was mainly based, and which found their best 
 expression and defence in the writings of Burke. It 
 was then almost universally held that the right of 
 voting was not a natural right, but a right conferred 
 by legislation on grounds of expediency, or, in other 
 words, for the benefit of the State. As the House of 
 Commons had been, since the Revolution of 1688, the 
 most powerful element of the Constitution, nothing in 
 the Constitution was deemed more important than the 
 efficiency of the machine, and measures of parliament- 
 VOL. i. 1
 
 2 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 ary reform were considered good or bad exactly in pro- 
 portion as they conduced to this end. The objects to 
 be attained were very various,, and they were best at- 
 tained by a great variety and diversity of representa- 
 tion. It was necessary to bring together a body of 
 men of sufficient intelligence and knowledge to exercise 
 wisely their great power in the State. It was necessary 
 to represent, and to represent in their due proportions, 
 the various forms and tendencies of political opinion 
 existing in the nation. It was necessary to represent 
 with the same completeness and proportion the various 
 and often conflicting class interests, so that the wants 
 of each class might be attended to and the grievances 
 of each class might be heard and redressed. It was also 
 in the highest degree necessary that the property of 
 the country should be specially and strongly repre- 
 sented. Parliament was essentially a machine for tax- 
 ing, and it was therefore right that those who paid 
 taxes should have a decisive voice, and that those who 
 chiefly paid should chiefly control. The indissoluble 
 connection between taxation and representation was 
 the very mainspring of English conceptions of freedom. 
 That no man should be taxed except by his own con- 
 sent was the principle which was at the root of the 
 American ^Revolution. It was the chief source of all 
 extensions of representative government, and it was 
 also the true defence of the property qualifications and 
 voting privileges which concentrated the chief power 
 in the hands of the classes who were the largest tax- 
 payers. No danger in representative government was 
 deemed greater than that it should degenerate into a 
 system of veiled confiscation one class voting the 
 taxes which another class was compelled to pay. 
 
 It was also a fundamental principle of the old system 
 of representation that the chief political power should
 
 CH. i. ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE 3 
 
 be with the owners of land. The doctrine that the 
 men to whom the land belonged were the men who 
 ought to govern it was held, not only by a great body 
 of English Tories, but also by Benjamin Franklin and 
 by a large section of the American colonists. It was 
 urged that the freeholders had a fixed, permanent, in- 
 alienable interest in the country, widely different from 
 the migratory and 'often transient interests of trade 
 and commerce ; that their fortunes were much more 
 indissolubly blended with the fortunes of the State ; 
 that they represented in the highest degree that healthy 
 continuity of habit and policy which is most essential 
 to the well-being of nations. As Burke, however, ob- 
 served, the introduction of the borough representation 
 showed that the English Legislature was not intended 
 to be solely a legislature of freeholders. The commer- 
 cial and trading interests had also their place in it, and 
 after the Eevolution that place became exceedingly 
 great. It y was strengthened by the small and venal 
 boroughs, which were largely in the hands of men who 
 had acquired great fortunes in commerce or trade. 
 The policy of the Revolution Government was, on the 
 whole, more decidedly directed by commercial views 
 than by any others, and it was undoubtedly the small 
 boroughs which, during the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, mainly kept the Hanoverian family on the 
 throne. 
 
 Aristocratic influence in the Constitution was always 
 very great, though it was never absolute. The House 
 of Commons after the Eevolution was a stronger body 
 than the House of Lords. The most powerful minis- 
 ters of the eighteenth century were commoners. Great 
 popular movements in the country never failed to in- 
 fluence the Legislature, though they acted less promptly 
 and less decisively than in later periods. On the other
 
 4 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 hand, a considerable proportion of the members of the 
 House of Commons were returned by members of the 
 House of Lords, and nearly every great family had at 
 least one representative in the Commons. The aris- 
 tocracy formed a connecting link between the smaller 
 country gentry and the trading and industrial inter- 
 ests. Like the latter, but unlike the former, they 
 were usually supporters of the system of government 
 established by the Revolution, of the Whig interest, 
 and of the Hanoverian dynasty. They possessed in 
 many cases great fortunes in money ; they had wider 
 interests and more cosmopolitan tastes than the ordi- 
 nary country gentlemen ; and they shared with the 
 commercial classes the ascendency in the boroughs. A 
 few of them had risen from those classes, or were con- 
 nected with them by marriage ; while, on the other 
 hand, they were the chief landowners, the natural 
 leaders of the landowning classes. 
 
 It was contended that this system secured the har- 
 mony between the two branches of the Legislature, and 
 that aristocratic ascendency brought with it many 
 other advantages. The possession of land, more than 
 any other form of property, is connected with the per- 
 formance of public duties, and the great landowner 
 was constantly exercising in his own district governing 
 and administrative functions that were peculiarly fitted 
 to give him the kind of knowledge and capacity that is 
 most needed for a legislator. Men of this class may 
 have many faults, but they are at least not likely in 
 the management of public affairs to prove either reck- 
 less and irresponsible adventurers or dishonest trustees. 
 To say this may not appear to be saying very much ; 
 but a country which has succeeded in having its public 
 affairs habitually managed with integrity, and with a 
 due sense of responsibility, will have escaped evils that
 
 CH. i. AKISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE 5 
 
 have wrecked the prosperity of many nations. It was 
 urged, above all, that the place which the aristocracy 
 exercised in the Legislature had at least the advantage 
 of reflecting the true facts and conditions of English 
 life. In each county a great resident noble is com- 
 monly the most important man. He influences most 
 largely the lives and happiness of the inhabitants, 
 takes the leading part in local movements, exercises by 
 general consent a kind of superintendence and pre- 
 cedence among his neighbours. It was therefore per- 
 fectly in accordance with the principles of representa- 
 tive government that his class should exercise a 
 somewhat corresponding influence in the Legislature. 
 
 In order to attain these various ends the House of 
 Commons was elected in a manner which showed the 
 most complete ' absence of uniformity and symmetry. 
 There were great differences both in the size of the 
 constituencies and in the nature of the qualifications. 
 In many places members were returned by a single man 
 or by a small group of often venal freemen. In other 
 constituencies there was a strong popular element, and 
 in some places the scot-and-lot franchise approached 
 nearly to universal suffrage. The difference of the 
 political power vested in an individual voter in differ- 
 ent parts of the country was enormously great, and 
 even the House of Commons was only very partially a 
 representative body. ' About one half of the House of 
 Commons/ wrote Paley, ' obtain their seats in that As- 
 sembly by the election of the people ; the other half, 
 by purchase or by nomination of single proprietors of 
 great estates/ 1 
 
 The large share in the representative body which was 
 granted to the two latter classes of members was de- 
 
 Moral Philosophy, ii. 218.
 
 6 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 fended by many arguments. It was said, with truth, 
 that the small boroughs had introduced, and usually at 
 an early age, into Parliament by far the greater num- 
 ber of the men of extraordinary ability who have 
 adorned it, and also many useful and experienced men, 
 not quite in the first rank, who from narrow circum- 
 stances, or from the turn of their own characters, or 
 from some unpopular religious belief, or from the fact 
 that they had spent much of their lives in obscure or 
 remote fields of public duty, would never have been 
 acceptable candidates in a popular constituency. To 
 ministries they were of the utmost value. They gave 
 a busy minister a secure and independent seat free 
 from all local demands and complications, enabled him 
 to devote his undivided energies to the administration 
 of the country, and made it easy for him to bring into 
 Parliament any colleague or valuable supporter who 
 had failed at an election, and was perhaps under a 
 cloud of transient unpopularity. In the eyes, too, of 
 the best thinkers of the eighteenth century it was of 
 the utmost importance that members of Parliament 
 should not sink into simple delegates. On the broad 
 lines and principles of their policy it was understood 
 that they should reflect the sentiments of their con- 
 stituents ; but the whole system of parliamentary gov- 
 ernment, in the opinion of Burke and most other 
 eighteenth - century statesmen, would degenerate if 
 members were expected to abdicate their independent 
 judgments, to submit to external dictation about the 
 details of measures, to accept the position of mere pup- 
 pets pulled by demagogues or associations outside the 
 House. The presence in Parliament of a large body of 
 men who did not owe their position to popular favour 
 secured an independent element in the House of Com- 
 mons, and affected the tone of the whole assembly.
 
 OH. I. THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 7 
 
 The boro'ugh system, also, concentrating power in a 
 few hands, greatly strengthened ministries. It gave 
 them a steady, calculable force, which in many circum- 
 stances, but especially in their foreign policy, was often 
 of inestimable value. Fluctuations of power were less 
 frequent, less violent, less capricious than they after- 
 wards became. Ministers could count more confidently 
 on persistent parliamentary support in lines of policy 
 of which the rewards were only to be looked for in a 
 distant future ; amid the chequered fortunes and the 
 ever-changing aspects of a great struggle. 
 
 This system of representation was supported and 
 consolidated by a tone of political feeling which has so 
 completely passed away that it is somewhat difficult to 
 realise the power which it once possessed I mean that 
 strong indisposition to organic change, as distinguished 
 from administrative reform, which the best statesmen 
 of all parties continually inculcated. They were usually 
 ready to meet practical evils as they arose, but they 
 continually deprecated any attempt to tamper with the 
 legislative machine itself, except under the most im- 
 perious necessity. They believed that the system of 
 the Constitution had grown up insensibly in accord- 
 ance with the wants of the nation ; that it was a highly 
 complex and delicate machine, fulfilling many differ- 
 ent purposes and acting in many obscure and far- 
 reaching ways, and that a disposition to pull it to 
 pieces in the interests of some theory or speculation 
 would inevitably lead to the destruction of parliamen- 
 tary government. A great part of its virtue lay in the 
 traditionary reverence that surrounded it, in the un- 
 written rules and restrictions that regulated its action. 
 There was no definite written constitution that could 
 be appealed to, but in no other form of government 
 did tacit understandings, traditional observances, il-
 
 8 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 logical but serviceable compromises, bear so great a 
 part. 
 
 It was claimed for this form of government that, 
 with all its defects and anomalies, it had unquestion- 
 ably worked well. I may again quote the words of 
 Paley. ' Before we seek to obtain anything more/ he 
 writes, 'consider duly what we already have. "We 
 have a House of Commons composed of 548 mem- 
 bers, in which number are found the most consider- 
 able landholders and merchants of the Kingdom ; the 
 heads of the army, the navy, and the law ; the occu- 
 piers of great offices in the State ; together with many 
 private individuals eminent by their knowledge, elo- 
 quence, and activity. If the Country be not safe in 
 such hands, in whom may it confide its interests ? If 
 such a number of such men be liable to the influence 
 of corrupt motives, what assembly of men will be se- 
 cure from the same danger ? Does any new scheme of 
 representation promise to collect together more wis- 
 dom or to produce firmer integrity ? * 1 
 
 The English Constitution of the eighteenth century 
 might also be tested in other ways. It is incontestable 
 that under it England had enjoyed for a long space of 
 time much prosperity, a far larger measure of steady 
 freedom, and a far more equitable system of taxation 
 than any of the great States of the Continent. "Under 
 this form of government she passed successfully through 
 the dangerous internal crisis of a long-disputed suc- 
 cession ; she encountered successfully foreign dangers 
 of the first magnitude, from the time of Louis XIV. 
 to the time of Napoleon ; and although her history 
 was by no means unchequered by faults and disasters, 
 it was under this system of government that she built 
 
 1 Moral Philosophy, ij. 220, 221.
 
 CH. i. THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 9 
 
 up her vast Indian Empire and largely extended and 
 organised her colonial dominions. 
 
 The other great type of free government existing in 
 the world was the American Republic, and it is curious 
 to observe how closely the aims and standards of the 
 men who framed the memorable Constitution of 1787 
 and 1788 corresponded with those of the English 
 statesmen of the eighteenth century. It is true that 
 the framework adopted was very different. In the 
 true spirit of Burke, the American statesmen clearly 
 saw how useless it would be to reproduce all English 
 institutions in a country where they had no historical 
 or traditional basis. The United States did not con- 
 tain the materials for founding a constitutional mon- 
 archy or a powerful aristocracy, and a great part of 
 the traditional habits and observances that restrained 
 and regulated English parliamentary government could 
 not possibly operate in a new country with the same 
 force. It was necessary to adopt other means, but the 
 ends that were aimed at were much the same. To di- 
 vide and restrict power ; to secure property ; to check 
 the appetite for organic change; to guard individual 
 liberty against the tyranny of the multitude, as well as 
 against the tyranny of an individual or a class ; to in- 
 fuse into American politic*! life a spirit of continuity 
 and of sober and moderate freedom, were the ends 
 which the great American statesmen set before them, 
 and which they in a large measure attained. They 
 gave an elected president during his short period of 
 office an amount of power which was, on the whole, 
 not less than that of George III. They invested their 
 Senate with powers considerably beyond those of the 
 House of Lords. They restricted by a clearly defined 
 and written Constitution the powers of the representa- 
 tive body, placing, among other things, the security of
 
 10 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 property, the sanctity of contract, and the chief forms 
 of personal and religious liberty beyond the powers of 
 a mere parliamentary majority to infringe. They es- 
 tablished a Supreme Court with the right of inter- 
 preting authoritatively the Constitution and declaring 
 Acts of Congress which exceeded their powers to be 
 null and void ; they checked, or endeavoured to check, 
 the violent oscillations of popular suffrage by intro- 
 ducing largely into the Constitution the principle of 
 double election ; and they made such large majorities 
 necessary for the enactment of any organic change 
 that these changes became impossible, except where 
 there was an overwhelming consensus of public opin- 
 ion in their favour. 
 
 In dealing with the suffrage they acted in the same 
 spirit. Judge Story has expatiated on this subject 
 in a book which is, in my opinion, one of the most 
 valuable ever written on the science of politics. He 
 argues that ( the right of voting, like many other rights, 
 is one which, whether it has a fixed foundation in nat- 
 ural law or not, has always been treated in the practice 
 of nations as a strictly civil right, derived from and 
 regulated by each society according to its own circum- 
 stances and interests/ On the ground of natural right 
 it would be impossible to exclude females from voting, 
 or to justify the arbitrary and varying enactments by 
 which different countries have defined the age at which 
 males attain their majorities. ' If any society is entrusted 
 with authority to settle the matter of the age or sex of 
 voters, according to its own views of its policy, or con- 
 venience, or justice, who shall say that it has not equai 
 authority, for like reasons, to settle any other matters 
 regarding the rights, qualifications, and duties of 
 voters ? ' The truth is that ' there can be no certain 
 rule ' on these subjects ' for all ages and for all na-
 
 CH. I. THE AMERICAN SUFFRAGE 11 
 
 tions.' The right of suffrage will vary almost infinite- 
 ly, according to the special circumstances and charac- 
 teristics of a nation. 1 
 
 The American Legislature acted on this principle. 
 In the colonial period ' no uniform rules in regard to 
 the right of suffrage existed. In some of the Colonies 
 . . . freeholders alone were voters ; in others, a very 
 near approach was made to universal suffrage among 
 the males of competent age ; and in others, again, a 
 middle principle was adopted, which made taxation 
 and voting dependent upon each other, or annexed to 
 it the qualification of holding some personal estate, or 
 the privilege of being a freeman or the eldest son of a 
 freeholder of the town or corporation.' AVhen the 
 ^Revolution separated the Colonies from the mother 
 country the same diversity was suffered to continue. 
 * In some of the States the right of suffrage depends 
 upon a certain length of residence and payment of 
 taxes ; in others, upon mere citizenship and residence ; 
 in others, upon the possession of a freehold or some 
 estate of a particular value, or upon the payment of 
 taxes, or performance of some public duty, such as 
 service in the militia or on the highways. In no two 
 of these State constitutions will it be found that the 
 qualifications of the voters are settled upon the same 
 uniform basis.' A proposal to establish a uniform 
 system of voting on a common principle was brought 
 before the Convention which framed the Constitution 
 of 1787-88, but after full discussion it was resolved to 
 leave the existing diversities untouched, and to con- 
 fide to each State the power of regulating as it pleased 
 the system of suffrage. All that the Convention 
 
 1 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States^ 
 ii. 55-58.
 
 12 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 established was, that the electors for the House of 
 Eepresentatives should, in each State, have the qualifi- 
 cations requisite for the electors of the most numer- 
 ous branch of the State Legislature. As a matter of 
 fact, for many years property qualifications were re- 
 quired in most States for electors, and a diversity in 
 the system of election prevailed which was little, if at 
 all, less than in England. In several of the State leg- 
 islatures, though not in the Federal Legislature, a 
 property qualification was required in representatives 
 and in the Federal Legislature representatives, and 
 direct taxes were apportioned by the same ratio. 1 
 
 If we now pass from the two great English-speaking 
 communities to France, we find ourselves in a different 
 region of thought, over which Rousseau exercised the 
 strongest influence. It is not necessary for me here to 
 enter into a general examination of the political theo- 
 ries of Eousseau, or of the many inconsistencies they 
 present. The part of his teaching which had most in- 
 fluence, and with which we are now specially concerned, 
 is that relating to the suffrage. He held that absolute 
 political equality was the essential condition of political 
 freedom, and that no diversities of power, or represen- 
 tations of classes or interests should be suffered to ex- 
 ist in the Constitution. Every man should have a vote, 
 and a vote of the same value ; a representative should 
 be nothing more than a delegate under the absolute 
 control of the constituency ; and no law can have any 
 binding force which has not been directly sanctioned 
 by the whole community. His whole system rested on 
 the idea of natural and inalienable rights. 
 
 These views did not at once pass into French legis- 
 lation. The States-General which met in 1789 had 
 
 ' Story, ii. 59-66, 95, 96, 106.
 
 CH. L FRENCH CONSTITUTIONS 13 
 
 been elected by orders, the nobles and the ecclesiastics 
 voting separately and directly for their own represent- 
 atives. For the third estate the system of double elec- 
 tion was adopted, the electors being themselves elected 
 by a very wide constituency, consisting of men of 
 twenty-five who had a settled abode and who paid di- 
 rect taxes. In the Constitution of 1791 the system of 
 double election was maintained ; the right of voting 
 for the primary assemblies was restricted to ' active 
 citizens ' who, among other things, paid direct contri- 
 butions to at least the value of three days' labour ; 
 while, the men wjiom they elected, and who in their 
 turn elected the representatives, were required to 
 possess a considerable property qualification. It varied, 
 according to the size of the constituencies and the 
 nature of the property, from a revenue of the value of 
 500 days' to a revenue of the value of 100 days' labour. 
 In 1792, however, the Legislative Assembly very nearly 
 established manhood suffrage, though it was qualified 
 by the system of double election. The connection of 
 voting with property and taxation was abolished. All 
 Frenchmen of twenty-one who had resided for a year 
 in the department, and who were not in domestic ser- 
 vice, might vote in the primary assemblies, and no 
 other qualification was required, either for the elected 
 electors or for the deputies, except that they should 
 have attained the age of twenty-five. It was under 
 this system that the Convention the most bloody and 
 tyrannical assembly of which history has any record 
 was elected. The Constitution of June 1793 com- 
 pleted the work of democratic equality. The Con- 
 vention decreed that ' all Citizens have an equal right to 
 concur in the enactment of the law and in the nomina- 
 tions of their delegates or agents ' ; that ' the Sover- 
 eign people is the universality of French citizens/ and
 
 14 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 that 'they should nominate directly their deputies.' 
 Population was made the sole basis of national repre- 
 sentation. All citizens of twenty-one years who had 
 resided for six months in the electoral district were 
 made voters, and every 40,000 voters were entitled to 
 return one member. This Constitution itself was sub- 
 mitted to and ratified by direct universal suffrage. 
 
 The year when this Constitution Avas enacted was 
 one of the most tragical in French history. It was the 
 year when the ancient monarchy was overthrown ; 
 when the King and Queen were brought to the scaffold ; 
 when the flower of the French nation were mown 
 down by the guillotine or scattered as ruined exiles 
 over Europe ; when the war with England began which 
 raged, with one short intermission, for more than 
 twenty years. 
 
 The Constitution of 1793 never came into force. It 
 was adjourned till after the war, and long before the 
 war had terminated France had passed into wholly dif- 
 ferent conditions. The downfall of the Jacobins in 
 1794 soon led to a restriction of the suffrage and a re- 
 vival of the old system of double election, and in the 
 strong reaction against the horrors of the Eevolution 
 France moved on by steady stages to the absolute des- 
 potism of Napoleon. The system of direct election of 
 members of Parliament was not established in France 
 till 1817, and universal suffrage, as it had been desig- 
 nated by the Convention in 1793, did not revive until 
 1848. But the theory that each change in the Con- 
 stitution should be ratified by a direct popular vote 
 showed more vitality, and successive Governments soon 
 learned how easily a plebiscite vote could be secured 
 and directed by a strong executive, and how useful it 
 might become to screen or to justify usurpation. The 
 Constitution of 1795, which founded the power of the
 
 CH. i. THE REFORM BILL OP 1832 15 
 
 Directors ; the Constitution of 1799, which placed the 
 executive power in the hands of three Consuls elected 
 for ten years ; the Constitution of 1802, which made 
 Buonaparte Consul for life, and again remodelled the 
 electoral system ; the Empire, which was established 
 in 1804, and the additional Act of the Constitution 
 promulgated by Napoleon in 1815, were all submitted 
 to a direct popular vote. 1 
 
 A great displacement of political power was effected 
 by the French Revolution of 1830 and by the English 
 Reform Bill of 1832. Tocqueville, in a recently pub- 
 lished book, has shown very clearly how the true sig- 
 nificance of the French Revolution of 1830 was the 
 complete ascendency of the middle, or, as the French 
 say, bourgeois class. In that class all political powers, 
 franchises, and prerogatives for the next eighteen years 
 were concentrated ; their good and evil qualities per- 
 vaded and governed the whole field of French politics ; 
 and, by a happy coincidence, the King in mind and 
 character was in perfect harmony with the representa- 
 tives of the people. 2 Constitutional government was 
 carried out during these years faithfully, and in some 
 respects even brilliantly, but it was tainted by much 
 corruption, and it rested on an electorate of much less 
 than a quarter of a million. 
 
 In England, a similar though not quite so decisive 
 influence was established by the Reform Bill of 1832. 
 Many causes contributed to this measure, but two pre- 
 dominated over all others, one of them being industrial 
 and geographical, and the other political. The great 
 manufacturing inventions of the eighteenth century 
 
 1 See Jules Clere, Histoire de la France depuis 1789. 
 du Suffrage Universel, 12-30, 2 Souvenirs de Tocqueville^ 
 33 ; Laferriere, Constitutions pp. 6-7.
 
 16 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. r. 
 
 had called into being vast masses of unrepresented 
 opinion in the provincial towns, transferred the weight 
 of population from the southern to the northern half 
 of the island -, and, partly by depleting old centres of 
 power, and partly by creating new ones, added enor- 
 mously to the inequalities and. anomalies of English 
 representation. On the other hand, the great wave of 
 Toryism that overspread England after the French 
 Revolution produced a greatly increased disinclination 
 among the governing classes to all change, and espec- 
 ially to all measures of parliamentary reform. The 
 Royal prerogative of summoning new centres of popula- 
 tion to send members to Westminster had long since 
 become wholly obsolete. Pitt, with much prescience, 
 had attempted in 1783 and 1785 to meet the growing 
 inequalities of representation and provide for a grad- 
 ual diminution of the nomination boroughs ; but his 
 scheme was defeated, and he himself abandoned the 
 policy of reform. 
 
 There can be little doubt that for many years after 
 the horrors of the French Revolution the anti-reform 
 party represented with perfect fidelity the true senti- 
 ments of the English people, and no kind of blame 
 should be attached to the ministers who resisted par- 
 liamentary reform during the continuance of the war. 
 After that period, however, home politics were for 
 some years unskilfully conducted, and the reform 
 party grew steadily in strength. The reaction which 
 the French Reign of Terror had produced had spent its 
 force. The many forms of misery and discontent pro- 
 duced by the sudden fall of prices, by the enormous 
 weight of the war taxation, by the growth of the fac- 
 tory system, and by the vast and painful transforma- 
 tion of industry it involved, had all their influence on 
 political opinion. Lord John Russell, dissociating
 
 CH. I. THE REFORM BILL OF 1833 17 
 
 parliamentary reform from radical schemes of universal 
 suffrage, electoral districts, and vote by ballot, repeat- 
 edly brought forward the wise policy of disfranchising 
 small boroughs which were found guilty of gross cor- 
 ruption, and transferring their seats to the great unrep- 
 resented towns, beginning with Leeds, Birmingham, 
 and Manchester. Such a policy, if it had been adopted 
 in time, and steadily pursued, might have long averted 
 a great and comprehensive change ; but it was obsti- 
 nately resisted. Many mistakes, and perhaps still more 
 the establishment of peace, had dimmed the reputation 
 which the Tory party had justly gained by their con- 
 duct of the war. On the other hand, the no less just 
 discredit which had fallen upon the Whig party on 
 account of the profoundly unpatriotic conduct of a 
 large section of its members in the early years of the 
 war had passed away. Most of its new leaders were 
 men who had no part in these errors, who were un- 
 tainted by French sympathies and revolutionary doc- 
 trines, who reflected the national feelings quite as truly 
 as their opponents. 
 
 The triumph of Catholic Emancipation greatly ac- 
 celerated the change. The Catholic question had been 
 for many years that on which public opinion was 
 mainly concentrated ; and experience shows that the 
 strength of public opinion which is needed to carry 
 a great organic change in England can never be si- 
 multaneously evoked on two totally different questions. 
 Some very acute judges, indeed, who cared nothing for 
 Catholic Emancipation in itself, steadily resisted it be- 
 cause they saw that, once it was carried, the undivided 
 enthusiasm of the country would flow into the channel 
 of reform. 1 
 
 1 Lord Russell used to relate Lord Lonsdale in private always 
 that this was the reason which gave for his opposition to Catho- 
 VOL. i. 2
 
 18 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. t 
 
 After the settlement of the Catholic question the 
 Whig party, having no longer the anti-Popery preju- 
 dice to contend with,, acquired all the popularity its 
 democratic tendencies would naturally give it, and ob- 
 tained the undivided support of the Protestant Dis- 
 senters. A great Whig cause had triumphed, and it 
 had triumphed by the Act of a Tory ministry. The 
 struggle had demonstrated clearly the coercive power 
 which might be exercised over Parliament by organ- 
 ised popular agitation. The Tory party was defeated, 
 divided, discredited, and discouraged, and a new class 
 of Irish reformers were introduced into Parliament. 
 The cry for reform grew louder and louder, and the 
 triumph of the cause in France greatly assisted it. 
 
 Under all these influences a movement of public 
 opinion in favour of parliamentary reform was created 
 which had probably never been equalled in England 
 for its spontaneity and force. The country seemed for 
 a time on the verge of revolution ; but the measure 
 was at last carried. To many contemporaries the de- 
 struction of the nomination boroughs and of the con- 
 trolling power of the aristocracy over the House of 
 Commons seemed destined to ruin the parliamentary 
 system of England. But the men Avho chiefly presided 
 over this great change were genuine patriots, pro- 
 foundly imbued with the best political philosophy of 
 the English school, and as far as possible from sympa- 
 thy with the French apostles of liberty. It is curious 
 to notice how deeply rooted the English sentiment of 
 the necessity to well-ordered and enduring freedom of 
 disparities of political power has been, even at the 
 
 lie Emancipation. He said that carried, it would be impossible 
 he did not care about this meas- to resist the cry for reform, 
 ure, but he knew that, if it were
 
 CH. i. THE REFORM BILL OF 1832 19 
 
 time when parliamentary government was in its in- 
 fancy. No one expressed this feeling better than 
 Shakespeare, in the noble words which he places in 
 
 the mouth of Ulysses : 
 
 Degree being vizarded, 
 
 Th' unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. 
 The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, 
 Observe degree, priority, and place. 
 
 , O ! when degree is shak'd, 
 Which is the ladder to all high designs, 
 The enterprise is sick. How could communities, 
 Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, 
 Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 
 The primogenitive and due of birth, 
 Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, 
 But by degree, stand in authentic place ? 
 Take but degree away, untune that string, 
 And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets 
 In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters 
 Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
 And make a sop of all this solid globe : 
 Strength should be lord of imbecility, 
 And the rude son should strike his father dead: 
 Force should be right ; or rather, right and wrong 
 (Between whose endless jar justice resides) 
 Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 
 Then everything includes itself in power, 
 Power into will, will into appetite ; 
 And appetite, a universal wolf, 
 So doubly seconded with will and power, 
 Must make perforce a universal prey, 
 And last eat up himself. ' 
 
 1 Trail us and Cressida, act i. Jar not with liberty, but well 
 
 scene 3. So Milton consist.' 
 
 ' If not equal all, yet free, Paradise Los *' Book V - l - 791 ' 
 
 Equally free ; for orders and Milton puts these lines in the 
 
 degrees mouth of Satan, but in his trea-
 
 20 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 Though the Reform Bill undoubtedly changed the 
 centre of political power in England, it left the lead- 
 ing characteristics of the old system undestroyed. The 
 constituencies were still very different in size and popu- 
 lation. The suffrage in different parts of the kingdom 
 was very variously arranged. All the old powers and 
 influences were retained, though their proportionate 
 weight was changed. The House of Lords still re- 
 mained an important element in the Constitution. 
 The landed interest was still powerful in the county 
 constituencies. Property was specially and strongly 
 represented, and the Reform Bill brought great masses 
 of hitherto unrepresented property, as well as great 
 centres of population, into the circle of the Constitu- 
 tion. The middle class, which now became the most 
 powerful in the political system, was one which could 
 be excellently trusted with a controlling power. Aris- 
 totle long since observed, that it is to this section of 
 the community that the chief power in government 
 may be most wisely and most profitably given. It is not 
 the class most susceptible to new ideas or most prone 
 to great enterprises, but it is distinguished beyond all 
 others for its political independence, its caution, its 
 solid practical intelligence, its steady industry, its high 
 moral average. It also, perhaps, feels more promptly 
 
 tise on Reformation in England untutored monarch, the noblest, 
 
 he expresses very similar sen- worthiest, and most prudent 
 
 timents in his own person, men, with full approbation and 
 
 ' There is no civil government suffrage of the people, have in 
 
 that hath been known no, not their power the supreme and 
 
 the Spartan nor the Roman final determination of highest 
 
 . . . more divinely and bar- affairs ' (Book II.). On the 
 
 moniously tuned, more equally political opinions of English 
 
 balanced as it were by the poets, see the interesting pref- 
 
 hand and scale of Justice, than ace to Sir Henry Taylor's 
 
 is the Commonwealth of Eng- ' Critical Essays ' ( Works, v. 
 
 land, when, under a firm and xi.-xix.).
 
 CH. i. MIDDLE-CLASS GOVERNMENT 21 
 
 and more acutely than any other class the effects of 
 misgovernment, whether that misgovernment takes the 
 form of reckless adventure and extravagant expendi- 
 ture, or whether, in the not less dangerous form of rev- 
 olutionary legislation, it disturbs settled industries, 
 drives capital to other lands, and impairs the national 
 credit, on which the whole commercial system must 
 ultimately rest. 
 
 In England, however, this middle class, though it 
 became after 1832 the most powerful, had not the same 
 absolute empire as in France. The active administra- 
 tion of affairs was chiefly in the hands of the upper 
 and most cultivated class. The chief controlling power 
 lay with the great middle classes, and followed mainly 
 the bent of their wishes and tendencies. At the same 
 time, the suffrage was so arranged that it was, in some 
 degree at least, within the reach of the skilled artisans 
 a great and intelligent class, who should have a dis- 
 tinct place and interest in every well-ordered govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It does not appear to me that the world has ever seen 
 a better Constitution than England enjoyed between 
 the Keform Bill of 1832 and the Reform Bill of 1867. 
 Very few parliamentary governments have included 
 more talent, or represented more faithfully the various 
 interests and opinions of a great nation, or maintained 
 under many trying circumstances a higher level of 
 political purity and patriotism. The constituencies at 
 this time coincided very substantially with the area of 
 public opinion. Every one who will look facts hon- 
 estly in the face can convince himself that the public 
 opinion of a nation is something quite different from 
 the votes that can be extracted from all the individuals 
 who compose it. There are multitudes in every na- 
 tion who contribute nothing to its public opinion ; who
 
 22 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 never give a serious thought to public affairs, who have 
 no spontaneous wish to take any part in them ; who, 
 if they are induced to do so, will act under the com- 
 plete direction of individuals or organisations of an- 
 other class. The landlord, the clergyman or Dissent- 
 ing minister or priest, the local agitator, or the 
 public-house keeper, will direct their votes, and in a 
 pure democracy the art of winning and accumulating 
 these votes will become one of the chief parts of prac- 
 tical politics. 
 
 Different motives will be employed to attain it. 
 Sometimes the voter will be directly bribed or directly 
 intimidated. He will vote for money or for drink, or 
 in order to win the favour or avert the displeasure of 
 some one who is more powerful than himself. The 
 tenant will think of his landlord, the debtor of his 
 creditor, the shopkeeper of his customer. A poor, 
 struggling man called on to vote upon a question about 
 which he cares nothing, and knows nothing, is surely 
 not to be greatly blamed if he is governed by such con- 
 siderations. A still larger number of votes will be 
 won by persistent appeals to class cupidities. The 
 demagogue will try to persuade the voter that by fol- 
 lowing a certain line of policy every member of his 
 class will obtain some advantage. He will encourage 
 all his utopias., He will hold out hopes that by break- 
 ing -contracts, or shifting taxation and the power of 
 taxing, or enlarging the paternal functions of govern- 
 ment, something of the property of one class may be 
 transferred to another. He will also appeal persist- 
 ently, and often successfully, to class jealousies and 
 antipathies. All the divisions which naturally grow out 
 of class lines and out of the relations between employer 
 and employed will be studiously inflamed. Envy, 
 covetousness, prejudice, will become great forces in
 
 CH. I. THE UNINSTRUCTED VOTERS 23 
 
 political propagandism. Every real grievance will be 
 aggravated. Every redressed grievance will be revived : 
 every imaginary grievance will be encouraged. If the 
 poorest, most numerous, and most ignorant class can 
 be persuaded to hate the smaller class, and to vote 
 solely for the purpose of injuring them, the party man- 
 ager will have achieved his end. To set the many 
 against the few becomes the chief object of the elec- 
 tioneering agent. As education advances newspapers 
 arise which are intended solely for this purpose, and 
 they are often almost the only reading of great num- 
 bers of voters. 
 
 As far as the most ignorant class have opinions of 
 their own, they will be of the vaguest and most child- 
 like nature. When personal ascendencies are broken 
 down, party colours will often survive, and they form 
 one of the few elements of real stability. A man will 
 vote blue or vote yellow as his father did before him, 
 without much considering what principles may be con- 
 nected with these colours. A few strong biases of 
 class or creed will often display a great vitality. Large 
 numbers, also, will naturally vote on what is called 
 ' the turn-about system/ These people, they will say, 
 have had their turn ; it is now the turn of the others. 
 This ebb and flow, which is distinct from all vicissi- 
 tudes of opinion, and entirely irrespective of the good 
 or bad policy of the Government, has become of late 
 years a conspicuous and important element in most 
 constituencies, and contributes powerfully to the de- 
 cision of elections. In times of distress the flux or 
 reflux of the tide is greatly strengthened. A bad har- 
 vest, or some other disaster over which the Government 
 can have no more influence than over the march of the 
 planets, will produce a discontent that will often gov- 
 ern dubious votes, and may perhaps turn the scale in a
 
 24 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 nearly balanced election. In all general elections a 
 large number of seats are lost and won by very small 
 majorities, and influences such as I have described may 
 decide the issue. 
 
 The men who vote through such motives are often 
 most useful members of the community. They are 
 sober, honest, industrious labourers ; excellent fathers 
 and husbands ; capable of becoming, if need be, admir- 
 able soldiers. They are also often men who, within 
 the narrow circle of their own ideas, surroundings, and 
 immediate interests, exhibit no small shrewdness of 
 judgment ; but they are as ignorant as children of the 
 great questions of foreign, or Indian, or Irish, or co- 
 lonial policy, of the complicated and far-reaching con- 
 sequences of the constitutional changes, or the great 
 questions relating to commercial or financial policy, on 
 which a general election frequently turns. If they are 
 asked to vote on these issues, all that can be safely pre- 
 dicted is that their decision will not represent either 
 settled conviction or real knowledge. 
 
 There is another and very different class, who are 
 chiefly found in the towns. They are the kind of men 
 who may be seen loitering listlessly around the doors of 
 every gin-shop men who, through drunkenness, or 
 idleness, or dishonesty, have failed in the race of life ; 
 who either never possessed or have wholly lost the 
 taste for honest continuous work ; who hang loosely 
 on the verge of the criminal classes, and from whom 
 the criminal classes are chiefly recruited. These men 
 are not real labourers, but their presence constitutes 
 one of the chief difficulties and dangers of all labour 
 questions, and in every period of revolution and an- 
 archy they are galvanised into a sudden activity. With 
 a very low suffrage they become an important element 
 in many constituencies. Without knowledge and
 
 CH. I. THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY 25 
 
 without character, their instinct will be to use the 
 power which is given them for predatory and anarchic 
 purposes. To break up society, to obtain a new deal 
 in the goods of life, will naturally be their object. 
 
 Men of these two classes no doubt formed parts of 
 the old constituencies, but they formed so small a part 
 that they did not seriously derange the constitutional 
 machine or influence the methods of candidates. When 
 they are very numerous they will naturally alter the 
 whole action of politicians, and they may seriously im- 
 pair the representative character of Parliament, by sub- 
 merging or swamping the varieties of genuine opinion 
 by great uniform masses of ignorant and influenced 
 voters. That symptoms of this kind have appeared 
 and increased in English politics since the Keform Bill 
 of 1867 is, I believe, the growing conviction of serious 
 observers. The old healthy forces of English life no 
 doubt still act, and on great occasions they will prob- 
 ably do so with irresistible power ; but in normal times 
 they act more feebly and more uncertainly, and are 
 more liable to be overborne by capricious impulses and 
 unreasoning fluctuations. The evil of evils in our 
 present politics is that the constituencies can no longer 
 be fully trusted, and that their power is so nearly abso- 
 lute that they have an almost complete control over the 
 well-being of the Empire. 
 
 One of the great divisions of politics in our day is 
 coming to be whether, at the last resort, the world 
 should be governed by its ignorance or by its intelli- 
 gence. According to the one party, the preponderat- 
 ing power should be with education and property. 
 According to the other, the ultimate source of power, 
 the supreme right of appeal and of .control, belongs 
 legitimately to the majority of the nation told by the 
 head or, in other words, to the poorest, the most igno-
 
 26 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 rant, the most incapable, who are necessarily the most 
 numerous. 
 
 It is a theory which assuredly reverses all the past 
 experiences of mankind. In every field of human en- 
 terprise, in all the competitions of life, by the inexorable 
 law of Nature, superiority lies with the few, and not 
 with the many, and success can only be attained by 
 placing the guiding and controlling power mainly in 
 their hands. That the interests of all classes should 
 be represented in the Legislature ; that numbers as 
 well as intelligence should have some voice in politics, 
 is very true ; but unless the government of mankind 
 be essentially different from every other form of human 
 enterprise, it must inevitably deteriorate if it is placed 
 under the direct control of the most unintelligent 
 classes. No one can doubt that England has of late 
 years advanced with gigantic strides in this direction. 
 Yet, surely nothing in ancient alchemy was more irra- 
 tional than the notion that increased ignorance in the 
 elective body will be converted into increased capacity 
 for good government in the representative body ; that 
 the best way to improve the world and secure rational 
 progress is to place government more and more under 
 the control of the least enlightened classes. The day 
 will come when it will appear one of the strangest facts 
 in the history of human folly that such a theory was re- 
 garded as liberal and progressive. In the words of Sir 
 Henry Maine, ' Let any competently instructed person 
 turn over in his mind the great epochs of scientific in- 
 vention and social change during the last two centuries, 
 and consider what would have occurred if universal 
 suffrage had been established at any one of them. Uni- 
 versal suffrage, which to-day excludes free trade from 
 the United States, would certainly have prohibited the 
 spinning- jenny and the power-loom. It would cer-
 
 OH. I. THE IRISH ELECTORATE 27 
 
 tainly have forbidden the threshing-machine. It would 
 have prevented the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar ; 
 and it would have restored the Stuarts. It would have 
 proscribed the Eoman Catholics, with the mob which 
 burned Lord Mansfield's house and library in 1780 ; 
 and it would have proscribed the Dissenters, with the 
 mob which burned Dr. Priestley's house and library in 
 1791.' * 
 
 It is curious and melancholy to observe how Kous- 
 seau's doctrine of the omnipotence of numbers and the 
 supreme virtue of political equality is displacing in Eng- 
 land all the old maxims on which English liberty once 
 rested. I have spoken of the great inequalities in the 
 qualifications for the suffrage that existed in the United 
 Kingdom. - They secured a healthy diversity of charac- 
 ter in the representatives, and they followed with rough 
 but general fidelity the different degrees of political ad- 
 vancement. There was one suffrage for the towns, and 
 another for the country one suffrage for England, 
 and another for Ireland. All these diversities have 
 now been swept away. The case of Ireland is especially 
 significant. Ireland was greatly over-represented in 
 the Imperial Parliament, and by universal acknowledg- 
 ment the Irish representatives formed the diseased spot 
 in the parliamentary body, the disaffected and obstruc- 
 tive element most hostile to its healthy action. It was 
 also absolutely certain that a lowering of the Irish suf- 
 frage would aggravate the evil, and introduce into Par- 
 liament a larger body of men who were completely 
 alienated from the interests of the Empire, and utterly 
 indifferent to the dignity of Parliament and the main- 
 tenance of the Constitution. No one who knew Ire- 
 land doubted that it would throw a still larger amount 
 
 1 Maine's Popular Government^ pp. 35-36,
 
 28 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 of power into the hands of a poor, ignorant, and disaf- 
 fected peasantry, completely under the influence of 
 priests and agitators ; that it would weaken, and in 
 many districts virtually disfranchise, loyalty, property, 
 and intelligence ; that it would deepen the division of 
 classes ; that it would enormously increase the diffi- 
 culty of establishing any form of moderate and honest 
 self-government. Nothing, indeed, is more certain 
 than that the elements of good government must be 
 sought for in Ireland in a higher electoral plane than 
 in England. The men who introduced and carried 
 the degradation of the Irish suffrage were perfectly 
 aware of what they were doing. They acted with their 
 eyes open ; they justified themselves, in the true spirit 
 of the Contrat Social, on the plea that they would not 
 allow a political inequality to continue, and they prob- 
 ably believed that they were playing a good card in the 
 party game. 
 
 A very similar illustration may be found in the lan- 
 guage now commonly held in the Radical party about 
 university representation. According to any sane 
 theory of representative government, no form of repre- 
 sentation can be more manifestly wise. I may here 
 once more go to Ireland for an illustration. Nothing 
 in the Irish representation is so manifestly wanting as 
 a more adequate representation of loyalty and intelli- 
 gence in three provinces. Loyal and well-educated 
 men are to be found there in abundance ; in nearly 
 every form of industry, enterprise, and philanthropy, 
 they take the foremost place ; but they have no corre- 
 sponding weight in the political representation, as they 
 are usually swamped by an ignorant and influenced 
 peasantry. Owing to the purely agricultural character 
 of the greater part of Ireland, and the steady decadence 
 of most of its county towns, the Irish boroughs are
 
 CH. i. ATTACKS ON EDUCATION 29 
 
 for the most part singularly small and insignificant. 
 Among these boroughs a leading place must be assigned 
 to the one university constituency. This great Univer- 
 sity has for many generations educated the flower of 
 the intelligence of Ireland. It has sent into the Im- 
 perial Parliament a greater number of representatives 
 of conspicuous ability than any other Irish constitu- 
 ency. It comprises more than 4,300 electors, and is, 
 therefore, even in point of numbers, much more con- 
 siderable than many Irish boroughs ; and its voters 
 consist of highly educated men, scattered over the 
 whole surface of the country, taking a leading part in 
 many professions and industries, and coming in close 
 contact with an altogether unusual variety of interests, 
 classes, and opinions. If the object of representation 
 be to reflect faithfully in its variety and due proportion 
 the opinions, the interests, and the intelligence of the 
 community, what constituency could be more essen- 
 tially and more usefully representative ? Yet we are 
 now told that, in computing the relative strength of 
 parties in Ireland, the University representation must 
 be subtracted, as ( it does not represent the nation/ 
 This dignity, it appears, belongs more truly to the illit- 
 erates more than one in five professedly unable even 
 to read the names upon the ballot-papers ' who, in 
 some remote western district, or in some decaying 
 county town, are driven like sheep to the polling-booth 
 by agitators or priests ! 
 
 Surely it is impossible to exaggerate the fatuity of 
 these attacks upon university representation ; and the 
 men who make them have rarely the excuse of honest 
 ignorance. With many the true motive is simply a 
 
 1 Return showing the Number of Persons who voted as Illiteratet 
 at the General Election of 1892 (Feb. 1893).
 
 30 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 desire to extinguish constituencies which return mem- 
 bers opposed to their politics, and at the same time, by 
 depreciating the great centres of intelligence, to flatter 
 the more ignorant voters. It is a truth which should 
 never be forgotten, that in the field of politics the 
 spirit of servility and sycophancy no longer shows 
 itself in the adulation of kings and nobles. Faithful 
 to its old instinct of grovelling at the feet of power, it 
 now carries its homage to another shrine. The men 
 who, in former ages, would have sought by Byzantine 
 flattery to win power through the favour of an emperor 
 or a prince, will now be found declaiming on platforms 
 about the iniquity of privilege, extolling the matchless 
 wisdom and nobility of the masses, systematically try- 
 ing to excite their passions or their jealousies, and to 
 win them by bribes and flatteries to their side. Many 
 of those who are doing their best to reduce the influence 
 of education and intelligence in English politics are 
 highly cultivated men, who owe to university educa- 
 tion all that they are, though they are now imitating 
 usually with awkward and overstrained effort the 
 rant of the vulgar demagogue. They have taken their 
 line in public life, and some of them have attained 
 their ends. I do not think that the respect of honest 
 men will form any large part of their reward. 
 
 It is curious how often in modern England extreme 
 enthusiasm for education is combined with an utter 
 disregard for the opinions of the more educated classes. 
 The movement against the influence of property is at 
 least as strong as against the influence of education. 
 One of the forms that it now chiefly takes is the out- 
 cry against plural voting. -It is denounced as an abuse 
 and an injustice that some great landlord who has 
 property in several counties, or in several towns, should 
 possess a vote for each constituency in which he pos-
 
 OH. I. ATTACKS ON PROPERTY 31 
 
 sesses property. To me, at -least, it appears that such 
 an arrangement is most natural, expedient, and just. 
 In each of these localities the voter has considerable 
 material interests ; in each of them he pays taxes ; in 
 each of them he discharges public duties ; in each of 
 them he probably exercises local influence as a land- 
 lord or an employer of labour. He takes part in each 
 constituency in local charities, in local movements, in 
 local business, and represents in each a clearly recog- 
 nised, and often very considerable, force. Can there 
 be anything more reasonable than that he should have 
 in each constituency a voice in the political represen- 
 tation ? Can there be anything more irrational than 
 to maintain that, in all these constituencies except one, 
 he should be denied that minute fraction of political 
 power which is accorded to the poorest day-labourer in 
 his employment ? Mill and some other advocates of 
 universal suffrage have maintained that while every 
 one should have a vote, plural voting should be 
 largely extended, giving special privileges to special 
 qualifications. It would be difficult to enact, and prob- 
 ably still more difficult to maintain, such privileges 
 under a democratic ascendency ; but plural voting con- 
 nected with property is rooted by long-established cus- 
 tom in the habits of the country, and though its influ- 
 ence is not very great, it does something to make the 
 Legislature a true picture and reflection of the forces in 
 the country, and to qualify the despotism of simple 
 numbers. 
 
 We may take another illustration of a different kind. 
 Let the reader place himself in imagination at the 
 Guildhall or at St. Paul's, and consider for a moment 
 all that is included within a square mile taken from 
 these centres. Probably no other spot on the globe 
 comprises so many of the forms and elements of power.
 
 32 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. 1 
 
 Think of all the wealth, all the varieties of knowledge, 
 all the kinds of influence and activity that are concen- 
 trated in that narrow space. In the most distant quar- 
 ters of the Empire men of enterprise and initiative 
 turn to the city of London for assistance ; each fluctu- 
 ation of its prosperity is felt to the furthest confines of 
 the civilised world. There is scarcely a Government 
 that does not owe something to it, and its agencies 
 radiate far beyond civilisation, among savage tribes 
 and through unreclaimed deserts. It is the great heart 
 of the Empire, beating in close, constant, active cor- 
 respondence with all its parts. And yet, according to 
 the democratic theory, a square mile of the City 
 should have exactly the same weight in the political 
 system as a square mile of Stepney or of Shadwell. 
 Can any one suppose that a theory of representation 
 so palpably and grotesquely at variance with the real- 
 ity of things has any real prospect of enduring ? 
 
 The complete submission of all taxation to the will 
 of a mere numerical majority is an end which we have 
 not yet fully attained, but towards which we are mani- 
 festly travelling. Every few years something is done in 
 this direction, either by lowering the suffrage, or by 
 abolishing ex-officio guardians of the poor, or by ex- 
 tinguishing plural voting, or by suppressing or weak- 
 ening property qualifications. The inevitable result 
 is to give one class the power of voting taxes which 
 another class almost exclusively pay, and the chief 
 tax-payers, being completely swamped, are for all prac- 
 tical purposes completely disfranchised. As I have al- 
 ready noticed, it would be difficult to conceive a more 
 flagrant abandonment of that principle about the con- 
 nection between taxation and voting which in former 
 generations was looked on as the most fundamental 
 principle of British freedom. It is curious to find
 
 CH. L EFFECTS OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 33 
 
 men who are steadily labouring for this end declaim- 
 ing on the iniquity of the aristocracy of the eighteenth 
 century in attempting to tax America without her con- 
 sent. Democracy pushed to its full consequences places 
 the whole property of the country in the hands of the 
 poorest classes, giving them unlimited power of help- 
 ing themselves. At the same time, under its influence 
 the effect of distant considerations on political action 
 is steadily diminishing. Very naturally, every re- 
 straint of economy under such a system is weakened, 
 and the sphere of Government activity and expense is 
 rapidly increased. But evils much graver than mere 
 extravagance and inequitable taxation are impending 
 in a country which has no very extraordinary natural 
 resources, and which owes its almost unique economi- 
 cal position mainly to its great accumulation of mova- 
 ble wealth, and to the national credit which secure 
 wealth alone can give. 
 
 It is a saying of the great German historian, Sybel, 
 that ( the realisation of universal suffrage in its conse- 
 quences has always been the beginning of the end of 
 all parliamentarism/ I believe that a large majority 
 of the most serious and dispassionate observers of the 
 political world are coming steadily to the same conclu- 
 sion. Parliamentary government which is mainly di- 
 rected by the educated and propertied classes is an 
 essentially different thing from parliamentary govern- 
 ment resting on a purely democratic basis. In all the 
 instances in which this form of government has been 
 conspicuously successful, the representative body was 
 returned on a restricted suffrage. This is manifestly 
 true of the British Parliaments of the past. The Ital- 
 ian Parliaments which displayed such eminent wisdom 
 and forbearance after the war of 1859 and after the 
 death of Cavour ; the Austrian Parliaments which car-
 
 34 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. 1 
 
 ried the singularly wise and moderate legislation that 
 has transformed Austria from a reactionary despotism 
 into one of the best-governed countries in Europe ; 
 the Belgian Parliaments which, in spite of furious re- 
 ligious animosities, established among a French-speak- 
 ing population constitutional government which en- 
 dured without organic change for sixty years, and 
 which their more brilliant neighbours have wholly 
 failed to rival; the. Dutch Parliaments, which repre- 
 sent a country where self-government has long been 
 as perfectly attained as in any portion of the globe 
 were all elected on a very high suffrage. All these na- 
 tions have during the last years either entered upon 
 the experiment of democracy or are now trembling on 
 the verge. The result is already very apparent. In 
 Italy, where the experiment has been longest tried, it 
 has already led to a great and manifest deterioration 
 in public life. In Belgium, its first effect was to break 
 up the Parliament into groups, and to shatter the 
 power of the Moderate Liberals. 
 
 In several countries pure democracy has been con- 
 nected with extreme instability of government, with 
 rapidly increasing taxation and debt, with broken 
 credit, with perpetual military insurrections, with con- 
 stantly recurring alternations of anarchy and despotism. 
 In Mexico, it has been computed that in the thirty- 
 two years between 1821 and 1853 no less than forty- 
 eight different forms of government succeeded each 
 other. 1 In Spain, democracy in its most exaggerated 
 form has been repeatedly adopted. There was an ex- 
 tremely democratic constitution established in 1812, 
 overthrown in 1814, re-established in 1820, again de^ 
 stroyed in 1823. After a long succession of insurrec 
 
 1 See Burke's Life of Juarez, p. 3.
 
 CH. i. EFFECTS OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 35 
 
 tions and constitutional vicissitudes, which it is un- 
 necessary to recount, universal suffrage was established 
 by the Republican revolution of 1868. It prevailed, 
 in spite of several revolutions of power, till 1877, and 
 during this time the credit of the country was irre- 
 trievably ruined by the immense increase of the debt. 
 In 1877 a high property electoral qualification was es- 
 tablished. In 1887 it was somewhat modified. In 
 1890 universal suffrage, chiefly qualified by a two years' 
 residence, was re-established. 1 In many cases where 
 universal suffrage exists it has been rendered nugatory 
 by the success with which the governing power has 
 been able to manage and to drill it. There are said to 
 have been instances where a regiment of soldiers has 
 been marched to the poll for the purpose of securing 
 the majority for the Government candidate. The sys- 
 tem has probably been least dangerous in countries 
 like Germany and the United States, where the powers 
 of the representative body are greatly limited, or in 
 new and distant countries, inhabited by thinly scat- 
 tered, prosperous, and self-reliant colonists, and where 
 there are no old institutions to be destroyed. Yet, 
 even in these cases the abuses and dangers that flow 
 from it are very apparent. 
 
 France, which more than any other country claims 
 the paternity of this form of government, deserves our 
 special attention. In one important respect she seemed 
 peculiarly fitted for it, for the great division of landed, 
 property secured a strong conservative basis, and erected 
 the most formidable of all barriers against socialistic in- 
 novations. She was also, on account of her almost 
 stationary population, much less exposed than other 
 European nations to that pressure of population on 
 
 'Dareste, Constitutions Modernes, i. 617, 619, 626.
 
 36 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 means of subsistence which is one of the chief causes 
 of political disturbances. At the Revolution of 1848 
 she passed at a single bound from an electorate of about 
 225,000 1 voters to universal manhood suffrage. For a 
 few months the new electors turned with an overwhelm- 
 ing enthusiasm to Lamartine. At a time when France 
 was peculiarly rich in great men he was pre-eminently 
 the wonderful man of his age, possessing nearly all the 
 qualities that are most fitted to dazzle great masses of 
 men, though, unfortunately, not those which are most 
 needed for the wise guidance of affairs. As a poet, he 
 was by universal consent among the very greatest 
 France had ever produced, and few men in all French 
 literature have wielded the noble instrument "of French 
 prose with such consummate genius and skill. His 
 ' History of the Girondins/ untrue, inaccurate, and 
 misleading as it is, had, probably, a greater influence 
 on immediate politics than any other historical work 
 that has ever been written, and the passionate enthusi- 
 asm it aroused contributed very largely to the Revolu- 
 tion. He combined, too, as no one has done before or 
 since, the most splendid literary gifts in poetry and 
 prose with the power of enthralling assemblies by his 
 spoken words, swaying and restraining the passions of 
 vast multitudes of excited men. In a great crisis he 
 proved brave, honest, humane, and well-meaning, and 
 he could judge large social questions with wisdom and 
 moderation ; but he had neither the true strength nor 
 practical talent that are needed in the government 
 of men, and he was apt to be led astray by a childlike 
 and unrestrained vanity. 
 
 His popularity was for a time so great that ten de- 
 partments and more than two millions of voters simul- 
 
 1 Clere, Hist, du Suffrage Universel, p. 59.
 
 CH. L UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN FRANCE 37 
 
 taneously elected him to the National Assembly, with^ 
 out any solicitation on his part. But his star soon 
 faded : socialistic attacks on property began to dominate 
 at Paris, and under the terror of these attacks the great 
 mass of voters began to turn towards a saviour of so- 
 ciety. The election, by an enormous majority, of Louis 
 Napoleon as President in December 1848, clearly fore- 
 shadowed the future, and the extremely menacing char- 
 acter which the Paris elections assumed led to the law 
 of 1850, which considerably restricted the suffrage. It 
 made three years' residence in the constituency neces- 
 sary for an elector, and it provided precise and stringent 
 rules by which that residence must be ascertained. In 
 spite of a furious opposition from the Radical party, 
 this law was carried by 433 to 240, and it is said to 
 have disfranchised more than three millions of voters, 
 or about a third part of the electorate. 1 
 
 Universal suffrage had lasted just two years ; but in 
 the conflict which ensued between the Legislative As-' 
 sembly and the President, the latter clearly saw that it 
 would be his best weapon. By a stroke of true politi- 
 cal sagacity he sent down, in November 1851, a power- 
 fully written presidential message, calling upon the 
 Assembly to repeal the law of 1850, and to restore their 
 franchise to the three million voters. The Chamber 
 received the message with some consternation, and after 
 an agitated debate it resolved by a majority of two to 
 maintain the existing law. Less than a month later 
 came the Coup d'Etat of December 2, when the chief 
 statesmen and generals of France were arrested in their 
 beds and carried in the dark winter morning to prison ; 
 when the Chamber was peremptorily dissolved ; when 
 its members, on their refusal to obey, were led between 
 
 Ciere, pp. 93-96.
 
 38 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 files of soldiers to the barracks, and thence conducted 
 to prison ; when all resistance was crushed by military 
 force, martial law, and wholesale deportations. One of 
 the first acts of Louis Napoleon was to announce in the 
 proclamation that dissolved the Chamber that the elec- 
 toral law of 1850 was annulled and universal suffrage 
 re-established. Two days after the Coup d'Etat it was 
 sanctioned by a plebiscite of the army, and within three 
 weeks of the same event, when the greater part of 
 France was still under severe martial law, the act of 
 the President was ratified by universal suffrage. Nearly 
 eight millions of electors are said to have voted for 
 him. 
 
 From the Coup d'Etat of December 2 universal suf- 
 frage was duly installed in France. Another plebiscite, 
 which took place in November 1852, made the Prince- 
 President Emperor ; while a fourth, only a few weeks 
 before the outbreak of the disastrous war of 1870, 
 once more sanctioned by overwhelming majorities the 
 imperial rule. During the whole of this reign the Leg- 
 islative Assemblies were elected by universal suffrage, 
 yet during the greater part of it the government was 
 an almost absolute despotism. Universal suffrage was 
 drilled and disciplined into the most obedient of ser- 
 vants. Every official, from the highest to the lowest, 
 was turned into an electioneering agent. The limits 
 of constituencies were arbitrarily enlarged, modified, or 
 contracted to secure the success of the Government can- 
 didate. All the powers of administration were system- 
 atically and openly employed in directing votes. Each 
 constituency was taught that its prospect of obtaining 
 roads, or bridges, or harbours, or other local advantages 
 depended on its support of the Government, and that if 
 the official candidate succeeded he would have the pow- 
 er of distributing among his supporters innumerable
 
 CH. i. THE LIBERAL EMPIRE 39 
 
 small Government places, privileges and honours. The 
 powers of the Legislative Assembly were extremely lim- 
 ited. They came to little more than a right of sanc- 
 tioning laws submitted to it by the Government, and 
 voting taxes under great restrictions. Until 1860 its 
 debates were not even fully reported, and for several 
 years the Opposition consisted of five men. 
 
 In 1867 and 1868 the whole system was suddenly 
 changed. The Emperor called one of the members 
 of the old Opposition to power, and made a bold 
 attempt, by large and liberal measures, to transform 
 the character of the Empire. The right of inter- 
 pellation was conceded to the Chamber. Liberty of 
 the press, in almost the widest measure, and a large 
 measure of liberty of meeting, were accorded, and the 
 fierce political life which had been for some seventeen 
 years suppressed burst out with a volcanic fury. Those 
 who knew France in the last days of the Empire will, 
 I think, agree with me that there has never been a 
 more violent, a more dangerous, or more revolutionary 
 press than then prevailed. The hope that active poli- 
 ticians would let bygones be bygones, and accept the 
 compromise of a liberal empire, soon waned. Furious 
 attacks on the main pillars of society attained an enor- 
 mous popularity, and the very foundations of the Em- 
 pire were persistently assailed. It was at this period 
 that the works of M. Tenot on the Coup d'Etat exer- 
 cised their great influence. The demonstrations at the 
 tomb of Baudin, who had been shot on a barricade in 
 December 1851, displayed the same spirit ; and the de- 
 fiant eloquence of Gambetta in defending those who 
 were accused of riot in connection with these demon- 
 strations first brought that tribune into public notice. 
 The Emperor, not unnaturally, refused to abandon the 
 whole system of official guidance at the election of the
 
 40 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 Chamber which met in 1869, and universal suffrage 
 again returned a great majority in his favour. But 
 the entire Parisian representation was won by the Op- 
 position, and a great portion of it by its most violent 
 and irreconcilable wing, while in the whole Chamber 
 not much less than a third of the members and a great 
 preponderance of the parliamentary talent were in op- 
 position to the Government. 
 
 Most good observers felt that a state of things had 
 been called into existence which could not possibly 
 last. The Emperor, in opening the Chamber, while 
 deploring the growth of subversive and anarchical pas- 
 sions, declared his determination to persevere in the 
 path he had chosen, and, although he refused to aban- 
 don his action over the constituencies, and expressly 
 reserved to himself the right of always appealing to his 
 people independently of his ministers, he greatly en- 
 larged the powers of the Assembly. In conjunction 
 with himself it now obtained the right of initiating 
 laws ; it obtained the fullest powers of amending them, 
 and the ministers became responsible to it. The Con- 
 stitution was denounced by the Kadical party as a 
 worthless mockery, but it was sanctioned by the Ple- 
 biscite of 1870. There were about 7,350,000 votes in 
 favour of the Government, and rather more than 
 1,500,000 votes against it. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the subversive pas- 
 sions that had been aroused and the grave internal dan- 
 gers that had arisen bore a great part in impelling the 
 Government into the disastrous Franco-German War. 
 There can be as little doubt that the same causes vastly 
 aggravated the calamity, for it was the fear of revolu- 
 tion that prevented the Emperor from falling back on 
 Paris after the first defeat. When the news of Sedan 
 arrived, and the people of Paris learnt that the Em-
 
 CH. I. OVERTHROW OF NAPOLEON III. 41 
 
 peror and his whole army were prisoners in the hands 
 of the Prussians, the Republican party saw that their 
 hour had arrived. Instead of rallying around the Em- 
 press, they at once, on their own authority, destroyed 
 the Government which universal suffrage had so fre- 
 quently and so recently ratified, and drove the Regent 
 into exile. Few things in French history are more 
 mournfully significant than that the streets of Paris 
 were illuminated the night after the disaster of Sedan 
 was known. In the eyes of the party which now ruled, 
 the triumph of the Republic more than compensated 
 for the most terrible calamity that had ever befallen 
 their country. One of the principal streets in Paris 
 still bears the name of the Fourth of September, the 
 day when this revolution was accomplished. It is, ap- 
 parently, still regarded by some Frenchmen as a day of 
 which they may be proud. 
 
 It deprived France of a settled Government at the 
 moment when such a Government was most imperi- 
 ously needed, and one of its most certain results was 
 the useless prolongation of a hopeless war. There is 
 little doubt that if the Empire had survived Sedan 
 peace would have speedily been made, and, although 
 Strasburg was irrevocably lost, Metz would have been 
 saved ; the war indemnity would have been far less ; 
 the vast expenditure of life and property and human 
 suffering that marked the later months of the war 
 would have been prevented, and France might have es- 
 caped the most hideous, shameful, and wicked of all 
 insurrections the Communist rising against a French 
 Government under the eyes of a victorious invading 
 army. 
 
 Happily, in this dark crisis of her fate France found 
 a really great man, who in intellectual stature seemed 
 to tower like a giant among his contemporaries ; and it
 
 42 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 is a curiously significant fact that he was one of the 
 few surviving statesmen who had been formed in the 
 parliamentary conflicts under Louis Philippe, before 
 the millennium of universal suffrage had dawned upon 
 the land. 
 
 It is, perhaps, somewhat rash to discuss the Gov- 
 ernment which ensued, under which France still sub- 
 sists. In the rapidly changing kaleidoscope of French 
 politics it may soon take a new form, and something 
 may easily occur which will give it a complexion some- 
 what different from my present judgment. Still, 
 twenty-three years have elapsed since 1870 and the time 
 at which I am writing, and this space is long enough 
 to furnish us with some general conclusions. The 
 French Eepublic is, not only in form, but in reality, a 
 Government of universal suffrage, acting with very lit- 
 tle control. Its democratic character is chiefly qualified 
 by the position of the Senate, which has some special 
 elements of strength, that will be considered in another 
 chapter. The position of the President was for some 
 time not very clearly determined. As interpreted by 
 Thiers it carried with it great governing powers. 
 Thiers was, indeed, essentially his own prime minister ; 
 he insisted upon the Chamber carrying out his policy ; 
 he corresponded directly with foreign ambassadors ; he 
 held the threads of foreign policy so exclusively in 
 his own hands that the whole question of the evacua- 
 tion of the territory was entirely managed by him, 
 without reference to his ministers, and it is said that 
 no documents relating to it were found in the Ministry 
 of Foreign Affairs. 1 His ascendency, however, was 
 mainly due to his great personality and reputation, and 
 after his resignation, and especially after the constitu- 
 
 Chaudordy, La France en 1889, p. 191.
 
 CH. i. THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY 43 
 
 tional laws of 1875, the French President assumed a 
 position very little different from that of a constitu- 
 tional monarch. Unlike the American President, un- 
 like the French Emperor, the President does not owe 
 his position to the direct and independent action of 
 universal suffrage. He is elected by the Senate and 
 Chamber of Deputies voting together. All his acts 
 have to be countersigned by a minister. His ministers 
 fall before a vote of the Assembly, and he cannot even 
 dissolve the Chamber of Deputies without the assent of 
 the Senate. The Government is, therefore, wholly 
 without that strong executive which is one of the most 
 distinguishing characteristics of the great American re- 
 public. 
 
 Whatever else may be said of this Government, it 
 has certainly not proved a brilliant one. Few French 
 Governments have produced or attracted so little ejni' 
 nent talent, or have been, for the most part, carried on 
 by men who, apart from their official positions, are so 
 little known, have so little weight in their country, 
 and have hitherto appealed so feebly to the imagina- 
 tions of the world. As it seems to me, one of the 
 characteristic features of our time is the absence of any 
 political ideal capable of exciting strong enthusiasm. 
 Political restlessness and political innovation are abun- 
 dantly displayed, but there is nothing resembling the 
 fervid devotion and the boundless hopes which the ad- 
 vent of democracy excited at the close of the eighteenth 
 century. Democracy has completely triumphed in two 
 forms the American and the French and we see it 
 fully working before us. Men 'may like it or dislike 
 it, but only rare and very peculiarly moulded minds 
 can find in the Government of either republic a subject 
 for real enthusiasm. The French Eevolution, in its 
 earlier days, excited such an enthusiasm nearly to the
 
 44 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i 
 
 point of madness, and in 1830 and 1848 French poli- 
 tics exercised an almost irresistible attraction over 
 surrounding countries. It has been one of the achieve- 
 ments of the present Eepublic to destroy this fanati- 
 cism. With our closer insight into American and 
 French democracy, forms of government seem to have 
 lost their magnetic power. The ideals and utopias 
 that float before the popular imagination are of another 
 kind. They point rather to great social and industrial 
 changes, to redistributions of wealth, to a dissolution 
 of the present fabric of society. 
 
 I do not know that this is altogether an evil. There 
 is a constant tendency in the human mind to expect 
 too much from Governments, and brilliancy in these 
 spheres is often sought by violent constitutional in- 
 novations or military adventure. At the same time, 
 when the Government of a country fails to excite en- 
 thusiasm, or even interest, there is apt to be some de- 
 cline of patriotism, and there is much danger that the 
 craving for excitement, which is so deeply implanted 
 in human nature, and certainly abundantly present in 
 French nature, may some day burst out in very dan- 
 gerous forms. It has often been said that one of the 
 causes of the popularity of military adventure in great 
 despotisms is the absence of any interest in ordinary 
 public life. In the light of the present condition of 
 France, it is exceedingly curious to read the speeches 
 of Lamartine, Cremieux, and the other men who 
 played the chief part in the Eevolution of 1848. The 
 charge which they brought against the Government of 
 Louis Philippe was much less that it was guilty of any 
 positive fault, than that it failed to give France the 
 brilliancy and the prominence in Europe which were 
 her due. She appeared, they contended, like a dowdy, 
 ill-dressed figure in the concert of nations. Yet, who
 
 CH. i. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 45 
 
 can doubt that at that period the amount of brilliant 
 talent in French public life was incomparably greater 
 than at present ? 
 
 The characteristic function, however, of government 
 is business, and a Government that administers affairs 
 with steady wisdom, tolerance, and uprightness may 
 well be pardoned if it does not appeal to the more 
 poetic side of human nature. I suspect, however, that 
 most impartial judges will greatly doubt whether 
 modern French democracy fulfils these requirements. 
 One of its most conspicuous features has been its ex- 
 treme, its astonishing ministerial instability. Between 
 1870 and the closing days of 1893, when I write these 
 lines, France has had no less than thirty-two ministries. 
 It may well be doubted whether a form of government 
 which leads to such instability can be destined to en- 
 dure, and whether it is compatible with that continuity 
 of policy which is one of the most essential elements of 
 national greatness. One of the causes that make the 
 power of Kussia in the world so formidable is the steady 
 persistence of its foreign policy. Designs that may be 
 traced to Peter the Great have been steadily pursued, 
 and in the whole period from 1816 to 1895 only three 
 ministers Nesselrode, Gortschakoff, and Giers have 
 directed the foreign policy of the Empire. The great 
 lines of French foreign policy were pursued with dif- 
 ferent degrees of energy and success, but with unde- 
 viating persistence, by Henry IV., by Kichelieu and 
 Mazarin, by Louis XIV., and by Cardinal Fleury. It 
 is probable that in France, as in most democracies, the 
 permanent service includes men greatly above the aver- 
 age which universal suffrage has brought to the front, 
 and it is in this service that the old administrative tra- 
 ditions are preserved and the chief elements of good 
 government are to be found. A good permanent ser-
 
 46 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 vice has often saved a country when its nominal rulers 
 are utterly untrustworthy. But, excellent as the ser- 
 vice has been, and, I believe, in many of its branches 
 still is, in France, it is scarcely possible that it should 
 not have been profoundly affected by constant fluctu- 
 ations among its chiefs. Partly by a desire to weed out 
 all officials who were not in accordance with the strict- 
 est Eepublican doctrine, and partly by the imperious 
 desire felt by succeeding ministries to provide for their 
 followers, a system of change has grown up in French 
 official life much like that which has done so much to 
 degrade American politics. 1 It is not, it is true, car- 
 ried to the same extreme, but it has introduced much 
 instability into spheres where steady continuity is of 
 the highest importance. 
 
 It produces not only the evil of inexperience, but 
 also the still greater evil of a lowered tone. No careful 
 student of French politics can fail to have been struck 
 with the many instances, since the establishment of the 
 Eepublic, in which diplomatists and other officials have 
 violated the cardinal article of professional honour by 
 publishing to the world secrets they had learned in con- 
 fidential Government posts. There can be no surer or 
 more ominous sign of deterioration in official life ; and 
 
 1 Speaking of the Civil Ser- prenait la parole en qiialite de 
 
 vice in France, M. Leroy-Beau- doyen, disait-il, des directeurs 
 
 lieu says : ' Plus la societe ap- generaux du ministere. Ce 
 
 proche du regime democratique doyen avait quarante-cinq ou 
 
 pur, plus cette instabilite s'ac- quarante-six ans, si non moins. 
 
 centue. ... La France sur Que de revocations ou de mises 
 
 ce point se fait americaine. prematurees a la retraite n'avait- 
 
 1'our ne citer qu'un petit fait il pas fallu pour amener ce 
 
 qui est singulierement significa- decanat precoce ! ' (L'Etat et ses 
 
 tif, en 1887 a 1'enterrement d'un Fonctions, pp. 65-G6.) See, too, 
 
 haut fonctionnaire du ministere Scherer, La Democratic et la 
 
 des finances, 1'un de ses col- France, pp. 26-32. 
 legues, bien connu d'ailleurs,
 
 Cte. i. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 47 
 
 it is not difficult to detect its causes. Much has been 
 due to the frequency of revolutions, the functionaries 
 of one dynasty regarding themselves as relieved from 
 all obligation to secrecy when a new form of govern- 
 ment was established. Much is also due to the charac- 
 ter of the Kepublic. A prominent French politician 
 who was for four years prefect of police published, al- 
 most immediately after he left office, two volumes of 
 ' recollections/ full of anecdotes which would be con- 
 sidered in England scandalous violations of official 
 confidence. The following significant lines are his 
 own defence. ' After having found that all means 
 were good for overthrowing the preceding regimes, the 
 men who are now in power, in order to consolidate 
 their own authority, claim to appropriate all the tra- 
 ditions of the monarchies they have destroyed. Under 
 a monarchy, the functionary who returns to private 
 life retains obligations of gratitude and fidelity towards 
 the dynasty of which he was and will remain the sub- 
 ject. But in the system of our institutions, what per- 
 manent element is there in the name of which such 
 obligations can be imposed on me ? Do I owe anything 
 to the existing Cabinet ? Is it not composed of my ad- 
 versaries ? Does it not run counter to all the ideas 
 that are dear to me ? Does it not obstruct the path to 
 the hopes of a better future ? Does it not impose on 
 my country a policy which I detest ? ' l 
 
 We may judge French democracy by other tests. 
 Has it raised France to a higher plane of liberty than 
 in the past ? The latitude of speaking and writing 
 and dramatic representation is, no doubt, extremely 
 great, but few modern French Governments, in their 
 religious policy and in their educational policy, have 
 
 1 Andrieux, Souvenirs d'un Prefet de Police, ii. 53-54.
 
 4:8 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 made more determined efforts to force upon great 
 masses of the population a system of education they 
 detested, or to deprive them of the religious conso- 
 lation they most dearly prized. It is very doubtful 
 whether the religious policy of Jules Ferry and the 
 educational policy of Paul Bert were approved of by the 
 majority of Frenchmen. They are, probably, among 
 the many instances in which a resolute and well-organ- 
 ised minority have forced their policy on a majority 
 who were for the most part languid, divided, or unor- 
 ganised. If the opinions of women as well as of men 
 be taken into account, as they surely should be in ques- 
 tions of religion and education, there can be little 
 doubt that tLe Government policy was that of a not 
 very considerable minority. The essential character- 
 istic of true liberty is, that under its shelter many dif- 
 ferent types of life and character, and opinion and be- 
 lief can develop unmolested and unobstructed. Can 
 it be said that the French Republic represents this 
 liberty in a higher degree than other Governments ? 
 It has been called a Government of the working-classes, 
 but has it in this respect any extraordinary claim to 
 our respect ? On nearly all working-class questions, it 
 will be found that France has been preceded on the 
 path of progress by British legislation. At the present 
 day, the hours of work of the French labourer are in 
 general much longer than those of the Englishman ; 
 and I believe the English workmen, who have of late 
 years so carefully examined continental legislations, 
 have very generally concluded that they have nothing 
 to envy in the industrial habits or legislation of the 
 Republic. 
 
 Has it, at least, managed with peculiar wisdom the 
 resources of France ? The history of French finances 
 in the nineteenth century is a very curious one, and a
 
 CH. i. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 49 
 
 brief retrospect will not, I think, be irrelevant to my 
 present purpose, for it throws much real and instruc- 
 tive light on the tendencies of democracies. We may 
 start from the year 1814, when the great French war 
 was concluded. There was then an extraordinary con- 
 trast between the financial condition of Great Britain 
 and that of her conquered adversary. Great Britain 
 seemed almost crushed by her enormous debt, while 
 the debt of France was quite inconsiderable. Partly 
 by unsparing levies on conquered nations, and partly 
 by his own extremely skilful management of French 
 resources, Napoleon had made his great wars almost 
 self-supporting. Putting aside the debts of conquered 
 or annexed countries, the whole debt of France created 
 between 1800 and 1814 amounted only to an annual 
 payment in interest of seven millions of francs, to a 
 nominal capital of 140 millions, or less than six mill- 
 ions of pounds. 1 
 
 The Hundred Days, the war indemnity exacted after 
 Waterloo by the Allies for their expense in the war, 
 the cost of the army of occupation, the large sums 
 which were voted in compensation to the plundered 
 ' emigres/ 2 and the years of impaired and depreciated 
 credit that followed the Restoration, added largely to 
 the debt ; but in the opinion of the best contemporary 
 authority on French finance, the Government of the 
 Restoration, in this branch of administration, was one 
 of the most skilful, honourable, and economical France 
 has ever known. The credit of the country was never 
 so high as in 1830, and although the debt was in- 
 creased, it was still very trifling in comparison with the 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science s Rather more than twenty- 
 des Finances (ed. 1892), ii. 556. five millions of francs. Ibid. p. 
 
 495.
 
 50 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 resources of France. When Louis XVIII. came to the 
 throne it involved an annual payment in interest of 
 rather more than sixty-three millions of francs. In 
 1830 this payment had risen to 164^ millions. Kather 
 more than four million pounds had thus been added to 
 the annual debt charge. 1 
 
 The reign of Louis Philippe was conducted on much 
 the same lines ; and although the debt continued to 
 grow, it grew at a far slower rate than the revenue of 
 the country. In the eighteen years of his reign Louis 
 Philippe added about twelve and a half millions of 
 francs, or 500,000/., to the annual debt-charge. When 
 his Government fell, in 1848, the French debt was the 
 second in Europe ; but it was still only a fourth part 
 of that of Great Britain, and if the French monarchy 
 had been as stable as that of England, there can be 
 little doubt that French credit would have attained 
 the English level. 2 
 
 Then came the democratic Eepublic of 1848. It 
 lasted for three years, and in those three years France 
 increased her debt more than in the twenty-five years 
 between 1823 and 1848. In 1852, when the Empire be- 
 gan, the debt-charge was about 231 millions of francs. 
 The French debt was now a little less than a third of 
 that of England. 3 
 
 During many years of the Second Empire the wealth 
 of France increased perhaps more rapidly than in any 
 other period of her history. Much of this prosperity 
 was, no doubt, due to the astonishing impulse then 
 given to all forms of production by Californian and 
 Australian gold, but much also was due to the saga- 
 cious energy with which the Government assisted ma- 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science 2 Ibid. pp. 563-64. 
 des Finances (ed. 1892), ii. 556-63. 3 Ibid. p. 564.
 
 CH. i. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 51 
 
 terial development. The railway system, which had 
 been very insufficiently developed under Louis Phi- 
 lippe, was now brought to great perfection. A policy 
 of judicious free trade immensely stimulated industry, 
 and nearly every kind of enterprise was assisted by the 
 Government. Vast sums were expended, and usually 
 with singular intelligence, on public works. The Con- 
 stitution of 1852 reserved to the Emperor the right of 
 authorising such works by simple decree, and also the 
 right of transferring the credits voted for one depart- 
 ment to another. But it was the policy of the Emperor 
 through his whole reign to secure the popularity of 
 his government by keeping the taxes low and unaltered, 
 and meeting the growing expenditure by constant 
 loans. Almost the whole cost of the Crimean War, the 
 Italian War, and the Mexican expedition, and also an 
 immense part of the habitual expenditure of the Gov- 
 ernment in times of peace, "was raised in this way. 
 The extravagance of this system was in part concealed 
 by the complexity of French financial administration, 
 under which several distinct budgets were usually put 
 forward in a year, and also by the device of a very large 
 floating debt. One of the most important steps taken 
 under the Empire was the introduction of a new sys- 
 tem of raising loans. Instead of appealing to a few 
 great capitalists, the Emperor threw open the loans by 
 direct subscription to the whole nation, dividing them 
 in such small portions that nearly all classes could 
 afford to subscribe. There is much difference of opin- 
 ion about the economical advantages of this plan, but 
 there can be no doubt of its extreme popularity. The 
 small Government bonds were eagerly taken up, and 
 loans became as popular as taxes were unpopular. 
 There can also be no doubt that, by interesting an im- 
 mense portion of the people in the security of the
 
 52 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 national debt, the new system greatly improved the 
 national credit and strengthened the conservative ele- 
 ment in France. It was computed that in 1830 there 
 were at the utmost not more than 125,000 persons in 
 France holding portions of the national debt. In 1869 
 the number had probably risen to between 700,000 and 
 800,000, and in 1881 it is believed to have been more 
 than 4,000,000. Either in this way or as owners of 
 land the great majority of the heads of families in 
 France had a direct interest in the prosperity of the 
 State. 1 
 
 The system of government under the Second Em- 
 pire, and especially in its first ten or twelve years, de- 
 serves more careful and impartial examination than it 
 is likely to receive from the generation which wit- 
 nessed the catastrophes of the Franco-German War. It 
 was a government with no real constitutional freedom, 
 no liberty of the press, no liberty of public meeting. It 
 sheltered or produced great corruption, and repressed 
 with arbitrary and tyrannical violence political oppo- 
 nents. It was detested by the educated classes, by the 
 minority of the population who seriously cared for 
 political freedom, and, in spite of the enormous sums 
 that were expended in public works in Paris, it never 
 succeeded in winning the affections of the Parisian 
 workmen. On the other hand, the theory of pater- 
 nal government exercised in a thoroughly democratic 
 spirit had probably never before been carried out with 
 equal energy and intelligence. The Emperor contin- 
 ually looked for his support to the great inarticulate 
 masses of his people. To promote their immediate 
 material well-being was the first object of his policy. 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science des Finances, ii. 564-70.
 
 cu. i. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 53 
 
 No preceding Government had done so much to stimu- 
 late industry in all its forms, to develop latent resources, 
 and to provide constant and remunerative employment. 
 For many years he succeeded in an eminent degree, 1 
 and there is very little doubt that the last plebiscite 
 which sanctioned his rule reflected the real feelings of 
 the numerical majority of Frenchmen. If 100,000 more 
 French soldiers had been present on the field of Worth, 
 and if the French commander had happened to be a 
 man of genius, it is very possible that the Empire 
 might have existed to the present day. 
 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu calculates that in the beginning 
 of 1870 the year of the war the interest of the 
 consolidated debt was about 129 millions of francs, 
 or about 5,160,000 pounds sterling more than it 
 had been in 1852, when the Emperor ascended the 
 throne. The whole debt-charge was 360 millions of 
 francs. It represented a nominal capital of rather less 
 than twelve milliards of francs, or 480 millions of 
 pounds ; and there was in addition a floating debt, 
 which at the beginning of 1870 had been recently 
 reduced to somewhat less than thirty-two millions of 
 pounds. 2 
 
 But the Empire bequeathed to the Eepublic which 
 followed it an appalling legacy. France was compelled 
 to pay Germany an indemnity of 200 millions of pounds, 
 and her own war expenses were only a few millions 
 below that sum. Nearly the whole of these colos- 
 
 1 Full particulars about the The writer had evidently access 
 
 industrial and financial history to the best sources of informa- 
 
 of the first ten years of the tion. 
 
 Empire will be found in a very * Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science 
 
 able book, published in 1802, des Finances, ii. 570; Chau- 
 
 called Ten Years of Imperial- dordy, La France en 1889, pp. 
 
 ism in France, by ' A Flaneur.' 52-53.
 
 54 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i 
 
 sal sums were raised by loans between 1870 and 1874, 
 and added to the permanent capital of the debt. 
 
 The French debt had now greatly outstripped the 
 English one. In the early years of the Kepublic, and 
 especially during the ascendency of M. Thiers, French 
 finances appear to have been managed with economy 
 and skill. But in 1878 a new system of prodigality 
 began which far exceeded that of the Second Empire, 
 and which appears to have continued to the present 
 time. A few plain figures will place, the situation be- 
 fore the reader. The nominal value of the debt of 
 France according to the Budget of 1892 was about 
 thirty-two milliards of francs, or 1,280 millions of 
 pounds. The annual debt-charge was about 1,000,- 
 250,000 francs, or fifty million pounds about double 
 the present interest of the debt of Great Britain ; and 
 in the twelve years of perfect peace from 1881 to 1892 
 France increased her debt by more than five milliards 
 of francs, or 200 millions of pounds a sum equal to 
 the whole war indemnity which she had been obliged to 
 pay to Germany after the war of 1870. ' And this 
 debt is irrespective of the large and rapidly growing 
 debts of the communes and municipalities. 
 
 A great part of it was, no doubt, incurred for military 
 purposes. The creation of a magnificent army ; the for- 
 tification of a country which the loss of Strasburg and 
 Metz had left very vulnerable, and the formation of a 
 vast and costly navy, which was probably intended to 
 intimidate Italy and overbalance the power of England 
 in the Mediterranean, account for much. Much, too, 
 was due to the great energy with which the French 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science des Finances, ii. 578-81 ; see, too, 
 Martin's Statesman's Year-Book, 1893 (France).
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION AND EXTRAVAGANCE 55 
 
 Kepublic has pushed on the work of national edu- 
 cation ; and the expense of this work was enormously 
 increased by the anti-ecclesiastical spirit which insisted 
 on building fresh schoolhouses where ecclesiastical 
 schools were abundantly supplied, and which refused 
 to make any use of the great voluntary institutions es- 
 tablished by the Church. But, in addition to these 
 things, there has been another great source of expense, 
 on which the best French economists dilate with un- 
 feigned alarm. It is the enormous and wasteful ex- 
 penditure on public works which are, for the most 
 part, unremunerative ; which are intended, by giving 
 employment, to conciliate the working-classes, and 
 which are extended to every department, almost to 
 every commune, as a reward for supporting the Gov- 
 ernment. Much of this kind was done especially at 
 Paris under the Second Empire, but the system never 
 acquired the enormous extension and extravagance that 
 it has assumed under the Eepublic. The name of M. 
 de Freycinet is specially attached to this great develop- 
 ment of public works ; but, as might be expected, it 
 soon far outgrew the proportions which its author had 
 originally assigned to it, though his first idea was to 
 spend four milliards of francs, or 160 millions of 
 pounds, on railways alone. Very naturally, such a 
 system of artificial employment having been started, it 
 was found impossible to abandon it. Very naturally, 
 every locality desired its share of the beneficence of the 
 Government. Countless millions were squandered, 
 either in purely Government work, or in trebling or 
 quadrupling local subventions, or in rendering gratu- 
 itous public services which had once paid their ex- 
 penses, or in multiplying inordinately Government 
 posts. And the result was that, at a time when severe 
 economy was imperiously required, the Eepublic added
 
 56 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY OH. j. 
 
 to its debt a sum which was little, if at all, less than 
 the expense of the war of 1870. ' 
 
 We can hardly have a more impressive illustration of 
 the truth that universal suffrage wholly fails to repre- 
 sent the best qualities of a nation. No people in their 
 private capacities are more distinguished than the 
 French for their business talent, for their combination 
 of intelligent industry with great parsimony, for the 
 courage with which in times of difficulty they retrench 
 their expenditure. Yet few Governments have been 
 more lavishly and criminally extravagant than those 
 which have emanated from universal suffrage in France. 
 
 The forms of corruption which are practised in a 
 pure democracy are in general far more detrimental to 
 the prosperity of nations than those which existed in 
 other days. Sinecures, and corrupt pensions, and 
 Court favours, and small jobs, and the purchase of 
 seats of Parliament, may all be carried very far with- 
 out seriously burdening the national revenues. A mill- 
 ionaire may squander with reckless profusion his 
 shillings and his pence, but as long as the main lines 
 of his expenditure are wisely ordered he will find no 
 great difference at the end of the year. There are, it 
 is true, occasional instances in which the extravagance 
 of an individual or of a Court may have ruined a na- 
 tion. The most amazing modern example has been 
 that of Ismail Pasha, who, in the thirteen years be- 
 tween 1863 and 1876, raised the Egyptian debt from a 
 little over three millions of pounds to eighty-nine mill- 
 ions, and who, mainly through his personal extrava- 
 
 1 See on this subject, Scherer, roy-Beaulieu, La Science des Fi- 
 
 La Democratic et la France, pp. nances, ii. 277-78 ; Chaudordy, 
 
 29-33 ; Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Etat La France en 1889, pp. 54-62. 
 et ses FonctionS) pp. 137-74 ; Le-
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION AND EXTRAVAGANCE 57 
 
 gance and reckless gambling, burdened a poor and 
 struggling population of six million souls with an 
 annual payment for interest of not less than seven mill- 
 ions of pounds. 1 Such prodigies of colossal selfishness, 
 however, are, happily, rare ; and if the world had not 
 come to form a wholly false measure of the enormity 
 of political crimes, both in rulers and subjects, they 
 would lead to something very different from a simple 
 deposition. 
 
 Corrupt Governments are not necessarily on the 
 whole extravagant. The great corruption which un- 
 doubtedly prevailed in the French Government under 
 Louis Philippe did not prevent that Government from 
 managing French finances with an economy which, in 
 the light of later experience, can only be regarded as 
 admirable. The jobs and sinecures and pensions of 
 the Irish Parliament in the eighteenth century were 
 very notorious ; yet Irish statesmen truly said that un- 
 til the outbreak of the great French war Ireland was 
 one of the least taxed nations, and its Government one 
 of the cheapest Governments in Europe. These kinds 
 of corruption do much to lower the character of Gov- 
 ernments and to alienate from them the public spirit 
 and enthusiasm that should support them ; but except 
 in very small and poor countries they seldom amount 
 to a serious economical evil. "Wars, overgrown arma- 
 ments, policies that shake credit and plunder large 
 classes, laws that hamper industry, the forms of cor- 
 ruption which bribe constituencies or classes by great 
 public expenditure, by lavish, partial, unjust taxation 
 these are the things that really ruin the finances of a 
 nation. To most of these evils unqualified democracies 
 are especially liable. 
 
 1 Milner's Egypt, p. 216.
 
 68 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 Modern Kadicalism is accustomed to dilate much 
 upon the cost to a nation of endowing princes and sup- 
 porting the pageantry of a Court. If there be a lesson 
 which repeated and very recent experience clearly 
 teaches, it is the utter insignificance of such expendi- 
 ture, compared with the cost of any revolution which 
 renders the supreme power in a State precarious, low- 
 ers the national credit, drives out of a country great 
 masses of capital, dislocates its industry and trade, or 
 gives a false and extravagant ply to its financial policy. 
 Brazil and Spain are poor countries, but the millions 
 that have been lost to them by revolutions due to the 
 selfish ambition of a few unprincipled adventurers 
 would have gone far to pay for all the extravagances of 
 all the Courts in Europe. 
 
 France can, no doubt, bear the burden of her enor- 
 mous debt better than most countries. Her great na- 
 tural advantages, her vast accumulated wealth, the 
 admirable industrial qualities of her people, the wide 
 distribution among them both of landed property and 
 of portions of the national debt, and the fact that this 
 debt is mainly held within the country, have all con- 
 tributed to the high credit which she still enjoys. 
 Great as is' her present debt, it bears a much smaller 
 proportion to her riches than the English debt did 
 to the revenue of Great Britain at the Peace of 
 1815, than the debts of Italy and Russia still bear to 
 their national resources. No one can doubt that, if a 
 policy of strict economy and steady peace is pursued in 
 France for the coming half-century, her finances will 
 again become very sound. Some portions of her debt 
 consist of terminable annuities. The good credit which 
 is largely due to the wide diffusion of the debt among 
 Frenchmen renders the policy of conversion at dimin- 
 ished interest possible ; and in 1950 the railways of
 
 CB. I. THE FINANCE OP THE REPUBLIC 69 
 
 France will become national property. A country 
 which was able in 1894 to convert without difficulty 
 280,000,000?. of stock bearing 4| per cent, interest into 
 3|-per-cent. stock is certainly in no desperate financial 
 condition, and the cheapness and abundance of money, 
 while it increases the temptation to borrow, dimin- 
 ishes the burden of debts. 
 
 But, in spite of all these things, no serious French 
 economist can contemplate without alarm the gigantic 
 strides with which both her debt and her taxation have 
 of late years advanced. Such men well know that few 
 national diseases are more insidious in their march, 
 more difficult to arrest, more disastrous in their ulti- 
 mate consequences. The immediate stimulus to em- 
 ployment given by a new loan masks its ultimate and 
 permanent effects, and if the interest alone is paid out 
 of taxation, the increase is at first scarcely perceptible. 
 No one can suppose that France is destined for a long 
 period to remain at peace, and there is very little pros- 
 pect of serious retrenchment in her internal affairs. A 
 policy which would involve greatly diminished ex- 
 penditure in public works, and, at the same time, con- 
 siderable increase of taxation, can never be popular 
 with the great uninstructed masses, on whose votes all 
 French Governments now depend. Few Governments 
 would venture to propose it, and least of all feeble, 
 transitory, and precarious Governments, like those 
 which have existed in France since 1870. Such Gov- 
 ernments necessarily take short views, and look eagerly 
 for immediate support. All the lines of policy that 
 are most fitted to appeal to the imagination and win 
 the favour of an uninstructed democracy are lines of 
 policy involving increased expenditure, and the whole 
 tendency of European democracy is towards enlarging 
 the functions and burdens of the State. When great
 
 60 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. 1. 
 
 sections of the people have come habitually to look to 
 Government for support, it becomes impossible to with- 
 draw, and exceedingly difficult to restrict, that sup- 
 port. Public works which are undertaken through 
 political motives, and which private enterprise would 
 refuse to touch, are scarcely ever remunerative. On 
 the other hand, nothing can be more certain than that 
 the evil of excessive taxation is not merely to be meas- 
 ured by the amount which is directly taken from the 
 taxpayer ; its indirect, remote consequences are much 
 more serious than its direct ones. Industries which 
 are too heavily weighted can no longer compete with 
 those of countries where they are more lightly taxed. 
 Industries and capital both emigrate to quarters where 
 they are less burdened and more productive. The 
 credit which a nation enjoys on the Stock exchange 
 is a deceptive test, for the finance of the market seldom 
 looks beyond the prospect of a few years. A false secur- 
 ity grows up, until the nation at last slowly finds that 
 it has entered irretrievably on the path of decadence. 
 
 It is scarcely to be expected, under the conditions I 
 have described, that the tone of public life should be 
 very high. The disclosures that followed the Panama 
 scandals, though the most startling, were by no means 
 the only signs that have thrown ominous light on this 
 subject. Scherer, in an admirable work, has described 
 in detail the action of the present system on French 
 political life. Nearly every deputy, he says, enters 
 the Chamber encumbered with many promises to indi- 
 viduals ; the main object of his policy is usually to 
 secure his re-election after four years, and the methods 
 by which this may be done are well known. There is 
 the branch line of railroad which must be obtained for 
 the district ; there is the fountain that should be 
 erected in the public place ; there is, perhaps, even
 
 CH. I. FRENCH POLITICAL LIFE 61 
 
 the restoration of the parish church to be effected. 
 But it is not less important that all public offices which 
 carry with them any local influence should be in the 
 hands of his supporters. He therefore at once puts 
 pressure on the Government, which usually purchases 
 his support by giving him the patronage he desires. 
 There is a constant shifting in the smaller local offices. 
 Never, it is said, were there so many dismissals and 
 changes in these offices as during the Kepublic ; and 
 they have been mainly due to the desire of the depu- 
 ties to make room for their supporters or their chil- 
 dren. The idea that a vote is a personal favour, estab- 
 lishing a claim to a personal reward, has rapidly spread. 
 At the same time, any vote in favour of public works, 
 and especially public works in his own constituency ; 
 any reorganisation that tends to increase the number 
 of men in Government employment, increases the 
 popularity of the deputy. The socialistic spirit takes 
 different forms in different countries, and this is the 
 form it seems specially adopting in France. The old 
 idea, that the representative Chamber is pre-eminently 
 a check upon extravagance, a jealous guardian of the 
 public purse, seems to have almost vanished in demo- 
 cratic countries, and nowhere more completely than in 
 France. In the words of Leon Say, a great proportion 
 of the deputies are, beyond all things, ' agents for in- 
 stigating to expense,' seeking to secure a livelihood 
 out of the public taxes for the greatest possible num- 
 ber of their electors. The electoral committee, or, as 
 we should say, the local caucus, governs the deputy, 
 who, in his turn, under the system of small parliamen- 
 tary groups and weak and perpetually fluctuating minis- 
 tries, exercises an exaggerated influence on the Admin- 
 istration. 1 
 
 1 Scherer, La Democratic et la France, pp. 22-38.
 
 62 . DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 We may, in the last place, ask whether democracy 
 has given France a nobler and more generous foreign 
 policy. French writers have often claimed for their 
 country that, more than any other, it has been gov- 
 erned by ' ideas ; ' that it has been the chief torch- 
 bearer of civilisation ; that French public opinion is 
 pre-eminently capable of rising above the limits of 
 a narrow patriotism in order to support, popularise, 
 and propagate movements of cosmopolitan liberalism. 
 These cosmopolitan sympathies, it must be owned, 
 sometimes fade into Utopia, and lead to a neglect 
 of the duties of a rational patriotism ; and not un- 
 frequently they have either disguised, or served, 
 or ended in, designs of very selfish military aggran- 
 disement. Still, no impartial student will deny that 
 France has for a long period represented in an eminent 
 degree the progressive element in European civilisa- 
 tion ; that her great influence has usually been thrown 
 into the scale of freedom, enlightenment, and toler- 
 ance. Can this noble position be now claimed for 
 her ? Can it be denied that a policy of rancour and 
 revenge has, in the later phases of her history, made 
 her strangely false to the nobler instincts of her past ? 
 Let the reader follow, in the work of Sir Alfred Mil- 
 ner, the account of the way in which, through very un- 
 worthy motives, she has obstructed in Egypt all those 
 reforms which were manifestly necessary to relieve the 
 misery of the Egyptian fellah. Or, let him take a 
 more conspicuous instance, and study that most hideous 
 story of our century the Russian persecution of the 
 Jews and then remember that it was on the morrow 
 of this persecution that the French democracy threw 
 itself, in a transport of boundless, unqualified enthusi- 
 asm, into the arms of Russia, and declared by all its 
 organs that French and Russian policies were now
 
 CH. I. FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY 63 
 
 identified in the world. Few sadder, yet few more sig- 
 nificant spectacles have been witnessed in our time 
 than this enthusiastic union, in 1893, of the chief 
 democracy of Europe with its one great persecuting 
 despotism. Could there be a more eloquent lesson on 
 the tendencies of democracy than was furnished by the 
 joyous and almost puerile delight with which France 
 identified herself with the cause of reaction, and re- 
 signed to others her old supremacy in European liberal- 
 ism ? What a change since the days when George 
 Sand heralded the triumph of democracy, in 1848, as 
 introducing, by the initiative of France, a new era of 
 progress and enlightenment among mankind ; since 
 Michelet described France as the armed sentinel of 
 Europe, guarding its civilisation against the barbarians 
 of the North ; since Lamartine, in lines of exquisite 
 beauty, proclaimed the cosmopolitan fraternity which 
 was soon to make patriotism itself an obsolete senti- 
 ment, too narrow and too harsh for a regenerated hu- 
 manity 1 
 
 Nations ! Mot pompeux pour dire barbarie ! 
 L'amour s'arrgte-t-il ou s'arrteiit vos pas ? 
 Dechirez ces drapeaux, une autre voix vous crie: 
 L'6goi'sme et la haine ont seuls une patrie, 
 La Fraternit6 n'en a pas. ' 
 
 The conditions of American democracy are essen- 
 tially different from those of democracy in France, and 
 the effects of this great experiment in government must 
 be profoundly interesting to every serious political in- 
 quirer. I have already referred briefly to its charac- 
 ter. It would be impossible in a book like the present, 
 it would be presumptuous on the part of a stranger, 
 
 1 'La Marseillaise de la Paix.'
 
 64 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 and after the great works which, in the present gen- 
 eration, have been written on the subject, to attempt 
 to give a full account of the workings of American 
 democracy, but a few salient facts may be gathered 
 which will throw much light upon my present subject. 
 One of the chief errors of English political writers of 
 the last generation in dealing with this topic arose 
 from their very superficial knowledge of American 
 institutions, which led them to believe that the Amer- 
 ican Government was generically of the same kind as 
 the Government of England, the chief difference being 
 that a majority of the people could always carry out 
 their will with more prompt, decisive, unrestrained 
 efficiency. The English public have at last, it may be 
 hoped, learned to perceive that this notion is radically 
 false. In England, a simple majority of Parliament is 
 capable, with the assent of the Crown, of carrying out 
 any constitutional change, however revolutionary ; and 
 the House of Commons, in practice, has absorbed to 
 itself all the main power in the Constitution. A 
 chance majority, formed out of many different political 
 fractions, acting through different motives, and with 
 different objects, may change fundamentally the Con- 
 stitution of the country. The Royal veto has become 
 wholly obsolete. The Eoyal power under all normal 
 circumstances is exercised at the'dictation of a ministry 
 which owes its being to the majority of the House of 
 Commons, and if the Crown can occasionally exercise 
 some independent political influence, it can only be in 
 rare and exceptional circumstances, or in indirect and 
 subordinate ways. The House of Lords has, it is true, 
 greater power, and can still, by a suspensive veto, delay 
 great changes until they are directly sanctioned by the 
 constituencies at an election. But after such sanction 
 it is scarcely possible that such changes should be re-
 
 CH. i. AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DEMOCRACY 65 
 
 sisted, however narrow may be the majorities in their 
 favour, however doubtful may be the motives by which 
 these majorities were obtained. 
 
 In America the position of the House of Representa- 
 tives is widely different from that of the House of 
 Commons. It is a body in which the ministers do not 
 sit, and which has no power of making or destroying a 
 ministry. It is confronted by a Senate which does not 
 rest on the democratic basis of mere numbers, but 
 which can exercise a much more real restraining power 
 than the House of Lords. It is confronted also by a 
 President who is himself chosen ultimately by manhood 
 suffrage, but in a different way from the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, and who exercises an independent power 
 vastly greater than a modern British sovereign. It is, 
 above all, restricted by a written Constitution under 
 the protection of a great, independent law court, which 
 makes it impossible for it to violate contracts, or to in- 
 fringe any fundamental liberty of the people, or to 
 carry any constitutional change, except when there is 
 the amplest evidence that it is the clear, settled wish of 
 an overwhelming majority of the people. No amend- 
 ment of the Federal Constitution can be even proposed 
 except by the vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Con- 
 gress, or of an application from the legislatures of two- 
 thirds of the several States. No amendment of the 
 Federal Constitution can become law unless it is rat- 
 ified, in three-quarters of the States, by both Houses in 
 the local legislatures, or by conventions specially sum- 
 moned for that purpose. As a matter of fact, all 
 amendments of the Federal Constitution have been rat- 
 ified by the State legislatures ; none of them have been 
 submitted to conventions. 
 
 Changes in the constitutions of the different States 
 may be effected in different ways, but never by a sim- 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 CH. I. 
 
 66 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 
 
 pie majority of a single legislature. In a few States, it 
 is true, such a majority may propose such an amend- 
 ment ; but it always requires ratification, either by a 
 popular vote, or by a subsequent legislature, or by 
 both. In most States majorities of two-thirds or three- 
 fifths are required for the simple proposal of a constitu- 
 tional amendment, and in a large number of cases ma- 
 jorities of two-thirds, or three-quarters, or three-fifths, 
 are required for the ratification. There is usually, 
 however, a second method provided for revising or 
 amending a State constitution, by means of a conven- 
 tion which is specially called for this purpose, and 
 which proposes changes that must be subsequently rat- 
 ified by a popular vote. 1 
 
 The American Constitution, indeed, was framed by 
 men who had for the most part the strongest sense of 
 the dangers of democracy. The school of American 
 thought which was represented in a great degree by ' 
 Washington and John Adams, and still more emphati- 
 cally by Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton ; 
 which inspired the Federalist and was embodied in the 
 Federalist party, was utterly opposed to the schools of 
 Eousseau, of Paine, and even of Jefferson, and it has 
 largely guided American policy to the present hour. It 
 did not prevent America from becoming a democracy, 
 but it framed a form of government under which the^ 
 power of the democracy was broken and divided, re- 
 stricted to a much smaller sphere, and attended with 
 far less disastrous results than in most European coun- 
 tries. Hamilton, who was probably the greatest polit- 
 ical thinker America has produced, was, in the essen- 
 
 1 A detailed account of the quired in Foreign Legislatures 
 
 methods of changing the State for changes in the constitution, 
 
 constitutions will be found in a presented to the House of Lords, 
 
 Report on the Majorities re- April 1893.
 
 CH. i. AMERICAN RESTRICTIONS OP DEMOCRACY 67 
 
 tials of his political thought, quite as conservative as 
 Burke, and he never concealed his preference for mon- 
 archical institutions. Democratic government, he be- 
 lieved, must end in despotism, and be in the meantime 
 destructive to public morality and to the security of 
 private property. 1 
 
 To the eminent wisdom of the Constitution of 1787 
 much of the success of American democracy is due ; 
 but much also must be attributed to the singularly 
 favourable circumstances under which this great ex- 
 periment has been tried. A people sprung mainly 
 from an excellent British stock, and inheriting all the 
 best habits and traditions of British constitutional 
 government, found themselves in possession of a terri- 
 tory almost boundless in its extent and its resources, 
 and free from the most serious dangers that menace 
 European nations. The habits of local government, 
 the spirit of compromise and self-reliance, the strong 
 moral basis which Puritanism never fails to establish, 
 were all there, and during a great portion of American 
 history emigration was attended with so many hard- 
 ships that few men who did not possess more than aver- 
 age energy and resource sought the American shore. 
 At the same time a vast unpopulated, undeveloped 
 country opened limitless paths of adventure, ambition, 
 and lucrative labour, dispersed many peccant humours, 
 attracted and employed much undisciplined and vol- 
 canic energy which, in other countries, would have 
 passed into politics and bred grave troubles in the 
 State. The immense preponderance of industrialism 
 in American life is, indeed, one of its most character- 
 istic features, and its influence on politics has been by 
 no means wholly good. It has contributed, with other 
 
 1 Van Buren, Political Parties in the United States^ pp. 80, 83.
 
 68 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 causes, to place political life on a lower plane, diverting 
 from it the best energies of the country ; but it has 
 also furnished great safety-valves for discontented 
 spirits and unregulated ambitions. The country was 
 so situated that it was almost absolutely self-support- 
 ing, and had no foreign danger to fear. It might al- 
 most dispense with a foreign policy. It required no 
 considerable army or war navy ; and it has been able 
 steadily to devote to the maintenance of an excellent 
 system of national education the sums which, in less 
 happily situated countries, are required for the pur- 
 poses of self-defence. Although America has expe- 
 rienced many periods of acute commercial crisis and de- 
 pression, the general level of her well-being has been 
 unusually high. Property has been from the first very 
 widely diffused. Her lower levels in their standard of 
 comfort more nearly resemble the middle than the 
 lowest class in European countries, and the great 
 masses of unemployed pauperism in the large towns, 
 which form one of the most serious political and social 
 dangers of Europe, have been scarcely known in Amer- 
 ica until the present generation. 
 
 The chief steps by which the Government has moved 
 in the direction of democracy may be briefly mentioned. 
 Although the Constitution in most respects realised 
 the anticipations of its founders, their attempt to place 
 the President outside the play of party spirit, and to 
 make him independent of democratic dictation, sig- 
 nally failed. The Constitution provided that each 
 State was to choose a number of presidential electors 
 equal to its representatives in Congress, and that these 
 men should be entrusted with the task of electing the 
 President. In accordance with its general policy on 
 all matters of election, the Constitution left it to the 
 different States to determine the manner of election
 
 CH. i. ELECTION OP PRESIDENTS AND SENATORS 69 
 
 and the qualifications of these presidential electors ; 
 but it enacted that no member of Congress and no 
 holder of a Federal office should be eligible. In this 
 manner it was hoped that the President might be 
 elected by the independent votes of a small body of 
 worthy titizens who were not deeply plunged in party 
 politics. But, as the spirit of party intensified and the 
 great party organisations attained their maturity, this 
 system wholly failed. Presidential electors are still 
 elected, but they are elected under a distinct pledge 
 that they will vote for a particular candidate. At 
 first they were nearly everywhere chosen on party 
 grounds by the State legislatures. Soon this process 
 appeared insufficiently democratic, and they were 
 chosen by direct manhood suffrage, their sole duty be- 
 ing to nominate the candidate who had been selected 
 by the party machine. 
 
 In the senatorial elections the principle of double 
 election has proved somewhat more enduring ; but 
 here, too, considerable transformations have taken 
 place. The Senate, as is well known, is composed of 
 two senators from each State, chosen for six years by the 
 State legislatures, the largest and the smallest States 
 being in this respect on a par. For a long time the 
 mode of their election varied greatly. ' In some States 
 they were chosen vivd voce ; in others, by ballots ; in 
 some, by a separate vote of each House ; in others, by 
 both Houses meeting and voting as one body/ 1 By an 
 Act of 1866 the method of election has been made uni- 
 form, the senators being nominated by a viva voce vote 
 in each House ; and if the result is not attained in this 
 manner, by a vote of the two Houses sitting together. 
 Very naturally and properly, these are party elections ; 
 
 1 Ford's American Citizen's Manual, i. 13-14.
 
 70 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. i. 
 
 but of late years the senators appear to have been 
 rarely what they were intended to be the independent 
 choice of the State legislatures. ' The machines/ or, 
 in other words, the organisations representing the rival 
 factions in each State, not only return absolutely the 
 members of the State legislature, but also designate 
 the rival candidates for the senatorships ; and the 
 members of the State legislature are returned under 
 strict pledges to vote for these designated candidates. 
 This servitude is not as absolute or universal as that 
 under which the presidential elections are made, but it 
 has gone very far to bring the election of senators 
 under the direct control of those knots of wirepullers 
 who rule all the fields of American politics, and direct 
 and manage universal suffrage. 1 In the early stages of 
 its history, when the States were very few, the Senate 
 was a small body, deliberating in secret, and more like 
 a Privy Council or a Cabinet than an Upper Chamber. 
 After the first five years of its existence this system of 
 secrecy was abandoned ; with the multiplication of 
 States the number of senators increased ; and the Sen- 
 ate has now the chief characteristics of a legislative 
 Chamber, though it possesses certain additional powers 
 which are not possessed by the corresponding bodies in 
 Europe. 
 
 The many restrictions on the suffrage by which the 
 members of the House of Representatives were elected 
 at the time of the Revolution have nearly all passed 
 away, and America has all but reached the point of 
 simple manhood suffrage. Maryland, in the first dec- 
 ade of the nineteenth century, led the way, 1 and the 
 example was speedily followed. The management, re- 
 
 1 See Bryce's American Com- a Tocqueville, Democratic en 
 monwealth, i. 131-32. Amerique, i. 91.
 
 CH. i. EXTENSIONS OF THE SUFFRAGE 71 
 
 striction, and extension of - the suffrage being left 
 within the almost complete competence of the several 
 States, form the chief field in which revolutionary 
 change can be easily effected. The Federal Constitu- 
 tion only imposes two restrictions on the competency 
 of the States to deal with this subject. The first is, 
 that the electors for representatives in each State ' shall 
 have the qualifications required for electors of the most 
 numerous branch of the State Legislature/ The sec- 
 ond, which was an amendment of the Constitution in- 
 troduced after the Civil War, and carried at a time 
 when the Southern States were still deprived of their 
 normal political power, is that no one may be excluded 
 from the suffrage ' on account of race, colour, or pre- 
 vious condition of servitude/ The suffrage, it is true, 
 is not absolutely universal. Besides the exclusion of 
 women, children, criminals, insane persons, and un- 
 naturalised immigrants, some easy qualifications of 
 residence and registration are usually required ; but 
 property qualifications have almost wholly disappeared. 
 The actual possession of property is no longer required 
 for a voter in any American election, with the excep- 
 tion, it is said, of the municipal elections in a single 
 district of Rhode Island. 1 A tax qualification existed 
 in 1880 in six States, but it has since then been abol- 
 ished in four of them. 2 Some States, however, still 
 exclude from the right of voting those who are so il- 
 literate that they are not able to read, and paupers 
 who are actually supported by the State. With these 
 slight and partial exceptions manhood suffrage gener- 
 ally prevails. 
 
 1 Hart's Practical Essays on qualification is required from an 
 
 American Government, 1893, p. office-holder. 
 
 28. There are still, however, * Ibid, 
 some cases in which a property
 
 72 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 As far as I can judge, it seems to have been brought 
 about by much the same means in America as in Eu- 
 rope. It has not been in general the result of any 
 spontaneous demand, or of any real belief that it is 
 likely to improve the Constitution ; but it has sprung 
 from a competition for power and popularity between 
 rival factions. An extension of the franchise is, natur- 
 ally, a popular cry, and each party leader is therefore 
 ready to raise it, and anxious that his rival should not 
 monopolise it. It is a policy, too, which requires no 
 constructive ability, and is so simple that it lies well 
 within the competence of the vulgarest and most ig- 
 norant demagogue. A party out of office, and doubt- 
 ful of its future prospects, naturally wishes to change 
 the character of the electorate, and its leaders calculate 
 that new voters will vote, at all events for the first 
 time, for the party which gave them their vote. We 
 are in England perfectly familiar with such modes of 
 conducting public affairs, and it is probably no exag- 
 geration to say that calculations of this kind have been 
 the chief motives of all our recent degradations of the 
 suffrage. In one important respect the Federal system 
 has tended to strengthen in America the democratic 
 movement. Each State naturally wishes to have as 
 much power as possible in the Confederation, and an 
 amendment of the Constitution which was forced 
 through during the temporary eclipse of the Southern 
 States provides that while, as a general rule, repre- 
 sentatives in Congress shall be apportioned among the 
 several States according to their populations, the basis 
 of representation in a State shall be reduced in propor- 
 tion to the number of such citizens who are excluded 
 from the suffrage, ' except for participation in rebel- 
 lion and other crime/ 
 
 The system of popular election has extended through
 
 cii. I. THE AMERICAN JUDICIARY 73 
 
 nearly all branches of American life. Perhaps its 
 most mischievous application is to the judicial posts. 
 The independence and dignity, it is true, of the Fed- 
 eral judges are protected by an article of the Constitu- 
 tion. They can only be appointed by the President 
 with the consent of the Senate. They hold their office 
 during good behaviour ; and they possess salaries which, 
 though small if compared with those of English judges, 
 enable them to support their position. The Supreme 
 Court is one of the most valuable portions of the 
 American Constitution, and although even its deci- 
 sions have not always escaped the suspicion of party 
 motives, it is, on the whole, probably inferior in ability 
 and character to no other judicial body on the globe. 
 But in the States another system has spread which has 
 both lowered and tainted the administration of justice. 
 As recently as 1830 the judges in the different States 
 owed their appointment to the governors, or to the 
 State legislatures, or to a combination of the two. In 
 1878, in no less than twenty-four States they were 
 elected by a popular vote. 1 When it is added that they 
 only hold their office for a few years, that they are 
 capable of re-election, and that their salaries are ex- 
 tremely small, it will not appear extraordinary that the 
 judicial body in most of these States should be desti- 
 tute of the moral dignity which attaches in England 
 to all its branches. Deliberate personal corruption, 
 which for generations has been unknown among Eng- 
 lish judges, has been in some cases proved, and in 
 many cases suspected, in America, and the belief that 
 in large classes of cases judges will act as mere parti- 
 sans on the bench has extended much further. The 
 prevalence of lynch law, which is so strangely discord- 
 
 1 Ford's American Citizen's Manual, i. 136.
 
 74 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 ant with the high civilisation of American life, is 
 largely due to that distrust of justice in many States 
 which is the direct, manifest, acknowledged conse- 
 quence of the system of popular election. 
 
 No one, indeed, who knows the class of men who 
 are wirepullers in the different American factions will 
 expect their nominees on the bench to be distinguished 
 either for impartiality or integrity. One of the most 
 extraordinary instances of organised crime in modern 
 history is furnished by the Molly Maguires of Penn- 
 sylvania, an Irish conspiracy which, with short inter- 
 vals, maintained a reign of terror between 1863 and 
 1875 in the anthracite coalfields of that State. The 
 innumerable murders they committed with impunity, 
 and the extraordinary skill and daring of the Irish de- 
 tective who succeeded in penetrating into their coun- 
 cils and at last bringing them to justice, form a story of 
 most dramatic interest ; but one of the most curious 
 facts connected with them is the political influence 
 they appear to have obtained. They controlled town- 
 ship affairs in several districts ; they applied to their 
 own purposes large public funds ; they had a great in- 
 fluence in the management of counties ; they were 
 courted by both political parties ; and they only failed 
 by a few hundred votes in placing one of their body on 
 the judicial bench. 1 I can here hardly do better than 
 quote the language of Mr. Bryce, who, writing with 
 ample knowledge of the subject, is evidently desirous of 
 minimising as much as possible the importance of the 
 facts which he honestly but reluctantly relates. 
 
 ' In a few States,' he writes, ' perhaps six or seven in 
 all, suspicion has at one time or another, within the 
 
 1 See that very curious book, Dewees's The Molly Maguires 
 (Philadelphia, 1877), pp. 33, 92-93, 109, 221-29, 296.
 
 CH. i. JUDICIAL CORRUPTION 75 
 
 last twenty years, attached to one or more of the supe- 
 rior judges. Sometimes these suspicions may have 
 been ill-founded. But though I know of only one 
 case in which they have been substantiated, there can 
 be little doubt that in several instances improprieties 
 have been committed. The judge may not have taken 
 a bribe, but he has perverted justice at the instance of 
 some person or persons who either gave him a consid- 
 eration or exercised an undue influence over him. . . . 
 I have never heard of a State in which more than two 
 or three judges were the object of distrust at the same 
 time. In one State, viz. New York, in 1869-71 there 
 were flagrant scandals, which led to the disappearance 
 of three justices of the superior court who had unques- 
 tionably both sold and denied justice. The Tweed 
 ring, when engaged in plundering the city treasury, 
 found it convenient to have in the seat of justice ac- 
 complices who might check inquiry into their mis- 
 deeds. This the system of popular election for very 
 short terms enabled them to do, and men were accord- 
 ingly placed on the bench whom one might rather 
 have expected to see in the dock bar-room loafers, 
 broken - down attorneys, needy adventurers whose 
 want of character made them absolutely dependent on 
 these patrons. . . . They did not regard social cen- 
 sure, for they were already excluded from decent soci- 
 ety ; impeachment had no terrors for them, since the 
 State legislatures, as well as the executive machinery 
 of the city, was in the hands of their masters. . . . 
 To what precise point of infamy they descended I can- 
 not attempt, among so many discordant stories and 
 rumours, to determine. It is, however, beyond a 
 doubt that they made orders in defiance of the plainest 
 rules of practice ; issued in rum - shops injunctions 
 which they had not e'ven read over ; appointed notori-
 
 76 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 ous vagabonds receivers of valuable property ; turned 
 over important cases to a friend of their own stamp, 
 and gave whatever decision he suggested. ... A 
 system of client robbery sprang up, by which each 
 judge enriched the knot of disreputable lawyers who 
 surrounded him. He referred cases to them, granted 
 them monstrous allowances in the name of costs, gave 
 them receiverships with a large percentage, and so 
 forth, they in turn either sharing the booty with him, 
 or undertaking to do the same for him when he should 
 have descended to the Bar and they have climbed to 
 the Bench. Nor is there any doubt that criminals 
 who had any claim on their party often managed to 
 elude punishment . . . for governor, judge, attor- 
 ney, officials, and police, were all of them party nomi- 
 nees. ... In the instance which made much noise 
 in Europe that of the Erie Railroad suits there 
 was no need to give bribes. The gang of thieves who 
 had gained control of the line and were ' watering ' the 
 stock were leagued with the gang of thieves who ruled 
 the city and nominated the judges, and nobody doubts 
 that the monstrous decisions in these suits were ob- 
 tained by the influence of the Tammany leaders over 
 their judicial minions/ 1 
 
 Such is the state of things which flourished a few 
 years ago in full exuberance in the capital of the great 
 democracy of the West, and among a people who claim 
 to be in the front rank of civilisation, and to have 
 furnished the supreme pattern of the democracies of 
 the future. Mr. Bryce does all that is in his power to 
 soften the picture. He believes that the corrupt 
 judges are only a small minority in a few States, and 
 that there is no evidence that even the New York 
 
 Bryce's American Commonwealth, iii. 394-99.
 
 CH. i. JUDICIAL CORRUPTION 77 
 
 judges, in ordinary commercial cases, where no politi- 
 cal interest came into play, and where the influence of 
 particular persons was not exerted, decided unjustly or 
 1 took direct money bribes from one of the parties.' 
 He also takes a long historical flight over nearly three 
 thousand years for the purpose of collecting parallel 
 enormities. Hesiod complained of kings who received 
 gifts to influence their decisions. Felix expected 
 money for releasing St. Paul. Among the great des- 
 potisms of the East judicial corruption has always 
 been common. In a single instance since the Kevolu- 
 tion an English chancellor was found to have taken 
 bribes ; and in some of the more backward countries of 
 Europe ' the judges, except, perhaps, those of the 
 highest court, are not assumed by general opinion to 
 be above suspicion.' 
 
 Such arguments may be left to stand on their own 
 merits. Of all the many functions which government 
 is expected to discharge, the most important to the 
 happiness of mankind is that of securing equal justice 
 between man and man. No statesmen were more con- 
 scious of this truth than the great men who framed the 
 Constitution of the United States ; and, under the 
 conditions of their time, they probably provided for it 
 almost as perfectly as human prescience could have 
 done. It would be a grave injustice to the American 
 people to suppose that they were not in general a law- 
 abiding people : they have more than once suppressed 
 disorder in the States with an unflinching energy and a 
 truly merciful promptness of severity which English 
 Administrations might well imitate ; and over a great 
 part of the States honest justice is undoubtedly admin- 
 istered. But no one, I think, can follow American 
 history without perceiving how frequently and seri- 
 ously the democratic principle has undermined this
 
 78 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. L 
 
 first condition of true freedom and progress. As Mill 
 justly says, the tyranny of the majority is not only 
 shown in tyrannical laws. Sometimes it is shown in 
 an assumed power to dispense with all laws which run 
 counter to the popular opinion of the hour. Some- 
 times it appears in corrupt, tainted, partial adminis- 
 tration of existing laws. Tyranny seldom assumes a 
 more odious form than when judges, juries, and execu- 
 tives are alike the tools of a faction or a mob. 
 
 Closely connected with this great abuse has been the 
 system of treating all the smaller posts and offices, 
 both under the Federal and the State governments, as 
 rewards for party services, and changing the occu- 
 pants with each change of political power. This is 
 the well-known ' spoils system/ and it has permeated 
 and corrupted American public life to its very roots. 
 It did not exist in the early days of the Republic. 
 Washington, in the eight years of his presidency, only 
 removed nine officials, and all for definite causes. 
 John Adams made the same number of changes. Jef- 
 ferson made thirty-nine ; and the three Presidents 
 who followed only removed sixteen in the space of 
 twenty years. John Quincy Adams, the last of this 
 line of Presidents, was in this respect scrupulously just. 
 ' As he was about the last President/ writes Mr. Gold- 
 win Smith, ' chosen for merit, not for availability, so 
 he was about the last whose only rule was not party, but 
 the public service. So strictly did he preserve the prin- 
 ciple of permanency and purity in the Civil Service, that 
 he refused to dismiss from office a Postmaster-General 
 whom he knew to be intriguing against him.' 
 
 The great evil which was impending was largely pre- 
 pared by an Act of 1820, which limited the term of 
 office of a vast number of subordinate officials to four 
 years, and at the same time made them removable at
 
 CH. i. THE SPOILS SYSTEM 79 
 
 pleasure. The modern system of making all posU 
 under the Government, however unconnected with 
 politics, rewards for party services was organised, in 
 1829, by Andrew Jackson. This President may be 
 said to have completed the work of making the Amer- 
 ican Republic a pure democracy, which Jefferson had 
 begun. His statue stands in front of the White House 
 at Washington as one of the great men of America, 
 and he assuredly deserves to be remembered as the 
 founder of the most stupendous system of political cor- 
 ruption in modern history. It began on a compar- 
 atively small scale. About 500 postmasters were at 
 once removed to make room for partisans, and all the 
 more active partisans, including, it is said, fifty or 
 sixty leading newspaper writers, received places, the 
 propagation- of Government views through the press 
 having now become, according to Webster, ' the main 
 administrative duty/ In a short time the dismissals 
 under this President numbered about 2,000. l 
 
 This was the beginning of a system which has spread 
 like a leprosy over all political life, and to which there 
 is, I believe, no adequate parallel in history. It is not 
 easy to obtain exact statistics about the extent to which 
 it has been practised. A very eminent American 
 writer, who is distinguished not only for his high char- 
 acter, but also for his scrupulous accuracy of state- 
 ment and research, and who has himself taken a prom- 
 inent part in the work of Civil Service reform, mentions 
 that a few years ago ' the army of Federal officials was 
 roughly estimated at nearly 125,000, drawing annual 
 salaries amounting to about eighty millions of dollars/ 
 He notices that in the two years preceding 1887, out 
 
 ' Goldwin Smith, The United States, pp. 192-203 ; Ford's Amer- 
 ican Citizen's Manual, i. 138-40.
 
 80 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 of 2,359 post-offices known as presidential, about 2,000 
 had been changed, and that out of 52,699 lower post- 
 office clerks, about 40,000 had been changed. 100 out 
 of 111 collectors of Customs, all the surveyors of Cus- 
 toms, all the surveyors-general, all the post-office in- 
 spectors-in-charge ; 11 out of 13 superintendents of 
 mints ; 84 out of 85 collectors of internal revenue ; 65 
 out of 70 district attorneys ; 8 out of 11 inspectors of 
 steam-vessels ; 16 out of 18 pension agents ; 190 out of 
 224 local land officers were changed in the space of two 
 years, and under a President who had come to office as 
 a supporter of Civil Service reform. These are but a 
 few illustrations out of many of the manner in which, 
 in the words of the writer I am citing, ' office is made 
 the coin in which to pay political debts and gain the 
 services of political condottieri,' and he estimates that 
 this President had ' dismissed nearly 100,000 public 
 servants for political ends/ 1 
 
 Another very competent American author, who has 
 written the best short account of American govern- 
 ment with which I am acquainted, observes that ' in 
 the Federal Administration alone there are nearly 90,- 
 000 office-holders who have no voice in the administra- 
 tion ; but as chiefs of bureaux and clerks are necessary 
 for the transaction of business, and as new territory 
 is opened up, the number is constantly increasing/ 
 These appointments are systematically filled up, not 
 upon the ground of administrative capacity, but ' on 
 the basis of nomination, influence, and official favour/ 
 The practice of constant removals has, since Jackson's 
 time, ' been followed by all parties in all elections, 
 
 1 See a remarkable essay on Reprinted froin the Indepen- 
 Mr. Cleveland and Civil Ser- dent, October 18, 1888. 
 vice Reform^ by Henry C. Lea.
 
 CH. i. THE SPOILS SYSTEM 81 
 
 great and small, national and local/ A great part of 
 this patronage is in the hands of senators and represen- 
 tatives, who claim as a right the power of advising the 
 President in these appointments ; who ' dictate appoint- 
 ments as if the Federal patronage in their State or dis- 
 trict was their private property/ and who systemati- 
 cally use it to build up political influence and reward 
 political services. 
 
 And not only does this system turn into ardent poli- 
 ticians countless officials whose duties should place 
 them as far as possible out of the domain of party poli- 
 tics ; not only does it furnish the staff of the great 
 party organisations, and make the desire of obtaining 
 and retaining office the main motive in all party con- 
 flicts it also gives rise to the system of political assess- 
 ments, ' made on office-holders of all grades, by a per- 
 fectly irresponsible committee, to be expended in 
 furthering the objects of the party. . . . Although 
 nominally such contributions to the campaign fund 
 are made " voluntarily " by the office-holders, yet their 
 true nature is shown by many circumstances. Thus, 
 in making its application, the committee fixes the 
 amount which each man is to pay. In 1882, 2 per 
 cent, of the annual salary was required, and was levied 
 on all, from the chiefs of bureaux to the lowest labourer 
 in the Government navy yards, and also levied alike on 
 Republicans and Democrats. Moreover, in case the 
 call was not responded to, employes of the committee 
 went among the departments and made personal appli- 
 cation to each delinquent. By experience the clerk 
 knows that he must pay or be discharged, a fact which 
 still more strongly brings out the "voluntary " nature 
 of the contribution. . . . The committee may ex- 
 pend the fund thus collected as it sees fit, and need 
 render an account of such expenditure to no man.
 
 82 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 Truth compels us to say that it forms a " corruption 
 fund " for influencing elections ; and the manner of 
 expending it is as vicious and debauching to the public 
 service as is the manner of collecting it. This matter 
 has also been made the subject of legislation, but with- 
 out any remedy being afforded/ ' 
 
 A third very competent American writer on the Con- 
 stitution reminds us that, owing to the increased debt 
 and taxation growing out of the Civil War, the number 
 of office-holders in the United States quadrupled in the 
 period from 1860 to 1870, and that these appointments 
 are systematically made through mere party motives, 
 and irrespective of the capacity of the claimant. ' This 
 system/ he continues, ' not only fills the public offices of 
 the United States with inefficient and corrupt officials 
 in high station, and keeps out of political life the capa- 
 ble men who are disinclined to perform party work as 
 a condition precedent to accession to office, but it also 
 created the same system under those officials as to all 
 their subordinates. . . . They were to a very large 
 degree, and still are, regularly assessed to pay the polit- 
 ical expenses of a campaign. Millions of dollars are 
 thus raised from office-holders in the United States at 
 every recurring Presidential election, or even local elec- 
 tion. . . . Such assessments were paid because they 
 knew that their official existence would be terminated 
 in the event of a change of Administration, under the 
 
 1 Ford's American Citizen's McGuiness's pig proved so pro- 
 Mannal, i. 130-41. Mr. Lea ductive in the New York Cus- 
 writes : ' It is in vain that the torn House, when an office is 
 PendletonAct prohibits the levy- ostentatiously opened in Wash- 
 ing of assessments on office- ington, and every clerk is per- 
 holders, when circulars from sonally notified that it is ready 
 democratic committees are as to receive contributions ' ( Mr. 
 thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, Cleveland and Civil Service Re- 
 when the raffle for the Widow form, p. 4).
 
 CH. i. THE SPOILS SYSTEM 83 
 
 domination of an adverse party. . . . The evil of 
 the abominable " spoils " system in the United States 
 is not so much the incompetency of the officers an 
 American's adaptiveness enables him quickly to learn 
 the routine duties of an office nor in the waste of 
 public money (because in a community so rich in pro- 
 ductive power as that of the United States the amount 
 which peculation can take from it is a burden easy to 
 be borne) but the main evil is that the spoils system 
 demoralises both parties, and makes contests which 
 should be for principle mainly for plunder/ Under its 
 influence, this writer adds, the quadrennial presiden- 
 tial elections have become ' mere scrambles for office.' ' 
 It will be observed that this system is very distinctly 
 a product of democracy. It is called by its supporters 
 the rotation of offices. It is defended on the ground 
 that, by short tenures and constant removals, it opens 
 the ranks of official life to the greatest possible number 
 of the people ; and although, in the words of Mr. 
 Bryce, ' nobody supposes that merit has anything to 
 do with promotion, or believes the pretext alleged for 
 an appointment/ 2 its democratic character and its ap- 
 peal to the self-interest of vast multitudes make it 
 popular. It is also, as Mr. Bryce notices, a main ele- 
 ment in that system of ' machine '-made politics Avhich, 
 in America, so successfully excludes the more respect- 
 able class from political life, and throws its whole man- 
 agement into the hands of the professional politicians. 
 I can here only refer my readers to the instructive 
 chapters in which Mr. Bryce has described the work- 
 ing of the ' machine.' He has shown how the extreme 
 
 1 Sterne's United States Con- 2 American Commonwealth, 
 stitution and History, pp. 227- ii. 488. 
 31.
 
 84 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 elaboration and multiplication of committees and or- 
 ganisations for the purpose of accumulating and 
 directing votes, as well as the enormous number of 
 local elections to office which are conducted on party 
 lines, and which all add to or subtract from party 
 strength, turn the politics of a State into a business so 
 absorbing that no one can expect to have much influ- 
 ence in it unless he makes it a main business of his 
 life. At the same time, the vast number of men who 
 hold office, and the still larger number who are aspir- 
 ing to office, furnish those organisations with innumer- 
 able agents, who work for them as men work for their 
 livelihood, while the tribute levied upon officials sup- 
 plies an ample fund for corruption. ' The great and 
 growing volume of political work to be done in man- 
 aging primaries, conventions, and elections for the 
 city, State and national Government . . . which 
 the advance of democratic sentiment and the needs of 
 party warfare evolved from 1820 down to about 1850, 
 needed men who should give to it constant and undi- 
 vided attention. These men the plan of rotation in 
 office provided. Persons who had nothing to gain for 
 themselves would soon have tired of the work. . . . 
 Those, however, whose bread and butter depend on 
 their party may be trusted to work for their party, to 
 enlist recruits, look after the organisation, play elec- 
 tioneering tricks from which ordinary party spirit 
 might recoil. The class of professional politicians was, 
 therefore, the first crop which the spoils system the 
 system of using public offices as private plunder bore. 
 ... It is these spoilsmen who have depraved and 
 distorted the mechanism of politics. It is they who 
 pack the primaries and run the conventions, so as to 
 destroy the freedom of popular choice ; they who con- 
 trive and execute the election frauds which disgrace
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION OP PARTY POLITICS 85 
 
 some States and cities, repeating and ballot-stuffing, 
 obstruction of the polls, and fraudulent countings-in. 
 . . . The Civil Service is not in America, and can- 
 not under the system of rotation become, a career. 
 Place-hunting is the career ; and an office is not a 
 public trust, but a means of requiting party services, 
 and also, under the method of assessments previously 
 described, a source whence party funds may be raised 
 for election purposes/ 1 'What characterises' Amer- 
 ican politicians, ' as compared with the corresponding 
 class in Europe, is that their whole time is more fre- 
 quently given to political work ; that most of them 
 draw an income from politics, and the rest hope to do 
 so.' 2 
 
 One very natural result is, that while there is no 
 country in the world in which great party contests are 
 fought with more energy and tenacity than in America, 
 there is no country in the world in which the motives 
 that inspire them are more purely or more abjectly 
 sordid. Great unselfish causes are, no doubt, advocated 
 by groups of politicians in America, as elsewhere, but 
 these lie usually within the limits of parties, and are 
 not the true causes of party division. In other coun- 
 tries it is not so. Selfish and corrupt motives no doubt 
 abound ; but in the contest between Liberals and Con- 
 servatives, Unionists and Radicals, in England ; in the 
 great dynastic quarrels, or quarrels between monarchy 
 and republicanism, between clericalism and anti-cleri- 
 calism, between labour and capital, that divide parties 
 on the Continent, there is always some real principle at 
 issue, some powerful element of unselfish enthusiasm. 
 In America this does not appear to be the case. This is 
 partly, no doubt, due to the absence of great questions 
 
 1 Bryce, ii. 485-89. a Ibid. 399.
 
 86 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 in a country which has few serious relations with 
 other nations, which has almost wholly disconnected 
 the interests of Churches and religion from national 
 politics, and in which the Constitution opposes insuper- 
 able obstacles to organic change. But it is still more 
 due to the enormous preponderance in politics of selfish 
 interests, and of classes who are animated by such in- 
 terests. I have quoted on this subject the emphatic 
 language of Mr. Sterne. That of Mr. Bryce is very 
 similar. ' Politics/ he says, ( has now become a gainful 
 profession, like advocacy, stock-broking, the drygoods 
 trade, or the getting up of companies. People go into 
 it to live by it, primarily for the sake of the salaries 
 attached to the places they count on getting ; second- 
 arily, in view of the opportunities it affords of making 
 incidental, and sometimes illegitimate, gains. ' ( Re- 
 publicans and Democrats have certainly war-cries, or- 
 ganisations, interests enlisted in their support. But 
 those interests are in the main the interests of getting 
 or keeping the patronage of the Government. Tenets 
 and policies, points of political doctrine and points of 
 political practice, have all but vanished. They have 
 not been thrown away, but have been stripped away by 
 time and the progress of events fulfilling some policies, 
 blotting out others. All has been lost except office or 
 the hope of it/ * 
 
 There is scarcely any subject on which the best men 
 in America are so fully agreed as upon the absolute ne- 
 cessity of putting an end to this spoils system, if Amer- 
 ican public life is ever to be purified from corruption. 
 Unfortunately, this system appeals to so many interests 
 and such strong passions, and has been so thoroughly 
 incorporated in the normal working of both of the 
 
 Bryce, ii. 345, 392.
 
 H. i. CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 87 
 
 great parties, that the task of combating it is enor- 
 mously difficult, and few active politicians have entered 
 into it with real earnestness. There have been frequent 
 efforts in this direction. There was an abortive at- 
 tempt of Calhoun, in 1839, to prevent a large class 
 of Government officers from interfering in elections. 
 There were Acts carried in 1853 and 1855 requiring 
 examinations for some departments of the Civil Ser- 
 vice at "Washington, and another Act was carried in 
 1871 ; but they appear to have been little more than a 
 dead -letter. 1 Though the subject was frequently be- 
 fore Congress, no really efficacious step was taken till 
 the Act called the Pendleton Act, which was carried 
 in 1883, and which applied to about 15,000 officials 
 out of about 125,000. It introduced into some depart- 
 ments the system of competitive examinations, gave 
 some real fixity of tenure, and attempted, though ap- 
 parently with little or no success, to check the system 
 of assessment for political purposes. 
 
 The system of competitive examinations has since 
 then been in some degree extended. One of the latest 
 writers on American politics says that about 43,800 
 servants of the Government, out of nearly 180,000 
 persons employed in all civil capacities by the United 
 States, are now withdrawn from the spoils system, but 
 he doubts much whether democratic opinion is, on the 
 whole, in favour of an abandonment of the system of 
 rotation and political appointment. 2 A considerable 
 movement to abolish it has, however, been set on foot, 
 and the reformers, who are known under the name of 
 Mugwumps, are said to have acquired some real influ- 
 ence. In the opinion of Mr. Gilman, the indepen- 
 
 1 Ford, i. 141-42 ; Bryce, ii. * Hart's Essays on American 
 490. Government, pp. 82, 83, 91-96
 
 88 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 dent element, which is ' opposed to any increase of the 
 Civil Service of the State or the nation until a great 
 reform has been accomplished, beyond dispute, in the 
 distribution of the multitude of minor offices/ is, 
 ' happily, coming to hold more and more the balance 
 of power/ ( There is/ he adds, 'a powerful and 
 growing tendency to take out of politics the public 
 charities, the free schools, the public libraries, the 
 public parks, and numerous other features of munici- 
 pal administration/ To take an office ' out of politics/ 
 Mr. Oilman very characteristically explains, means ' to 
 take it out of corruption into honesty/ and to treat it 
 ( as a public trust for the benefit of the whole people/ l 
 The growth of the number of minor officials, which 
 is a natural consequence of the spoils system, and also 
 of the prevailing tendency to extend the functions of 
 government, is exciting serious alarm. A recent Civil 
 Service Commission gives the number of ' employees ' 
 in the postal service of the United States, in 1891, as 
 112,800; the number of other ' employees ' as 70,688. 
 There has been, the Commission says, ' a very startling 
 growth in the number of Government employees, com- 
 pared with the growth of population. . . . The growth 
 of a service which can be used for political ends is a 
 rapidly increasing menace to republican government/ 
 Mr. Oilman quotes the statement of Mr. Curtis, that 
 the first object of every reformer should be ' to restrict 
 still further the executive power as exercised by party.' 
 In America, that statesman says, ' the superstition of 
 Divine right has passed from the king to the party/ 
 and the belief that it can do no wrong ' has become the 
 practical faith of great multitudes/ 'It makes the 
 whole Civil Service a drilled and disciplined army, whose 
 
 1 Oilman's Socialism and the American Spirit (1893), p. 178.
 
 OH. I. MULTIPLICATION OP OFFICES 89 
 
 living depends upon carrying elections at any cost for 
 the party which controls it/ ' 
 
 On the whole, as far as a stranger can judge, there seem 
 to be in this field real signs of improvement, although 
 they may not be very considerable or decisive. It must 
 be remembered that the period immediately following 
 the War was one peculiarly fitted for the growth of 
 corruption. The sudden and enormous increase of 
 debt, the corresponding multiplication of officials, the 
 paralysis of political life in a great part of the country, 
 and the many elements of social, industrial, and polit- 
 ical anarchy that still prevailed, all made the task of 
 professional politicians easy and lucrative. One great 
 improvement which has taken place, and which has 
 spread very swiftly over the United States, has been an 
 alteration in the ballot system. In my own opinion, 
 the ballot, in any country where politics rest on a 
 really sound and independent basis, is essentially an 
 evil. Power in politics should never be dissociated 
 from responsibility, and the object of the ballot is to 
 make the elector absolutely irresponsible. It obscures 
 the moral weight of an election, by making it impossi- 
 ble to estimate the real force of opinion, knowledge, 
 and character that is thrown on either side. It saps 
 the spirit of independence and uprightness, and it gives 
 great facilities for deception and fraud, for the play of 
 mercenary, sordid, and malignant motives, and for the 
 great political evil of sacerdotal influence. But the 
 task of a statesman is, usually, to select the best alter- 
 native, and, where intimidation or corruption is very 
 rife, the evils produced by secret voting may be less 
 serious than those which it prevents. 
 
 In America, the system of ballot secured no real 
 
 1 Oilman's Socialism and the American Spirit (1893), pp. 310-11.
 
 90 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 secrecy, and seemed, and indeed probably was, specially 
 intended to throw all electoral power into the hands of 
 'the machine.' The -agents of each organisation were 
 suffered to stand at the poll and furnish the elector 
 with ballot-papers inscribed with the names of their 
 party candidates, and watchful eyes followed him till 
 he placed the paper in the ballot-box. He might, it is 
 true, change the name on the paper, but in the im- 
 mense majority of cases the votes of the electors were 
 dictated by and known to the party agent. 1 A power- 
 ful movement, however, grew up, chiefly in 1890 and 
 1891, for changing this system and introducing what 
 is called the Australian ballot. Its principal feature is 
 that the State has taken the manufacture and distribu- 
 tion of ballot-papers out of the hands of the different 
 parties, and secures to the voter absolute secrecy and 
 freedom from interference at the polling-booths. In 
 five years the Australian ballot has been adopted in 
 thirty-five States, and it appears to have done some- 
 thing to diminish the power of the caucus organisation 
 and to check the various fraudulent practices which 
 had been common at elections. 2 
 
 One great cause of the degradation of American pol- 
 itics has been the extreme facility with which votes 
 have been given to ignorant immigrants, who had no 
 experience in public life and no real interest in the 
 well-being of the country. Most of the more intelli- 
 gent American observers have agreed that the common 
 schools, and the high level of knowledge and intelli- 
 gence they secure, have been among the most impor- 
 
 1 See Bryce, ii. pp. 492-95. a Oilman's Socialism and the 
 
 There were some varieties, how- American Spirit, pp. 169-70; 
 
 ever, in the system in the differ- Political Science Quarterly 
 
 ent States. (Ford, American (New York), 1891, p. 386. 
 Citizen's Manual, i. 103-8.)
 
 CH. I. THE KNOW-NOTHINGS 91 
 
 taut conditions of the healthy working of their insti- 
 tutions. For a long period the constituent bodies in 
 America were certainly among the best educated in the 
 world ; but since the torrent of ignorant immigrants 
 and negro voters has poured into them they can have 
 no pretensions to this position. 
 
 In 1798, when revolutionary elements were very 
 rife in Europe, and when their introduction into the 
 United States excited serious alarm, a Naturalisation 
 Act was carried increasing the necessary term of resi- 
 dence from five to fourteen years ; but this Act was 
 only in force for four years. The Know-nothing 
 party, which played a considerable part in American 
 politics in 1854 and the two following years, en- 
 deavoured to revive the policy of 1798. It grew up at 
 the time when the evil effects of the great immigration 
 that followed the Irish famine had become apparent, 
 and it was assisted by a fierce anti-Popery fanaticism, 
 which had been much strengthened by the hostility the 
 Catholic clergy had begun to show to the common 
 schools, and by the attempt of some of them to exclude 
 Bible-reading from those schools. It was guilty of not 
 a little lawless violence, and although it succeeded, in 
 1855, in carrying nine of the States elections, and in 
 1856 nominated presidential candidates, it soon per- 
 ished, chiefly through its divisions on the slavery ques- 
 tion, and through the transcendent importance that 
 question was beginning to take in American politics. 
 It is said that Washington, in some moment of great 
 danger, gave the order, < Put none but Americans on 
 guard to-night/ and these words were taken by the 
 Know-nothings as their watchword. Their funda- 
 mental object was the exclusion of foreigners and Cath- 
 olics from all national, State, county, and municipal 
 offices, and a change in the naturalisation laws provid-
 
 92 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. i. 
 
 ing that no immigrant should become a citizen till 
 after a residence of twenty-one, or, at the very least, of 
 fifteen years. 1 
 
 Few persons would now defend the proposal to in- 
 troduce a religious disqualification into the American 
 Constitution ; but if the Know-nothings had succeeded 
 in lengthening the period of residence required for nat- 
 uralisation, they might have given a different charac- 
 ter to American, political life and incalculably raised 
 its moral tone. Their best defence is to be found in 
 the enormous scandals in the government of New York 
 that immediately followed their defeat. To one class 
 especially, a change in the laws of naturalisation would 
 have been a priceless blessing. It is difficult to say 
 how different the Irish element in America might have 
 been if the poor, ignorant, helpless, famine-stricken pea- 
 santry who poured by tens of thousands into New York 
 had been encouraged to pass at once into honest indus- 
 try, scattered on farms over the face of the country, and 
 kept for fifteen or twenty years out of the corrupting 
 influence of American politics. But the shrewd party 
 managers soon perceived that these poor men were 
 among the best counters in their game. The immedi- 
 ate prospect of much higher wages than they had been 
 accustomed to kept an immense proportion of them in 
 the great city where they landed. They had no one to 
 guide them. They were hardly more fitted than chil- 
 dren to make their way under new conditions in a 
 strange land, and almost their only genuine political 
 feeling was hatred of England. Like the Germans, 
 they showed from the first a marked tendency to con- 
 
 1 Much information on the United States from the Corn- 
 Know-nothing movement will be promise of 1850, and in an arti- 
 found in the second volume of cle by Mr. McMaster in The 
 Mr. Rhodes's History of the Forum, July 1894.
 
 CH. i. IRISH AND NEGRO VOTERS 93 
 
 gregate in great towns. It was computed in 1890, that 
 a third part of the Irish in America were still to be 
 found in the ten largest towns ; that, taking the popu- 
 lation of those towns together, one out of every thir- 
 teen persons was Irish, and that in New York, out of 
 a population of a little more than 1,200,000, 198,000 
 were Irish. 1 Five years were required for naturalisa- 
 tion by the Federal law, but some State laws gave a 
 vote after a shorter residence, and the Federal law was 
 easily and constantly violated. Immense numbers, who 
 were absolutely ignorant of all American public ques- 
 tions, and absolutely indifferent to public interests, 
 were speedily drilled in the party organisation. They 
 soon learned their lesson. They acquired a rare apti- 
 tude in running the machine, in turning the balance 
 of doubtful elections, in voting together in disciplined 
 masses, in using political power for private gain. 
 There are few sadder histories than the influence of the 
 Irish race on American politics, and the influence of 
 American politics on the Irish race. 
 
 The enfranchisement of the negroes added a new 
 and enormous mass of voters, who were utterly and 
 childishly incompetent, and it applied mainly to that 
 portion of the United States which had escaped the 
 contamination of the immigrant vote. For some time 
 after the war the influence of property and intelligence 
 in the South was completely broken, and the negro 
 vote was ostensibly supreme. The consequence was 
 what might have been expected. A host of vagrant 
 political adventurers from the North, known in Amer- 
 ica as carpet-baggers, poured into the Southern prov- 
 inces, and, in conjunction with the refuse of the 
 mean whites, they undertook the direction of the negro 
 
 1 Hart's Essays on American Government, pp. 192, 204.
 
 94 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 votes. Then followed, under the protection of the 
 Northern bayonets, a grotesque parody of government, 
 a hideous orgie of anarchy, violence, unrestrained cor- 
 ruption, undisguised, ostentatious, insulting robbery, 
 such as the world had scarcely ever seen. The State 
 debts were profusely piled up. Legislation was openly 
 put up for sale. The ' Bosses ' were in all their glory, 
 and they were abundantly rewarded, while the crushed, 
 ruined, plundered whites combined in secret societies 
 for their defence, and retaliated on their oppressors by 
 innumerable acts of savage vengeance. 1 At length the 
 Northern troops were withdrawn, and the whole scene 
 changed. The carpet-baggers had had their day, and 
 they returned laden with Southern booty to their own 
 States. Partly by violence, partly by fraud, but largely 
 also through the force of old habits of obedience and 
 command, the planters in a short time regained their 
 ascendency. Sometimes, it is said, they did not even 
 count the negro votes. Generally they succeeded in 
 dictating them, and by systematic manipulation or in- 
 timidation they restored the South to quiet and some 
 degree of prosperity. A more curious picture of the 
 effects of democratic equality among a population who 
 were entirely unfitted for it had never been presented. 
 The North, it is true, introduced all the apparatus of 
 State education for the benefit of the negroes ; but if 
 there had ever been any desire for such things, it soon 
 died away. Mr. Bryce, writing about twenty-three 
 years after the termination of the Civil War, says : 
 
 1 See Bryce, ii. 520-21 ; Gold- dinary reign of terror and plun- 
 
 win Smith, p. 300. M. Molin- der that existed in the South 
 
 ari, in his very interesting Let- while the carpet-baggers were 
 
 tres sur les Etats-Unis et le in power (see pp. 185-97, 270- 
 
 Canada, lias collected a number 72). 
 of facts illustrating the extraor-
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION IN NEW YORK 95 
 
 ' Kouglily speaking, 75 per cent, of the adult coloured 
 voters are unable to write, and most of the rest unac- 
 customed to read newspapers/ 1 
 
 The system I have described has proved even more 
 pernicious in municipal government than in State pol- 
 itics or in Federal politics. Innumerable elections of 
 obscure men to obscure places very naturally failed to 
 excite general interest, and they almost inevitably fell 
 into the hands of a small ring of professional politicians. 
 The corruption of New York, which has been the most 
 notorious, is often attributed almost exclusively to the 
 Irish vote ; but as early as the first quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century, when Irish influence was quite imper- 
 ceptible, the State and City of New York were in the 
 hands of a clique called 'the Albany Kegency/ which 
 appears to have exhibited on a small scale most of the 
 features of the later rings. ' A strong phalanx of offi- 
 cers, from the governor and the senators down to 
 the justices of peace in the most remote part of the 
 State/ we are told, governed New York for the sole 
 benefit of a small knot of corrupt politicians. ' The 
 judiciaries' were 'shambles for the bargain and sale of 
 offices/ The justices of the peace were all the creatures 
 of the party, and were almost invariably corrupt. 2 Be- 
 tween 1842 and 1846, when the great Irish immigra- 
 tion had not yet begun, an evil of another kind was 
 prevailing in New York. It was the custom to allow 
 the inmates of public almshouses to leave the institu- 
 tions on the days of election and cast their votes ; and 
 an American writer assures us that at this time ' the 
 almshouses formed an important factor in the politics 
 
 1 Bryce, ii. 92-93. Works (New York, 1853), iii. 
 
 See an address of the well- 334-37. The first political work 
 
 known statesman, W. H. Sew- of Mr. Seward was to resist the 
 
 ard, October 5, 1824 : Seward' s Albany Ring.
 
 96 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 of the State of New York, for the paupers were sent 
 out to vote by the party in power, and were threatened 
 with a loss of support unless they voted as directed ; 
 and the number was such as to turn the scale in the 
 districts in which they voted.' a It was abuses of this 
 kind that led to one of the greatest modern improve- 
 ments in American politics the exclusion in several 
 States of absolute paupers from the franchise. 
 
 It is true, however, that the corruption never at- 
 tained anything approaching the magnitude which it 
 reached between 1863 and 1871, when all the powers 
 of the State and town of New York had passed into 
 the hands of the Tammany Ring. At this time four- 
 ninths of the population were of foreign birth. A 
 vast proportion consisted of recent immigrants, and. 
 the Irish Catholic vote seems to have ' gone solid ' in 
 favour of the ring. The majority of the State legisla- 
 ture, the mayor, the governor, several of the judges, 
 almost all the municipal authorities who were empow- 
 ered to order, appropriate, supervise and control expen- 
 diture, were its creatures, and I suppose no other cap- 
 ital city in the civilised globe has ever, in time of peace, 
 witnessed such a system of wholesale, organised, con- 
 tinuous plunder. It was computed that 65 per cent, of 
 the sums that were ostensibly expended in public works 
 represented fraudulent additions. Between 1860 and 
 1871 the debt of New York quintupled, and during 
 the last two and a half years of the government of the 
 ring it increased at the rate of more than five and a half 
 millions of pounds a year. 2 A distinguished Amer- 
 ican writer, who is also a distinguished diplomatist 
 
 1 Ford's American Citizen's York City in Mr. Bryce's third 
 
 Manual, i. 88-89. volume. See especially pp. 179, 
 
 8 See Mr. Goodnow's chapter 190, 195. 
 on the Tweed Ring in New
 
 CH. I. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 97 
 
 and well acquainted with the conditions of European 
 capitals, has drawn the following instructive parallel. 
 ' The city of Berlin, in size and rapidity of growth, 
 may be compared to New York. It contains twelve 
 hundred thousand inhabitants, and its population has 
 tripled within the last thirty years. . . . While Ber- 
 lin has a municipal life at the same time dignified 
 and economical, with streets well paved and clean, with 
 a most costly system of drainage, with noble public 
 buildings, with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness better guarded by far than in our own metropolis, 
 the whole government is carried on by its citizens for 
 but a trifle more than the interest of the public debt of 
 the city of New York/ 
 
 ' I wish/ says the same writer, ' to deliberately state 
 a fact easy of verification the fact that whereas, as a 
 rule, in other civilised countries municipal Govern- 
 ments have been steadily improving until they have 
 been made generally honest and serviceable, our own, 
 as a rule, are the worst in the world, and they are 
 steadily growing worse every day.' ' 
 
 The case of New York was an extreme one, but was, 
 indeed, very far from being unique. * The government 
 of the cities/ says Mr. Bryce, ' is the one conspicu- 
 ous failure of the United States. . . . The faults of 
 the State Governments are insignificant compared with 
 the extravagance, corruption, and mismanagement 
 which mark the administration of most of the great 
 cities. For these evils are not confined to one or two 
 cities. . . . There is not a city with a population 
 
 1 The Message of the Nine- by the same writer, on ' The 
 
 teenth Century to the Twentieth, Government of American Cit- 
 
 by Andrew Dickson White ies ' (The Forum, December 
 
 (Newhaven, 1883), pp. 14-15; 1890). 
 see also an instructive article,
 
 98 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 of 200,000 where the poison-germs have not sprung 
 into vigorous life, and in some of the smaller ones, 
 down to 70,000, it needs no microscope to note the re- 
 sults of their growth. Even in cities of the third rank 
 similar phenomena may occasionally be discerned ; 
 though there, as some one has said, the jet-black of 
 New York or San Francisco dies away into a harmless 
 grey.' 1 It should be added, that there is no country 
 in the world in which this question is more important 
 than in the United States, for there is no country in 
 which town life during the present century has in- 
 creased so enormously and so rapidly. The proportion 
 of the population who live in towns of over 8,000 in- 
 habitants is said to have risen in that period from 4 to 
 more than 23 per cent. 2 
 
 Mr. Bryce has enumerated from good American 
 sources the chief forms which this municipal robbery 
 assumes. There are sales of monopolies in the use of 
 public thoroughfares ; systematic jobbing of contracts ; 
 enormous abuses in patronage ; enormous overcharges 
 for necessary public works. Cities have been com- 
 pelled to buy lands for parks and places because the 
 owners wished to sell them ; to grade, pave, and sewer 
 streets without inhabitants in order to award corrupt 
 contracts for the works ; to purchase worthless proper- 
 ties at extravagant prices ; to abolish one office and 
 create another with the same duties, or to vary the 
 functions of offices for the sole purpose of redistribut- 
 ing official emoluments ; to make or keep the salary of 
 an office unduly high in order that its tenant may pay 
 largely to the party funds ; to lengthen the term of 
 
 1 Bryce, ii. 281. and an article by Mr. Springer, 
 
 2 See an essay on American on ' City Growth and Tarty Pol- 
 cities in Hart's Essays on Amer- itics,' The Forum, December 
 ican Government, pp. 162-205 ; 1890.
 
 CH. I. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 99 
 
 office in order to secure the tenure of corrupt or in- 
 competent men. When increasing taxation begins to 
 arouse resistance, loans are launched under false pre- 
 tences, and often with the assistance of falsified ac- 
 counts. In all the chief towns municipal debts have 
 risen to colossal dimensions and increased with porten- 
 tous rapidity. ' Within the twenty years from 1860 to 
 1880,' says an American writer, ' the debts of the cities 
 of the Union rose from about $100,000,000 to $682,- 
 000,000. From 1860 to 1875 the increase of debt in 
 eleven cities was 270.9 percent., increase of taxation 
 362.2 per cent. ; whereas the increase in taxable valu- 
 ation was but 156.9 per cent., and increase in popula 
 tion but 70 per cent.' ' The New York Commissioners 
 of 1876 probably understated the case when they de- 
 clared that more than half of all the present city debtb 
 in the United States are the direct results of inten- 
 tional and corrupt misrule. 2 
 
 No candid man can wonder at it. It is the plain, 
 inevitable consequence of the application of the meth- 
 ods of extreme democracy to municipal government. 
 In America, as in England, municipal elections fail to 
 attract the same interest and attention as great politi- 
 cal ones, and when all the smaller offices are filled by 
 popular election, and when those elections are continu- 
 ally recurring, it is impossible for busy men to master 
 their details or form any judgment on the many ob- 
 scure candidates who appear before them. Property 
 qualifications are deemed too aristocratic for a demo- 
 cratic people. The good old clause, that might once 
 have been found in many charters, providing that no 
 one should vote upon any proposition to raise a tax or 
 
 1 Sterne's United States, p. " Bryce, ii. 278-87, 469-74, 
 267 ; see also Bryce, ii. 280. 521.
 
 100 DEMOCEACY AND LIBERTY CH. i 
 
 to appropriate its proceeds unless he was himself liable 
 to be assessed for such tax, has disappeared. ' It is 
 deemed undemocratic ; practical men say there is no 
 use in submitting it to a popular vote.' ' The elections 
 are by manhood suffrage. Only a small proportion of 
 the electors have any appreciable interest in moderate 
 taxation and economical administration, and a propor- 
 tion of votes, which is usually quite sufficient to hold 
 the balance of power, is in the hands of recent and most 
 ignorant immigrants. Is it possible to conceive con- 
 ditions more fitted to subserve the purposes of cunning 
 and dishonest men, whose object is personal gain, 
 whose method is the organisation of the vicious and 
 ignorant elements of the community into combinations 
 that can turn elections, levy taxes, and appoint admin- 
 istrators ? 
 
 The rings are so skilfully constructed that they can 
 nearly always exclude from office a citizen who is 
 known to be hostile ; though ' a good, easy man, who 
 will not fight, and will make a reputable figure-head, 
 may be an excellent investment/ 2 Sometimes, no 
 doubt, the bosses quarrel among themselves, and the 
 cause of honest government may gain something by the 
 dispute. But in general, as long as government is not 
 absolutely intolerable, the more industrious and respect- 
 able classes keep aloof from the nauseous atmosphere 
 of municipal politics, and decline the long, difficult, 
 doubtful task of entering into conflict with the dom- 
 inant rings. ' The affairs of the city/ says Mr. White, 
 'are virtually handed over to a few men who make 
 politics, so called, a business. The very germ of the 
 difficulty was touched once, in my presence, by a lead- 
 ing man of business in our great metropolis, who said : 
 
 Bryce, ii. 291. Ibid. ii. 469.
 
 CH. i. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 101 
 
 " We have thought this thing over, and we find that it 
 pays better to neglect our city affairs than to attend to 
 them ; that we can make more money in the time re- 
 quired for the full discharge of our political duties than 
 the politicians can steal from us on account of our not 
 discharging them." ' 1 
 
 The evil has, however, undoubtedly, in many cases 
 become intolerable, and the carnival of plunder that 
 culminated in New York in 1871 gave a shock to pub- 
 lic opinion and began a series of amendments which 
 appear to have produced some real improvement. ' The 
 problem/ says Mr. Sterne, ' is becoming a very serious 
 one how, with the growth of a pauper element, prop- 
 erty rights in cities can be protected from confiscation 
 at the hands of the non-producing classes. That the 
 suffrage is a spear as well as a shield is a fact which 
 many writers on suffrage leave out of sight ; that it 
 not only protects the holder of the vote from aggression, 
 but also enables him to aggress upon the rights of 
 others by means of the taxing power, is a fact to which 
 more and more weight must be given as population in- 
 creases and the suffrage is extended/ 2 Some good has 
 been done by more severe laws against corruption at 
 elections; though, in spite of these laws, the perjury 
 and personation and wholesale corruption of a New 
 York election appear far to exceed anything that can 
 be found in the most corrupt capital in Europe. 3 A 
 great reform, however, has been made by the extension 
 of the term of office of the New York judges in the 
 higher courts to fourteen years, and by a measure 
 
 1 White's Message of the Nine- way in which New York elec- 
 
 leenth Century to the Twentieth, tions are still conducted, by Mr. 
 
 pp. 15-16. Goff, in the North American 
 
 3 Sterne, p. 271. Review, 1891, pp. 203-10. 
 
 1 See a striking account of the
 
 102 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 granting them independent salaries. The general im- 
 punity of the great organisers of corruption was broken 
 in 1894, when one of the chief bosses in America, a man 
 of vast wealth and enormous influence in American 
 politics, was at last brought to justice and sentenced to 
 six years' imprisonment. 1 
 
 The most successful steps, however, taken in the 
 direction of reform have been those limiting the power 
 of corrupt bodies. One of the most valuable and most 
 distinctive features of the American Constitution is the 
 power of electing conventions independent of the State 
 legislatures for the purpose of effecting amendments in 
 the State constitutions. Being specially elected for a 
 single definite purpose, and for a very short time, and 
 having none of the patronage and administrative pow- 
 ers that are vested in the Legislature, these conven- 
 tions, though the creatures of universal suffrage, have 
 in a great degree escaped the influence of the machine, 
 and represent the normal and genuine wishes of the 
 community. They have no power of enacting amend- 
 ments, but they have the power of proposing them and 
 submitting them to a direct popular vote. By these 
 means a number of amendments have, during the last 
 few years, been introduced into the State constitutions. 
 In New York, and in several other States, since 1874 
 the State legislatures are only permitted to legislate for 
 municipal affairs by a general law, and are deprived of 
 the much-abused right of making special laws in fa- 
 vour of particular individuals or corporations ; but it 
 is said that these restrictions are easily and constantly 
 evaded. 2 Restrictions have been imposed in many 
 
 1 A curious letter on the ca- be found in The Times, March 
 
 reer of this personage, called 2, 1894. 
 4 The Downfall of a Political " Sterne, pp. 258-59. 
 Boss in the United States,' will
 
 CH. i. RESTRICTIONS ON STATE LEGISLATURES 103 
 
 States upon forms of corruption that had been widely 
 practised, in the guise of distributions of public funds 
 in aid of charities connected with religious establish- 
 ments, and of exemptions from taxation granted to 
 charitable institutions. In a few States some provision 
 has been made to secure a representation' of minorities, 1 
 and in many States limitations which, however, have 
 been often successfully evaded have been imposed on 
 the power of borrowing and the power of taxing. 2 The 
 theory of American statesmen seems to be, that the 
 persons elected on a democratic system are always likely 
 to prove dishonest, but that it is possible by constitu- 
 tional laws to restrict their dishonesty to safe limits. 
 There has been a strong tendency of late years to mul- 
 tiply and elaborate in minute detail constitutional re- 
 strictions, and the policy has also been widely adopted 
 of making the sessions of State legislatures biennial in- 
 stead of annual, in order to limit their powers of mis- 
 chief. 
 
 The following interesting passage from one of the 
 chief living historians of America well represents the 
 new spirit. ' It has become the fashion to set limits on 
 the power of the governors, of the legislatures, of the 
 courts ; to command them to do this, to forbid them 
 to do that, till a modern State constitution is more 
 like a code of laws than an instrument of representative 
 government. A distrust of the servants and represen- 
 tatives of the people is everywhere manifest. A long 
 and bitter experience has convinced the people that 
 
 1 Ford, i. 113-15. never exceed 7 per cent, of the 
 
 2 See, on this subject, Bryce, assessed value of the taxable 
 ii. 293-94. One favourite form property. In order to evade 
 of restriction has been that the this the assessed value of prop- 
 debt of a county, city, borough, erty has almost everywhere been 
 township, or school district shall largely increased.
 
 104 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 legislators will roll up the State debt unless positively 
 forbidden to go beyond a certain figure ; that they will 
 suffer railroads to parallel each other, corporations to 
 consolidate, common carriers to discriminate, city 
 councils to sell valuable franchises to street-car com- 
 panies and telephone companies, unless the State con- 
 stitution expressly declares that such things shall not 
 be. So far has this system of prohibition been carried, 
 that many legislatures are not allowed to enact any 
 private or special legislation ; are not allowed to re- 
 lieve individuals or corporations from obligations to the 
 State ; are not allowed to pass a Bill in which any 
 member is interested, or to loan the credit of the 
 State, or to consider money Bills in the last hours of 
 the session.' * In Washington, a still stronger meas- 
 ure has been adopted, and the whole municipal govern- 
 ment is placed in the hands of a commission appointed 
 directly by the Congress. 
 
 At the same time, another very different, and per- 
 haps more efficacious, method has been adopted of 
 checking municipal corruption, and Laveleyehas justly 
 regarded it as extremely significant of the future ten- 
 dencies of democracy. There are two facts, as yet 
 very imperfectly recognised in Europe, which Amer- 
 ican experience has amply established. The first is 
 that, in the words of an American writer, ' there can 
 be no question that one of the most prolific sources of 
 official corruption and incompetency lies in the multi- 
 plication of elective offices.' 2 The second is, that this 
 multiplication, instead of strengthening, materially di- 
 minishes popular control, for it confuses issues, divides 
 and obscures responsibility, weakens the moral effect of 
 
 1 See an article, by Mr. Me- cember 1893, p. 470. 
 Master, in The Forum, De- 2 Ford, i. 129.
 
 CH. i. TENDENCY TO CONCENTRATE POWER 105 
 
 each election, bewilders the ordinary elector, who knows 
 little or nothing of the merits of the different candi- 
 dates, and inevitably ends by throwing the chief power 
 into the hands of a small knot of wirepullers. The sys- 
 tem has, accordingly, grown up in America of invest- 
 ing the mayors of the towns with an almost autocratic 
 authority, and making them responsible for the good 
 government of the city. These mayors are themselves 
 elected by popular suffrage for periods ranging from 
 one to five years ; they are liable to impeachment if 
 they abuse their functions ; the State legislature re- 
 tains the right of giving or withholding supplies, and 
 it can override, though only by a two-thirds majority, 
 the veto of the mayor. But, in spite of these restric- 
 tions, the power vested in this functionary, according 
 to recent constitutional amendments, is enormously 
 great, far greater than in European cities. With very 
 slight restrictions, the mayor appoints and can remove 
 all the heads of all the city departments. He exercises a 
 right of veto and supervision over all their proceedings. 
 He is responsible for the working of every part of mu- 
 nicipal administration. He keeps the peace, calls out 
 the Militia, enforces the law, and, in a word, deter- 
 mines in all its main lines the character of the city 
 government. This system began in Brooklyn in 1882. 
 It was extended, apparently with excellent results, to 
 New York in 1884 ; and the same highly concentrated 
 responsibility is spreading rapidly through other 
 States. 1 It is curious to observe the strength which 
 this tendency is assuming in a country which beyond 
 all others was identified with the opposite system ; and 
 it is regarded by some excellent political writers in 
 
 1 Bryce, ii. 264-65, 292, 304-5, iii. 196 ; Laveleye, Le Gowverne- 
 ment dans la Democratic, i. 97-109.
 
 106 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 America as the oue real corrective of the vices of de- 
 mocracy. In the words of one of the most recent of 
 these writers, ' the tendency is visibly strengthening in 
 the United States to concentrate administrative powers 
 in the hands of one man, and to hold him responsible 
 for its wise and honest use. Diffusion of responsibil- 
 ity through a crowd of legislators has proved to be a 
 deceptive method of securing the public welfare/ * 
 
 It seems to me probable that this system will ulti- 
 mately, and after many costly and disastrous experi- 
 ments, spread widely wherever unqualified democracy 
 prevails. In the election of a very conspicuous person, 
 who is invested with very great prerogatives, public 
 interest is fully aroused, and a wave of opinion arises 
 which in some degree overflows the lines of strict cau- 
 cus politics. The increasing power of organisations is 
 a conspicuous fact in all countries that are gliding down 
 the democratic slope. It is abundantly seen in England, 
 where candidates for Parliament are now more and more 
 exclusively nominated by party organisations ; and in 
 the United States the power of such bodies is far 
 greater than in England. But while in obscure and 
 comparatively "insignificant appointments the managers 
 of the machine can usually do much what they please, 
 they are obliged in the more important elections to 
 take average non-political opinion into account. The 
 best candidates are not found to be men of great emi- 
 nence or ability, for these always excite animosities and 
 divisions ; but it is equally important that they should 
 not be men labouring under gross moral imputations. 
 The system of double election also, though it has been 
 greatly weakened, probably still exercises some influence 
 in diminishing corruption. It is like the process of 
 
 Oilman, Socialism and the American Spirit, p. 82.
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 107 
 
 successive inoculations, by which physiologists are 
 able to attenuate the virus of a disease. On the whole, 
 corruption in the United States is certainly less promi- 
 nent in the higher than in the lower spheres of govern- 
 ment, though even in the former it appears to me to be 
 far greater than in most European countries certainly 
 far greater than in Great Britain. 
 
 I can, however, hardly do better than give a sum- 
 mary of the conclusions of Mr. Bryce. They appear 
 to me the more impressive because, in the somewhat 
 curious chapter which he has devoted to American cor- 
 ruption, it is his evident desire to minimise, as far as 
 he honestly can, both its gravity and its significance. 
 No President, he says, has ever been seriously charged 
 with pecuniary corruption, and there is no known in- 
 stance, since the presidency which immediately pre- 
 ceded the Civil War, of a Cabinet minister receiving a 
 direct money bribe as the price of an executive act or 
 an appointment ; but several leading ministers of re- 
 cent Administrations have been suspected of compli- 
 city in railroad jobs, and even in frauds upon the rev- 
 enue. In the Legislature, both the senators and the 
 members of the House of Representatives labour under 
 ' abundant suspicions/ ( abundant accusations/ but 
 few of these * have been, or could have been, sifted to 
 the bottom/ ' The opportunities for private gain are 
 large, the chances of detection small/ All that can be 
 safely said is, that personal dishonesty in the exercise 
 of legislative powers, of a kind quite distinct from the 
 political profligacy with which we are in our own coun- 
 try abundantly familiar, prevails largely and unques- 
 tionably in America. It is especially prominent in what 
 we should call private Bills affecting the interests of 
 railroads or of other wealthy corporations, and in Bills 
 altering the tariff of imports, on which a vast range of
 
 108 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 manufacturing interests largely depend. ' The doors 
 of Congress are besieged by a whole army of commercial 
 and railroad men and their agents, to whom, since they 
 have come to form a sort of profession, the name of 
 Lobbyists is given. Many Congressmen are personally 
 interested, and lobby for themselves among their col- 
 leagues from the vantage-ground of their official posi- 
 tions/ 
 
 The object of the lobbyist is to ' offer considerations 
 for help in passing a Bill which is desired, or stopping 
 a Bill which is feared/ There are several different 
 methods. There is ' log-rolling,' when members in- 
 terested in different private Bills come to an agree- 
 ment that each will support the Bill of the others on 
 condition of himself receiving the same assistance. 
 There is the 'strike/ which means that 'a, member 
 brings in a Bill directed against some railroad or other 
 great corporation merely in order to levy blackmail 
 upon it. ... An eminent railroad president told me 
 that for some years a certain senator regularly prac- 
 tised this trick/ * It is universally admitted that the 
 Capitol and the hotels of Washington are a nest of 
 such intrigues and machinations while Congress is sit- 
 ting.' The principal method, however, of succeeding 
 seems to be simple bribery, though 'no one can tell 
 how many of the members are tainted.' Sometimes 
 the money does not go to the member of Congress, but to 
 the boss who controls him. Sometimes a lobbyist re- 
 ceives money to bribe an honest member, but, finding 
 he is going to vote in the way desired, keeps it in his 
 own pocket. Often members are bribed to support a 
 railway by a transfer of portions of its stocks. Free 
 passes were so largely given with the same object to 
 legislators that an Act was passed in 1887 to forbid 
 them. Mr. Bryce mentions a governor who used to
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 109 
 
 obtain loans of money from the railway which traversed 
 his territory under the promise that he would use his 
 constitutional powers in its favour ; and members of 
 Congress were accustomed to buy, or try to buy, land 
 belonging to a railway company at less than the market 
 price, in consideration of the services they could ren- 
 der to the line in the House. It was clearly shown 
 that, in one case within the last twenty years, a large 
 portion of a sum of $4,818,000, which was expended 
 by a single railway, was used for the purpose ' of in- 
 fluencing legislation/ The letters of the director who 
 managed the case of this railway have been published, 
 and show that he found members of both Houses fully 
 amenable to corruption. ' I think/ writes this gentle- 
 man in 1878, ' in all the world's history, never before 
 was such a wild set of demagogues honoured by the 
 name of Congress/ 
 
 It is, of course, inevitable that only a small propor- 
 tion of transactions of this kind should be disclosed. 
 These cases are merely samples, probably representing 
 many others. A great additional amount of direct cor- 
 ruption is connected with the enormous distribution of 
 patronage in the hands of members of Congress. There 
 are about 120,000 Federal Civil Service places, and an 
 important part of each member's business is to distrib- 
 ute such places among his constituents. It is easy to 
 imagine how such patronage would be administered by 
 such men as have been described. 
 
 Mr. Bryce, however, is of opinion that there is 
 much prevalent exaggeration about American corrup- 
 tion, and that Europeans are very unduly shocked by 
 it. This is partly the fault of Americans, who have 
 ' an airy way of talking about their own country/ and 
 love ( broad effects.' It is partly, also, due to the 
 malevolence of European travellers, 'who, generally
 
 110 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i 
 
 belonging to the wealthier class, are generally reaction- 
 ary in politics/ and therefore not favourable to demo- 
 cratic government. Englishmen, he thinks, are very 
 unphilosophical. They have ' a useful knack of forget- 
 ting their own shortcomings when contemplating those 
 of their neighbours/ 'Derelictions of duty which a 
 man thinks trivial in the form with which custom 
 has made him familiar in his own country, where, 
 perhaps, they are matter for merriment, shock him 
 when they appear in a different form in another coun- 
 try. They get mixed up in his mind with venality, 
 and are cited to prove that the country is corrupt and 
 its politicians profligate/ In the proceedings of Con- 
 gress, Mr. Bryce says, ' it does not seem, from what 
 one hears on the spot, that money is often given, or, I 
 should rather say, it seems that the men to whom it is 
 given are few in number. But considerations of some 
 kind pretty often pass/ In other words, not actual 
 money, but the value of money, and jobs by which 
 money can be got, are usually employed. 
 
 Senators are often charged with ' buying themselves 
 into the Senate/ but Mr. Bryce does not think 
 that they often give direct bribes to the members 
 of the State legislature to vote for them. They only 
 make large contributions to the party election fund, 
 out of which the election expenses of the majority 
 are defrayed. 1 ' Bribery exists in Congress, but is 
 
 1 1 may here quote the words speeches of Webster, and Cal- 
 
 of Mr.- Wlilte, whose authority houn, and Clay, and Sumner, 
 
 on such a question is at least and Seward, and Everett, that 
 
 equal to that of Mr. Bryce : great commonwealths would 
 
 ' I am not at all disposed to ac- arise in which United States' 
 
 cept the prevalent cant about senatorships would be virtually 
 
 corruption; but suppose that put up to the highest bidder 
 
 any one had told us in our col- term after term, until such a 
 
 lege days, as we pondered the mode of securing a position in
 
 CH. i. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 111 
 
 confined to a few members, say 5 per cent, of the whole 
 number. . . . The taking of other considerations 
 than money, such as a share in a lucrative contract, or 
 a railway pass, or a " good thing " to be secured for a 
 friend, prevails among legislators to a somewhat larger 
 extent. . . . One may roughly conjecture that from 
 15 to 20 per cent, of the members of Congress, or of 
 an average State legislature, would allow themselves to 
 be influenced by inducements of this kind. . . . Job- 
 bery of various kinds, i.e. the misuse of a public posi- 
 tion for the benefit of individuals, is pretty frequent. 
 It is often disguised as a desire to render some service 
 to the party ; and the same excuse is sometimes found 
 for a misappropriation of public money. Patronage 
 is usually dispensed with a view to party considera- 
 tions or to win personal support. But this remark is 
 equally true of England and France, the chief differ- 
 ence being that, owing to the short terms and frequent 
 removals, the quantity of patronage is relatively greater 
 in the United States/ 
 
 On the whole, Mr. Bryce concludes, if ' we leave 
 ideals out of sight, and try America by an actual 
 standard, we shall find that while the legislative bodies 
 fall below the level of purity maintained in England 
 and Germany, probably also in France and Italy, her 
 Federal and State Administration, in spite of the evils 
 flowing from an uncertain tenure, is not, in point of 
 integrity, at this moment sensibly inferior to the Ad- 
 ministrations of European countries.' 1 
 
 This judgment certainly does not err on the side of 
 severity. If in England a great admirer of our parlia- 
 mentary institutions, while boasting that no Prime 
 
 our highest council would be teenth Century to the Twentieth, 
 
 looked upon as natural and p. 14). 
 
 normal ! ' (Message of the Nine- 1 Bryce, ii. 509-25.
 
 112 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 Minister had been seriously charged with pecuniary 
 corruption, and that no Cabinet Minister had been 
 known for the last forty years to have taken money as 
 a bribe, was obliged to add that several Cabinet Minis- 
 ters of both parties in the State were suspected of 
 complicity in railroad jobs and frauds on the revenue ; 
 that the whole of that vast department of legislation 
 which affects the interests of corporations and manu- 
 factures was systematically managed, or at least influ- 
 enced,, by corruption ; that about 5 per cent, of the 
 members of both Houses of Parliament were accus- 
 tomed to take direct money bribes ; that one in every 
 five or six members was pretty certainly open to cor- 
 rupt jobs, while suspicion of dishonesty of some kind 
 attached to a much larger number, we should scarcely, 
 I think, consider our parliamentary government a suc- 
 cess. 
 
 Many of the causes of the vices of American govern- 
 ment are inherent in democracy, but there are two ag- 
 gravating causes which I have not mentioned. The 
 rule that the person elected to either House of Con- 
 gress must be a resident in the State for which he sits 
 abridges greatly the choice of able and efficient men, 
 and much strengthens the power of the local machine ; 
 while the large salaries attached to the position of 
 senator or representative make it even apart from its 
 many indirect advantages an object of keen ambition 
 to the professional politician. Members of each House 
 have a salary of 1, 0007. a year, besides some small al- 
 lowance for travelling and other expenses. In 1873, 
 the two Houses passed an Act increasing many official 
 salaries and adding a third to their own salaries, and, 
 by a curiously characteristic provision, the congres- 
 sional salaries, and these alone, were made retroactive. 
 The appropriation, however, by Congress of nearly
 
 CH. i. PUBLIC OPINION ON CORRUPTION 113 
 
 40,OOOZ. to itself excited so much indignation that it 
 was repealed in the next Congress. 1 
 
 The members of the House of Eepresentatives sit 
 only for two years, which probably adds something to 
 the desire for speedy gain. At the same time, it ap- 
 pears certain that the Federal Government is less deep- 
 ly tainted with corruption than a large proportion of 
 the State legislatures, far less deeply than the Govern- 
 ments of nearly all the more important towns. 
 
 There is one thing which is worse than corruption. 
 It is acquiescence in corruption. No feature of Amer- 
 ican life strikes a stranger so powerfully as the extraor- 
 dinary indifference, partly cynicism and partly good 
 nature, with which notorious frauds and notorious cor- 
 ruption in the sphere of politics are viewed by Amer- 
 ican public opinion. There is nothing, I think, alto- 
 gether like this to be found in any other great country. 
 It is something wholly different from the political tor- 
 por which is common in half-developed nations and 
 corrupt despotisms, and it is curiously unlike the state 
 of feeling which exists in the French Republic. Fla- 
 grant instances of corruption have been disclosed in 
 France since 1870, but French public opinion never 
 fails promptly to resent and to punish them. In Amer- 
 ica, notorious profligacy in public life and in the admin- 
 istration of public funds seems to excite little more 
 than a disdainful smile. It is treated as very natural 
 as the normal result of the existing form of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 I imagine that most persons who formed their opin- 
 ions, as historians are apt to do, mainly by the exam- 
 ples of the past would judge very unfavourably the 
 prospects of a country where there was so much cor- 
 
 1 Bryce, i. 259-61. 
 VOL. i.
 
 114 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 ruption and so much toleration of corruption in public 
 life. The words of Jugurtha might well rise to their 
 lips : ' Urbem venalem, et mature perituram si empto- 
 rem invenerit ! ' They would be inclined to conclude 
 that, if the United States escaped great perils from with- 
 out, this was mainly due to its extraordinarily advan- 
 tageous position, and that internally it presented in a 
 very marked degree the signs of moral dissolution which 
 portend the decadence of nations. I believe, however, 
 that the best judges, who are well acquainted with 
 America, would concur in believing that such a judg- 
 ment would be fallacious. America illustrates even 
 more clearly than France the truth which I have al- 
 ready laid down, and which will again and again reap- 
 pear in these volumes that pure democracy is one of 
 the least representative of governments. In hardly 
 any other country does the best life and energy of the 
 nation flow so habitually apart from politics. Hardly 
 any other nation would be more grossly misjudged if 
 it were mainly judged by its politicians and its politi- 
 cal life. 1 It seems a strange paradox that a nation 
 
 1 The following remarks of to watch the people who make 
 
 Mr. Oilman appear to me well a profession of running the po- 
 
 worthy of attention : ' Only litical machine. His own pri- 
 
 one who has lived for some vate business, with which Gov- 
 
 time in the United States, and ernment as a rule has little to 
 
 has had considerable experience do, tends to absorb his thoughts, 
 
 of the actual workings of Amer- He even prefers too often to be 
 
 ican political institutions, will heavily taxed in direct conse- 
 
 sufficiently realise the force of quence of political corruption, 
 
 the curious contrast between rather than to take the time 
 
 " the people " and " the poli- from his private affairs which 
 
 ticians." It is purely in imag- would be needed to overthrow 
 
 ination or theory that the pol- the machine and keep it in per- 
 
 iticians are faithful representa- manent exile ' ( The American 
 
 tives of the people. The busy, Spirit of Socialism, pp. 178-79). 
 
 "driving" American citizen is I may add the judgment of one 
 
 apt to feel that he has no time of the most serious and impar-
 
 CH. i. CAUSES OF AMERICAN CORRUPTION 115 
 
 which stands in the very foremost rank in almost all 
 the elements of a great industrial civilisation, which 
 teems with energy, intelligence and resource, and which 
 exhibits in many most important fields a level of moral 
 excellence that very few European countries have at- 
 tained, should permit itself to be governed, and repre- 
 sented among the nations, in the manner I have de- 
 scribed. How strange it is, as an Italian statesman 
 once said, that a century which has produced the tele- 
 graph and the telephone, and has shown in ten thou- 
 sand forms such amazing powers of adaptation and 
 invention, should have discovered no more successful 
 methods of governing mankind ! The fact, however, 
 is as I have presented it, and there are few more curi- 
 ous inquiries than its causes. 
 
 The foregoing pages will, I think, have at least 
 shown the chief sources from which the corruption has 
 sprung. To quote once more the words of Mr. Bryce : 
 ' Every feature of the machine is the result of patent 
 causes. The elective offices are so numerous that or- 
 dinary citizens cannot watch them, and cease to care 
 who gets them ; the conventions come so often that 
 busy men cannot serve in them ; the minor offices are 
 so unattractive that able men do not stand for them. 
 The primary lists are so contrived that only a fraction 
 of the party get on them, and of this fraction many are 
 too lazy, or too busy, or too careless to attend. The 
 mass of the voters are ignorant ; knowing nothing 
 about the personal merits of the candidates, they are 
 
 tial of American historians : States. The one is lower than 
 
 'It is certain that in no Ten- it was in 1860; the other, incon- 
 
 tonic nation of our day is the sistent as it may seem, is higher ' 
 
 difference so marked between (Rhodes's History of the United 
 
 the public and private standards States from the Compromise of 
 
 of morality as in the United 1850, iii. 113).
 
 116 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 ready to follow their leaders like sheep. Even the bet- 
 ter class, however they may grumble, are swayed by 
 the inveterate habit of party loyalty, and prefer a bad 
 candidate of their own party to a (probably no better) 
 candidate of the other party. It is less trouble to put 
 up with impure officials, costly city governments, a 
 jobbing State legislature, an inferior sort of Congress- 
 man, than to sacrifice one's own business in the effort 
 to set things right. Thus the machine works on, and 
 grinds out places, power, and the opportunities of il- 
 licit gain to those who manage it.' * 
 
 These things, however, would not be acquiesced in 
 if it were not that an admirable written Constitution, 
 enforced by a powerful and vigilant Supreme Court, 
 had restricted to small limits the possibilities of mis- 
 government. All the rights that men value the most 
 are placed beyond the reach of a tyrannical majority. 
 Congress is debarred by the Constitution from mak- 
 ing any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, 
 or abridging the freedom of speech and of the press, 
 or the right of assembly, or the right of petition. No 
 person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
 without due process of law. All the main articles 
 of what British statesmen would regard as necessary 
 liberties are guaranteed, and property is so fenced 
 round by constitutional provisions that confiscatory 
 legislation becomes almost impossible. No private 
 property can be taken for public use without just com- 
 pensation, and the Federal Constitution contains an 
 invaluable provision forbidding any State to pass any 
 law impairing the obligation of contracts. The dan- 
 ger of partial or highly graduated taxation voted by 
 the many and falling on the few has been, in a great 
 
 1 Bryce, ii. 449.
 
 CH. i. RESTRICTIONS ON CORRUPTION 117 
 
 measure, guarded against by the clauses in the Consti- 
 tution providing that representatives and direct taxes 
 shall be apportioned among the States according to 
 their population ; that no capitation or other direct 
 tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census, and 
 that all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform 
 throughout the United States. The judgment of the 
 Supreme Court condemning the income-tax in 1894 
 brought into clear relief the full force and meaning of 
 these provisions. Neither Congress nor the State leg- 
 islatures can pass any Bill of attainder or any ex post 
 facto law punishing acts which were not punishable 
 when they were committed. 
 
 At the same time, the number and magnitude of the 
 majorities that are required to effect any organic change 
 in the Federal Constitution are so great that such 
 changes become almost impossible. They have, in 
 fact, never, since the earliest days of the Constitution, 
 been effected on any important subject, except during 
 the wholly abnormal period that immediately followed 
 the Civil War, when the political independence of the 
 Southern States was for a time destroyed. The con- 
 currence of majorities in two-thirds, and afterwards in 
 three-fourths, of the States which is required for such 
 an organic change becomes more and more difficult to 
 obtain as the States multiply, with increasing popula- 
 tion. Other guarantees of good government very 
 notably, it is to be feared, the character of the Senate 
 have been enfeebled by time and corruption and the 
 increasing power of the machine ; but this one, at 
 least, almost automatically strengthens. 
 
 In the State constitutions the same system of checks 
 prevails. All men, in the language of several of the 
 constitutions, have ' natural, essential, inalienable 
 rights/ and among them that of ' enjoying and defend-
 
 118 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY OH. i. 
 
 ing their lives and liberties, and acquiring, possessing 
 and protecting property. 7 The Constitution of Ala- 
 bama expresses admirably the best spirit of American 
 statesmanship when it states that ' the sole and only 
 legitimate. end of government is to protect the citizen 
 in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and 
 when the Government assumes other functions, it is 
 usurpation and oppression/ Politicians may job and 
 cheat and maladminister, but they can only do so 
 within narrow limits, and if the evils become too great, 
 conventions are called, which impose restrictions on 
 the State legislatures. These bodies are forbidden to 
 borrow or to tax beyond certain limits, or to touch a 
 long list of specified subjects, or to sit for more than 
 once in two years or for more than a defined number 
 of days. 1 If they contrive as they undoubtedly do 
 to heap up a great deal of corrupt expenditure within 
 these limits, the more respectable class consider that 
 the country is very rich, and can afford it, and that it 
 is better to allow this corruption to go on than to give 
 up private business to prevent it. A curious kind of 
 optimism also prevails largely in America. It is be- 
 lieved that, provided the most important things are 
 secured, it is better to allow every one to vote and or- 
 ganise as he pleases ; that there will ultimately be a 
 survival of the fittest ; that in course of time, and after 
 prolonged and costly experiences, the turbid element 
 of corruption will clarify, and its worst constituents 
 sink like sediment to the bottom. 
 
 Another consideration, which has hardly, I think, 
 been sufficiently recognised among the guiding influ- 
 ences of American politics, is the complete separation 
 
 1 See, e.g., the long and curious list of the limitations imposed 
 on the Pennsylvanian Legislature in Ford (i. 32-35).
 
 CH. I. THE WAR OP SECESSION 119 
 
 of Church and State. American writers, probably with 
 good reason, consider this one of the great successes of 
 their government. In spite of the Episcopal Church 
 establishment that once existed in Virginia, and the 
 intensely theocratic character which New England 
 Governments for a long time presented, the idea of the 
 connection of Church and State did not strike root in 
 America, and public opinion, within as well as without 
 the Churches, seems cordially to approve of the separa- 
 tion. But one consequence has been to diminish great- 
 ly the interest in national politics. Every one who 
 knows England knows how large a proportion of the 
 best men who are interested in politics are mainly in- 
 terested in their ecclesiastical aspects, in questions di- 
 rectly or indirectly connected with Establishment or 
 Disestablishment. All this class of questions is in 
 America removed from the sphere of politics. 
 
 That public opinion can be powerfully aroused there 
 in a worthy cause no one will question. Nowhere in 
 the present century has it acquired a greater volume 
 and momentum than in the War of Secession. The 
 self-sacrifice, the unanimity, the tenacity of purpose, 
 the indomitable courage displayed on each side by the 
 vast citizen armies in that long and terrible struggle, 
 form one of the most splendid pages in nineteenth- 
 century history. I can well recollect how Laurence 
 Oliphant, who had excellent means of judging both 
 wars, was accustomed to say that no fighting in the 
 Franco-German War was comparable to the tenacity 
 with which in America every village, almost every 
 house, was defended or assailed ; and the appalling 
 sacrifice of life during the struggle goes far to justify 
 this judgment. Nor were the nobler qualities of the 
 American people less clearly manifested by the sequel 
 of the war. The manner in which those gigantic
 
 120 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. x. 
 
 armies melted away into the civil population, casting 
 aside, without apparent effort, all military tastes and 
 habits, and throwing themselves into the vast fields of 
 industry that were opened by the peace, forms one of 
 the most striking spectacles in history ; and the noble 
 humanity shown to the vanquished enemy is a not less 
 decisive proof of the high moral level of American 
 opinion. It was especially admirable in the very try- 
 ing moments that followed the assassination of Lin- 
 coln, and it forms a memorable contrast to the extreme 
 vindictiveness displayed by their forefathers, in the 
 days of the Revolution., towards their loyalist fellow- 
 countrymen. America rose at this time to a new place 
 and dignity in the concert of nations. Europe had 
 long seen in her little more than an amorphous, ill- 
 cemented industrial population. It now learned to 
 recognise the true characteristics of a great nation. 
 There was exaggeration, but there was also no little 
 truth, in the words of Lowell : 
 
 Earth's biggest country got her soul, 
 And risen up Earth's greatest nation. 
 
 Jobbing and corruption and fraud nourished, indeed, 
 abundantly during the war, but the lines of national 
 greatness and genuine patriotism were far more con- 
 spicuous. In times of peace, no nation has ever been 
 more distinguished than America for the generosity 
 shown by her citizens in supporting public institutions 
 and public causes. 
 
 Her treatment of her gigantic debt was also a great 
 surprise to Europe. It was a common prediction 
 among shrewd judges that the peace would speedily be 
 followed by national bankruptcy, and that a democratic 
 nation would never endure the burden of a national 
 debt which was at that time by far the largest in the
 
 CH. I. PAYMENT OF THE NATIONAL DEBT 121 
 
 world. Hardly any one appears to have foreseen that 
 this democracy would surpass all the monarchies in 
 history in its unparalleled persevering and successful 
 efforts to pay off its debt. It is true that its motives 
 in doing so were far from being purely patriotic and 
 disinterested. The payment of the debt was indis- 
 solubly connected with the adoption- of a system of se- 
 vere Protection. Manufacturers by such Protection 
 made colossal fortunes. The working class in Ame- 
 rica seem to have very generally adopted the opinion 
 that a protective system, by raising the price of the 
 articles they make and excluding similar articles made 
 in other countries, has an effect, in raising wages and 
 increasing employment, which is very beneficial to their 
 interests. Multitudes of Americans in the Northern 
 States had purchased national bonds at a time when 
 they were greatly depreciated, and they gained enor- 
 mously by being paid off at par. At the time when 
 the policy of paying off the debt was adopted, the section 
 of the country where these bonds were exclusively held, 
 where Protection was always most popular, and where 
 manufacturers chiefly existed, had acquired, through 
 the war, a complete ascendency. These things do much 
 to explain the course that was adopted, but it was a 
 course which involved sacrifices that few nations could 
 have endured, and it was carried out with an energy 
 and perseverance that no nation could have surpassed. 
 
 The general legislation in America also ranks very 
 high. Many of the worst abuses of British law either 
 never existed there, or were redressed at a much earlier 
 period than in England. Her penal code, her educa- 
 tional laws, her laws about the sale and transfer of 
 landed property, were for a long period far better than 
 those of Great Britain ; and the fact that no religious 
 disqualifications were recognised saved her from strug-
 
 122 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 
 
 gles that have largely occupied many generations of 
 English reformers. I do not think that, in modern 
 times, legislation has been better or the spirit of Ee- 
 form more active in the republic than in the monarchy, 
 but I believe the best observers on both sides of the 
 Atlantic recognise the two systems as substantially on 
 the same plane of excellence, though each country may 
 learn many things from the other. The American 
 type of legislator is eminently shrewd, businesslike, 
 and free from prejudice, and he is quite prepared to 
 make good laws, as long as they do not affect inju- 
 riously his personal and party interests. Public opinion 
 insists on this, and it makes, as we have seen, occa- 
 sional spasmodic efforts to diminish the great corrup- 
 tion of American political life. 
 
 America, during the last three quarters of the nine- 
 teenth century, has changed greatly. It is very differ- 
 ent from the country which Dickens and Mrs. Trollope 
 described, and even the great work of Tocqueville oc- 
 casionally wears an aspect of some unreality. The 
 population of the United States has quadrupled since 
 Tocqueville visited it, and it is not surprising that many 
 conditions should have been changed and some predic- 
 tions falsified. Tocqueville believed much more in the 
 permanence of republican institutions in America than 
 in the permanence of the Union. He predicted very 
 confidently that the power of the Federal Government 
 would steadily decline and the power of the separate 
 States increase ; that any serious resistance of the 
 States to the Federal Union must certainly succeed ; 
 that the Union would only endure as long as all the 
 States continued to wish to form part of it. 1 The War 
 
 1 Democratic en Amerique, ii. war, or a great internal crisis, 
 351-55, 383-85. He suggests, might possibly arrest this ten- 
 however in one place that a dency (p. 398).
 
 CH. i. TOCQUEVILLE 123 
 
 of the Secession showed that he was mistaken, and it 
 produced for some years a strong tendency in the di- 
 rection of centralisation. 
 
 In many respects, however, he judged with singular 
 accuracy both the dangers and the tendencies of Ame- 
 rican political life. He deplored the custom, which had 
 already begun in his time, of making the judges elective. 
 He predicted that the habit of treating representatives 
 as mere delegates bound by imperative instructions 
 would destroy the essence of representative government. 
 He dwelt with much perspicuity on the dangers in a 
 pure democracy of the multiplication of great towns ; 
 on the gradual displacement of power which would fol- 
 low the rise of new territories eclipsing or superseding 
 the old States ; on the moral and political effects of 
 slavery, and of the increase of the negro race ; on the 
 deep and menacing line of division which the combined 
 influence of slavery and climate, and the resulting 
 difference of character and habits were drawing be- 
 tween the Northern and the Southern States. He im- 
 agined, indeed, that slavery would make it the special 
 interest of the latter to cling to the Union, as they had 
 every reason to fear the consequences if they were left 
 alone with their negroes ; but he doubted whether 
 this bond of interest would prove ultimately as 
 strong as the antagonism of sentiment. The system 
 of party in America he never seems to have clearly 
 understood, and he altogether failed to foresee the 
 enormous power and the corrupting influence of ' the 
 Machine/ 
 
 The America he described was, in some respects, 
 very unlike that of our own day. He speaks of a des- 
 potism of opinion which prevented all free expression 
 of independent, eccentric, or heretical ideas ; of Ame- 
 rican dislike to general ideas and theoretical discover-
 
 124 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. i. 
 
 ies ; of a jealousy of wealth which compelled rich men, 
 like the Jews of the Middle Ages, to abstain from all 
 the ostentation of luxury. These things are wholly 
 changed. America is no longer a country without 
 pauperism and without great wealth. It contains some 
 of the largest fortunes in the world. American wealth 
 is certainly by no means averse to ostentation, and is 
 rather peculiarly apt to take forms that are dangerous 
 and injurious to the community. We are accustomed 
 to hear, in some quarters, the enormous landed proper- 
 ties possessed by a few English landlords described as 
 a great evil ; but as long as those who wish to buy 
 land, or to take land on a long lease, have no difficulty 
 in doing so, it is not easy to see what real interest is 
 seriously injured. ' The power the great landlord pos- 
 sesses may, no doubt, be abused ; but great abuse is 
 neither easy nor common, while the benefits resulting 
 to the nation from the existence of this class are real 
 and evident. But, of all forms that great wealth can 
 take, I know of none that lends itself to greater or 
 more scandalous abuse than that of the railway king, 
 who controls for his own selfish purposes the chief lines 
 of communication in the country. In no Dther country 
 has this class of men been so prominent as in America, 
 and in no other has their power been more hide- 
 ously abused. Nowhere else have there been so many 
 conspicuous examples of colossal, ostentatious fortunes 
 built up by reckless gambling, by the acquisition of 
 gigantic monopolies, by a deadly and unscrupulous 
 competition bringing ruin into countless homes, by a 
 systematic subordination of public to private interests, 
 by enormous political and municipal corruption. If 
 such men as Lincoln, and Emerson, and Lowell have, 
 in our generation, represented with supreme perfection 
 the distinctive beauty of the American type, such a
 
 CH. i. AMERICAN RAILROADS AND TRUSTS 125 
 
 career as that of Jay Gould has, in its own way, been 
 not less truly characteristic. 
 
 Integrity in the management of great companies and 
 corporations is certainly not, in these latter days, a 
 characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race on either side of 
 the Atlantic, but I believe it is even less so in America 
 than in England. The contrast between the manage- 
 ment of railways in England and in the United States 
 is extremely significant. America is now one of the 
 richest countries in the world, and its people have cer- 
 tainly no superiors in business talent. Yet it has been 
 stated on excellent authority that, in the fifteen years 
 between 1875 and 1890, the aggregate foreclosure sales 
 on the railways of the United States comprised 50,525 
 miles, with $2,865,000,000 of combined stocks and 
 bonds, or an average of $191,000,000 per annum. In 
 1890, twenty-nine companies were subject to foreclosure 
 sales. 1 A great railway authority, speaking in the be- 
 ginning of 1894, said : ' There is no less than one- 
 fourth of the American railways in extent of mileage 
 and capital now under the control of the courts of 
 law, and during the year 1893 alone seventy-four rail- 
 way companies including a mileage of 30,000 miles and 
 a capital of 360 millions sterling, passed into the hands 
 of receivers/ 2 Making the fullest allowance for trade 
 depressions and vicissitudes, and for currency troubles, 
 what an amount of gigantic and deliberate dishonesty, 
 as well as unscrupulous gambling, does such a state of 
 things represent ! The system of monopolising articles 
 of the first necessity, under the name of Trusts, in 
 order to force up their price, which is one of the most 
 
 1 North American Review, at a meeting of the Grand Trunk 
 1891, p. 84; see, too, Professor Railway Company, April 30, 
 Ely's Socialism, pp. 270-71. 1894, p. 4. 
 
 2 Speech of Sir Henry Tyler
 
 126 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY OH. t 
 
 mischievous forms thaf modern industry has assumed, 
 has been especially American, and the origin of some 
 of the greatest American fortunes. 
 
 These evils are certainly not unconnected with poli- 
 tical conditions. In a country where there is no rank, 
 and where political eminence gives little or no dignity, 
 the thirst for wealth acquires a maddening power. Cor- 
 rupt political organisations come in constant contact 
 with great railway and industrial corporations, and 
 each can do much to assist and to demoralise the 
 other. Even independently of these mutual services, 
 there is an analogy between the two things. To run a 
 company is very like running the machine, and the 
 low standard which public opinion admits in the one 
 is, not unnaturally, extended to the other. 
 
 Slavery has passed away in America, and with it one 
 great blot and danger has disappeared ; but the negro 
 race, with its doubtful future, remains. The character 
 of the constituencies has been profoundly lowered by 
 the negro voters, and the extraordinary prevalence and 
 ferocity of lynch law seems to show that the old habits 
 of violence which slavery did so much to foster are by 
 no means extinct. A great improvement, however, has 
 incontestably taken place in the character of American 
 foreign policy since the close of the war. The many 
 violent and unscrupulous acts that once marked that 
 policy were nearly all distinctly traceable to the ascend- 
 ency of Southern statesmen. Something was due to 
 the character of the men, for the conditions of slave 
 labour produce a type which is much more military 
 and adventurous than pacific and industrial. But the 
 main cause was the imperious necessity imposed on 
 these States of acquiring new slave territories, in order 
 to counteract the increasing preponderance which in- 
 creasing population was giving to the Northern States,
 
 en. i. AMERICAN CIVILISATION 127 
 
 and thus secure their share of power in the Union. 
 This was the origin of the annexation of Texas ; of the 
 conquest of New Mexico and California ; of the fili- 
 bustering expedition of General Lopez against Cuba in 
 1851 ; of the unscrupulous attempts to force a quarrel 
 upon Spain in 1854, in order to find a pretext for seiz- 
 ing Cuba ; of the shameless Ostend manifesto, in which 
 American ministers declared their determination to 
 acquire Cuba by force if they could not do so by pur- 
 chase ; of the countenance that was given to the fili- 
 bustering expedition of William Walker to Nicaragua 
 in 1857 ; of the renewed attempts to acquire Cuba in 
 1858 and 1859. Since the question of secession has been 
 settled this spirit of aggression seems to have wholly 
 passed out of American foreign policy. There have 
 been occasions when American statesmen, in order to 
 win the favour of some class of voters, have shown a 
 disregard of the courtesies and decorum of international 
 dealings which no European country would have dis- 
 played', but in the great lines of her foreign policy,. 
 America has of late years been in general eminently 
 honourable and unaggressive. It is no small thing that 
 this vast section of the human race, so rich in the 
 promise of the future, has wholly escaped the milita- 
 rism that is corroding the greatest Powers of Europe, 
 and that its gigantic energies have been steadily directed 
 in the paths of peace. 
 
 The feature of American civilisation which has most 
 struck European observers has been its exceedingly one- 
 sided character. It is a supremely great industrial 
 civilisation, generating to the highest degree the quali- 
 ties, capacities and inventions that are needed for in- 
 dustrial life, and bringing in its train widely diffused 
 comfort, education and self-respect ; but there are cer- 
 tain sides in which it still ranks much below the civili-
 
 128 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 sations of Europe. Tocqneville and his generation were 
 much struck with this. Tocqueville said that America 
 had hitherto produced only a very small number of re- 
 markable writers, that she had produced no great his- 
 torians, and no poets, and that there were third-rate 
 towns in Europe which published in a year more works 
 of literature than all the twenty-four States of Ame- 
 rica. 1 Mill, writing in 1840, speaks of 'the marked 
 absence in America of original efforts in literature, 
 philosophy, and the fine arts ; ' 2 while Carlyle, a few 
 years later, very roughly declared that America had 
 still her battle to fight ; that though the quantity of 
 her cotton, dollars, industry and resources was almost 
 unspeakable, she had as yet produced no great thought, 
 or noble thing that one could worship or loyally ad- 
 mire ; that her chief feat in history had been to beget, 
 ' with a rapidity beyond recorded example, eighteen 
 millions of the greatest bores ever seen in this world 
 before/ 3 
 
 This last judgment is certainly more remarkable for 
 its vigour than for its judicial impartiality. Since 
 Carlyle wrote America has produced some admirable 
 literature ; it has produced several considerable histo- 
 rians, some graceful and justly popular poets, some 
 excellent critics, novelists and moralists, and a vein of 
 humour which is perhaps more distinctively American 
 than any other element in its literature. It has, espe- 
 cially, produced some of the most beautiful literary 
 lives in the whole history of letters lives true, simple, 
 laborious and affectionate, singularly free from the 
 jealousies and extravagances that deface so many pages 
 of literary biography, absolutely free from that taint of 
 
 1 Democratic en Amerique, ii. 3 Latter-day Pamphlets: ' The 
 233. Present Time.' 
 
 a Dissertations, ii. 42.
 
 CH. i. PAUCITY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA 129 
 
 impurity which has passed so deeply into the contem- 
 porary literatures of Europe. But, when all this is 
 said, we cannot but ask whether the America of the 
 nineteenth century has produced much in the fields of 
 thought, or literature, or art that is really great ; any- 
 thing comparable to what Germany or France has pro- 
 duced during the same period ; anything comparable 
 to what might have been expected from a rich, highly 
 educated, and pacific nation, which now numbers more 
 than sixty millions of souls, and is placed, in some re- 
 spects, in more favourable circumstances than any 
 other nation in the world. A curious passage in an 
 essay on Channing which Eenan wrote some forty years 
 ago describes the impression which American civilisa- 
 tion at that time left on the mind of one of the most 
 brilliant of Frenchmen. ' If it were necessary/ he 
 says, ' that Italy with her past, or America with her 
 future, should be blotted out of existence, which would 
 leave the greater void in the heart of humanity ? What 
 has all America produced that can compare with a ray 
 of that infinite glory that adorns an Italian town, even 
 of the second or third order Florence, Pisa, Sienna, 
 Perugia ? Before New York and Boston reach in the 
 scale of human greatness a rank that is comparable to 
 these towns, how many steps have they still to make ! ' l 
 There is, no doubt, exaggeration in such language ; 
 there are forms of very genuine human greatness that 
 it fails to recognise. But it is impossible not to feel 
 that, on the intellectual and aesthetic side, America 
 has not yet fulfilled her part, and that an unduly 
 large proportion of her greatest achievements belong 
 to a time when she had not a tithe of her present pop- 
 ulation and wealth. Washington and Franklin and 
 
 1 Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 130 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 Hamilton, the Constitution of 1787, the Federalist 
 and the Commentaries of Judge Story, have not been 
 eclipsed. 
 
 Many causes have been assigned for this intellectual 
 sterility, continuing long after America had taken her 
 place among the great nations of the world. Tocque- 
 ville believed that there was no country with less 
 intellectual independence and less real liberty of dis- 
 cussion than America, or in which the expression of 
 unpopular opinion was more bitterly resented ; and he 
 said, .that there were no great American writers because 
 ' literary genius cannot exist without liberty of thought, 
 and there is no liberty of thought in America/ l Mill, 
 expanding another passage from Tocqueville, described 
 America as, ' intellectually speaking, a province of 
 England a province in which the great occupation 
 of the inhabitants is making money, because for that 
 they have peculiar facilities, and are, therefore, like 
 the people of Manchester or Birmingham, for the 
 most part contented to receive the higher branches of 
 knowledge ready-made from the capital.' 2 Maine at- 
 tributed much to the long refusal of the Congress to 
 grant an international copyright. The want of such 
 copyright effectually crushed American authorship in 
 the Home market by the competition of the unpaid 
 and appropriated works of British authors, and ' con- 
 demned the whole American community to a literary 
 servitude unparalleled in the history of thought/ 3 
 
 1 Democratic en Amerique, ii. don, but the intellectual life 
 
 149, 152. that produces them comes from 
 
 5 Dissertations, ii. 43 ; com- all parts of the kingdom, and in 
 pare Tocqueville, ii. 58. I do a very large degree from the 
 not think Mill's illustration a great provincial towns, 
 happy one. Most English books, 3 Maine's Popular Govern- 
 no doubt, are published in Lon- merit, p. 247.
 
 en. I. PAUCITY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA 131 
 
 In all this there is much truth ; but it must, I 
 think, be added that modern democracy is not favour- 
 able to the higher forms of intellectual life. Democ- 
 racy levels down quite as much as it levels up. The 
 belief in the equality of man, the total absence of the 
 spirit of reverence, the apotheosis of the average judg- 
 ment, the fever and the haste, the advertising and 
 sensational spirit which American life so abundantly 
 generates, and which the American press so vividly re- 
 flects, are all little favourable to the production of 
 great works of beauty or of thought, of long medita- 
 tion, of sober taste, of serious, uninterrupted study. 
 Such works have been produced in America, but in 
 small numbers and under adverse conditions. The 
 habit, too, which has so long existed in America, and 
 which is rapidly growing in England, of treating the 
 private lives of eminent men as if they were public 
 property ; of forcing their opinions on all subjects into 
 constant publicity by newspaper interviews ; of multi- 
 plying demands upon their time for public functions 
 for which they have no special aptitude, adds greatly 
 to the evil. Among the advantages which England de- 
 rives from her aristocracy, not the least is the service 
 it renders to literature by providing a class of men who 
 are admirably fitted for presidential and other public 
 functions, which in 'another society would have been 
 largely thrown on men of letters. No one can fail to 
 observe how large a proportion of the Americans who 
 have shown distinguished talent in literature and art 
 have sought in European life a more congenial atmos- 
 phere than they could find at home. 
 
 In spite of all retarding influences, America will, no 
 doubt, one day occupy a far higher position than at 
 present in the intellectual guidance of the world. It 
 is probable that the concession of international copy-
 
 132 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY OH. I. 
 
 right, placing American authors on the same footing 
 with foreign ones, will hasten that day, and there are 
 clear signs that a school of very serious scholarship and 
 very excellent writing is arising among them. Many 
 of the peccant humours of the body politic will, no 
 doubt, be ultimately dispersed. The crudest, most 
 ignorant, most disorderly elements of European life 
 have been poured into America as into a great alembic, 
 and are being gradually transformed into a new type. 
 The enormously corrupting influences which New 
 York and some other immigration centres have exer- 
 cised on American politics must diminish when they 
 cease to be what Americans call ' pivot States/ holding 
 the balance between rival parties, and when the centre 
 of power moves onward towards the west. A people 
 supremely endowed with energy and intelligence, and 
 among whom moral and religious influences are very 
 strong, can scarcely fail sooner or later to mould their 
 destinies to high and honourable ends. 
 
 Optimism certainly reigns more widely in America 
 than in Europe, and Americans are the best judges 
 of their own institutions and future. Serious clouds 
 seem to hang on their horizon. The decay, in some 
 parts of America, of family life through the excessive 
 facility of divorce ; the alarming prevalence of finan- 
 cial dishonesty on a large scale ; the strange and ominous 
 increase of ordinary crime, which contrasts remarka- 
 bly with its steady diminution in Great Britain ; l the 
 profligacy that still reigns in political and municipal 
 life, and the indifference with which that profligacy 
 is contemplated, afford much ground for melancholy 
 thought. It is contrary to all past experience that 
 
 1 See on this subject a remarkable article, by Mr. Lea, in The 
 Forum, August 1894.
 
 CH. i. THE POLICY OF PROTECTION 133 
 
 political corruption should be a mere excrescence in a 
 nation, affecting either slightly or not at all the deeper 
 springs of national morals. As the country fills up, as 
 national expenses increase, as the problems of govern- 
 ment become more difficult and delicate, the necessity 
 of placing the Administration in all its branches in 
 trustworthy and honest hands must be more felt, and 
 the future of America seems to me very largely to de- 
 pend upon the success with which her reformers can 
 attain this end. Something considerable, as we have 
 seen, has been already done ; yet some of the worst in- 
 stances of corrupt rings have been posterior to the 
 downfall of the Tammany rule at New York, which 
 was supposed to mark the beginning of a new era. 
 The evidence which was brought before the Senate of 
 New York in 1894, disclosing the enormous and sys- 
 tematic corruption of the police force of that great 
 city, is in itself sufficient to show how little this hope 
 has been fulfilled. 1 
 
 The policy of Protection in America, which has 
 been carried to such a high point since the war, is no 
 new thing. It existed, though with some fluctuations, 
 through a great part of earlier American history ; 2 the 
 high duties imposed during the war were amply justi- 
 fied by the necessity of obtaining money for its support, 
 and their continuance for some years after the peace 
 was probably justified by the transcendent importance 
 of reducing rapidly an unparalleled debt. With the 
 ideas that are now floating through the world, nothing 
 could be more dangerous than for a pure democracy, in 
 times of difficulty or poverty, to find itself burdened 
 
 1 Many particulars about this American Protection, see Taus- 
 
 will be found in The Forum, sig's Tariff History of the Uni- 
 
 August 1894. ted States (New York, 1888). 
 
 *On the early history of
 
 134 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. i. 
 
 with an enormous debt taxation for the fulfilment of 
 ancient contracts. The statesmen who followed the 
 war have at least secured America from this danger. 
 But the immense increase of Protection, which began 
 with the Woollen Act of 1867 and the Copper Act of 
 1869, and which culminated in the McKinley tariff, 
 was largely due to other motives. If the best Ameri- 
 can authorities may be trusted, it includes as much 
 purely class legislation, intended to support class inter- 
 ests and carried by corrupt means, as can be found in 
 the most effete monarchy of Europe. 
 
 The wonderful surplus which for many years existed 
 in consequence of the high protective duties astonished 
 Europe, but not more so than the manner in which it 
 was expended. I suppose there is no page in the finan- 
 cial history of the world more extraordinary than the 
 history of the American pension list. At the close of 
 the war pensions were, very properly, given to soldiers 
 who were disabled in the course of it, and to wives of 
 soldiers who had been married during the war, and 
 who were left widows. It was naturally supposed that 
 in America, as elsewhere, the war pensions would 
 diminish as time rolled on and as the actors in the 
 struggle passed away. For some years there seemed 
 every prospect that this would have been the case ; 
 and there can be no doubt that it would have been so 
 if the Protectionist interest had not found it necessary 
 to maintain and expend an enormous surplus. The 
 result of that necessity is, that in a long period of un- 
 broken peace a war pension list has been created in the 
 United States which far exceeds in magnitude any 
 other that is known in history. Fifty-seven years after 
 the war of 1812 pensions were voted to its surviving 
 soldiers and to their widows ; thirty-nine years after 
 the Mexican War a similar measure was taken in
 
 CH. i. THE PENSION LIST 135 
 
 favour of the survivors of that war. The list was 
 made to include men who had been disabled long after 
 the war, and by causes totally unconnected with it, 
 and widows who had not been married, who in many 
 cases had not been born, when the last shot was fired. 
 Personation, and other frauds almost grotesque in their 
 cynicism and enormity, became notoriously common, 
 and were practised with the most absolute impunity. 
 Multitudes of young women formed real or pretended 
 connections with old men for the purpose of qualifying 
 for a pension. It appears from official documents 
 that, in 1892, there were on the pension list 165 per- 
 sons pensioned as survivors of the war in 1812, and 
 there were no less than 6,657 women who were pen- 
 sioned as widows of the soldiers in that war. The 
 pension list trebled between 1880 and 1884. In 1893, 
 it was stated that half a million of dollars a day were 
 distributed on account of a war which had terminated 
 nearly thirty years before. In 1893 there were 960,- 
 000 names on the pension list, and 165 millions of dol- 
 lars, or thirty-three million pounds, was appropriated 
 by Congress to the pension service. 
 
 It is not surprising that such an administration of 
 public money should have produced a great financial 
 revulsion, and that the period of enormous surpluses 
 should have been followed by a period of almost equally 
 enormous deficits. No other country, indeed, could 
 have borne such an expenditure, and certainly public 
 opinion in no other country would have tolerated it. 1 
 
 1 A great deal of information Times, January 29, 1894. It 
 
 about the American pensions appears, however, that in the 
 
 will be found in The Forum, year ending June 30, 1894, the 
 
 May and June, 1893, and in the expenditure on the pension list 
 
 North American Review, April had sunk to 27,960,892/. ( Times, 
 
 and May, 1893; see, too, the October 30, 1894).
 
 136 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. I. 
 
 It would be perhaps a paradox to say that the go- 
 vernment of a country which is so great, so prosperous, 
 and so pacific as the United States has not been a suc- 
 cess ; but, on the whole, American democracy appears 
 to me to carry with it at least as much of warning as 
 of encouragement, especially when we remember the 
 singularly favourable circumstances under which the 
 experiment has been tried, and the impossibility of 
 reproducing those conditions at home. There is one 
 point, however, on which all the best observers in 
 America, whether they admire or dislike democracy, 
 seem agreed. It is, that it is absolutely essential to its 
 safe working that there should be a written constitu- 
 tion, securing property and contract, placing serious 
 obstacles in the way of organic changes, restricting the 
 power of majorities, and preventing outbursts of mere 
 temporary discontent and mere casual coalitions from 
 overthrowing the main pillars of the State. In Ame- 
 rica, such safeguards are largely and skilfully provided, 
 and to this fact America mainly owes her stability. Un- 
 fortunately, in England the men who are doing most 
 to plunge the country into democracy are also the bit- 
 ter enemies of all these safeguards, by which alone 
 a democratic government can be permanently main- 
 tained.
 
 CH. ii. CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES 137 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE power given in England to a simple majority of a 
 single Parliament to change, with the assent of the 
 Crown, any portion of the Constitution is not a com- 
 mon thing among free nations. Italy and Hungary, it 
 is true, appear in this respect to stand on the same 
 basis as England. In Spain there is a written Consti- 
 tution that makes no special mention of provision for 
 its own reform, and it is a disputed question whether 
 the text of the Constitution can be modified by a 
 simple legislative measure of an ordinary Cortes, or 
 must be submitted to a Constituent Cortes specially 
 summoned for this purpose. But in most constitutions 
 there is a distinct line drawn between organic consti- 
 tutional changes and ordinary legislation, and careful 
 provisions establish the manner in which alone the 
 former can be carried into effect. In a large number of 
 constitutions, of which those of the Austrian Empire, 
 Belgium, and Bavaria may be cited as examples, two- 
 thirds majorities are required for constitutional changes. 
 In several constitutions it is necessary that such 
 changes should be sanctioned by two succ'essive Parlia- 
 ments. In the Netherlands they may be demanded by 
 a simple majority in one Parliament, but must be 
 sanctioned, after a dissolution, by two-thirds majorities 
 in its successor. In the German Empire there is a 
 provision that fourteen hostile votes in the Federal 
 Council constitute on these subjects an absolute veto. 
 In France, constitutional changes, after being voted by
 
 138 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 majorities in each of the two Houses, must be ap- 
 proved by a majority in a National Assembly con- 
 sisting of the two Houses sitting and voting together. 
 In Switzerland they may be proposed by either Legis- 
 lative Chamber, or by 50,000 vote-possessing citizens, 
 but they cannot become law until they have been 
 sanctioned by a direct popular vote taken in the form 
 of a Eeferendum. 1 
 
 Probably none of these provisions are as really effica- 
 cious as those which are contained in the Constitutions 
 of the United States. None of them exist in the Brit- 
 ish Constitution, or in the constitutions of the great 
 colonial democracies that are growing up under the 
 English sceptre. One remarkable attempt to introduce 
 the American principle into an English colony was, in- 
 deed, made by the great Australian statesman, AVent- 
 worth, who, in 1853, introduced into his scheme for 
 the Constitution of New South Wales a clause pro- 
 viding that alterations in the Constitution could only 
 be carried by two-thirds majorities. Unfortunately, 
 this clause ultimately miscarried in England, and in 
 this, as in the other Colonies, the power of an upper 
 Chamber and the small measure of restraint involved 
 in connection with the mother country alone restrict 
 the power of unbridled democracy. 2 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in our consti- 
 tutional history than the small stress which has been 
 placed in England upon mere legislative machinery, 
 upon Constitutional laws definitely tracing the respec- 
 tive limits and powers of different institutions. The 
 system of checks and counterchecks which it has been 
 
 1 Eeport on the Majorities re- sented to the House of Lords, 
 quired in Foreign Legislatures April 1893. 
 for Constitutional Changes, pre- * Rusden's History of Aus- 
 tralia^ iii. 71-137.
 
 OH. n. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 139 
 
 the object of written constitutions to maintain has 
 been roughly maintained in England by the great di- 
 versities that long existed in the constituencies ; by 
 the powerful organisation of many distinct, and some- 
 times conflicting, interests ; by the great influence and 
 essentially representative character of the House of 
 Lords. It has been supported by a network of usages, 
 traditions, compromises, and understandings which 
 have no real or sufficient basis in the letter of the law, 
 but which have long been universally accepted. Many 
 of the most important working elements in the Con- 
 stitution the nature of the Cabinet, the functions 
 of the Prime Minister, the dignity and the attitude 
 of the Speaker, the initiative of the Government in 
 matters of finance, the extent to which the House of 
 Lords may use its veto rest essentially on the founda- 
 tion of custom. It is absolutely indispensable to the 
 working of the whole machine that it should be in 
 the hands of honest and trustworthy men, of men 
 determined to subordinate on great occasions their 
 personal and party interests to the interests of the 
 State ; imbued with a genuine spirit of compromise, 
 and cordially in harmony with the general spirit of 
 the Constitution. As long as such a spirit prevails 
 in Parliament and governs the constituencies, so long 
 the British Constitution will prove a success. If 
 this spirit is no longer found among rulers and Par- 
 liaments and constituencies, there is no constitution 
 which may be more easily dislocated, and which pro- 
 vides less means of checking excesses of bad govern- 
 ment. 
 
 ' Upon the power/ wrote Adam Smith, ' which the 
 leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, 
 have of preserving or defending their respective im- 
 portance depends the stability and duration of every
 
 140 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 system of free government.' 1 This truth has been 
 always strongly felt in England, and it has sometimes 
 been pushed to very extreme consequences. Thus, in 
 the debates upon the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
 some of the most considerable defenders of these laws 
 refused to argue the question on merely economical 
 grounds. They maintained that the preponderance of 
 the landed interest was a political end of the first mag- 
 nitude. They argued that it secured for the nation a 
 governing class whose interests were indissolubly con- 
 nected with the permanent prosperity of England ; 
 whose class standard of honour placed them above all 
 suspicion of personal corruption, and who, by living 
 among their people and conducting the local govern- 
 ment of their counties, had acquired in a high mea- 
 sure the kinds of knowledge and of capacity that are 
 most needed in political life. Long after the sceptre 
 of power had passed from the landed gentry to the 
 middle classes, the old belief, or prejudice, or super- 
 stition that the administration of government ought 
 to be chiefly entrusted to gentlemen, prevailed, and, in 
 spite of all democratic agitations, it is certainly very 
 far from extinct. 
 
 As I have already intimated, this belief, like many 
 others which are now often very disdainfully treated, 
 is by no means incapable of defence. The position of 
 a public man is essentially that of a trustee, and inter- 
 ests of the most enormous importance depend largely on 
 his character. To place the direction of affairs in the 
 hands of honest, trustworthy, and competent men, 
 though it is not the sole, is certainly the most impor- 
 tant end of politics, and an immense proportion of 
 the calamities that politicians have brought upon the 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, Book iv. ch. 7.
 
 CH. ir. GOVERNMENT BY GENTLEMEN 141 
 
 world are due to the management of great political in- 
 terests having passed into the hands of mere scheming 
 adventurers. Honesty and dishonesty belong to all 
 ranks and to all grades of fortune, but in dealing with 
 masses of men we must judge by averages and proba- 
 bilities, and chiefly by the strength of temptation and 
 the pressure of interest. ' How easy it is/ as Becky 
 Sharp said, ' to be virtuous on 5,OOOZ. a year ! ' The 
 fact that a trustee who is entrusted with vast money 
 interests is himself not a needy, struggling, embarrassed 
 man, but the possessor of a competent fortune, is gen- 
 erally recognised as furnishing some guarantee, though, 
 unfortunately, by no means a sufficient one, that he 
 will not dishonestly abuse his trust. And the strength 
 of this presumption is greatly increased if the cha- 
 racter of his fortune is not fugitive and movable, but 
 permanent and stationary, and if he holds a desirable 
 social position which depends mainly upon opinion, 
 and would be inevitably destroyed by an act of private 
 dishonesty. 
 
 This is the mode of reasoning on which men inva- 
 riably act in the transactions of private life, and it is 
 equally applicable to politics. The code of honour 
 which the conventionalities of society attach to the 
 idea of a gentleman is, indeed, a somewhat capricious 
 thing, and certainly not co-extensive with the moral 
 law. It may be, and often is, compatible with acts 
 that are, in truth, profoundly base and immoral. 
 Without forfeiting this position in the eyes of the 
 world, men have plunged their country, through mo- 
 tives of mere personal ambition, into the horrors of 
 war ; have sought for honours, or power, or party 
 triumphs, by shameful acts of political apostasy and 
 shameful incitements to class warfare ; have purchased 
 majorities by allying themselves with dishonest men
 
 142 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 pursuing dishonest ends ; have framed constitutions to 
 enable their allies to carry those ends into effect. Men 
 of old families and ample means may be found among 
 the active agents or the servile tools in some of the 
 worst political transactions of our time. All this is 
 profoundly true ; and it is also true that when any 
 one class, be it high or low, obtains an uncontrolled, or 
 even a greatly preponderating, power, its policy will 
 exhibit a class bias. At the same time, it is no less 
 true that on special subjects, and within a restricted 
 sphere, the code of honour of a gentleman is the most 
 powerful of all restraining influences, more powerful 
 even than religion with ordinary men. Wherever it 
 pervades the public service men will soon learn to re- 
 cognise that public servants cannot be bribed or cor- 
 rupted ; that in dealing with public money they will 
 not be guilty of malversation ; that their word may be 
 trusted, that they are not likely to act by tortuous or 
 intriguing methods. The credit of England in the 
 world depends largely upon this conviction, and that 
 credit has been no small element of her prosperity. 
 Imputations against men in high office, which in. many 
 countries are constantly made, easily believed, and 
 sometimes proved, are in England at once felt to be 
 incredible. One thing, at least, is very apparent to all 
 serious observers if the government of England passes 
 altogether out of the hands of the kind of men who 
 have hitherto directed it, it will speedily fall into the 
 hands of professional politicians. What the character 
 and tendencies of such politicians are likely to be, the 
 example of the United States abundantly shows, and it 
 shows also how different must be the constitution 
 under which alone they can be safely restrained. 
 
 I do not think there is any single fact which is more 
 evident to impartial observers than the declining effi-
 
 CH. n. DISTRUST OF REPRESENTATIVE BODIES 143 
 
 ciency and the lowered character of parliamentary go- 
 vernment. The evil is certainly not restricted to Eng- 
 land. All over Europe, and, it may be added, in a 
 great measure in the United States, complaints of the 
 same kind may be heard. A growing distrust and 
 contempt for representative bodies has been one of the 
 most characteristic features of the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century. In some countries, as we have al- 
 ready seen, the parliamentary system means constantly 
 shifting government, ruined finances, frequent mili- 
 tary revolts, the systematic management of constituen- 
 cies. In most countries it has proved singularly sterile 
 in high talent. It seems to have fallen more and more 
 under the control of men of an inferior stamp : of 
 skilful talkers or intriguers ; or sectional interests or 
 small groups ; and its hold upon the affection and re- 
 spect of nations has visibly diminished. Laveleye has 
 truly noted the sigh of relief that is felt in many lands 
 when a Parliament is prorogued, and the growing feel- 
 ing that America has acted wisely in restricting many 
 of her State legislatures to biennial sessions. He ob- 
 serves, with some cynicism, that Italy has one special 
 advantage in her capital the Eoman malaria effectu- 
 ally abridges the sessions of her Parliament. 
 
 This great decline in the weight of representative 
 bodies, which has made ' parliamentarism ' almost a 
 by-word in many nations, has advanced contempora- 
 neously with the growth of democracy. In a large 
 degree, at least, it may be clearly traced to the general 
 establishment of universal suffrage as the basis of rep- 
 resentation. It is being generally discovered that the 
 system which places the supreme power in the hands 
 of mere majorities, consisting necessarily of the poor- 
 est and most ignorant, whatever else it may do, does 
 not produce Parliaments of surpassing excellence. One
 
 144 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IL 
 
 thing, however, must be observed. Ignorance in the 
 elective body does not naturally produce ignorance in 
 the representative body. It is much more likely to 
 produce dishonesty. Intriguers and demagogues, play- 
 ing successfully on the passion? and the credulity of 
 the ignorant and of the poor, form one of the great 
 characteristic evils and dangers of our time. 
 
 In England, no one can be insensible to the change 
 in the tone of the House of Commons within the mem- 
 ory of living men. The old understandings and tra- 
 ditions, on which its deliberations have been for many 
 generations successfully conducted, have largely disap- 
 peared, and new and stringent regulations have been 
 found necessary. Scenes of coarse and brutal insult, 
 of deliberate obstruction, of unrestrained violence, cul- 
 minating on one occasion in actual blows, have been 
 displayed within its walls, which recall vividly the 
 condition of the American Congress in the years of 
 fiercely excited passions that preceded the Civil War. 
 It is true that these scenes may be chiefly traced to 
 one party, which made it its avowed object to de- 
 grade, dislocate, and paralyse the parliamentary ma- 
 chine till their objects were attained ; but the con- 
 tagion of their example and the connivance, through 
 party motives, of other members have been very 
 evident. 
 
 On the other hand, the power of arbitrarily closing 
 debates, which has been placed in the hands of majori- 
 ties, has been grossly abused. It has been made use of 
 not merely to abridge, but to prevent, discussion 01* 
 matters of momentous importance. Many clauses of 
 a Home Rule Bill which went to the very root of the 
 British Constitution ; which, in the opinion of the 
 great majority of oompetent British statesmen, would 
 have proved the inevitable prelude to the dismember-
 
 CH. ii. DECADENCE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 145 
 
 ment and downfall of the Empire ; which was sup- 
 ported by a party depending on the votes of men who 
 were ostentatiously indifferent to the well-being of the 
 Empire, and was strenuously opposed by a great ma- 
 jority of the representatives of England, and by a 
 considerable majority of the representatives of Great 
 Britain, were forced through the House of Commons by 
 the application of the Closure, and without any possi- 
 bility of the smallest discussion. Nothing but the veto 
 of the House of Lords prevented a measure of the first 
 importance, carried by such means and by a bare ma- 
 jority, from becoming law. 
 
 And while this change has been passing over the 
 spirit of the House of Commons, its powers and its 
 pretensions are constantly extending. The enormous 
 extension of the practice of questioning ministers has 
 immensely increased the intervention of the House in 
 the most delicate functions of the Executive. It in- 
 sists on measures and negotiations, in every stage of 
 their inception, being brought before it, and resolu- 
 tions emanating from independent sections have more 
 than once exercised a most prejudicial influence, if not 
 on foreign affairs, at least on the government of India. 
 At the same time, the claim is more and more loudly 
 put forward that it should be treated as if it were the 
 sole power in the State. The veto of the sovereign has 
 long since fallen into abeyance. Her constitutional 
 right of dissolving Parliament if she believes that a 
 minister or a majority do not truly represent the feel- 
 ings of the nation, and are acting contrary to its inter- 
 ests, might sometimes be of the utmost value, but it is 
 never likely to be put in force. Her slight power, in 
 the rare cases of nearly balanced claims, of selecting 
 the minister to whom she will entrust the government, 
 and the slight influence she still retains over the dispo- 
 VOL. i. 10
 
 146 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. 11. 
 
 sition of patronage, are regarded with extreme jealousy ; 
 while every interference of the House of Lords with the 
 proposed legislation of the Commons has been, during, 
 a considerable part of the last few years, made the sig- 
 nal of insolent abuse. It would be difficult to conceive 
 a greater absurdity than a second Chamber which has 
 no power of rejecting, altering, or revising ; and this 
 is practically the position to which a large number of 
 members of the House of Commons, .and of their sup- 
 porters outside the House, would reduce the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 We can hardly have a more grotesque exhibition of 
 this spirit than was displayed during the discussion of 
 the Parish Council Bill in 1894. The Bill came for 
 the first time before Parliament. It was one on which 
 the House of Lords, consisting of the great proprietors 
 of the soil, could speak with pre-eminent knowledge 
 and authority, while a vast proportion of the majority 
 in the House of Commons had not the remotest con- 
 nection with land, and were notoriously acting under 
 mere motives of party interest. The Bill of the Com- 
 mons, in its principle and main outlines, was accepted 
 by the Lords, and they went no further than to alter it 
 in a few of its details. But because they exercised in 
 this manner their clearest and most indisputable con- 
 stitutional right, on a subject with which they were 
 peculiarly competent to deal, they were denounced as 
 if they had committed an outrage on the nation. The 
 last ministerial speech with which Mr. Gladstone closed 
 his long political career l was an abortive attempt to 
 kindle a popular agitation against them on that ground. 
 
 The enormous and portentous development of par- 
 liamentary speaking, which has so greatly impeded 
 
 March 1, 1894.
 
 CH. it PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING 147 
 
 public business, is due to many causes. In the first 
 place, the House of Commons of 670 members is far 
 too large for the purposes for which it is intended. It 
 is larger than any other legislative body in the world, 
 and the nineteenth century has added greatly both to 
 its numbers and its speakers. At the beginning of the 
 century it received an important addition in the Irish 
 members who were brought in by the Union. The abo- 
 lition of the small boroughs and the increasing power 
 of the constituencies over their members greatly in- 
 creased the average attendance, by making the mem- 
 bers much more directly dependent upon their electors. 
 The Reform Bills of 1867 and 1885 gave an opportunity 
 for some reduction. But, as is usually the case, the 
 interests of party and popularity prevailed, and the 
 number of members was not diminished, but even 
 slightly increased. The scenes of violence, anarchy, 
 and deliberate obstruction that have been so frequent 
 during late years have done much to destroy that re- 
 spect for the House, that timidity in appearing before 
 a fastidious audience, which once weighed heavily on 
 nearly all new members, and imposed a useful restraint 
 on idle speaking. At the same time, the development 
 of the provincial papers has made it an easy and desira- 
 ble thing for each member to be reported at full in his 
 own constituency as a prominent speaker ; and the vast 
 increase of stump oratory by members of Parliament in 
 every town and almost every village has given nearly 
 all members a fatal facility. Something, also, has been 
 due to the fact that the House of Commons was led or 
 profoundly influenced during many years by a very 
 great orator, who possessed every form of eloquence 
 except conciseness, and who could rarely answer a 
 question without making a speech. 
 
 This diffuseness and incontinence of speech has not
 
 148 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 been the characteristic of the deliberative assemblies 
 that have left the greatest mark on the history of the 
 world. Jefferson observes in his 'Memoirs/ 'I served 
 with Washington in the Legislature of Virginia, before 
 the ^Revolution, and during it, with Dr. Franklin, in 
 Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten 
 minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which 
 was to decide the question/ 1 In our own House of 
 Commons, old members still remember the terse, di- 
 rect character of the speeches of Eussell, Palmerston, 
 and Disraeli, and many men who have exercised great 
 weight and influence in English politics have been sin- 
 gularly deficient in the power of speech. The names 
 of Lord Althorp, Sir Charles Wood, and the Duke 
 of Wellington in the past generation, and of W. H. 
 Smith in our own, will at once occur to the reader. 
 The dreary torrent of idle, diffusive, insincere talk 
 that now drags its slow lengths through so many 
 months at Westminster certainly does not contribute to- 
 raise the character of the House of Commons. It is a 
 significant sign that parliamentary reporting has of 
 late years greatly declined, and that newspapers which 
 would once have competed for the fullest reports of 
 parliamentary speeches now content themselves with 
 abridgments, or summaries, or even with sketches of 
 the speakers. 
 
 On the whole, however, it may be questioned whether, 
 in the existing state of the British Constitution, this 
 diffuseness is an evil. There is some weight in the con- 
 tention of Bagehot, that one great advantage of govern- 
 ment by debate is, that much talking prevents much 
 action, and if it does little to enlighten the subject, it 
 at least greatly checks the progress of hasty and revo- 
 
 1 Life of Jefferson, i. 179.
 
 CH. IL INFLUENCE OF THE CAUCUS 149 
 
 lutionary legislation. There are worse things than a 
 wasted session, and, in times when the old restraints 
 and balances of the Constitution have almost perished, 
 the restraint of loquacity is not to be despised. 
 
 It makes the House of Commons, however, a per- 
 fectly inefficient instrument for some of the purposes 
 it is expected to fulfil. There are large questions, such 
 as the reform and codification of great branches of the 
 law, which bristle with points of difficulty and differ- 
 ence, but which at the same time do not fall within the 
 lines of party or affect the balance of power. To carry 
 highly complex measures of this kind through a body 
 like the present House of Commons is utterly impossi- 
 ble, and these much-needed reforms are never likely to 
 be accomplished till the Constitution is so far changed 
 as to give much larger powers to Committees. 
 
 The independence of Parliament has at the same 
 time almost gone. Since the country has committed 
 itself to democracy the caucus system which is but 
 another name for the American machine, and which, 
 like the American machine, is mainly managed by a 
 small number of active politicians has grown with 
 portentous rapidity. It nominates the candidates for 
 elections. It dictates their policy in all its details. It 
 applies a constant pressure by instructions, remon- 
 strances, and deputations at every stage of their task. 
 It reduces the ordinary member of Parliament to the 
 position of a mere delegate, or puppet, though at the 
 same time it tends, like many other democratic institu- 
 tions, to aggrandise enormously the power of any single 
 individual who is sufficiently powerful and conspicuous 
 to enlist the favour of the nation and dominate and 
 direct the caucus machinery. What is called ' the one- 
 man power Ms a very natural product of democracy. 
 Mr. Bright once said that the greatest danger of our
 
 150 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 present system of government is surprise the power 
 which a bold and brilliant leader possesses of commit- 
 ting his party by his own will to a new policy which had 
 never been maturely considered or accepted. It is no- 
 torious that the most momentous new departure made 
 by the Liberal party in our day the adoption of the pol- 
 icy of Home Eule was due to a single man, who acted 
 without consulting the most important of his colleagues. 
 At the same time, a great change has taken place in 
 the relations of Government to the House of Commons. 
 In order to guard against the dangers to be feared from 
 an unrestrained House, opposite methods have been 
 employed in the United States and in England. In 
 the former, the ministers form no part of the represen- 
 tative Chamber, and the vote of that Chamber is in- 
 competent to overthrow them. In England, on the 
 other hand, the Ministry is the creature of the House 
 of Commons ; but the organised force of a united Ca- 
 binet is the most powerful restraint upon its proceed- 
 ings. Most of the old power of the sovereign, as it has 
 been truly said, has now passed to the Cabinet, and a 
 solid body of the leaders of the majority, whose guid- 
 ance is indispensable to the ascendency of their party, 
 is able to exercise a strong controlling influence on all 
 parliamentary proceedings. But the situation is much 
 modified when Parliaments break up into small groups. 
 All over the world this has been one of the most marked 
 and significant tendencies of democratic Parliaments, 
 and it will probably eventually lead to a profound 
 change in the system of parliamentary government. 
 In France, in Germany, and in Italy, as well as in many 
 minor States, this disintegration may be shown to its 
 full extent ; in Great Britain it has made considerable 
 progress. Not many years ago Belgium was said to be 
 the only European country where the Legislature was
 
 CH. II. PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS 151 
 
 still divided into only two distinct parties. 1 One of the 
 first results of her lowered suffrage has been the intro- 
 duction into her Parliament of a new and powerful So- 
 cialist group. 
 
 "Where this disintegration extends to the majority its 
 results are very manifest. Government in its relation 
 to the House of Commons loses its old commanding and 
 controlling authority. The Cabinet had already lost 
 much of its initiating power by the growth of the caucus 
 system, which dictates the policy of the party. In a 
 Parliament with no homogeneous majority its strength 
 is still further diminished. A coalition may at any 
 time overthrow it. It depends upon the concurrence 
 of many distinct groups, governed by different motives, 
 aiming at different objects, representing different 
 shades of political feeling. It is obliged to conciliate 
 by separate bribes these different sections, or to dis- 
 cover some cry that may rally them, some active and 
 aggressive policy that may secure their support, and 
 to which they will subordinate their special objects. 
 
 This evil is greatly accentuated by the modern dis- 
 covery that the disintegration of parties is exceedingly 
 conducive to the triumph of minor sectional objects. 
 A group of men representing opinions and aiming at 
 objects which are only those of a small minority of the 
 nation, may obtain a decisive influence if it keeps apart 
 from the great party organisations, subordinates all 
 other considerations to its own objects, and at times 
 when parties are evenly balanced, and when a few votes 
 can save or destroy a Government, makes the attain- 
 ment of those objects the price of its adhesion. Where 
 there are only two strongly organised parties these 
 minor questions fall into their natural place ; but in a 
 
 1 Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Democratic, ii. 101.
 
 152 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IT. 
 
 Parliament broken into many fractions, each fraction 
 can exercise a power utterly disproportionate to its 
 numbers and to its real hold upon the country. The 
 action of the independent Irish Home Eule party in 
 the parliamentary system has been the most remarkable 
 instance of this truth, and other groups are evidently 
 constituting themselves in the same way, and are like- 
 ly to pursue their objects by the same parliamentary 
 methods. 
 
 The consequences of all this are very far-reaching. 
 If my forecast is not erroneous, it must end in the de- 
 struction of that ascendency of the House of Commons 
 which was built up in the days of middle-class su- 
 premacy and of strong party organisation. It produces 
 also a weakness and an instability in the executive 
 power which is often very injurious to the interests of 
 the nation. On the whole, however, this weakness 
 seems likely to be greater under Liberal than under 
 Conservative Governments, as the Conservative party is 
 far more homogeneous than its rival. The great re- 
 volt of the nation against Radical policy in 1895 has 
 created one of the most powerful ministries of the cen- 
 tury, resting upon an enormous and substantially ho- 
 mogeneous majority in both Houses. But, with the 
 fluctuations to which parliamentary government is now 
 so liable, no one can suppose that such a majority can 
 be permanent. All the signs of the times point to the 
 probability in England, as elsewhere, of many minis- 
 tries resting on precarious majorities formed out of 
 independent or heterogeneous groups: There are few 
 conditions less favourable to the healthy working of 
 parliamentary institutions, or in which the danger of 
 an uncontrolled House of Commons is more evident. 
 
 One consequence of this disintegration of Parliament 
 is a greatly increased probability that policies which
 
 CH ii. APPETITE FOR ORGANIC CHANGE 153 
 
 the nation does not really wish for may be carried into 
 effect. The process which the Americans call e log- 
 rolling ' becomes very easy. One minority will agree 
 to support the objects of another minority on condition 
 of receiving in return a similar assistance, and a num- 
 ber of small minorities aiming at different objects, no 
 one of which is really desired by the majority of the 
 nation, may attain their several ends by forming them- 
 selves into a political syndicate and mutually co-ope- 
 rating. The kind of politics which was notoriously 
 adopted on the question of Home Eule illustrates both 
 the nature and the danger of this system. The Home 
 Kule Bill had been decisively condemned by the con- 
 stituencies, and the Government which proposed it 
 saw clearly that on that issue alone it was not likely to 
 obtain a favourable verdict. It was argued, however, 
 that if a Home Eule Government could win the sup- 
 port of the electors who desired local option, and the 
 disestablishment of the Welsh and Scotch Churches, 
 and the abolition of the hereditary element in the 
 House of Lords, and legislation shortening the hours of 
 labour, and other measures of a democratic character, 
 these different parties would constitute a majority that 
 would enable the ministers to carry Home Kule in 
 spite of the wishes of the nation. 
 
 Probably still more dangerous is the necessity, which 
 the existing state of parliamentary representation es- 
 tablishes, of seeking for a popular cry, which generally 
 means some organic and destructive change in the Con- 
 stitution. An appetite for organic change is one of the 
 worst diseases that can affect a nation. All real pro- 
 gress, all sound national development, must grow out 
 of a stable, persistent national character, deeply influ- 
 enced by custom and precedent and old traditional 
 reverence, habitually aiming at the removal of prac-
 
 154 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 tical evils and the attainment of practical advantages, 
 rather than speculative change. Institutions, like 
 trees, can never attain their maturity or produce their 
 proper fruits if their roots are perpetually tampered 
 with. In no single point is the American Constitu- 
 tion more incontestably superior to our own than in 
 the provisions by which it has so effectually barred the 
 path of organic change that the appetite for such 
 change has almost passed away. No one who observes 
 English politics with care can fail to see how frequently, 
 when a statesman is out of office and his party divided, 
 his first step is to mark out some ancient institution for 
 attack in order to rally his followers. Personal vanity 
 here concurs powerfully with party interests, for men 
 who are utterly destitute of real constructive ability 
 are capable of attacking an existing institution ; and 
 there is no other form of politics in which a noisy 
 reputation can be so easily acquired. Instead of wisely 
 using the machinery of government for the benefit of 
 the whole nation, English politicians have of late years 
 been perpetually tampering with it, and a spirit of 
 feverish unrest has passed into English politics which, 
 if it is not checked, bodes ill for the permanence of 
 parliamentary government. 
 
 Both parties have in this respect much to answer 
 for. A weak Conservative Government is often tempted 
 to outbid its rival and win the support of some discon- 
 tented fragment of the Opposition ; and there is no 
 Eadicalism so dangerous as this, for it finds no external 
 body to restrain it, and the Opposition is bound by its 
 position to aggravate it. Few pages in our modern 
 political history are more discreditable than the story 
 of the ' Conservative ' Keform Bill of 1867. A weak 
 Liberal Government, on the other hand, depends for 
 its support on the concurrence of many semi-detached
 
 CH. ii. ENGLISH RADICALISM 155 
 
 groups, among which extreme politicians often exercise 
 a disproportionate power. The Home Eule schism, by 
 depriving the party of the greater part of its restrain- 
 ing and moderating element, has much increased the 
 danger. 
 
 There are few things, also, more disheartening in 
 English politics than what may be called the unintel- 
 ligent conservatism of English Eadicalism. It moves 
 persistently in a few old, well-worn grooves. The 
 withdrawal of the control of affairs from the hands 
 of the minority who, in the competitions of life, have 
 risen to a higher plane of fortune and instruction ; 
 the continual degradation of the suffrage to lower and 
 lower strata of intelligence ; attacks upon institution 
 after institution ; a systematic hostility to the owners 
 of landed property, and a disposition to grant much 
 the same representative institutions to all portions of 
 the Empire, quite irrespectively of their circumstances 
 and characters, are the directions in which the ordi- 
 nary Radical naturally moves. In hardly any quarter 
 do we find less constructive ability, less power of arriv- 
 ing even at a perception of the new evils that have 
 arisen or of the new remedies that are required. To 
 destroy some institution, or to injure some class, is 
 very commonly his first and last idea in constitutional 
 policy. 
 
 Another tendency which is very manifestly strength- 
 ening in English politics is that of attempting to win 
 votes by class bribery. With very large democratic 
 constituencies, in which a great ' proportion of the 
 voters are quite indifferent to the main questions of 
 party politics, some form of corruption is certain to 
 arise. The kinds of bribery, it is true, which prevailed 
 in England under an unreformed Parliament have 
 either disappeared or greatly diminished. The aum-
 
 156 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 her of the electors, the secrecy of the vote, and the 
 stringency of recent legislation against corruption, have 
 had in this respect a salutary effect. The gigantic 
 corruption which exists in America under the name of 
 the ' spoils system ' has not taken root in England, 
 though some recent ^attempts to tamper, in the inter- 
 ests of party, with the old method of appointing magis- 
 trates in the counties, and some claims that have been 
 put forward by members of Parliament to dictate the 
 patronage in their constituencies, show that there are 
 politicians who would gladly introduce this poison- 
 germ into English life. Happily, however, the system 
 of competitive examination places most branches of the 
 Civil Service out of the reach of politicians. But a 
 form of bribery which is far cheaper to the candidate, 
 yet far more costly to the nation, than that to which 
 our grandfathers were accustomed, has rapidly grown. 
 As Sir Henry Maine has truly said, the bribery which 
 is most to be feared in a democracy is that of ' legis- 
 lating away the property of one class and transferring 
 it to another." Partial, inequitable taxation, intro- 
 duced for the purpose of obtaining votes, is an evil 
 which in democratic societies is but too likely to in- 
 crease. 
 
 It has been rendered easier by the great fiscal revolu- 
 tion which took place in England after the abolition of 
 the Corn Laws. A number of widely diffused indirect 
 taxes, which were paid in the form of enhanced prices, 
 were abolished ; taxation has been more concentrated, 
 and it has become very easy to vary both its amount and 
 its incidence. It is remarkable that, at a time when this 
 process was rapidly advancing, a note of warning and 
 of protest was sounded by one of the wisest leaders of 
 
 1 Popular Government, p. 106.
 
 CH. II. PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION 157 
 
 the Liberals. Sir C. Lewis, in the memorable Budget 
 speech which he made as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in 1857, quoted the following striking passage from 
 Arthur Young : ' The mere circumstance of taxes be- 
 ing very numerous in order to raise a given sum is a 
 considerable step towards equality in the burden fall- 
 ing on the people. If I were to define a good system 
 of taxation, it should be that of bearing lightly on an 
 infinite number of points, heavily on none. In other 
 words, that simplicity in taxation is the greatest ad- 
 ditional weight that can be given to taxes, and ought 
 in every country to be most sedulously avoided/ ' That 
 opinion,' said Sir Cornewall Lewis, ' though contrary to 
 much that we hear at the present day, seems to me to 
 be full of wisdom, and to be a most useful practical 
 guide in the arrangement of a system of taxation/ * 
 
 These remarks of Sir Cornewall Lewis were much 
 censured at the time ; but I believe that many of our 
 best contemporary thinkers will agree with me that 
 they contain much truth, and that the concentration 
 of taxation into a very few forms has been carried in 
 England to an exaggerated extent. In times when 
 prosperity is rapidly advancing and when taxation is 
 easily borne the evil may be little felt ; but in times of 
 receding prosperity it is of no small advantage that the 
 burden of taxation should be diffused in many forms 
 and over a wide area. As it is much easier in times of 
 adversity to raise than to impose a duty, it is often wiser 
 
 1 Northcote's Twenty Years of really equitable taxation that 
 
 of Financial Policy, pp. 309-10. has been yet devised, as those 
 
 There is a remarkable speech of who escaped one tax fall under 
 
 Thiers in favour of a great va- another, and taxation adjusts 
 
 riety of moderate taxes, deliv- itself almost insensibly to ex- 
 
 ered January 19, 1831. He con- penditure. 
 tended that this is the only system
 
 158 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. 11. 
 
 in times of prosperity to lower than to abolish it. Low 
 duties on articles of general consumption, showing 
 themselves in a slightly enhanced price, pass almost un- 
 noticed, and usually cause far less friction and discom- 
 fort than direct taxes. They are very equitable, for 
 they are strictly proportioned to consumption or enjoy- 
 ment ; and this system of taxation makes it easy for 
 the taxpayer, according to his improving or declining 
 means, to vary his taxation by varying his consumption, 
 while it secures that some portion of the national bur- 
 den shall be diffused over a wide area. An excellent 
 writer on this subject has truly said : ' If only our fis- 
 cal burdens are equitably apportioned, and so contrived 
 as neither to fetter industry nor to repress enterprise, 
 that mode of levying them must be the best which is 
 the least unpleasant and the least felt ; ' and the same 
 writer gives good ground for believing that there is 
 much exaggeration, and even positive error, in the popu- 
 lar notion that the cost of collecting indirect taxes is 
 greater than that of collecting direct ones. 1 Two 
 other considerations must also be remembered. One is, 
 that the remission of a direct tax is usually felt to its 
 full extent by the whole body of taxpayers affected, 
 while a wholly disproportionate amount of the benefit 
 arising from the remission of a duty is in most cases 
 intercepted by middlemen. The other is, that the re- 
 mission of a direct tax is usually an unmixed benefit, 
 while the remission of an indirect tax, by stimulating 
 competition, often produces acute suffering to particu- 
 lar classes. Thus, to give a single example, the kelp 
 manufacture, on which the poorest inhabitants of the 
 most barren coast-lands in Scotland and Ireland are 
 largely supported, was for many years wholly depen- 
 
 Greg's Political Problems, p. 304.
 
 en. n. EXAGGERATIONS OF FREE TRADE 159 
 
 dent for its existence on a tax which was imposed on 
 Spanish barilla. 
 
 I do not intend by these remarks to dispute the im- 
 mense advantages which England has derived from her 
 Free-trade legislation. This legislation has vastly sti- 
 mulated both production and consumption ; it has light- 
 ened many burdens ; and in many cases the Treasury 
 has derived a far greater revenue from a low duty than 
 it had ever received from a high one. But the political 
 evil of narrowing the basis of taxation is a real one, 
 and, even in its purely economical aspects, the reaction 
 against the abuses of the old fiscal system seems to have 
 been carried too far. It is not probable that a single 
 loaf of bread was made the cheaper by the abolition, in 
 1869, of the shilling registration duty on corn, though 
 that small duty at the time it was repealed by Mr. Lowe 
 brought more than 900,000/. into the national ex- 
 chequer, and would, probably, at the present day have 
 brought in double that sum. Not one Londoner in a 
 hundred even knew of the existence of the small Lon- 
 don duty on coal which was abolished in the present ge- 
 neration. It had existed in one form or another for more 
 than six hundred years, and was almost the oldest of our 
 taxes. It furnished an income of more than 500,000?. 
 a year, raised without complaint, for the purpose of 
 effecting metropolitan improvements ; and there is no 
 reason to believe that any human being, except a few 
 rich coalowners and middlemen, derived any benefit 
 from its abolition. 1 
 
 We have a striking instance though it was not of a 
 
 1 The facts relating to these Results in the way of Fluctu- 
 
 coal dues will be found in a re- ations and Alterations of the 
 
 port issued by the Coal, Corn, Price of Coal in London since 
 
 and Finance Committee of the the Abolition of the Coal Dues. 
 Corporation of London, on The
 
 160 DEMOCRACY AND LD3ERTT cm. IL 
 
 democratic character of the manner in which changes 
 in taxation may be made use of for electioneering pur- 
 poses in the conduct of Mr. Gladstone in making the 
 abolition of the income-tax his election-cry at the 
 general election of 1874. The circumstances of this 
 election may be briefly told. Mr. Gladstone was not 
 obliged to go to the country. In spite of his defeat on 
 the Irish University question in the preceding year, he 
 had still a considerable and unbroken majority, though 
 several defeats at bye-elections showed clearly that his 
 power was declining, and especially that the upper and 
 middle classes, who were the payers of income-tax, 
 were profoundly shaken in their allegiance to him. 
 The income-tax-payers, it is true, were not even then 
 an absolute majority of the electors, but they formed a 
 much larger proportion than after the Reform Bill of 
 1885. They included the great majority of the voters 
 who could influence other voters ; and they were a 
 body so large and so powerful that there was no rea- 
 sonable doubt that a general movement among them 
 would decide the fate of the election. The fortune of 
 the ministry was tolerably certain to turn upon the 
 question whether the defection in this notoriously wa- 
 vering class could be arrested. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Mr. Gladstone, 
 much to the surprise of the country, suddenly dissolved 
 Parliament ; and he issued a programme to his electors 
 which, if the report of those who are likely to be best 
 informed is not wholly erroneous, was as much a sur- 
 prise to most of his colleagues as to the public. The 
 times were very prosperous, and a great surplus was 
 gathering in the Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone, throw- 
 ing all other political questions into the background, 
 resolved to utilise this surplus for election purposes, 
 and to stake his chances at the election upon large di-
 
 CH. it. THE ELECTION OF 1874 161 
 
 rect offers of financial relief made to the electors, but 
 especially to that class of the electors who were known 
 to be wavering in their allegiance. One portion of his 
 election address consisted of a general and undefined 
 promise to reduce duties and assist rates ; but the part 
 which at once and especially riveted the attention of 
 the country by its conspicuous novelty and boldness 
 was a definite pledge that if he won the election he 
 would abolish the income-tax. This promise at once 
 became the leading feature of the election. It was 
 urged from a hundred Liberal platforms and in a hun- 
 dred Liberal newspapers as the great reason why the 
 income-tax-payers should support the ministry. Every 
 elector of this class, as he went to the poll, was clearly 
 informed that he had a direct personal money interest 
 in the triumph of the Government. 
 
 It is true that the promise of Mr. Gladstone was 
 qualified by the following vague passage in his election 
 address : ' I have said nothing to preclude the Go- 
 vernment from asking Parliament to consider, in con- 
 junction with these great remissions, what moderate 
 assistance could be had from judicious adjustments 
 of existing taxes.' It is true also, that in a later 
 speech, being pressed with .the impossibility of repeal- 
 ing the income-tax without imposing other taxation, 
 he admitted that, in consideration of the repeal of the 
 income-tax and the reduction of rates, ( property ought 
 in some shape and to some considerable and equitable 
 extent to make some fair contribution towards the 
 public burdens/ But the nature and magnitude of 
 this contribution, the form it was to take, and the area 
 over which it was to be distributed, were never revealed 
 up to the day of the election. Everything relating to 
 it was left perfectly vague and shadowy. One point 
 only was brought before the electors in clear, vivid, 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 162 DEMOCRACY AND IJBERTY CH. H. 
 
 unmistakable relief. It was, that if Mr. Gladstone 
 won the day the income-tax would cease. Such a 
 promise, unaccompanied by any distinct statement of 
 equivalent burdens to be imposed, could only have 
 operated as a direct bribe addressed to that great 
 section of the electorate whose growing alienation from 
 the Government was the chief cause of the dissolution. 
 No politician, I believe, seriously doubted that when 
 Mr. Gladstone placed the abolition of the income-tax 
 in the forefront of the battle, his object was to win the 
 income-tax-payers to his side. 
 
 Some strictures that I ventured to make on this trans- 
 action in a former book elicited from Mr. Gladstone 
 two articles of indignant defence. 1 No one who judged 
 solely from those skilful and plausible pages would im- 
 agine that any question of winning votes, or arresting 
 a political defection, or gaining a party triumph, could 
 have entered even distantly into his calculations. He 
 was merely, he said, ' consulting' the nation 'upon 
 the exercise of its chief and primary right of giving or 
 withholding taxes ; ' upon ' a great subject of financial 
 readjustment.' ' The rights of the people/ as he truly 
 said, ' in respect to taxation are older, higher, clearer 
 than in respect to any other subject of government/ 
 He at the same time asserted that his censor ' ought to 
 have known, and to have stated, that with the propo- 
 sal to repeal the income-tax came a proposal to recon- 
 struct and enlarge the death duties. Direct taxation 
 of a kind most vexatious to trade and industry was to 
 be removed direct taxation, the least of all unfavour- 
 able to trade and industry, . . . was to be imposed/ 
 
 The assertion so confidently made in this passage 
 was simply untrue, and is a curious instance of the 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, June and August 1887. A brief article of 
 my own will be found in the July number.
 
 CH. ii. THE ELECTION OP 1874 163 
 
 lapse of memory into which, by too hasty writing, its 
 author has sometimes been betrayed. No proposal of 
 this kind was made. Mr. Gladstone was obliged in his 
 second article to confess that on this point his memory 
 had betrayed him, and that his critic was right ; but 
 he at once changed his ground, and argued that it 
 would have been exceedingly prejudicial to the public 
 service if he had disclosed at the election the ' readjust- 
 ment ' of taxation which he had contemplated, as such 
 a disclosure would have enabled the taxpayer to evade 
 the coming burden. ' The disclosure of the particu- 
 lars of the plan would have been both wholly novel and 
 in the highest degree mischievous to the public in- 
 terest.' It is, surely, sufficiently obvious to reply that 
 this fact is a very conclusive argument against the 
 propriety of throwing such a matter into an election 
 programme. ' The ancient right ' of the people to be 
 consulted on adjustments of taxation can hardly be very 
 valuable when the condition of the consultation is that 
 the nature of the adjustment should be concealed. 
 Stated fully to the electors, Mr. Gladstone's proposal 
 would, according to his own showing, have defeated 
 itself. Stated as it was stated, it amounted to little 
 more than a naked promise, that if a certain class of 
 voters would maintain the Government in power, they 
 should be freed from a burdensome tax. 
 
 But Mr. Gladstone takes a much higher ground than 
 that of mere apology, and assures us that his real motive 
 in this transaction was ' the fulfilment of a solemn duty.' 
 He considered the income-tax unjust, unequal, and de- 
 moralising ; twenty-one years before he had formed 
 part of a ministry which promised to abolish it. This 
 pledge, after a long slumber, revived in its full vitality 
 at the eve of the election, and he offered the electors 
 * the payment of a debt of honour.'
 
 164 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IT. 
 
 I have little doubt that Mr. Gladstone succeeded in 
 persuading himself that this mode of reasoning was 
 legitimate, but the answer to it is very simple. It was 
 perfectly open to him to have introduced into Parlia- 
 ment a Budget abolishing the income-tax and carrying 
 out, after full exposition and discussion, such other 
 financial arrangements as he deemed desirable. Had 
 he pursued this usual and regular course, no shadow of 
 blame or discredit could have been attached to him, 
 and he would, very probably, have rendered a real ser- 
 vice to the country. But it was a wholly different 
 thing to throw a half-disclosed and fragmentary Bud- 
 get before the constituencies at a general election, 
 making the simple abolition of a specific tax the main 
 ground for asking the votes of those who paid it. A 
 Minister who, seeing the popularity of his Government 
 visibly declining, determined to dissolve Parliament 
 before introducing his Budget, and to make his elec- 
 tion-cry a promise to abolish the chief direct tax paid 
 by a great wavering body of electors, may have been 
 actuated by no other object than ' the fulfilment of a 
 solemn duty/ But in ordinary men such conduct would 
 imply other motives ; and such men undoubtedly co- 
 operated with Mr. Gladstone in the struggle, and such 
 men will, for their own purposes, follow his example. 
 In my opinion, few worse examples could have been 
 given, and the constituencies in defeating Mr. Glad- 
 stone at this election rendered no small service to 
 political morality. 
 
 Another argument of a curiously ingenious and 
 characteristic nature must be noticed. I had said that 
 the meaning of Mr. Gladstone's address was, that if he 
 won the day the income-tax would cease. The state- 
 ment is literally and incontestably true ; but Mr. Glad- 
 stone very dexterously met it by declaring that it is an
 
 CH. II. THE ELECTION OF 1874 165 
 
 entire misrepresentation and an evidence of extreme 
 ignorance to describe the election as if it was fought on 
 the issue of the income-tax. It was not a question of 
 one party supporting and the other opposing the abo- 
 lition. ' This supposed historical fact is a pure histori- 
 cal fiction/ Both parties promised the abolition, and 
 both parties, therefore, stood on the same footing. 
 
 A few words of explanation will, I think, place this 
 matter in its true light. When Mr. Gladstone issued 
 his election address, Mr. Disraeli was evidently taken 
 by surprise. He was much alarmed lest this novel and 
 unprecedented course might produce a great wave of 
 popularity, and sweep the main body of income-tax- 
 payers into his rival's net. He, accordingly, promptly 
 replied that he also was in favour of the abolition of 
 the income-tax, and had always been opposed to it. 
 This implied promise was thought by many good 
 judges at the time to have been an exceedingly im- 
 proper one ; and I am in no way bound to defend it, 
 though it is but justice to add that Mr. Disraeli stated 
 that he was only in favour of the abolition in case the 
 surplus was sufficiently large to make it possible with- 
 out the imposition of fresh taxation. 1 But surely it is 
 mere sophistry to argue that the conduct of Mr. Dis- 
 raeli affects the character of Mr. Gladstone's original 
 address. Is it not perfectly notorious that the popu- 
 larity which Mr. Gladstone's promise was expected to 
 produce in this great wavering portion of the constitu- 
 encies was the element of success on which his follow- 
 ers most confidently relied ? Did they not, after Mr. 
 Disraeli's reply, still urge (and with much reason) the 
 special claim which Mr. Gladstone had established on 
 the voters by forcing the question into the van, and 
 
 1 Annual Register, 1874, p. 9,
 
 166 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IL 
 
 also that he was much more competent than his rival 
 to carry the proposal into effect ? Is the fact that Mr. 
 Gladstone's example was so speedily followed a proof 
 that it was not pernicious, and was not likely to be 
 contagious ? 
 
 A much more serious argument is, that among the 
 questions that have at different times been brought, 
 with general consent, before the constituencies there 
 have been many, such as the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
 or local taxation, or economical reform, in which a 
 private pecuniary interest, as well as a public interest, 
 must have been presented to the elector. The state- 
 ment is perfectly true, and I have no wish to dispute 
 or evade its force. Public and private interest are, 
 undoubtedly, often so blended in politics that it is not 
 possible wholly to disentangle them. The difference 
 between an election which is mainly governed by low 
 motives of private interest, and an election which is 
 mainly governed by high motives of public spirit, is 
 very great, but it is essentially a difference of propor- 
 tion and degree. All that can be said is, that it will 
 depend largely on a minister to determine at an elec- 
 tion which of these classes of motives preponderate. 
 Each dubious case must be judged by the common 
 sense of the community on its own merits, and in the 
 light of its own special circumstances. In former 
 days, private interest was chiefly brought to bear upon 
 elections by the process of corruption applied to indi- 
 vidual voters. In modern days, bribery has changed 
 its character, and is much more likely to be applied to 
 classes than to individuals. Manipulations of taxation, 
 and other legislative offers dexterously adapted to 
 catch in critical times the votes of particular sections 
 of the electorate, are the evils which are chiefly to be 
 feared, and, of this kind of evil, the course adopted by
 
 CH. II. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION 167 
 
 Mr. Gladstone in 1874 still appears to me to have been 
 a conspicuous example. 
 
 Many other illustrations might be given. No one 
 who has carefully followed Irish politics during the 
 period of the Land League agitation can doubt that 
 appeals to the cupidity of electors formed the main- 
 spring of the whole machine. Other motives and ele- 
 ments, no doubt, entered largely into the calculations 
 of the- leaders ; and with them a desire to drive the 
 landlord from his property was not in itself an end, 
 but rather a means of obtaining political ascendency 
 and separation from England. But it is notorious 
 that the effectual inducement they held out to the 
 great body of the farming class to support them was 
 the persuasion that it was possible by the use of po- 
 litical means to break contracts, lower rents, and 
 confiscate property. Nor can it be denied that the 
 legislation of the Imperial Parliament has gone a long 
 way to justify their prevision. 
 
 I do not include in this charge the Land Act of 
 1870, which appears to me to have been, in its main 
 lines, though not in all its parts, a wise and compre- 
 hensive effort to deal with one of the most difficult and 
 complicated questions that have appeared in English 
 politics. The elements of the problem were very 
 numerous. There was the imperfect sympathy be- 
 tween the land-owning and land-cultivating classes, 
 arising originally from historical causes, from differ- 
 ences of religion, politics, and, in some degree, of race, 
 and in modern times strengthened by the Famine and 
 the Encumbered Estates Act, which created a multi- 
 tude of new landlords, largely drawn from the trading 
 classes, who had no knowledge of the traditions and 
 customs of the estates they acquired, and who often 
 purchased with borrowed money and as a commercial
 
 168 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. It 
 
 investment. Improvements, too, in Ireland were for 
 the most part made by the tenant, and not by the land- 
 lord ; and although the rents were in general propor- 
 tionately lower than in England, although on most old 
 estates a long tenure at low rents amply compensated 
 the tenant for his outlay, there were, undoubtedly, 
 cases where the advent of a new proprietor, or a sudden 
 rise in rents or depreciation in values, led to a virtual 
 confiscation of tenants' improvements. Leases had 
 been for some years diminishing, and tenancies at will 
 became general. The custom of tenant-right was gen- 
 eral in Ulster and occasional in other provinces, though 
 it subsisted without the smallest sanction or protection 
 of the law. Usage unsanctioned by law played a large 
 part in Irish agrarian life ; and there was a bad cus- 
 tom of allowing rents to be paid, in many parts of the 
 country, with extreme irregularity, according to the 
 good or bad seasons, and leaving the arrears of many 
 years outstanding, not claimed, and not wiped away. 
 It must be added, that the small number of manufac- 
 tures had thrown the population, to an unhealthy 
 extent, for subsistence on the soil ; that political agita- 
 tion had already done much to inflame class animosi- 
 ties and accentuate class divisions, and that there were 
 grave faults on both sides. Wretched farming ; thrift- 
 less, extravagant, unbusinesslike habits in all classes ; 
 a great want of enterprise and steady industry ; much 
 neglect of duty, and occasional, though not, I think, 
 frequent, acts of oppression and extortion, all contri- 
 buted to complicate the task of the legislator. 
 
 In my own opinion, it should have been his object to 
 secure to the tenants compensation for all future im- 
 provements ; to bring back by special inducements a 
 land system resting on definite written contracts ; to 
 give legal character to tenant-right when it was gener-
 
 CH. II. TENANTS' IMPROVEMENTS. 169 
 
 ally acknowledged ; and to assist by Government 
 measures in the formation of a peasant proprietary, or, 
 what was politically scarcely less valuable, of a class of 
 tenants holding land for ever at a low fixed rent. 
 
 The question of tenants' improvements especially 
 was of vital importance, and it is one of the most real 
 of Irish grievances that Parliament, in spite of the 
 clearest warnings, so long neglected to attend to it. 
 
 Some years before the Famine Sharman Crawford 
 had devoted himself with much zeal to the subject, 
 and had repeatedly brought into the House of Com- 
 mons a Bill which would have effectually met it. 
 He proposed that when a tenant made improvements 
 which were of a nature to produce an increased rent, 
 and which had not been included in the terms of his 
 existing lease, these improvements should be duly va- 
 lued ; that the tenant, at the expiry of his term, should 
 have the right to claim either immediate money com- 
 pensation from the landlord or a prolongation of his 
 tenancy ; and that, in fixing the new rent, the value of 
 the unremunerated improvements should be taken into 
 account, so that the tenant might be repaid for them 
 in the course of the succeeding tenancy. 1 
 
 The Devon Commissioners, who sat under a com- 
 mission ordered at the end of 1843, collected a great 
 deal of valuable information on the subject, and treated 
 it in an eminently judicial spirit. They acknowledged 
 that ' there had not been brought many cases to show 
 that it had been the practice of land-proprietors to 
 take advantage of improving tenants who had in- 
 vested money without a lease or other security/ They 
 acknowledged also, that ' it had not been shown that 
 
 1 See the Digest of the Evidence of the Devon Commission, pt. i. 
 164-66.
 
 170 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. n. 
 
 tenants possessing long and beneficial leases .of the 
 lands had in general brought them to a high state of 
 improvement ; ' that, in fact, there was evidence ' that 
 lands let upon very long terms, and at very low rents, 
 were in a worse condition, and their occupiers even 
 more embarrassed, than others/ On the other hand, 
 they urged that cases of the confiscation of tenants' 
 improvements had occurred ; that a tenant at will or a 
 tenant with a very short lease was always liable to 
 them ; that ( a single instance occurring in a large dis- 
 trict would naturally paralyse exertion to an incalcula- 
 ble extent ; ' that the possibility and extreme facility of 
 such confiscation in the existing state of the law was a 
 gross injustice to the tenant, discouraged in the most 
 powerful manner a kind of investment which was na- 
 turally very profitable both to the tenant class and to 
 agriculture in general, and directly or indirectly con- 
 tributed largely to most of the social evils of Ireland. 
 They recommended, as of the highest importance to 
 Ireland, a law giving tenants in the future compensa- 
 tion for permanent and productive improvements, and 
 framed upon the following principles. Agreements 
 between landlord and tenant relative to such improve- 
 ments were to be duly registered, and, in cases where 
 it was found impossible to arrive at such agreement, 
 a tenant was to serve a notice on the landlord of his 
 intention to make suitable improvements. Mutually 
 chosen arbitrators were to report upon them, and the 
 assistant barrister, after such report, and after exami- 
 nation, was to certify the maximum cost, not exceed- 
 ing three years' rent. If the tenant was ejected, or if 
 his rent was raised within thirty years, the landlord 
 was to pay such a sum, not exceeding the maximum 
 fixed, as the work shall be then valued at. The im- 
 provements were to be completed within a limited time,
 
 CH. n. THE LAND ACT OF 1860 171 
 
 and the landlord was to have the option of making 
 them himself, charging 5 per cent, on the outlay. 1 
 
 A Government measure based on this report was in- 
 troduced by Lord Stanley, in a speech of great power, 
 in 1845, and by Lord Lincoln in 1846. In the first 
 ease it was abandoned in the face of very determined 
 opposition. In the second, it fell through on account 
 of the overthrow of the Government of Sir Robert 
 Peel, which had introduced it. Several attempts in 
 the same direction were made in the following years, 
 the most remarkable being the Bill of Mr. Napier, the 
 Irish Attorney-General of Lord Derby's Government, in 
 1852, which had a retrospective character applying to 
 all past improvements. None of these measures, how- 
 ever, ultimately succeeded, and the advice of the Devon 
 Commission was neglected. 
 
 Besides the question of improvements, it was clearly 
 recognised that something must be done to prevent the 
 too frequent evictions, or threatened evictions, and the 
 Land Act of 1860 did something in this direction. 
 This Act, which was passed by a Liberal Government, 
 affirmed in the clearest terms that the relations of land- 
 lord and tenant in Ireland rested solely ' on the express 
 or implied contract of the parties, and not upon tenure 
 or service ; ' but it at the same time provided that the 
 landlord could bring no ejectment for non-payment of 
 rent till a year's rent under the contract of tenancy 
 was in arrear ; and that, even after, the ejectment had 
 taken place, and the landlord was in possession of the 
 farm, the tenant might apply to the court for his rein- 
 statement if, within six months after his ejection, he 
 paid his rent and costs. A clause which appears to 
 
 1 Digest of the Evidence of the Devon Commission^ pt. ii. 1124- 
 1125.
 
 172 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 have been imitated from the French Civil Code 1 au- 
 thorised the tenant to remove ' all personal chattels, 
 engines, machinery, and buildings accessorial thereto 
 affixed to the freehold by the tenant at his own ex- 
 pense/ provided this could be done without injuring 
 the freehold as it existed when he first received it ; and 
 another clause established the right of the tenant to 
 cut turf, in the absence of any express agreement 
 to the contrary, on any unreclaimed turf bog on his 
 tenancy. It may be added, that Acts of the old Irish 
 Parliament had long since given the leaseholder a right 
 of property in the trees he had planted, provided they 
 were duly registered. 
 
 The very comprehensive and elaborate Act of 1870 
 vent much further, and it was inspired by an evident 
 desire to do justice to all parties ; though, in the vast 
 range of its provisions, there were some which have 
 proved prolific in dangerous consequences not, I believe, 
 clearly foreseen by its authors. One valuable portion 
 of the Act followed and extended the policy, which had 
 been adopted in the Church Act, of endeavouring to 
 create a peasant proprietary. It authorised advances 
 not exceeding two-thirds of the purchase money, and 
 repayable by an annuity of 5 per cent, in thirty-five 
 years, to any tenant who desired to purchase his hold- 
 ing. Another portion recognised, in the largest and 
 fullest terms, the right of the tenant to compensation 
 for his improvements, which are defined as works add- 
 ing to the letting value of the holding, and suitable to 
 it, and also to his crops and his unexhausted manure. 
 This right was not destroyed by an ejection for non- 
 payment of rent. It was not confined to improvements 
 made subsequent to the Act. With certain clearly 
 
 See Richey on The Irish Land Laws, pp. 50-51.
 
 CH. ii. THE LAND ACT OF 1870 173 
 
 defined exceptions, it applied to all improvements made 
 by the tenant or his predecessors in title. In the case 
 of permanent buildings and reclamation of waste land 
 there was no limit of time. In the case of other im- 
 provements there was a limit of twenty years. It was 
 enacted that improvements, except in certain specified 
 instances, should be deemed to have been made by 
 the tenant or his predecessors, unless the contrary had 
 been proved, thus reversing the old legal presumption 
 that whatever is added to the soil belongs to the land- 
 lord. Durable and written contracts and tenant-right 
 were encouraged by clauses limiting the improvements 
 for which a landlord was liable whenever he granted a 
 long lease, and permitting a departing tenant to dis- 
 pose of the interests of his improvements to an incom- 
 ing tenant on terms that were approved of by the 
 court. 
 
 The Ulster tenant-right or, in other words, the 
 right of a tenant to sell his interest in his farm re- 
 ceived the force of law, and it was extended to all parts 
 of Ireland. In Ulster the existing tenants had pur- 
 chased their tenant-right, and they only obtained legal 
 security for what was already theirs by usage. In the 
 other parts of Ireland a saleable property which they 
 had not bought was conferred upon them. One conse- 
 quence of this was, that the boon was a much greater 
 one to the first generation of tenants, who received it 
 as a gift, than it was likely to be to their successors, 
 who would in due course purchase their tenant-right. 
 Another consequence, which was probably not foreseen, 
 was that the tenants borrowed largely on their new se- 
 curity ; and it was from this time that the ' gombeen 
 man,' or.local usurer, obtained his great prominence in 
 Irish life. A provision, to which, I believe, there was 
 then no parallel in the legislation of the world, provid-
 
 174 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 ed that a tenant who had accepted a tenancy from year 
 to year could not be removed, except at a ruinous cost, 
 at the date at which his tenancy was terminable. Ex- 
 cept in case of non-payment of rent, bankruptcy, or 
 violation of specified conditions of tenancy, the land- 
 lord had no power of resuming possession of his land 
 without paying the tenant a fine for ' disturbance/ 
 which might, in some cases, amount to seven years' 
 rent. It will be observed that this ' disturbance ' was 
 not an illegal act. It was simply the enforcement by 
 the landlord of a plain and incontestable right secured 
 to him by the contract under which he freely parted 
 from his land. As Judge Longfield has observed, it 
 was possible for a landlord under this law to put a ten- 
 ant in possession as tenant from year to year, to leave 
 him in the enjoyment of it for five years, and then to 
 be obliged to pay him seven years' rent as a fine for 
 removing him from it. 1 This compensation was quite 
 distinct from that given for improvements in the shape 
 of permanent buildings or reclamation of the soil. A 
 landlord might, however, free himself from this claim 
 by giving a long lease. 
 
 The statesman who introduced the Act very clearly 
 stated that it was not intended to give the tenant at 
 will a proprietary right in his holding, but the provi- 
 sions relating to disturbance plainly and unquestion- 
 ably had this effect. Some faint and distant analogy 
 may be discovered between this legislation and the Eng- 
 lish tenure of copyhold, which grew out of tenancies 
 at will that had existed undisturbed in the same fa- 
 milies for many generations, and which the law at last 
 recognised as a permanent tenure, to be enjoyed by the 
 tenants and their heirs, subject to the conditions pre- 
 
 Sy stems of Land Tenure (Cobden Club), p. 78.
 
 OH. n. THE LAND ACT OF 1870 175 
 
 scribed by immemorial custom in the manor. The 
 Irish law, however, applied to the newest as well as to 
 the oldest tenancies. It was defended, partly on the 
 ground that usage in most parts of Ireland made a 
 yearly tenant secure that he would continue undis- 
 turbed in his tenancy as long as he paid his rent ; 
 partly as a measure intended to discourage the great 
 political evil of unnecessary evictions ; partly on the 
 ground that it was likely to be beneficial to both land- 
 lord and tenant, by giving the tenant strong additional 
 reasons for punctually observing the conditions of his 
 tenancy. It was said that it merely gave the tenant 
 of a bad landlord the security which the tenant of a 
 good landlord already enjoyed, and that, in the case of 
 small farmers, an increased stability of tenure would 
 be not only a great political advantage, but also a great 
 incentive to better agriculture. Even eviction for non- 
 payment of rent might be deemed a ' disturbance ' es- 
 tablishing a claim for compensation if, in the opinion 
 of the Land Court, the rent was an exorbitant one, or 
 if the arrears that were demanded had not wholly ac- 
 crued within the previous three years. The right of 
 compensation for disturbance applied to all tenancies 
 from year to year, or held on leases for less than thirty- 
 one years created after the Act had passed, and also to 
 all tenancies from year to year existing when the Act 
 was passed which were under the value of 100Z. a year. 
 The Legislature considered, with some reason, that 
 the smaller tenants were too poor to make their own 
 bargains. Agreements between landlord and tenant, 
 under which the latter gave up their rights to certain 
 privileges granted by the Act, were in a large number 
 of cases made null and void. These clauses prohibiting 
 grown-up men from making their own bargains have 
 been the fruitful parents of much later legislation.
 
 176 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 The principle passed into England in the Ground 
 Game Act of 1880, which made it impossible for an 
 English tenant to divest himself by agreement with the 
 landlord of the right of killing hares and rabbits ; and 
 a tendency to introduce the same principle of compul- 
 sion into the largest possible number of contracts 
 relating to land and trade seems fast becoming a dis- 
 tinctive feature of advanced English Liberalism. 
 
 The Irish Land Act of 1870, in its consequences, was 
 certainly one of the most important measures of the 
 present century. It appears to me to have been intro- 
 duced with much integrity of motive, and in many of 
 its parts it proved very beneficial. The recognition of 
 a tenant's right to the improvements he had made ; 
 the recognition of the Ulster tenant-right ; the en- 
 couragement given to the substitution of written leases 
 and contracts for the system of tenants at will ; the 
 measures taken to create a peasant proprietary, were 
 all marked with much wisdom. Capricious notices to 
 quit, or notices to quit given for the mere purpose of 
 accelerating the payment of rent, were discouraged by 
 the imposition of a stamp duty, and there was a useful 
 provision granting loans of public money for the re- 
 clamation of waste land. I cannot, however, reconcile 
 with the rights of property the retrospective clause 
 making a landlord liable for improvements made by 
 tenants at a time when no such liability was recognised 
 by law, and with a clear knowledge of that fact ; and 
 the clause giving a yearly tenant compensation for 
 simple disturbance if he was removed at the end of the 
 year seems to me essentially dishonest, and the germ of 
 much evil that followed. It was not altogether a new 
 importation into Irish politics. In 1866, Sir Colman 
 O'Loughlin brought in a Bill for discouraging annual 
 letting and precarious tenancies, and one of its clauses
 
 CH. n IMPROVEMENTS AND RENTS 177 
 
 gave compensation to a yearly tenant if he was ejected 
 for any other cause than nonpayment of rent. This 
 Bill was thrown out by a large majority. 1 
 
 It is probable that the Act of 1870 would have been 
 more successful if it had been less ambitious, and 
 had aimed at a smaller number of objects. The diffi- 
 culty, however, of the task was extremely great, and 
 much allowance must be made for the statesmen who 
 framed it. The two features of the old Irish land 
 system which made the position of the Irish tenant 
 most precarious were the general absence of leases, and 
 the custom of the tenant, not the landlord, making 
 most improvements. Neither of these points was, in 
 most cases, a matter of much dispute between landlord 
 and tenant. Those who are best acquainted with the 
 conditions of Irish land before the recent legislation 
 will, I believe, agree with me that the majority of 
 smaller tenants preferred a yearly tenancy, which was 
 rarely changed, to a definite lease, which usually in- 
 volved stricter covenants, and was likely when it ex- 
 pired to be followed by a revaluation and rise of rents ; 
 and that they preferred making their improvements in 
 their own economical, and generally slovenly, way, 
 rather than have them made in the English fashion by 
 the landlord, who compensates himself by adding a 
 percentage to the rent. If the rent is sufficiently low, 
 and the tenure sufficiently long to compensate the 
 tenant for his outlay, there is nothing in this system 
 that is unjust ; nor is it unjust that, after the tenant 
 has been so compensated, the land should be rented ac- 
 cording to its improved value. But it is easy to under- 
 stand how this custom strengthened that notion of the 
 joint ownership of the soil which had such a deep root 
 
 See Sir William Gregory's Autobiography ', p. 243. 
 vou i. 18
 
 178 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 among Irish ideas. In many of the poorer parts of 
 Ireland the cabin built by the peasant, the clearing of 
 stones, and the erecting of fences, constituted much 
 the greater part of the value of the farm. These little 
 farms of barren land were, indeed, essentially unsup- 
 porting. They furnished the small tenant with shel- 
 ter and with potatoes for his subsistence. His rent, 
 which was usually not more than about 4Z. a year, and 
 very irregularly paid, was earned sometimes by fishing, 
 more frequently as a migratory labourer, and often by 
 harvest-work in England or Scotland. 
 
 In the fertile districts the conditions were different 
 and very various. Probably the greater number of the 
 original improvements had been made under the old 
 system of very long leases at very low rents. In many 
 eases the erection of certain buildings was expressly 
 stipulated in the lease, and was one of the elements in_ 
 regulating the price. A great part of the cost of 
 drainage which has been made under Government 
 loans has been paid by the landlords, and in very many 
 cases they have contributed a proportion to the cost of 
 buildings ; but, as a general rule, the improvements 
 were made by the tenant, under the belief that he 
 would enjoy his tenancy for a sufficient time and at a 
 sufficiently low rent to compensate him for them. The 
 immense deterioration of Irish land through bad and 
 wasteful farming forms, however, a considerable offset 
 against these improvements. 
 
 That rents in Ireland before 1870 were not in general 
 extortionate, and were, indeed, much below the compe- 
 tition value, is abundantly proved. 1 It is proved by the 
 
 1 Comparisons between Irish and payment for improvements, 
 and British rents are apt to be The following passage, how- 
 very fallacious, on account of ever, from a pamphlet by one of 
 the different systems of farming the greatest modern authorities
 
 CH. ir. IRISH RENTS 179 
 
 fact that wherever tenant right was permitted this right 
 of occupation sold for a large sum ; by the fact that 
 wherever subletting was permitted the tenant almost 
 invariably let the whole, or portions of his tenancy, at 
 much higher rents than he paid. It is proved by the 
 evidence of men of the greatest authority on Irish 
 land, such as Judge Longfield and Master Fitzgibbon, 
 and by the direct testimony of the Bessborough Com- 
 mission in 1881, which, after a long and careful inves- 
 tigation, arrived at the conclusion that in Ireland it 
 was 'unusual to exact what in England would have 
 been considered as a full and fair commercial rent." 1 
 It is proved by comparison with English and with 
 foreign rents, and by the slow increase of Irish rents, 
 as compared both with the prices of the chief articles 
 of agricultural produce and with the increase of rents 
 in other parts of the kingdom. Arthur Young, in his 
 day, considered the rents paid in Ireland to the 
 
 on statistics, may be given :' Be- celui des terres des Flandres ' 
 fore the period of distress,' (ISIrlande, le Canada^ Jersey 
 writes Sir Edwin Chadwick in (1881), p. 138). 
 1886, ' the rents in Ireland ap- ' See Report of the Inquiry 
 peared to average 15s. an acre into the Working of the Land- 
 for tillage land (it is now de- lord and Tenant Act, 1870, p. 
 clared to be on an average un- 3 ; Judge Longfield's essay, in 
 der 10s.) ; in England, 23s. an the Cobden Club volume, on 
 acre. In Scotland, on inferior ' Systems of Land Tenure ; ' 
 tillage lands to those of Eng- ' Fitzgibbon's Ireland in 1868, 
 land, the rents were 40s. and pp. 268-70. Judge Longfield 
 more' (Chadwick's Alternative was for many years judge of 
 Remedies for Ireland-, p. 19). the Landed Estates Court, and 
 On the comparison between probably the first authority on 
 Irish and foreign rents I may land in Ireland. The authority 
 cite M. Molinari, one of the of Master Fitzgibbon is scarcely 
 most competent judges on the less, for as Master of Chan- 
 Continent. His conclusion is : eery he had for many years no 
 ' Le taux general des rentes est less than 452 estates, with more 
 modere ; autant que j'ai pu en than 18,000 tenants and a rental 
 juger, il est a qualite egale de of more than 330,000/., under 
 terrain, de moitie plus has que his jurisdiction.
 
 180 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. is. 
 
 owner of land unduly, and often absurdly, low ; and in 
 bringing in the Land Bill of 1870, Mr. Gladstone 
 stated that, in the ninety years that had elapsed since 
 Arthur Young wrote, the rents of Ireland had just 
 doubled, and, if Ulster were excluded, had much less 
 than doubled, while in ninety-eight years the rental of 
 England had trebled, and in ninety-nine years the 
 rental of Scotland had sextupled. 1 If we take a shorter 
 period, and a period of great prosperity, we shall come 
 to much the same conclusion. Mr. Caird, who is one 
 of the best modern authorities on agriculture, com- 
 puted that in the seven years before 1869 'the land 
 rental of England has risen 7 per cent., that of Scot- 
 land 8 per cent., while that of Ireland appears in the 
 same time to have advanced, from its lowest point, not 
 more than 5J per cent.' 2 Taking Ireland, indeed, as a 
 whole, it is probably the portion of the United King- 
 dom in which the benefit of the great rise in the price 
 of agricultural produce in the third quarter of the 
 nineteenth century has fallen most largely to the 
 labourers and tenants, and in the smallest degree to 
 the landlords. 3 
 
 But although it is not true that Irish rents were in 
 general unduly high, it is true that the position of the 
 great body of the Irish tenants was utterly precarious ; 
 that in three provinces of Ireland many causes had 
 conspired to break down the good feeling between 
 
 1 See Mr. Gladstone's pub- prices of the cattle and dairy 
 lished speech on introducing the products which Ireland pro- 
 Land Bill of 1870, pp. 26-27. duces ; ' and he adds : ' The 
 
 2 The Irish Land Question, farmer and the labourer to- 
 by James Caird (1869), p. 15. gether have, in fact, had all 
 
 3 Sir R. Giffen speaks of ' the the benefit of the rise in agri- 
 stationariness of rents in Ire- cultural prices ' (Progress of 
 land for a long period, notwith- the Working Classes in the last 
 standing the great rise in the Half -century).
 
 CH. II. IRISH RENTS 181 
 
 landlord and tenant which was essential to a sound 
 agrarian state ; and that cases of gross oppression and 
 extortion, though they were a small minority,, did 
 exist, and were not infrequent. Subletting, it is true, 
 had much diminished, and with it the chief cause of 
 extravagant rents. No fact is more clearly stamped 
 upon every page of Irish agrarian history than that men 
 of the farmer class have always been far harsher masters 
 than men of the gentleman class ; and in these latter 
 days there have been instances of tenants holding at 
 very moderate rents under the landlord, and actually 
 having their rents reduced by the Land Court, at the 
 very time when they were themselves extorting for 
 portions of the same land extreme rack rents from their 
 labourers. To no spot of the globe, indeed, is the 
 parable of the servant who, having been forgiven his 
 debt by his own master, exacted the last penny from 
 his fellow-servant, more applicable than to Ireland. 
 
 But among rents paid to the actual owner of the soil 
 two classes were often extortionate. There were small 
 properties in the hands of men of narrow means, either 
 of the trading or farming classes, and there were 
 tracts often extensive tracts which had been bought 
 by speculators under the Incumbered Estates Act, 
 usually with borrowed money. There were cases in 
 which the purchasers at once sought, by extensive 
 clearances and greatly raised rents, to recoup them- 
 selves for their outlay. In the sale of these estates the 
 tenants had usually been unprotected by lease. The 
 law under which the estates had been sold recognised 
 in them no right in their improvements, and rents 
 were sometimes raised, in estates which had derived 
 most of their value from recent tenants' improvements, 
 in a manner that was positively fraudulent. The pur- 
 chaser thought only of his legal rights. He knew
 
 182 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 nothing and lie cared nothing about the history of his 
 property. 1 Sometimes, too, on older estates, particular 
 farms might be found rented at a strangely higher rate 
 than those around them. The explanation is, usually, 
 that these rents had formerly been paid to a middle- 
 man, and had not been revised when the middleman 
 was removed. 
 
 The Act of 1870 had many merits, but it admitted, 
 as I believe, a dangerous and dishonest principle. The 
 Act of 1881 appears to me one of the most unquestion- 
 able, and indeed extreme, violations of the rights of 
 property in the whole history of English legislation. 
 In order to realise its character it is only necessary to 
 remember that before the legislation of Mr. Gladstone 
 the ownership of land in Ireland was, like that in 
 France and in America, as absolute and undisputed as 
 the ownership of a house, or a horse, or a yacht. The 
 Incumbered Estates Act, and all the proceedings con- 
 nected with it, brought this fact into the clearest re- 
 lief. It had been the policy of the Whig Government, 
 supported in its day by the loud applause of- the Li- 
 beral party, to place landed property in Ireland on the 
 strictest commercial basis. The measure was carried 
 in 1849, at a time when Ireland was reduced to the 
 lowest depths of misery by the great Famine, and when 
 the newly imposed poor law in many cases equalled, in 
 some cases even exceeded, the whole valuation income 
 of an estate, and it was pressed on by the Liberal party 
 with extreme harshness, to the ruin of countless land- 
 lords and creditors. 
 
 By this Act, at a time when Irish land had sunk to 
 a mere fraction of its normal value, the first incum- 
 
 1 See some good remarks on this subject by Sir W. Gregory, 
 Autobiography, pp. 157-59.
 
 CH. n. THE INCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 183 
 
 brancer of an estate, or any other creditor who believed 
 that the estate would fetch a price large enough to 
 meet the payment of his own demand, might force the 
 estate by a summary proceeding, and before a newly 
 constituted court, into the market, utterly regardless 
 of the interests of the other creditors and of the owner. 
 Every creditor except the petitioner who was forcing 
 the sale was at liberty to bid ; and even the petitioner, 
 by leave of the court (which was easily procured), 
 might become the purchaser of the depreciated pro- 
 perty. ' By this new process/ writes a very competent 
 lawyer, ' estates were sold to the amount of many mil- 
 lions, during the years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852, for 
 less than half their value, and less than half the prices 
 which the same estates would bring had the sale been 
 deferred till the end of 1863. Some of the most an- 
 cient and respected families in the country, whose es- 
 tates were not incumbered to much more than half 
 their value, were sold out and beggared ; thousands 
 of creditors whose demands would have been paid if 
 the sales had not been accelerated were not reached, 
 and lost the money which they had lent upon what was 
 ample security at the time it was lent, and would again 
 have become sufficient security had the property not 
 been ruined by the poor law and sold in that ruined 
 condition, in a glutted market, under an enactment 
 devised for the professed purpose of improving the con- 
 dition of Ireland. The law's delay, which in ordinary 
 circumstances is a grievance and a vexation, would 
 have had a salutary and a just effect in those calami- 
 tous times. There was no justice in exonerating the 
 early incumbrancers from all participation in the ef- 
 fects of the visitation which had come upon the coun- 
 try, and every feeling of humanity and every principle 
 of equity demanded temporary indulgence from them.
 
 184 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IL 
 
 There was cruel injustice in turning a destructive visi- 
 tation of Providence into an advantage to them which 
 they could not have had if the law had been left as it 
 stood when they made their contracts and took their 
 securities, and as it still stands in England.' ' 
 
 This measure, however, was at that time put forward 
 by the Whig party as the supreme remedy for the ills 
 of Ireland. It was pushed on against all remonstrances, 
 and with many insults to the broken and impoverished 
 landlords, who were now fast sinking into the shades of 
 night. Political economy, it was said, was vindicated, 
 and with a chorus of self-congratulation the "Whig 
 leaders proclaimed that Irish property was at last placed 
 on its true basis, that all feudal superstitions had been 
 effectually exorcised, and that a new and energetic class 
 of landlords would replace the old thriftless, apathetic 
 landlords of the past. During the last twenty-five 
 years the main object of the leaders of the Liberal 
 party has been to undo the work of 1849. 
 
 Let us now look at the Incurnbered Estates Act from 
 another side. The purchaser purchased from the Go- 
 vernment, and at the invitation of the Government, 
 the complete and absolute ownership of the estate, sub- 
 ject only to the existing contracts under which it had 
 been hired out to the tenants. He bought every acre 
 of the land, every stone of the buildings. If there 
 were improvements on the land, these improvements 
 were specifically mentioned in the printed advertise- 
 ments that were issued by the Land Court, and they 
 were sold to the purchaser by a judge who was ap- 
 pointed by the Government, and under the direct sanc- 
 tion of the Imperial Parliament. If the property was 
 let on very easy terms ; if the leases were soon to ex- 
 
 i Fitzgibbon's Ireland in 1868, p. 208.
 
 CH. ii. THE INCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 185 
 
 pire ; if there was a possibility of making a considera- 
 ble rise of rents, these facts were constantly put forward 
 by the court as inducements to the purchaser, and they 
 entered largely into the price which he gave. He was 
 guaranteed the complete and absolute possession of the 
 land and buildings on the termination of the tenancies 
 in the schedule, the full legal right of determining the 
 existing yearly tenancies. One of the special advan- 
 tages attributed to the Act was, that it was perfectly 
 clear ; that the title which it conferred was absolutely 
 indisputable. It was a parliamentary title, the highest 
 known to English law ; a security of the same kind 
 and of the same force as that by which the fundholder 
 or other Government creditor is guaranteed the interest 
 of his loan. Between 1849 and 1870 more than fifty- 
 two millions of pounds had been invested on this se- 
 curity in the purchase of Irish land. About an eighth 
 part of the soil of Ireland is said to be held under this 
 parliamentary title. 
 
 Let us now pass for a moment to the position of the 
 existing landlords as it is established by the legislation 
 of Mr. Gladstone. In the first place, the improvements 
 which had been purchased under the Incumbered Es- 
 tates Act have, by a naked act of confiscation, and 
 without the smallest compensation, been taken from 
 the purchaser, and are now the property of the tenant. 
 A great part of what the State had sold to him, and 
 what the State had guaranteed to him, is no longer his ; 
 and it has ceased to be his, not by an act of honest 
 purchase, but by an act of simple power. In the next 
 place, his clear and indisputable right to resume pos- 
 session of his land when the tenancies upon it had ex- 
 pired has been taken from him. The tenant who was 
 in possession when the Land Act was passed has ac- 
 quired fixity of tenure. Subject to the periodical re-
 
 186 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 vision of rents by the Land Court, and the fulfilment 
 of certain easy statutory conditions, he cannot be re- 
 moved unless the landlord should purchase from him, 
 by permission of the Land Court, and on conditions 
 which the court prescribes, that right of resuming pos- 
 session of his land which before the new Act was in- 
 disputably his own. The landlord has ceased to be the 
 owner. He has become merely a rent-charger. Again 
 and again in the debates of 1870, when the question of 
 fixity of tenure was raised, the leaders of the Liberal 
 party acknowledged the very obvious truth that such a 
 provision simply amounted to the transfer of the owner- 
 ship of the soil from the landlord to the tenant, and 
 that such a transfer could only be honestly effected by 
 paying for it in money. ' By such a provision,' said 
 Mr. Gladstone, ' the landlord will become a pensioner 
 and rent-charger upon what is now his own estate. The 
 Legislature has, no doubt, the perfect right to reduce 
 him to that condition, giving him proper compensation 
 for any loss he may sustain in money.' ' Inasmuch as 
 perpetuity of tenure on the part of the occupier is vir- 
 tually expropriation of the landlord, and as a mere re- 
 adjustment of rent according to the price of produce 
 can by no means dispose of all contingencies the future 
 may produce in his favour, compensation would have 
 to be paid to the landlord for the rights of which he 
 would be deprived.' 1 'I shall not go into argument 
 on that subject,' said Sir Roundell Palmer when speak- 
 ing of this proposal, ' because that point was exhausted 
 by the Head of the Government when he spoke of fixity 
 of tenure, which, in plain English, means taking away 
 the property of one man and giving it to another. My 
 
 1 Speech of Mr. Gladstone in Proposing the Irish Bill, Febru- 
 ary 15, 1870 (Murray).
 
 CH. n. 'FIXITY OF TENURE 187 
 
 right honourable friend said that, according to the 
 principles of justice, if we transferred property in that 
 way we must pay for it. No doubt we may take a 
 man's property, but in that case we must compensate 
 him for it/ l 
 
 These principles appear to me perfectly true, and in- 
 deed self-evident ; but they did not prevent the legis- 
 lators of 1881 conferring fixity of tenure on the present 
 tenant without granting compensation to the landlord, 
 and from that time the first principle of much reason- 
 ing in Parliament about Irish land has been that it is a 
 dual ownership ; that the landlord is nothing more 
 than a partner, or, as it is now the fashion to say, ' a 
 sleeping partner,' in a joint possession, whose interests 
 in every question of dispute should be systematically 
 subordinated to those of the other partner. And this 
 phraseology represents with much truth the position 
 which the holders of land under parliamentary or other 
 title in Ireland now hold. 
 
 In the last place, the Legislature has deprived the 
 landlord of the plainest and most inseparable rights of 
 ownership the power of making contracts, offering 
 his farms at the market price ; selecting his tenants ; 
 prescribing the period and the terms for which he will 
 let his land. A court is established with an absolute 
 power of deciding the amount of rent which the tenant 
 is to pay, and the landlord has no option of refusing, 
 or seeking another tenant. It is often argued that the 
 reduction enforced by the Land Courts is, on an average, 
 somewhat less than that which has taken place in Eng- 
 land, and that the Irish landlord has, in consequence, 
 no reason to complain. There is, however, a great dif- 
 ference between a country which is mainly pasture and 
 
 1 Hansard, cxix. 1666.
 
 188 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 a country which is in a large degree wheat-growing ; 
 between a country where farms are constantly thrown 
 into the hands of the landlord, as no tenant will take 
 them, and a country where the average price of tenant- 
 right is more than ten years' purchase of the existing 
 rental. There is also a clear difference between a re- 
 duction imposed by an act of mere power, and a reduc- 
 tion which is the result of the free bargaining of two 
 contracting parties. 
 
 It might have been supposed that a legislature, in 
 conferring this tremendous power upon a new court, 
 would take great care at least to minimise its injustice 
 by strictly denning the principles on which it was to act, 
 and insisting that the reasons for its decisions should be 
 clearly and fully given. Mr. Gladstone, however, with 
 great skill, succeeded in persuading Parliament to ab- 
 stain from giving any definition or any approximation 
 to a definition of a fair rent, leaving this matter com- 
 pletely, or almost completely, to the arbitrary and un- 
 regulated action of the court. The single exception 
 was a provision that no rent must be allowed for improve- 
 ments made either by the tenant or by his predecessor in 
 title. The one real test of the value of a thing is what 
 men are prepared to give for it, and this market test was 
 absolutely excluded from the valuation. Another pos- 
 sible test was the long continuance of the existing rent. 
 The Bessborough Commission, which laid the founda- 
 tion of the Act of 1881, proposed ' that a rent which 
 was paid at any time within the last twenty years, and 
 which continued for not less than ten years to be regu- 
 larly paid/ should be always assumed to be a fair rent, 
 unless the conditions had altered to the detriment of 
 the tenant. Another proposal was, that rents should 
 be deemed fair, and should be exempted from the juris- 
 diction of the court, if they had not been raised during
 
 CH. II. THE REGULATION OF RENTS 189 
 
 the preceding twenty years. In spite of the great and 
 almost unparalleled increase of prosperity in Ireland 
 during that period, it appears that this proposal would 
 have applied to no less than 4,700,000 acres of Irish 
 soil. 1 
 
 Both of these proposals, however, were rejected. 
 Many rents were reduced which had been paid without 
 a murmur for thirty or forty years, and in spite of clear 
 evidence that the chief articles of Irish agricultural pro- 
 duce had during that period largely risen, and that the 
 opening of new markets and the improvement of commu- 
 nications had materially added to the value of the farms. 2 
 Many rents were reduced although it was shown that, 
 within the last few years, the right of occupying the 
 farms at these rents had been purchased by the tenant 
 at a large sum under the Act of 1870. 3 The decisions 
 were virtually and mainly in the hands of the sub-com- 
 missioners, who were to a large extent young barristers 
 and county attorneys ; many of them with scarcely any 
 previous knowledge of land, or of the conditions of ag- 
 riculture in the province in which they were adjudi- 
 cating. They were sent to their task or, as one of 
 the ablest of them expressed himself, ' let loose upon 
 property ' without any instructions ; 4 and they usually 
 gave their decisions without assigning any reasons. It 
 was clearly understood that their business was to re- 
 duce, and not to regulate, rents. Their popularity or 
 unpopularity depended on the amount of their reduc- 
 tions, and they knew that the wildest expectations were 
 excited. One of the great perplexities of the lawyers 
 
 1 See the speech of the Right port of the Committee of the 
 Hon. E. Gibson on the second House of Lords on the Land Act, 
 reading, April 5, 1881. 1883, p. 18; see, too, p. 101. 
 
 2 See on this subject the strik- 3 Ibid. pp. 17, 43 
 ing evidence in the Third Re- Ibid. pp. 104, 132.
 
 190 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 who practised before them arose from the extreme diffi- 
 culty of discovering the principle or reasoning on which 
 they acted. One fact, however, which was clearly shown 
 was, that the artificial depreciation of land arising from 
 agrarian agitation and outrage entered largely into their 
 estimate. 1 It would be impossible to conceive a greater 
 encouragement to such agitation ; while the landlords 
 were fined by the Government because the Govern- 
 ment had failed to discharge adequately its elementary 
 duty of suppressing anarchy and securing property. A 
 hasty visit to the farms was made, and rents were set- 
 tled according to their present condition. In this way, 
 in a country where farming was already deplorably 
 backward, slovenly and wasteful farming received a 
 special encouragement in the form of the greatest re- 
 duction of rents. 
 
 It is not surprising that such decisions carried with 
 them little moral weight. When complaints were 
 made, the ministers dilated on the indecency of ques- 
 tioning ' judicial decisions ; ' as if such arbitrary pro- 
 ceedings as I have described bore any real resemblance 
 to the judgments of a law court, where a judge is 
 guided at every step by the clearly defined provisions 
 of the law, and where his task is simply to decide 
 or explain its relations to the facts that are before 
 him. It may be observed, too, that while competition 
 for rents was extinguished by the law, and rentals 
 greatly reduced, the competition for tenant-right was 
 practically unrestrained, and the price of tenant-right 
 rapidly rose. 2 There could be no- better proof that the 
 
 1 Third Report of the Com- tion, addressed to H. M.'s Mi- 
 
 mittee of the House of Lords on nisters, February 3, 1888, p. 23, 
 
 the Land Act, 1883, p. 86. and the reply to the Report of 
 
 a For full statistics on this the Land Acts Committee of 
 
 subject, see the Statements of 1894, pp. 102-13. 
 the Irish Landowners' Conven-
 
 CH. ii. OPINION OF MILL 191 
 
 reductions did not represent the real market deprecia- 
 tion of value, but were in a large degree simply the 
 transfer of property from one class to another. 
 
 I have no wish to put forward any extreme or ex- 
 aggerated view of the sanctity of landed property. In 
 my own opinion, the Legislature has a perfect right, if 
 the public welfare requires it, to take possession of all 
 such property, and to sell or hire it on such terms as 
 it pleases, on the single condition of giving full com- 
 pensation to the owners. The recommendation of Mill, 
 that Irish landlords should be altogether expropriated, 
 receiving full compensation, seems to me very doubtful 
 in point of policy, but in no degree objectionable in 
 point of principle. Mill will certainly not be suspect- 
 ed of any undue leaning towards landowners, but his 
 doctrine differs little, if at all, from that which I 
 am maintaining. ' The claim of the landowners/ he 
 writes, ' is altogether subordinate to the general policy 
 of the State. The principle of property gives them no 
 right to the land, but only a right to compensation for 
 whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be 
 the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that 
 their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners, 
 and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as 
 such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed 
 of it without receiving its full pecuniary value, or an 
 annual income equal to what they derived from it. 
 . . . When the property is of a kind to which peculiar 
 affections attach themselves, the compensation ought 
 to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent. . . . The Le- 
 gislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole 
 body of landlords into f undowners or pensioners, might, 
 a fortiori, commute the average receipts of Irish land- 
 owners into a fixed rent charge, and raise the tenants 
 into proprietors, supposing always (without which
 
 192 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. u. 
 
 these acts would be nothing better than robbery) that 
 the full market value of the land was tendered to the 
 landlords in case they preferred that to accepting the 
 conditions proposed/ * 
 
 I should myself state the claims of the landlord in 
 somewhat different terms. As much land in these 
 islands is held in trust, it seems to me that the Govern- 
 ment, if it deprives the landlord, for purposes of pub- 
 lic policy, of the whole or a portion of his property, 
 is bound in equity to compensate him by such a sum as 
 would produce, if invested in a trust fund, an income 
 equal to that of which he was deprived. 
 
 The course which was pursued by the British Le- 
 gislature towards Irish land was different, and if the 
 terms ' honesty ' and ' dishonesty ' apply to the acts of 
 Parliaments or Governments as truly as to individuals, 
 it was distinctly and grossly dishonest. Under the 
 Constitution of the United States, the greater part of 
 this legislation, being a direct violation of contract, 
 would have been beyond the competence of the States. 
 Nor is there, I believe, anything in the legislation of 
 the great European countries that is parallel to it. It 
 has been described by one of the best continental 
 writers upon government as an attack on the principle 
 of property more radical than any measure of the 
 French Eevolution, or even of the Eeign of Terror. 2 It 
 
 1 Political Economy, Book ii. on ne pent guere aller plus loin ' 
 
 chap. ii. 6. (Laveleye, Le Gouvernement et 
 
 *'Les lois agraires que M. la Democratic, i. 31-32). M. 
 
 Gladstone a fait voter pour 1'Ir- Leon Say cites recent Irish agra- 
 
 lande et que 1'on trouve deja in- rian legislation as the most strik- 
 
 suffisantes portent au principe ing modern instance of State 
 
 de la propriete et du libre con- Socialism (Socialisme cTEtat, 
 
 trat une atteinte plus radicale p. 7) See, too, the remarks of 
 
 que ne 1'ont fait la revolution M. Stocquart, Revue de Droit 
 
 franchise et me'me la Terreur. International, xxvii. 14:5. 
 ... A moins de confiscation
 
 en. n. ANTICIPATIONS OF MINISTERS 193 
 
 is, indeed, much less like ordinary legislation than like 
 extraordinary legislation of the nature of Acts of at- 
 tainder or confiscation. There is, it is true, one ma- 
 terial difference. Acts -of attainder are usually passed 
 for the purpose of confiscating the property of men 
 who have been guilty of treason or rebellion. As the 
 Parnell Commission abundantly showed, the true crime 
 of the Irish landlords was their loyalty. It was for 
 the avowed purpose of ruining and driving from the 
 country ( the English garrison ' that the Fenian party 
 organised the agrarian agitation that led to the legisla- 
 tion of 1881. 
 
 The Bill was defended by some very serious states- 
 men on the ground of necessity. A gigantic agrarian 
 conspiracy, including the bulk of the Irish peasantry, 
 the great transfer of political power that had taken 
 place in Ireland under English legislation, and an 
 acute and protracted agricultural crisis, produced by 
 bad seasons and wretched prices, had, they said, brought 
 Ireland into a state in which some such measure was 
 inevitable. It must be added that its character and 
 effects were much misunderstood. It was believed 
 that the free sale clause, which enabled a tenant who 
 was in difficulties to sell his tenant-right to a solvent 
 farmer, and, after paying all debts, to emigrate or set 
 up business with a substantial capital, would operate 
 to the great advantage of all parties. It would, it was 
 thought, give the broken tenant a new start, secure 
 the rent of the landlord, put an end to all necessity 
 for evictions, and at the same time attract farmers of 
 energy and industry ; and it was not foreseen how 
 completely it could be paralysed by violence and intimi- 
 dation. 
 
 It is also tolerably certain that a considerable num- 
 ber, at least, of the most important ministers never 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n, 
 
 anticipated that the provisions for settling rents by the 
 authority of the court would be applied to the bulk of 
 Irish tenancies, or made use of to create a new level of 
 rental. It would, they believed, simply reduce to the 
 general average those exceptional and extortionate 
 rents which, in every county, undoubtedly existed. 
 If it had not been for the assurances to this effect 
 given by the ministers, it is very improbable that the 
 Bill would have passed. ' My view/ said Mr. Bright, 
 ' is, that in reality the rents in Ireland will for the 
 most part, in nine cases out of ten, be fixed very much 
 as they are now.' 1 'The Government/ said the At- 
 torney-General for Ireland, ( did not admit that there 
 would be any loss to the landlord, except the loss of a 
 power which he ought not to exercise/ 2 'I deny/ 
 said the English Chancellor, ' that it [the Bill] will, 
 in any degree whatever, diminish the rights of the 
 landlord, or the value of the interest he possesses/ 3 
 ' I think/ said Mr. Forster, ' the final result of the 
 measure within a few years will be, that the land- 
 owners of Ireland, small and large, will be better off 
 than they are at this moment.' 4 It was believed that 
 rents would be often raised as well as often lowered, 
 that the tenants who were moderately rented would, in 
 consequence, abstain from going into the court, and 
 that the Act would in practice apply only to a small 
 number of over-rented tenancies. Lord Carlingford, 
 who spoke with especial authority on all Irish ques- 
 tions, and who took the chief part in carrying the 
 measure through the House of Lords, was very ex- 
 plicit. ' My lords/ he said, ' I maintain that the pro- 
 visions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money 
 
 1 Hansard, cclxi. 103. * Ibid, cclxir. 532. 
 
 * Ibid, cclxi. 1379. * Ibid, cclxiii. 1685.
 
 CH. ii. POLICY OF MR. GLADSTONE 195 
 
 loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them 
 no loss of income, except in those cases in which a 
 certain number of landlords may have imposed upon 
 their tenants excessive and inequitable rents, which 
 they are probably vainly trying to recover/ l 
 
 I am far from presuming to fathom the true mean- 
 ing or design of the statesman who is chiefly re- 
 sponsible for this legislation. In introducing the Bill 
 of 1870, with its dangerous principle of compensation 
 for disturbance, Mr. Gladstone had specially and re- 
 peatedly maintained that he was conferring a benefit 
 upon the owners as well as the occupiers of the soil. 
 He deplored the fact that the selling value of Irish land 
 was much lower than that of British land, and pre- 
 dicted that the effects of his legislation would make it 
 ' not merely worth twenty or twenty-five years' pur- 
 chase, but would raise it altogether, or very nearly, to 
 the value of English or Scotch land/ 2 In 1881 he 
 used similar language. When introducing a measure 
 establishing fixity of tenure he was confronted with 
 his own very plain words in 1870, which I have al- 
 ready quoted, about the confiscatory character of such 
 a measure ; but it was not difficult for so supreme a 
 master of the art of evasion to extricate himself from' 
 his difficulty. He skilfully met the demands for com- 
 pensation for property and legal rights that were 
 clearly taken away by alleging that he was not injuring, 
 but, on the contrary, benefiting the landowner. In 
 many cases, he said, the probable effect of the Bill 
 would be to raise rents ; and although fie would not 
 say ' whether the action of the court in fixing a ju- 
 dicial rent may not, on the whole, lower the rents 
 rather than raise them in the first operation/ he was 
 
 Hansard^ ccbdy. 252. Ibid. cc. 1263.
 
 196 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 convinced that the increased value of land derived 
 from the greater solidity of the social state which he 
 was bringing about would speedily ' repay the landlord 
 for any incidental mischief of the Act twofold or 
 threefold.' 1 As was his usual custom on such occa- 
 sions, he pitched his tone very high, and appealed in 
 noble language to the loftiest motives. < Justice, sir, 
 is to be our guide ; and as it has been said that love is 
 stronger than death, even so justice is stronger than 
 popular excitement, stronger than the passions of the 
 moment, stronger even than the grudges, the re- 
 sentments, and the sad traditions of the past. Walk- 
 ing in that light, we cannot err. Guided by that 
 light the Divine Light we are safe/ 
 
 Probably no one who was present when, with uplifted 
 eyes, and saintly aspect, and exquisitely modulated in- 
 tonation, the great speaker poured out these sonorous 
 sentences, predicted that in a few short years he would 
 identify himself with the men whom he had truly de- 
 scribed as preaching ' the doctrine of public plunder ; ' 
 demoralising a people by ' teaching them to make the 
 property of their neighbour the objects of their cove- 
 tous desire ; ' attempting to substitute ' an anarchical 
 oppression ' for the authority of law ; making rapine 
 their first object ; seeking ' to march through rapine 
 to the dismemberment of the Empire ; ' destroying the 
 peace of life ; aiming at ' the servitude of good men, 
 the impunity and supremacy of bad men/ Few per- 
 sons could have imagined that this virtuous statesman 
 would soon be endeavouring to place the government 
 of Ireland in the hands of those who were guilty of 
 such things ; that he would be employing all the re- 
 
 1 Hansard, cclxiii. 1696-97. of the Land Law, February 
 See on this subject an excellent 1882, published by the Irish 
 , amphlet, called The Working Land Committee.
 
 CH. ii. THE ACT OF 1881 197 
 
 sources of his matchless dialectic to attenuate their 
 misdeeds ; that he would denounce as coercion mea- 
 sures for the enforcement of the criminal law against 
 the most merciless of oppressions, which were largely 
 copied from his own legislation ; that he would spend 
 the evening of his long and brilliant public life in in- 
 flaming class animosities and reviving the almost ex- 
 tinct embers of provincial jealousies. It is perhaps 
 somewhat less surprising that the Irish landlords con- 
 tinued to be attacked just as if the Acts of 1870 and 
 1881 had never been carried, and as if capricious evic- 
 tions and rack-rents had not been rendered impossible. 
 The Act was, indeed, as far as possible from appeas- 
 ing Ireland. Probably the worst period of the land 
 agitation followed its enactment, and hopes of plunder 
 were excited to the utmost, while falling prices and 
 ever-deepening agricultural distress vastly aggravated 
 the crisis. The stability which was supposed to have 
 been given by the Act of 1881 had been represented 
 as one of its great merits ; but every year the cry for 
 revising it acquired fresh force, and after the utter 
 political demoralisation that followed the apostasy of 
 1886, when the main section of the Liberal party pur- 
 chased the votes by adopting the policy of the National 
 League, this cry became probably irresistible. Some 
 of those who had consented to the Act of 1881 now 
 looked with consternation at their work. ' I would 
 rather have cut off my hand/ said Lord Selborne, ' than 
 been a party to the measure of 1881, giving the House 
 the reasons and assurances which I then gave, if I had 
 known that within five years after its passing it would 
 have been thrown over by its authors, and that the 
 course they had now taken would have been entered on/ 1 
 
 1 Hansard^ cccxix. 18,
 
 198 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IL 
 
 The Land Act of 1887, however, which reopened the 
 settlement, was carried by a Unionist Government, and 
 it again lowered rents which only four or five years be- 
 fore had been judicially fixed. It was said that the 
 State, having undertaken to regulate rents, could not 
 remain passive when prices had so greatly fallen, and 
 that the political condition of the country imperatively 
 demanded its intervention. It is true that, under the 
 Act of 1881, the State, while reducing the rents of the 
 Irish landlords, had guaranteed those reduced rents for 
 fifteen years. 1 It was a distinct, formal promise, rest- 
 ing on the national faith and on the authority of the 
 Imperial Parliament. The promise was broken, but it 
 was asked whether this was in truth a very different 
 thing from what had already been done in 1881, when 
 parliamentary and hereditary titles had been torn into 
 shreds. The existing leaseholders were at the same 
 time brought, for the first time, within the provisions 
 of the clause for reducing rents. Mr. Gladstone 
 had refused to do this in 1881 ; but it was said that it 
 was intolerable that the flower of the Irish tenantry 
 should alone be excluded from benefits which all other 
 tenants so abundantly enjoyed, and that there was lit- 
 tle chance of conciliating the Irish farmers if their 
 leading and most intelligent members were left embit- 
 tered by an exceptional disability. 
 
 The force of this argument is incontestable, but the 
 gravity of the step that was taken is not less so. One 
 great object, as we have seen, of the Act of 1870 had 
 been to induce landlords to grant leases by giving them 
 an assurance that they would in this way place them- 
 selves beyond the many entanglements and penal 
 
 1 ' An alteration of judicial rent shall not take place at less in 
 tervals than fifteen years ' (Sect. viii.).
 
 CH. It THE LAND ACT OF 1887 199 
 
 clauses of the new legislation. No one could pretend 
 either that the Irish leaseholders were a helpless class, 
 incapable of making their own bargains, or that their 
 position rested on any other foundation than a distinct 
 written contract. They were the most substantial and 
 intelligent farmers of Ireland. The lease which regu- 
 lated their tenancies was a fully recognised legal docu- 
 ment, bearing the Government stamp, carrying with it 
 all the authority and protection that English law could 
 give. Its first clause was, usually, that at the expiry 
 of the assigned term the tenant should hand back the 
 land to its owner. This provision had been already 
 torn to pieces* by the Act of 1881, which provided that 
 in cases of all leases of less than sixty years the tenant, 
 at the expiry of the lease, if resident on his farm, need 
 not hand it back according to his contract, but should 
 remain a ' present tenant/ with all the rights of perma- 
 nent occupancy attaching to that position. 1 The next 
 clause stipulated in very explicit terms the rent in con- 
 sideration of which the landlord had, in the exercise of 
 his full legal rights, hired out his farm. This also was 
 broken, and the leaseholder had now the right of bring- 
 ing his landlord into a court where, as the result of 
 proceedings which always brought with them heavy 
 legal costs to the landlord, the rent was authoritatively 
 and judicially reduced. 
 
 It will be observed that the State did not in this 
 matter annul or dissolve a legal contract, leaving the 
 two parties free to make fresh arrangements. It left 
 
 1 There was an exception in the lease of A. B., in whose 
 
 case of bon&-fide reversionary hands it now was, this arrange- 
 
 leases made before the law had ment was suffered to stand, 
 
 passed ; e.g., if the landlord had See Kisbey On the Land Act of 
 
 already granted to C- D. the 1881, pp. 64-65. 
 lease of a farm on the expiry of
 
 200 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 one party wholly bound by the terms of the contract ; 
 it contented itself with releasing the other ; and, it 
 need scarcely be added, it did this without granting 
 the smallest compensation to the defrauded partner. 
 There were other provisions, into which I need not 
 enter, diminishing the few remaining powers of the 
 landlord of recovering rent, and somewhat improving 
 the position of the ordinary tenant. The Act was de- 
 scribed by a leading Unionist statesman as ' the most 
 generous boon ' ever conferred by the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment on the Irish tenant. This ' generosity * which 
 impels legislators, without the smallest^ sacrifice to 
 themselves, to seek to conciliate one class by handing 
 over to them the property of another is likely to be a. 
 growing virtue in English politics. 
 
 "We can hardly, indeed, have a better example of the 
 manner in which a subversive principle, once admitted 
 into politics, will grow and strengthen till it acquires 
 an irresistible power. When the principle of com- 
 pensation for disturbance was introduced into the mea- 
 sure of 1870, it was carefully explained that this was 
 not intended to invalidate in any degree the indis- 
 putable title of the landlord to the sole ownership of 
 his property ; that it was intended to be strictly li- 
 mited in its application ; that it was essentially a mea- 
 sure for the maintenance of public order ; that its only 
 object was to make a few bad landlords do what all 
 good landlords were already doing ; that it was certain 
 to be as beneficial to the landlord as to the tenant 
 class. Probably, few persons clearly foresaw that it 
 was the first step of a vast transfer of property, and 
 that in a few years it would become customary for 
 ministers of the Crown to base all their legislation on 
 the doctrine that Irish land was not an undivided 
 ownership, but a simple partnership.
 
 OH. ii. CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION 201 
 
 As might be expected, the Irish landlords claimed 
 compensation for property that was manifestly confis- 
 cated, for vested and reversionary interests and clearly 
 recognised legal rights which, for reasons of public 
 policy, had been taken away. In an eminently mode- 
 rate and closely reasoned statement they showed how 
 invariably and rigorously the Imperial Parliament, fol- 
 lowing the general custom of civilised communities, 
 had itself recognised this right, and imposed the obli- 
 gation of compensation on all public bodies, companies, 
 and individuals to whom it had granted a compulsory 
 power of acquiring or interfering with property or 
 vested interests. They suggested especially two forms 
 of compensation. One of them was the reduction of 
 the tithe rent-charge which was paid to the Govern- 
 ment by the landlord. They strengthened their case 
 by reminding the ministers that before 1872 the tithe 
 rent-charge could be revised every seven years, accord- 
 ing to the price of corn, which was then much higher 
 than at the time they wrote ; that before 1838 the 
 tithe was paid by the occupier, and not by the owner, 
 and that the duty of paying it, or, as it was then said, 
 collecting it, was transferred in that year to the land- 
 lord, on the understanding that he could recoup him- 
 self in the rent. This rent was now arbitrarily reduced, 
 and the landlord had lost all power over it. 
 
 The other suggestion was, that Government might 
 lend money at low interest to pay off the heavy charges 
 which rested on Irish land, arid which had been incurred 
 on the faith of legal rights that were now destroyed. 
 Great sums had been already advanced in Ireland for 
 public purposes on such terms, and it was noticed that 
 this policy had very recently been adopted in Russia 
 to relieve the embarrassments of the Russian landlords. 
 As the normal rate of interest on charges on Irish
 
 202 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 property was little, if at all, below 5 per cent., and as, 
 with Imperial credit, State loans might be granted at 
 an annuity not exceeding 3| per cent., repaying capital 
 and interest in about sixty-five and a half years, this 
 measure would have very materially lightened the bur- 
 den, and probably saved many landlords and many 
 creditors from ruin. 1 
 
 Such proposals, however, never had the least chance 
 of being accepted. It was certain that the Liberal 
 party, which now depended on the National League, 
 would be steadily opposed to them, and it was quite 
 powerful enough to prevent them. There was, indeed, 
 a melancholy unreality about all such discussions. The 
 two parties moved on different planes. Arguments of 
 justice, precedents, clear statements by Liberal leaders, 
 were put forward by the representatives of the Irish 
 landlords, but every politician knew in his heart that 
 the real question was one of votes and power, and po- 
 litical power had passed away from the Irish landlords. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow this story any further, 
 and to describe the almost annual attempts that have 
 been made to grant, through political pressure, to the 
 occupying class in Ireland a larger share of the proper- 
 ty of the nominal owners. It cannot be denied that 
 this legislation has redressed some hard cases and bene- 
 fited a large number of tenants ; and as few men look 
 beyond immediate consequences, or rightly estimate 
 those which are indirect and remote, this fact is accept- 
 ed by many as its justification. For my own part, I 
 believe that it will one day be found that the evils result- 
 ing from this policy have greatly outweighed its bene- 
 fits, and that they will fall far more heavily on another 
 
 1 Statement submitted on the part of the Irish Landowners' 
 Convention to Her Majesty's ministers, February 3, 1888.
 
 CH. ii. EFFECTS OF THE LAND LAWS 203 
 
 class than on the small class which was directly injured. 
 In a poor country, where increased capital, improved* 
 credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it 
 has shaken to the very basis the idea of the sanctity 
 and obligation of contract ; made it almost impossible 
 to borrow any considerable sum on Irish land ; effectu- 
 ally stopped the influx of English gold ; paralysed or 
 prevented nearly all industrial undertakings, stretching 
 into a distant future. It has reacted powerfully upon 
 trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the Irish 
 towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ire- 
 land from the improvement of the soil, as the landlord 
 can have no further inducement or obligation to spend 
 money on his estate. In combination also with the 
 Home Kule movement it has driven much capital out 
 of the land. Probably only a small portion of the 
 money which is now received for the sale of land undei 
 the Government Acts is invested in Ireland. Prudent 
 men have learned the wisdom of placing their savings, 
 and at least a portion of their realised property, outside 
 a country where the dominant political influences are 
 on the side of dishonesty ; where the repudiation of 
 debts and the intimidation of creditors have become 
 leading features of popular politics ; where the protec- 
 tion of property and the administration of justice may 
 one day fall into the hands of the authors of the ' No 
 Rent Manifesto ' and of the Plan of Campaign. 
 
 Under such conditions, the difficulty of establishing 
 any system of safe and honest self-government has been 
 immensely aggravated. Ireland must indeed be greatly 
 changed if the withdrawal from her country districts 
 of the presence and influence of her most educated 
 class proves a real benefit ; if local institutions are 
 more wisely and honestly administered by passing from 
 the hands of country gentlemen into the hands of the
 
 204 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 professional politician ; if the labourer and smaller te- 
 'nant find it to their advantage to be more directly under 
 the power of farmers, gombeen men, and local attor- 
 neys. Fair rents and free sale, as has been often ob- 
 served, are mutually destructive, and after a few sales 
 the burden of interest paid to the money-lender will be 
 far heavier than the rent which was taken from the 
 landlord ; while the conflict between the farmer and 
 the labourer is likely to reproduce in an aggravated 
 form the conflict between the landlord and the farmer. 
 
 Three things, indeed, may be confidently asserted 
 about Irish rents. The first is, that it has never been 
 the custom of the great body of Irish landlords to exact 
 the full competitive rents from their tenants, although 
 a considerable minority have done so. The second is, 
 that it has been the invariable practice of Irish tenants, 
 in selling to one another their tenant-right and in sub- 
 letting plots of ground to their labourers, to demand 
 the full competitive price. The third is, that in order 
 to make the system of what is practically rack-rent 
 general, no better way could be devised than the recent 
 land legislation. If you give the tenant fixity of tenure 
 at a judicially fixed rent which is considerably below 
 the market price, and at the same time give him a 
 practically unlimited power of selling his tenancy with 
 no restriction of price, the result must be two rents 
 one paid to the landlord, the other paid to the money- 
 lender in the shape of interest on the money borrowed 
 to purchase the tenant-right. And these two combined 
 will represent the extreme value of the land. 
 
 The moral effects on the Irish people of the land 
 legislation and of the agitation that produced it have 
 been still more pernicious. If we ask what are the 
 chief services that a Government can render to nation- 
 al morals, we shall probably obtain different answers.
 
 CH. ii. EFFECTS OF THE LAND LAWS 205 
 
 Some men will place the greatest stress on the establish- 
 ment by the State of the religion which they believe 
 to be true ; on the infusion into national education of 
 a large measure of religious teaching ; on laws restrain- 
 ing private vices or controlling trades, institutions, or 
 amusements that may produce them. On all these 
 points there may be much controversy about the true 
 province of the State, and there is probably much ex- 
 aggeration about the good that it can do. To me, at 
 least, the first and greatest service a Government can 
 render to morals seems to be the maintenance of a so- 
 cial organisation in which the path of duty and the 
 path of interest as much as possible coincide ; in which 
 honesty, industry, providence, and public spirit natu- 
 rally reap their rewards, and the opposite vices their 
 punishment. No worse lesson can be taught a nation 
 than that violence, intimidation, conspiracy, and sys- 
 tematic refusal to pay debts are the natural means of 
 rising to political power and obtaining legislative con- 
 cessions. No worse habit can be implanted in a nation 
 than that of looking for prosperity to politics rather 
 than to industry, and forming contracts and incurring 
 debts with the belief that a turn of the political wheel 
 may make it possible to cancel them. 
 
 It is, indeed, a curious and melancholy study to trace 
 the effects of recent legislation on different classes in 
 Ireland. The landlords who have suffered least have 
 probably been those who simplified their properties by 
 the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that too 
 often followed the Famine. Next in the scale came 
 those who exacted extreme rack-rents from their te- 
 nants. Those rents had been received for many years, 
 and though they were ultimately more reduced than 
 rents which had always been low, they still, in innu- 
 merable cases, remained somewhat higher than the
 
 206 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 others. The large class who regarded land simply as a 
 source of revenue, and, without doing anything harsh, 
 or extortionate, or unjust, took 110 part or interest in 
 its management, have suffered very moderately. It is 
 the improving landlord, who took a real interest in his 
 estate, who sank large sums in draining and other pur- 
 poses of improvement, who exercised a constant and 
 beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered 
 most by the legislation that reduced him to a mere 
 powerless rent-charger, and in most cases rendered the 
 sums he had expended an absolute loss. As I have al- 
 ready noticed, the careless and slovenly farmer had his 
 rent more reduced than the farmer who, by good culti- 
 vation, had maintained his farm at its full value. An 
 Arrears Act was carried conferring great benefits on 
 the farmer who had allowed his rent to fall many years 
 into arrear, but doing nothing for the farmer who, by 
 steady, conscientious industry, had in bad times ho- 
 nestly paid his way. Even the land purchase Acts, 
 though they are by far the most valuable parts of re- 
 cent Irish land legislation, had^ a similar tendency. 
 As the tenant is no longer asked to advance any por- 
 tion of the purchase money, no premium is given to in- 
 dustry and thrift ; the value of the purchased land has 
 been artificially depreciated by agitation and attacks 
 upon property ; and as the landlord whose income has 
 already been twice reduced by a land court knows that 
 in most cases, in addition to heavy legal expenses, a sale 
 will reduce each remaining 100Z. a year to 60Z. or 70Z., 
 he is, not unnaturally, unwilling to sell when his te- 
 nants are honest and solvent, though he may be ready to 
 do so on easy terms when they are dishonest, trouble- 
 some, and unpunctual. 
 
 To crown the edifice, a measure was introduced by 
 the Government, in 1894, for the purpose of reinstat-
 
 CH. n. EVICTED TENANTS 207 
 
 ing, at the cost of 250,000?'. of public money drawn 
 from the funds of the Irish Church, those tenants 
 who, in spite of judicial reductions and all the delays 
 and indulgences of the law, had been either unable or 
 unwilling to pay their rents, and had been in conse- 
 quence evicted. By this measure it was proposed to 
 invest three men nominated by the Government, and un- 
 controlled by any right of appeal, with an arbitrary and 
 almost absolute power of reinstating any Irish tenant, 
 or the representative of any Irish tenant, who had been 
 evicted for any cause since 1879. The only restriction 
 was that the consent of the present tenant must be ob- 
 tained ; but in a great part of Ireland he could not 
 withhold it without imminent danger to his life. The 
 tenant might have been evicted for dishonesty, for vio- 
 lence, for criminal conspiracy, for hopeless and long- 
 continued bankruptcy. He might be living in America. 
 The owner of the soil might have delayed the eviction 
 for years after the law had empowered him to carry it 
 out, and he might have at last taken the land into his 
 own possession, and have been, during many years, 
 farming it himself. He had no right of refusing his 
 consent, and his only alternative was to take back the 
 former tenant, or to sell to him the farm at whatever 
 price a revolutionary and despotic tribunal might de- 
 termine. 
 
 The explanation of the measure was very plain. It 
 was specially intended for the benefit of the ' Plan-of- 
 campaign ' tenants, who had placed money which was 
 actually in their possession, and which was due to 
 their landlords for benefits already received, in the 
 hands of ' trustees,' for the express purpose of de- 
 frauding their creditors. This ' Plan of Campaign ' 
 had been authoritatively pronounced by the highest 
 law court in Ireland to be ' clearly and absolutely ille-
 
 208 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n, 
 
 gal/ It had been condemned by the head of the Ca- 
 tholic Church as distinctly immoral. It had been 
 avowedly ' a political engine/ devised by political con- 
 spirators for the purpose of defeating the Government, 
 proving that the Land League was stronger than the 
 law, and persuading the peasantry that its directors 
 were the real rulers of Ireland. The instigators of this 
 conspiracy were now in Parliament. The Government 
 depended for their majority upon their votes, and their 
 terms were that the Plan-of-Campaign conspiracy 
 should be triumphantly vindicated. The proposed 
 measure was not a mere measure of amnesty closing an 
 old controversy, granting indulgence to poor men who 
 had been duped by men far more dishonest than them- 
 selves. It was a measure of triumph, giving special 
 and exceptional favour to defaulting tenants. No sol- 
 vent tenant could become the owner of his farm with- 
 out the consent of his landlord. This privilege was 
 reserved for the evicted tenant. 
 
 In the light of this clause and of the persistence 
 with which it was maintained, no reasonable man could 
 doubt the character, the origin, and the motive of the 
 measure. The Government bought the Irish vote by a 
 Bill to carry out their design, and it resolved to devote 
 a large amount of public money to the purpose. It is 
 true that this scandalous instance of political profligacy 
 was defeated by the House of Lords, and that in the 
 Land Bill of the succeeding year the compulsory clause 
 was dropped ; but the fact that a British minister 
 could be found to introduce, and a party majority to 
 vote it, is not likely to be forgotten in Ireland. Never, 
 indeed, did a minister of the Crown propose a measure 
 more distinctly calculated to encourage dishonesty, and 
 to persuade a deluded people that a sufficient amount 
 of voting power was all that was needed to make it sue-
 
 "CH. II. A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT 209 
 
 cessful. It has been truly said, that the worst feature 
 of the old penal code against Irish Catholics was that 
 some of its provisions placed law in direct opposition 
 to religion and to morals, and thus tended powerfully 
 to demoralise as well as to impoverish. A system of 
 government has, in our day, grown up in Ireland not 
 less really and scarcely less widely demoralising. Those 
 who have examined its effects will only wonder that so 
 much honesty and virtue have survived it. 
 
 It has been well said by Senior, that * the most re- 
 volting, and perhaps the most mischievous, form of 
 robbery is that in which the Government itself becomes 
 an accomplice ; when the property of whole classes of 
 individuals is swept away by legislative enactments, and 
 men owe their ruin to that very institution which was 
 created to ensure their safety/ 1 Probably the most 
 serious aspect, however, of this Irish legislation is to be 
 found in the precedents it created. I have not con- 
 cealed the difficulties under which it grew up, and 
 which explain and palliate the conduct of the legis- 
 lators, and if a comparison were made between the 
 losses English landlords have undergone through eco- 
 nomical causes, and the losses of Irish landlords under 
 the action of the law, it is very doubtful whether the 
 position of the former would appear the more desirable. 
 But, when all this is said, it is impossible reasonably to 
 deny that this legislation involves as distinct instances 
 of national faith violated, of property guaranteed by 
 law taken without compensation, as can be found in the 
 proceedings of any of those defaulting governments of 
 South America on which English public opinion has 
 so often and so largely expended its indignation. If 
 
 Journals, c., relating to Ireland^ i. 2. 
 
 VOL. I. li
 
 210 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 Parliament passed a law repudiating its railway guaran- 
 tees, or the whole or part of the interest of the Na- 
 tional Debt, or limiting by an act of power the profits 
 of tradesmen, or compelling a London lodging-house 
 keeper to give fixity of tenure at a reduced rent to a 
 London workman, or placing the debentures and prefe- 
 rence shares of a railway on the same basis as the ordi- 
 nary shares, or obliging a railway company to expend 
 the whole or nearly the whole of its profits in cheapen- 
 ing fares, instead of increasing dividends, it would not 
 be invading the rights of property more clearly. 
 
 It is idle to suppose that such a precedent can be 
 confined to Ireland, or Irish land, or Irish landlords. 
 With a suffrage that gives the predominant power to 
 the very ignorant and the very poor ; in an age when 
 every kind of predatory theory relating to property is 
 in the air, and when the province of State interference 
 is continually extending, and under a Constitution 
 which gives no special protection to contracts, such a 
 precedent is certain to gnnv. A departure from sound 
 principle in legislation is nearly always advocated, in 
 the first instance, on the ground that it is entirely ex- 
 ceptional, strictly limited in its application, certain to 
 do no practical harm, and intended to secure some 
 practical benefit. Once admitted, it soon becomes a 
 starting-point or logical premise, and is pushed into 
 new fields and to new consequences. 
 
 There are very few forms of confiscation which an 
 ingenious man may not justify by the Irish precedent. 
 Irish landlordism is far from being an exceptional 
 thing, and oppressive rents and harsh evictions will be 
 found in greater abundance in the poorer quarters of 
 London, Paris, or New York, than in Mayo and Conne- 
 mara. The well-known American writer, Mr. G-eorge, 
 compares Irish landlords to useless, ravenous, destruc-
 
 CH. ii. HENRY GEORGE ON LANDLORDISM 211 
 
 tive beasts, but he acknowledges, a few pages later, that 
 they are in no degree harder than any similar class ; 
 that they are less grasping towards their tenants than 
 the farmers who rent of them are towards the labourers 
 to whom they sublet ; that it is pure ' humbug ' to pre- 
 tend that ' Irish landlordism is something different 
 from American landlordism ; ' and that the position of 
 an American tenant is, in fact, not better, but worse, 
 than that of an Irish one. ' In the United States the 
 landlord has, in all its fulness, the unrestricted power 
 of doing as he pleases with his own. Eack-renting is 
 with us the common, almost the exclusive, form of 
 renting. There is no long process to be gone through 
 to secure an eviction, no serving notice upon the re- 
 lieving officer of the district. The tenant whom the 
 landlord wants to get rid of can be expelled with the 
 minimum of cost and expense/ Mr. George quotes 
 with approval the statement of an American judge that 
 there are few months in which at least 100 warrants of 
 ejection are not issued against poor tenants in the more 
 squalid quarters of New York. 1 
 
 In countless instances, indeed, the rents of poor 
 men's houses, the value of poor men's investments, and 
 the burdensomeness of poor men's contracts, are 
 affected by circumstances which they could neither 
 foresee nor control. How often does some great quarter 
 of houses for the poor grow up in the neighbourhood 
 of a flourishing industry, but a change of fashion, a 
 new invention, a migration of population or capital, 
 destroys the industry : work ebbs away, prices and 
 wages change, contracts which were once easy and 
 natural become overwhelmingly oppressive, and with 
 diminishing or disappearing profits, the interest of 
 
 1 George's Social Problems, chap. xi.
 
 212 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cu. n. 
 
 money borrowed to carry on the business ruins the 
 worker. Ought the State under such circumstances to 
 constitute itself a kind of Providence, to break con- 
 tracts and regulate anew the conditions of industry ? 
 And if it begins to do this, without giving compensa- 
 tion for rights that it takes away, and under mere po- 
 litical pressure, at what point is it likely to stop ? 
 
 Reflections of this kind must have occurred to every 
 thinking man who observes the course of modern 
 politics, and the alacrity and complaisance with which 
 schemes of the most wholesale plunder are in many 
 quarters received. One favourite form has consisted 
 of attacks on the private ownership of land, and the 
 popularity attained by the writings of Mr. George, 
 who preaches on this subject the most extreme doctrine, 
 is a striking sign of the times. Nothing, indeed, in his- 
 tory or in economics is more plain than that the strong 
 stimulus of an exclusive personal interest can alone at- 
 tract to land the labour and the capital that make it 
 fully productive, and that the productiveness of the 
 soil is one of the first conditions of the wellbeing of 
 the whole community. The transition from the com- 
 mon ownership of land which existed when mankind 
 were thinly scattered nomads and hunters, to a divided 
 land cultivated and fertilised by individual industry, 
 was one of the first and most valuable steps in the pro- 
 gress of civilisation. Nothing also in morals is more 
 plain than that to abolish without compensation that 
 private ownership which has existed unquestioned for 
 countless generations, and on the faith of which tens 
 of thousands of men in all ages and lands, and with 
 the sanction and under the guarantee of the laws of all 
 nations, have invested the fruits of their industry and 
 their thrift, would be an act of simple, gross, naked, 
 gigantic robbery. Were it not so, indeed, the words
 
 CH. ii. THE UNEARNED INCREMENT 213 
 
 * honesty ' and ' dishonesty ' would have no real mean- 
 ing. Yet such a proposal has been warmly welcomed, 
 such a measure has been eagerly advocated,, by many 
 who would be very indignant if they were described as 
 the accomplices of thieves, and who would probably be 
 perfectly incapable in their private capacities of an act 
 of dishonesty. If, on the other hand, the State simply 
 purchased honestly the land of the country, and 
 placed itself in the position of the landlord, it is easy 
 to show that the whole transaction could only end in a 
 ruinous loss. The position of the occupying tenant 
 would be unchanged, except that he would pay his 
 rent, not to a private individual, but to the representa- 
 tive of the State. The purchase money could only be 
 raised by a colossal loan, which would have to be paid 
 for in the shape of interest. The returns from land are 
 so small that, far from furnishing a surplus for the re- 
 lief of taxation, they would, in most cases, be insuffi- 
 cient to pay the simple interest of this loan, even if it 
 could be raised on ordinary terms. But every compe- 
 tent judge must know the utter impossibility of raising 
 such a loan at the ordinary price, and without produ- 
 cing a financial convulsion probably more tremendous 
 than any that the world has seen. 1 
 
 Another doctrine which, in different forms, has 
 spread widely through public opinion is that of Mill 
 about ' the unearned increment.' Starting from the 
 belief that the value of land has a natural tendency to 
 increase through the progress of society, and without 
 any exertion or sacrifice on the part of the owner, Mill 
 proposed that this ' unearned increment ' should be 
 
 1 Mr. Fawcctt has dealt fully State Socialism and the Nation* 
 with this aspect of the question alisation of Land (1883). 
 in an admirable pamphlet called
 
 214 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 steadily intercepted and appropriated by the State in 
 the form of taxation. It was true, Mill acknowledged, 
 that men had long bought land, which brings a smaller 
 return than almost any other form of investment, 
 through a belief that their income would gradually in- 
 crease, and with an implied assurance that they would 
 only be taxed in proportion to other incomes. Mill, 
 however, very honestly met this objection by maintain- 
 ing that the confiscation of the increment should only 
 take place from the present time and with due notice, 
 and that the landlord should have the alternative of 
 receiving from the State the present market value, 
 which includes the present value of all future expecta- 
 tions. 
 
 In the long period of agricultural depression through 
 which England and most other countries have passed 
 the doctrine of ' an unearned increment ' wears an 
 aspect of irony. For many years the market value of 
 agricultural land, instead of rising, has been steadily 
 falling, and history clearly shows that the same pheno- 
 menon has taken place in many long periods and in 
 many great countries. If the State takes from the 
 owner by exceptional taxation the normal rise in the 
 value of his land, it may very reasonably be expected 
 by exceptional legislation to compensate him for its fall. 
 
 No statement can be more palpably untrue than that 
 ' unearned increment ' is a thing in any degree peculiar 
 to land. The growth of population and the develop- 
 ment of civilisation exercise exactly the same influence 
 on the shares of a railway or a dockyard ; on the wages 
 of the labourer ; on the fees of the professional man ; on 
 the masterpieces of art, on the value of innumerable 
 articles of commerce. In countless cases property is 
 increased, or industry and ability reap larger rewards 
 in consequence of changes which do not lie within
 
 CH. II. THE UNEARNED INCREMENT 215 
 
 themselves, and to which they have contributed no- 
 thing, but which are wholly due to extraneous and sur- 
 rounding circumstances. Ask any rich man which of 
 his investments, without any sacrifice or exertion on 
 his part, have doubled or trebled in value, and you 
 will find that in the great majority of cases they have 
 no connection with land. What reason is there, there- 
 fore, for selecting for exceptional and penal taxation 
 the single form of property which usually produces 
 the least return, and which is associated to the great- 
 est degree with the discharge of duties that are emi- 
 nently useful to the State ? And this proposal is 
 made in a country where so large an amount of money 
 has been sunk in land by many generations of pro- 
 prietors that the actual rent would represent, in very 
 many instances, nothing more than the lowest interest 
 on the outlay ; in a country where the value of per- 
 sonal property enormously exceeds that of land, and 
 has been, during the last century and a half, advancing 
 with a vastly greater rapidity. According to Sir 
 Eobert Giffen, land in England constituted in 1690 
 about 60 per cent, of the national wealth, and in 1800 
 about 40 per cent. In the United Kingdom it con- 
 stituted, in 1812, 44 per cent. ; in 1865, 30 per cent. ; 
 in 1875, 24 per cent. ; in 1884, only 17 per cent. 1 
 
 The true explanation of such proposals is political. 
 It is to be found in that almost rabid hatred of the 
 landed interest, growing out of political antagonism, 
 which has characterised large bodies of English Ead- 
 icals, and which, in a time when the deep agricultural 
 depression forms probably our most serious national 
 evil and danger, makes the increased taxation of land 
 one of the most popular of Radical cries. 
 
 Giffen's Gro'wth of Capital, pp. 111-12.
 
 216 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 One argument, upon which much stress has been 
 put, but which has now, in a great degree, lost its 
 force, is that the land of the- country is the source of 
 the food on which its people depend, and that special 
 legislation ought therefore to prevent it from being in 
 the uncontrolled power of the few. As I have already 
 said, I believe that, if any clear case of public welfare 
 can be established, the Government has the right to 
 take complete or partial possession of the land, on 
 condition of compensating the owners. If England 
 were surrounded by a brass wall, and if its people de- 
 pended for their subsistence on the crops raised within 
 that wall, severe restrictions should undoubtedly be 
 placed on the use of great portions of the soil for parks 
 or sporting purposes. But the situation is much mod- 
 ified when the main supply of food for the people is 
 not derived from English soil, but comes from the 
 United States, from the Colonies, from India, and 
 from Russia, and when this supply pours in with such 
 abundance and at such prices that the best English 
 land is almost crushed by the competition, while the 
 inferior lands have become, as food-producing land, 
 almost useless. 
 
 The unreality, however, of the speculation that 
 would separate landed property by a sharp generic 
 distinction as an object of spoliation from all other 
 property speedily became apparent. The same class 
 of reasoners soon found that similar or analogous ar- 
 guments may be applied to other branches of property, 
 and to defence of other forms of dishonesty. It is a 
 significant fact that while Mr. George in his first book 
 only proposed to rob the landowner, in his second book 
 he proposed equally to rob the f undowner, being now 
 convinced that the institution of public debts and pri- 
 vate property in land rested on the same basis. In
 
 CH. II. NATIONAL DEBTS 217 
 
 nearly all the Socialist programmes that are now is- 
 sued on the Continent the ' nationalisation of land ' is 
 included, but it is always coupled with proposals for 
 the nationalisation of all capital and means of produc- 
 tion, and for the repudiation of national debts. 
 
 Jefferson had already anticipated these writers in 
 their advocacy of the repudiation of national debts ; 
 and it must be acknowledged that the arguments for 
 this course are quite as plausible as those in favour of 
 land spoliation. It is said that one generation cannot 
 bind another and impose on it the interest of its debts. 
 We are reminded that these debts were incurred at a 
 time when the masses, who now consider themselves, 
 by a kind of right divine, the rulers of the State, were 
 almost wholly unrepresented, and for objects of which 
 they altogether disapprove. Demagogues are not want- 
 ing to persuade them that the war of the American 
 Eevolution and the war of the French Eevolution, 
 which are responsible for the greater part of the debt, 
 were mere crimes of the aristocracy, and crimes di- 
 rected against the people. Are the people, it is asked, 
 for ever to bear the burden of debts so incurred, and 
 incurred, too, when the national credit was so low that 
 not more than 70?. or 60?. was paid to the Exchequer 
 for bonds which now bear the value of 100?. ? 
 
 As democracy advances, and precedents of spolia- 
 tion pass into legislation, doctrines of this kind are 
 likely to find an increasing number of adherents. 
 This prospect renders peculiarly alarming the enor- 
 mous increase of national debt that has taken place in 
 Europe during the last few decades. It justifies the 
 wisdom of the policy of America in paying off, even by 
 very drastic measures, the bulk of its debt, and also the 
 great and praiseworthy efforts that have been made by 
 British Governments in the same direction.
 
 218 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. it 
 
 Mining royalties stand on the same footing as private 
 property in land. They are a kind of property which 
 has been for generations bought, sold, mortgaged, and 
 bequeathed with the full sanction of the law, and they 
 have been estimated in the British Isles at the enor- 
 mous sum of eight millions a year. There is a party, 
 though happily not a large one, who openly advocate 
 their simple confiscation. Thus the Glasgow Trade 
 Council passed a resolution, 'That this Council in- 
 structs the secretary to state to the (Mining Eoyalties) 
 Commission that it is in favour of mining royalties be- 
 coming national property without compensation being 
 given/ Similar views are frequently expressed in So- 
 cialist literature, and they were put forward by some 
 witnesses before the Labour Commission, the most con- 
 spicuous upholder of this shameless dishonesty being a 
 Radical member of Parliament. 1 
 
 Another kind of property which has been the sub- 
 ject of much more or less ingenious sophistry is lite- 
 rary property. The right of an author to the profits of 
 the book he has written rests on the highest and sim- 
 plest title by which property can be held that of 
 creation. The author made it. His title to what he 
 has himself created, like that of the labourer to what 
 he has himself earned, is certainly more direct, if it is 
 not of a higher kind, than that of any species of pro- 
 perty which is simply hereditary. But the peculiarity 
 of literary property is, that while it may be of great 
 value to its author, and of great utility to mankind, it 
 may be stolen with peculiar facility, and in a different 
 way from most other kinds of property. Like a bank- 
 note, its value is destroyed if every one is allowed to 
 reproduce it, and hence laws of copyright have been 
 
 Spyers, The Labour Question, pp. 128-30.
 
 OH. n. LITERARY PROPERTY 219 
 
 found necessary to protect it. Among all the forms of 
 property, few are so imperfectly protected as this ; but 
 y there are some who would abolish it altogether, refus- 
 ing all legal protection to literary property. One of 
 their arguments is, that an author merely gives a form 
 to ideas and knowledge which are floating in the intel- 
 lectual atmosphere around him, and which are the 
 common property of all men, and has, therefore, no 
 exclusive right to what he has written. If this be 
 true and it is far from being absolutely so the sim- 
 ple answer is, that it is to the form alone, which is his 
 own work, that he claims an exclusive right. A sculp- 
 tor's right of property in his statue is not destroyed by 
 the fact that the clay and the marble existed before he 
 touched them with his chisel. An author claims no 
 monopoly in his ideas ; but the form in which he 
 moulds them is so essentially the main element in the 
 question, that the distinction is for all practical pur- 
 poses trivial. There is no idea in Gray's Elegy which 
 has not passed through thousands of minds. Gray 
 alone gave them the form which is immortal. 
 
 It is said that an author is a ' monopolist ' because he 
 claims an exclusive right of selling his book, and that his 
 claim is therefore opposed to the doctrine of free trade. 
 But this is a pure confusion of thought. In the sense 
 of political economy, a man is a monopolist who pre- 
 vents others from pursuing a form of industry which 
 they might have pursued independently of him, and 
 had he not existed. He is not a monopolist if he only 
 prevents them from appropriating what he alone has 
 made, and what would not have existed without him. 
 An author is a monopolist in no other sense than a pro- 
 prietor or labourer who claims the exclusive possession 
 of his own earnings or his own inheritance. If I write 
 ihe history of a particular period, I claim no legal right
 
 220 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 of debarring others from writing about the same period, 
 or using the materials that I have used. I claim only 
 an exclusive right in that specific work which I have 
 myself made. A fisherman would be rightly called a 
 monopolist if he excluded all others from fishing in the 
 sea. He is not rightly called a monopolist if he only 
 claims an exclusive right to dispose of the fish which 
 he has himself caught in the sea, which is open to all. 1 
 
 But the author, it is said, is under a special obliga- 
 tion to the State because his property is protected by a 
 special law. The answer is, that the very object for 
 which all governments are primarily created, and for 
 which all taxes are paid, is the protection of life and 
 property. A government in protecting property is 
 simply discharging its most elementary duty. Dif- 
 ferent kinds of property may be invaded, and must 
 therefore be protected in different ways ; and, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, the protection of literature costs the State 
 much less in labour, in money, and in popularity than 
 the protection of pheasants. 
 
 Others again contend for what they call the nationali- 
 sation of the means of communication, or, in other 
 words, the appropriation of the railways and all other 
 public conveyances by the State. If by this term is 
 meant that the Government should either construct, or 
 
 1 Locke's remarks about land- in, it hath by this labour some- 
 
 ed property appear to me very thing annexed to it that excludes 
 
 eminently applicable to copy- the common right of other men. 
 
 right. ' Whatsoever a man re- For, this labour being the un- 
 
 moves out of the state that Na- questionable property of the la- 
 
 ture hath provided and left it bourer, no man but he can have 
 
 in, he hath mixed his labour a right to what that is once 
 
 with, and joined to it something joined to, at least where there 
 
 that is his own, and thereby is enough and as good left in 
 
 makes it his property. It being common for others ' (Locke On 
 
 by him removed from the com- Civil Government, c. v.). 
 mon state Nature hath placed it
 
 CH. ii. THE CLAIMS OF SOCIALISM 221 
 
 purchase at a fair price, the railways within its do- 
 minion, there is no objection of principle to be raised. 
 The system of State railways exists in many countries. 
 In judging whether it is for the advantage of the na- 
 tion as a whole, we have to consider a large number of 
 conflicting and closely balanced advantages and disad- 
 vantages, and the preponderance in each country must 
 be decided according to its own special economical cir- 
 cumstances. It is also universally admitted that the 
 State, having given great privileges and powers to a 
 railway company, is perfectly justified in imposing upon 
 it many restrictions. But when it is claimed that the 
 State may, without purchase, or at a rate of compensa- 
 tion below its real value, take possession of a railway, 
 depriving of their property the shareholders at whose 
 risk and cost it was made, it can only be answered that 
 such a claim is simple and naked robbery. And the 
 same thing may be confidently asserted of many other 
 ambitious schemes for ' nationalising ' all great indus- 
 trial undertakings and absorbing all capital into the 
 State. If the element of just purchase enters into 
 these transactions, they would only result in a great 
 financial catastrophe. If purchase or compensation 
 be refused, the catastrophe would not be averted, but 
 the process would be one of gigantic robbery. 
 
 Such schemes for turning the State into the univer- 
 sal landlord, the universal manufacturer, the universal 
 shopkeeper, reorganising from its foundations the whole 
 industrial system of the world, excluding from it all 
 competition and all the play of individual emulation 
 and ambition, can never, I believe, be even approxi- 
 mately realised ; but no one who watches the growth 
 of Socialist opinion in nearly all countries can doubt 
 that many steps will be taken in this direction in a not 
 remote future.
 
 222 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 The question in what degree and in what manner the 
 demands that are rising may be wisely met is of the 
 utmost importance. The subject is one which I pro- 
 pose to discuss at some length in later chapters. Two 
 things may here be said. One is, that in an over- 
 crowded country like England, whose prosperity rests 
 much less on great natural resources than on the con- 
 tinuance of a precarious and highly artificial commer- 
 cial and manufacturing supremacy, any revolution that 
 may lead to a migration of capital or the destruction 
 of credit is more than commonly dangerous. The 
 other is, that this class of questions is eminently one in 
 which consequences that are obscure, intricate, indirect, 
 and remote are often, in the long run, more important 
 than those which are obvious and immediate. 
 
 Is the parliamentary system in the democratic form 
 which it has of late years assumed well fitted for wisely 
 dealing with these difficult and dangerous questions ? 
 Let any one observe how steadily and rapidly the stable 
 forces, which in old days shaped and guided the course 
 of English politics, are losing their influence. Let him 
 watch closely a great popular election, and observe how 
 largely the chance of a candidate depends upon his skill 
 in appealing to the direct and immediate interests, or 
 supposed interests, of large sections of the electorate ; 
 in making use of claptrap and popular cries ; in in- 
 flaming class animosities and antipathies, and pledging 
 himself so far as to conciliate many distinct groups of 
 faddists. Let him then observe how Parliament itself 
 is breaking into small groups ; how the permanent 
 forces of intelligence and property, which once enabled 
 governments to pursue their paths independently of 
 fluctuating or transient gusts of ignorant opinion, are 
 weakened ; how large a part of legislation, especially in 
 the closing period of a Parliament, is manifestly in-
 
 CH. n. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 223 
 
 tended for mere electioneering purposes ; how very few 
 public men look much beyond the interests of their 
 party and the chances of an election. He must be a 
 sanguine man who can look across such a scene with 
 much confidence to the future. 
 
 He will not, if he is a wise man, be reassured by the 
 prevailing habit, so natural in democracies, of canonis- 
 ing, and almost idolising, mere majorities, even when 
 they are mainly composed of the most ignorant men, 
 voting under all the misleading influences of side-issues 
 and violent class or party passions. ' The voice of the 
 people/ as expressed at the polls, is to many politicians 
 the sum of all wisdom, the supreme test of truth or 
 falsehood. It is even more than this : it is invested 
 with something very like the spiritual efficacy which 
 theologians have ascribed to baptism. It is supposed 
 to wash away all sin. However unscrupulous, however 
 dishonest, may be the acts of a party or of a statesman, 
 they are considered to be justified beyond reproach if 
 they have been condoned or sanctioned at a general 
 election. It has sometimes happened that a politician 
 has been found guilty of a grave personal offence by an 
 intelligent and impartial jury, after a minute investi- 
 gation of evidence, conducted with the assistance of 
 highly trained advocates, and under the direction of an 
 experienced judge. He afterwards finds a constituency 
 which will send him to Parliament, and the newspapers 
 of his party declare that his character is now clear. 
 He has been absolved by ' the great voice of the people/ 
 Truly indeed did Carlyle say that the superstitions to 
 be feared in the present day are much less religious 
 than political ; and of all the forms of idolatry I know 
 none more irrational and ignoble than this blind wor- 
 ship of mere numbers. 
 
 It has led many politicians to subordinate all notions
 
 224 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 of right and wrong to the wishes or interests of majori- 
 ties, and to act on the maxim that the end justifies the 
 means quite as audaciously as the most extreme Jesuit 
 casuists. This new Jesuitism has, indeed, much real 
 affinity with the old one. The root idea of the old 
 Jesuitism was*a strongly realised conviction that the 
 Catholic Church is so emphatically the inspired teacher 
 of mankind, and the representative of the Deity upon 
 earth, that no act can be immoral which is performed 
 in its service and is conducive to its interests. The 
 root idea of the new Jesuitism is the belief that the 
 moral law has no deeper foundation and no higher 
 sanction than utility, and that the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest number is its supreme test and ideal. 
 From this it is easily inferred that minorities have no 
 rights as against majorities. In both cases, too, the 
 love of power plays a great part. The old Jesuit 
 found in his doctrine a strong lever for governing the 
 Church and influencing the world. The new Jesuit 
 finds his doctrine peculiarly useful in a society in which 
 all political power is obtained by winning the votes of a 
 majority. Many good Catholics will maintain that the 
 old Jesuit misread the teaching of the Church, and 
 some of them believe that religion has had no worse 
 enemy than a society which has associated the most 
 sacred Name given among men with falsehood, impos- 
 ture, unscrupulous tyranny, and intrigue. Many good 
 utilitarians will say that the new Jesuit has calculated 
 falsely the balance of utilities, and that no course of 
 policy which shakes the security of property or contract, 
 and the rights of minorities, can be, in its far-off re- 
 sults, for the benefit of the majority. But in each 
 case the inference of the Jesuit is plausible and natural, 
 and it is an inference that is certain to be drawn. 
 Some of my readers will probably consider it fanciful
 
 CH. n. MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 225 
 
 to attribute to theories of moral philosophy any influ- 
 ence over political conduct. In England, speculative 
 opinion has not usually much weight in practical poli- 
 tics, and English politicians are very apt to treat it with 
 complete disdain. Yet no one who has any real know- 
 ledge of history can seriously doubt the influence over 
 human affairs which has been exercised by the specula- 
 tions of Locke, of Eousseau, of Montesquieu, of Adam 
 Smith, or of Bentham. The force and the intensity 
 which the doctrine of nationalities has of late years as- 
 sumed throughout Europe is not unconnected with the 
 new importance which speculative writers have given 
 to race affinities and characteristics, and something of 
 the current Eadical notions about land is certainly due 
 to our increased knowledge of the wide diffusion, in the 
 early stages of society, of joint or communal ownership 
 of the soil. 
 
 So, too, I believe the views of many politicians have 
 been not a little coloured by the doctrines of moral 
 philosophy, which have of late years been widely popu- 
 lar, and which reduce our conceptions of right and 
 wrong, justice or injustice, to mere general utility, or a 
 calculation of interests. Philosophy has its fanatics as 
 well as religion, and to this conception of ethics may 
 be largely traced the utter unscrupulousness in dealing 
 with the rights of minorities which is sometimes found 
 among men who are certainly not mere unprincipled 
 self-seekers. In every conflict of interests between the 
 few who own a thing, or have produced it, or paid for 
 it, or run the risks attending it, and the many who 
 wish to enjoy it, this bias may be discerned. In the 
 eyes of many politicians, all differences between the 
 landlord and his tenants, between the author and his 
 readers, between railway-shareholders and the travelling 
 public, between the producer and the consumers, are 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. II. 
 
 simply regarded as conflicts between the few and the 
 many, and the rights of the few cease to have any bind- 
 ing force if their destruction is likely to confer an im- 
 mediate benefit on the many. 
 
 Herbert Spencer has said, with profound truth and 
 wisdom, that ' the end which the statesman should keep 
 in view as higher than all other ends is the formation 
 of character.' It is on this side that democratic poli- 
 tics seem to me peculiarly weak. Let us once more 
 look at the representative body. Even taking the low- 
 est test, can it be confidently said that its moral level 
 is what it was ? Too much stress may perhaps be 
 laid on the many grave private scandals that have taken 
 place among its members within the last twenty or 
 thirty years. It is impossible, however, not to be struck 
 by the number of cases in which members of that 
 House have during this space of time been found 
 guilty of acts of financial dishonesty that brought them 
 within the scope of the criminal law, or of other forms 
 of immorality sufficiently grave to come before the law 
 courts. The House of Commons consists of 670 mem- 
 bers. About the year 1892 the committee of a great 
 London club containing nearly twice as many members 
 had their attention called to the fact that, by a curious 
 omission in their rules, no provision had been made 
 for the expulsion of any member who, without breaking 
 the precise rules of the club, had been guilty of any of 
 those gross scandals which make men unfit for the so- 
 ciety of gentlemen. The omission had been unnoticed 
 because, although the club had existed since 1824, no 
 such case had arisen among its members. It would be 
 unreasonable to expect from a body elected under such 
 stormy and contentious conditions as the House of 
 Commons a standard as high as that in the Athenasum 
 Club, but surely the contrast is too great and too
 
 CH. n. HOUSE OP COMMONS ETHICS 227 
 
 marked to be lightly dismissed. And if we extend our 
 survey beyond England, and count up the instances of 
 gross profligacy or dishonesty which have been de- 
 tected, often in very high places, in the Parliaments 
 of the Continent, of the United States, and of the 
 Colonies, in the present generation, the evidence will 
 accumulate, showing how little democratic election se- 
 cures a high standard of integrity and morality. 
 
 The House of Commons, however, as I have before 
 said, is essentially a body of trustees, and it is by their 
 performance of their public duty that its members must 
 be chiefly judged. Is it too much to say that, in the 
 opinion of the great body of educated men, there has 
 been in this respect a marked decline ? I am anxious 
 on this subject to avoid all exaggeration. It is not yet 
 true of England, as it is of America, that the best men 
 in intellect and character avoid public life, though 
 there are ominous signs that this may before long be 
 the case. Parliament still contains a large body of 
 such men, and there have been several conspicuous 
 modern instances showing how much the weight of 
 character still tells in public life. Probably a large 
 proportion of my readers will be of opinion that the 
 year 1886 witnessed the worst act of modern English 
 politics ; but it at least brought with it the consoling 
 spectacle of a large body of public men, several of them 
 of the highest political eminence, deliberately and with- 
 out any possible selfish motive breaking old ties and 
 sacrificing political ambition rather than take part in 
 a disgraceful scene. But, on the whole, can any one 
 doubt that apostasies have been more shameless, class 
 bribes more habitual, and the tone of the House of 
 Commons less high, than in the last generation ; that 
 principles are more lightly held and direct party in- 
 terests more habitually followed ; that measures of
 
 228 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 great and far-reaching importance are more recklessly 
 launched for mere electioneering purposes; that men 
 to whom, in private conversation, not one educated 
 man out of a hundred would ascribe any real sincerity 
 or weight of conviction, are playing a more leading 
 part in English public life ? I have elsewhere dwelt 
 on the profound and indelible impression made in the 
 last century by the coalition between Fox and North. 
 These two able, honourable, and in most respects pa- 
 triotic, politicians, had been fiercely divided on the 
 question of the American War, and Fox had used the 
 strongest language against his opponent, denouncing 
 him as the enemy of British freedom, and describing 
 him as worthy of death upon the scaffold. The Ameri- 
 can War ceased ; the controversies it produced were 
 closed, and then Fox made an alliance with North for 
 the purpose of keeping out of office a statesman whom 
 they disliked and distrusted. Nothing in the English 
 parliamentary history of the eighteenth century more 
 profoundly shocked the public mind and conscience 
 than this transaction, and Fox, at least, never recovered 
 the discredit which the coalition left upon his charac- 
 ter. Yet, after all, both of these statesmen were men un- 
 doubtedly devoted to the interests of the great empire 
 they ruled, and after the termination of the American 
 War there was no capital subject of present difference 
 between them. 
 
 Compare this transaction with the alliance which gave 
 the Liberal leaders eighty-five Home Eule votes in 1886, 
 and placed them in a close bond of union with the very 
 men whom they had so lately denounced and imprisoned 
 for treason to the Empire, and for most deliberately in- 
 citing to dishonesty and crime. Those who will judge 
 public men by their acts, and not by their professions, 
 can have little difficulty in pointing the moral.
 
 CH. U. THE CHANGED CONSTITUENCIES 229 
 
 Few persons will question that this transaction 
 would have been impossible in the Parliaments before 
 the Keform Bill of 1867. In the days of middle-class 
 ascendency every politician found it necessary to place 
 himself in general harmony with average educated 
 opinion. A very slight shifting of that opinion, es- 
 pecially in the smaller boroughs, could be decisive. 
 There was always an ultimate court of appeal, whicli 
 could be relied on to judge promptly, with shrewdness 
 and patriotism, and some real knowledge of the facts 
 of the case. Mere rhetoric and claptrap ; brilliant 
 talent, unallied with judgment ; coalitions to carry 
 some measure which the country condemned by unit- 
 ing it with a number of bribes offered to many different 
 classes ; policies in which great national interests were 
 sacrificed to personal ambition or to party tricks ; the 
 dexterity which multiplies, evades, or confuses issues, 
 had seldom even a temporary success. The judgment 
 of average educated men on the whole prevailed ; and 
 although that judgment may not be very quick or far- 
 seeing, or open to new ideas, it rarely failed to arrive 
 at a just estimate of a practical issue. 
 
 But the changes that introduced into the con- 
 stituencies a much larger proportion of ignorance, in- 
 difference, or credulity soon altered the conditions of 
 politics. The element of uncertainty was greatly in- 
 creased. Politicians learned to think less of convincing 
 the reason of the country than of combining hetero- 
 geneous and independent groups, or touching some 
 strong chord of widespread class interest or prejudice. 
 The sense of shame to a remarkable degree diminished. 
 It would once have been intolerable to an English 
 public man to believe that, in spite of all differences 
 of opinion, he was not followed through life and to the 
 grave by the respect of the great body of his educated
 
 230 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 fellow-countrymen. This sentiment has greatly faded. 
 Men have now become very indifferent to what they 
 would nickname the opinion of the classes or the 
 clubs, provided they can succeed, by the methods I 
 have described, in winning a majority and obtaining 
 power and office. The party game is played more 
 keenly and more recklessly, and traditional feelings as 
 well as traditional customs have greatly lost their force. 
 
 This tendency is increased by the extreme rush and 
 hurry of modern life, which naturally produces some 
 levity of character. A constant succession of new im- 
 pressions and ideas takes away from societies, as from 
 individuals, the power of feeling anything deeply and 
 persistently. Disgrace never seems indelible when it 
 is so soon forgotten, and the strong, steady currents of 
 national sentiment and tendency, on which the great- 
 ness of empires depends, become impossible. Con- 
 tinuity of policy is more difficult, and, with a jaded 
 political palate, the appetite for experiment and sensa- 
 tion becomes more powerful. 
 
 In the whole field of politics, personal and class in- 
 terests seem to have grown stronger ; and the latter are 
 often not even those of a very large class. The objects 
 of an ordinary trade strike have begun to blend power- 
 fully with national politics. In the dockyard towns, 
 it has long been said that questions of wages, salaries, 
 or employment dominate over all others. There have 
 been instances in which the political votes of the police 
 force, of the Post-office officials, of the Civil Service 
 clerks, have been avowedly marshalled for the purpose 
 of obtaining particular class advantages. 1 In county 
 
 1 A remarkable paper, giving will be found in the 
 instances in which this kind of October 15, 1892. 
 pressure has been employed,
 
 CH. ii. POLITICAL CRIMES 231 
 
 councils and other small elective bodies, it is probable 
 that these motives will, in England as in America, be 
 easily and efficaciously employed. When the votes of a 
 body of men in a nearly balanced contest may be pur- 
 chased with public money, or at least lost if public 
 money is withheld, a higher standard of public virtue 
 than is now general is required to resist a mode of 
 bribery which is at once cheap, easy, and not illegal. 
 A powerful trade union may capture a small elected 
 body, and a weak government resting on a fluctuating 
 and a disintegrated majority is strongly tempted to 
 conciliate every detached group of voters. 
 
 The reader must judge for himself whether this 
 picture is untrue or overcharged ; if he believes it to 
 be true, he will hardly question its gravity. The evil 
 I have described is much aggravated by the very in- 
 adequate sense of the criminality of political misdeeds 
 that prevails widely in contemporary thought. In the 
 case of those acts of open violence and treason which 
 are commonly described as political crimes, this may 
 be largely traced to the time when power was in the 
 hands of a very few, when religious liberty, and per- 
 sonal liberty, and liberty of expression were all un- 
 known, and when much of the highest and purest 
 heroism was displayed in resisting intolerable oppres- 
 sion. Much of the poetic glamour which was thrown 
 over the revolutionists of those days still remains, 
 though in nearly all countries the circumstances have 
 wholly changed. Under the popular governments of 
 modern times revolution is nearly always a crime, and 
 usually a crime of the first magnitude. No one, as I 
 have elsewhere said, ' who has any adequate sense of the 
 enormous mass of suffering which the authors of a re- 
 bellion let loose upon their country will speak lightly 
 of this crime, or of the importance of penalties that
 
 232 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 may deter others from following in their steps. . . . 
 In the great lottery of civil war the prizes are enor- 
 mous ; and when such prizes may be obtained by a 
 course of action which is profoundly injurious to the 
 State, the deterrent influence of severe penalties is 
 especially necessary. In the immense majority of 
 cases, the broad distinction which it is now the fashion 
 to draw between political and other crimes is both 
 pernicious and untrue. There is no sphere in which 
 the worst passions of human nature may operate more 
 easily and more dangerously than in the sphere of 
 politics. There is no criminal of a deeper dye than 
 the adventurer who is gambling for power with the 
 lives of men. There are no crimes which produce 
 vaster or more enduring suffering than those which sap 
 the great pillars of order in the State, and destroy the 
 respect for life, for property, and for law on which all 
 true progress depends/ 
 
 Let any one examine the chief revolutionary move- 
 ments of our time, and he may soon convince himself 
 that by far the greater number of them have been led 
 by some ambitious soldier, or politician, or pretender, 
 simply actuated by a desire for wealth and power, by a 
 wish to defeat and overthrow a competitor, by over- 
 weening vanity, or by a mere love of excitement, ad- 
 venture, and notoriety. A man who through such 
 motives makes a revolution which destroys a multitude 
 of lives, ruins the credit and commerce of a nation, 
 scatters far and wide the seeds of anarchy, disaster and 
 long-continued depression, and perhaps begins the 
 decadence of his nation, surely deserves a prompt and 
 ignominious death as much as the man who, under the 
 influence of want, or passion, or drink, has committed 
 an ordinary murder. A public opinion is very morbid 
 which looks on these things as venial. It is the cus-
 
 CH. ii. POLITICAL MORALITY 233 
 
 torn in England to assert that such crimes as the mur- 
 ders in the Phoenix Park, or the massacre or at- 
 tempted massacre by an Anarchist's bomb of a number 
 of innocent persons in some place of public amuse- 
 ment, are not ' political.' It does not appear to me 
 reasonable to deny this character to acts which were 
 inspired by no motive of private gain or malice, and 
 were directly and exclusively intended to produce 
 political ends. But the fact that they were political 
 does not attenuate their atrocity, nor ought it to miti- 
 gate the punishment of the criminal. 
 
 In home affairs, while the widest toleration should 
 be accorded to all honest diversities of opinion and 
 policy, there are courses of conduct which involve the 
 deepest turpitude, and which, at the same time, bring 
 with them no legal penalties, and can only be re- 
 strained and punished by opinion. If a man, for the 
 mere purpose of winning votes, seeks to plunge his 
 country into an unrighteous or unnecessary war, or to 
 prolong a war which might be terminated with honour ; 
 to set class against class and deepen the lines of divi- 
 sion and animosity ; to place the poAver of government 
 in the hands of dishonest or disloyal men, and assist 
 them in carrying out their designs ; if for the sake of 
 an office, or a pension, or a peerage, he supports a 
 policy which he knows to be unrighteous or unwise, he 
 is certainly committing a moral offence of the deepest 
 dye. Judgments which relate to motives are, no 
 doubt, always uncertain, and ample allowance should 
 be made for the eccentricities of honest opinion. A 
 course which seems to most men very iniquitous may 
 appear to some men positively good, or the lesser of 
 two evils, or the necessary fulfilment of an old engage- 
 ment, or an inevitable result of preceding policy. Yet 
 still public opinion can, with a rough but substantial
 
 234 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 justice, estimate the characters and the motives of 
 public men, and it is a very evil sign when it looks 
 without serious reprobation on those whom it believes 
 to be acting without convictions ; to be playing with 
 great national interests for party or personal ends, as 
 if they were cards in a game or horses in a race. 
 
 This consideration is quite compatible with the fact 
 that men acting in parties are frequently obliged, on 
 public grounds, to subordinate their own judgment on 
 minor questions to that of their party. They are often 
 confronted with the question whether supporting a bad 
 measure is not a less evil than displacing a good go- 
 vernment or breaking up or enfeebling a useful organi- 
 sation, and they are often obliged to vote for or against 
 one measure with a view to carrying or defeating a 
 totally different one. They must look to the whole 
 results of their conduct, ulterior as well as proximate. 
 In France, a large number of the best men of our cen- 
 tury have successively supported more than one dynasty 
 and republic, and they were not wrong in doing so. 
 Though they preferred one or other form of govern- 
 ment, they considered that the evils of instability and 
 revolution were so great that it was the part of a pa- 
 triotic man to strengthen the existing form, if it was 
 only a tolerable one, and endeavour to graft upon it the 
 best characteristics of the other forms. 
 
 In party parliamentary government, questions of 
 ethics of a much more perplexing character continually 
 arise. Some men differ from the dominant tendencies 
 of their party, but not so strongly or universally as 
 to induce them to break formally the ties of long- 
 standing engagements ; or they remain in it because 
 they believe that it would be a great public calamity if 
 it were deprived of its moderating element, and thrown 
 altogether into the hands of extreme men. Usually,
 
 CH. n. POLITICAL MORALITY 235 
 
 while the extremes of rival parties differ widely, there 
 is a frontier line where the two parties almost blend. 
 Sometimes, as in the latter days of Lord Palmerston's 
 life, the lines of party have been so faintly drawn that 
 a rising politician might very reasonably consider it a 
 matter of great indifference to which party he attached 
 himself. At other times parties are deeply sundered 
 by questions vitally affecting the wellbeing of the 
 nation. In practical politics there must always be 
 much compromise and mutual concession ; and, as 
 Hallam long since said, the centrifugal and the centri- 
 petal forces, which correspond roughly to the rival 
 party tendencies, are both needed to preserve the due 
 balance of affairs. There are great evils, as well as 
 great advantages, attending the party system, and 
 there are periods when these evils seem brought into a 
 more than common prominence. 
 
 All this, however, is clearly distinct from the con- 
 duct of a politician who, in matters of grave national 
 concern, regulates his actions with an exclusive view 
 to his own interests. In English opinion, very glaring 
 instances of political profligacy are distinguished 
 broadly from acts of private and personal dishonesty, 
 such as malversation in the administration of public 
 funds. But the distinction is, in truth, an- unreal 
 one, and it is not likely to last. A man who remains 
 in a party which he would otherwise have abandoned, 
 or votes for some important measure which he would 
 have otherwise opposed, because he has been bought 
 by the offer of a peerage or a place, would probably be 
 incapable of swindling and cheating at cards, but his 
 conduct is not really less dishonourable. The false 
 trustee to the public will easily, under sufficient 
 temptation, turn into the fraudulent bankrupt, and a 
 public opinion which is lax and indulgent in dealing
 
 236 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 with one form of dishonesty will soon learn to look 
 with toleration on the other. The same type of cha- 
 racter which produces the unscrupulous professional 
 politician produces also the too familiar fraudulent 
 director. We need not look beyond the Atlantic for 
 examples. 
 
 There is hardly any field, indeed, in which moral 
 notions are more confused and inconsistent than in 
 politics. Let any one, for example, read the report of 
 the judgment of the Parnell Commission, and the 
 sworn testimony on which it was based, and let him 
 then remember that the men who were distinctly 
 proved to have organised, encouraged, stimulated, and 
 profited by all the violence, fraud, intimidation, and 
 crime that is there recorded received the support of the 
 great body of the Catholic priests in Ireland, and of 
 the great body of Nonconformist ministers in England. 
 There were, it is true, noble exceptions. The names 
 that had most weight in the Nonconformity of our 
 time the names of Spurgeon, and Fraser, and Allon, 
 and Dale stand in this respect beyond reproach. But 
 the majority of the English and Welsh Nonconform- 
 ists took a different course, and their ministers have 
 in the present generation been ardent politicians, 
 prominent on the platform, and not unfrequently in- 
 troducing their politics into the pulpit. They were, 
 apparently, entirely unmoved by the judicial inquiry 
 which proved beyond all possibility of doubt the com- 
 plicity of the men they supported with crime. The 
 boycotting, the Plan of Campaign, the incendiary 
 speeches, the open advocacy of public plunder, the 
 connection with American dynamiters, the concealed 
 accounts, the many instances of hideous cruelty and 
 oppression of the weak that were distinctly traceable to 
 the Irish Land League, all left these religious teachers
 
 CH. ii. POLITICAL MORALITY 237 
 
 completely undisturbed. These things were regarded 
 as merely 'political.' At last, however, it was shown 
 that the prime mover of the Irish agitation had been 
 guilty of adultery. It was a very ordinary case, with- 
 out much special aggravation, and such as might be 
 found in almost every newspaper. Then, for the first 
 time, the Nonconformist conscience was aroused. It 
 was intolerable that a truly religious party should be 
 in alliance with a politician guilty of such an act ; and 
 the explosion of moral indignation, which began in the 
 Nonconformist ranks, soon shook the land, and de- 
 tached by successive impacts the Prime Minister, the 
 Irish bishops, and most of the Irish members from 
 their old connection. Can those who witnessed this 
 grotesque exhibition wonder at the charge of Pharisaism 
 and hypocrisy which foreign observers so abundantly 
 bring against English public opinion ? Can they be 
 surprised that 'the Nonconformist conscience' is ra- 
 pidly becoming a byword in England, much like the 
 ( moral sentiments ' of Joseph Surface ? 
 
 My readers will not, I hope, so far misunderstand 
 these remarks as to attribute to me any indifference to 
 the private morals of public men. The example of men 
 who hold a high and responsible position before the 
 world exercises a more than common influence, and it 
 is therefore specially desirable that they should be men 
 of untarnished honour and blameless lives. There 
 have been instances of men of very lax domestic morals 
 who have been excellent politicians, and of men of 
 exemplary private characters who have in Parliament 
 been unprincipled and corrupt ; but still private virtue 
 is at least some guarantee for the right performance of 
 public duty ; while a man who has lost his position in 
 the world through a great moral scandal would be al- 
 most more than human if he did not subordinate all
 
 238 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 political convictions and public interests to regaining 
 it. But, after all, it is not the private vices of public 
 men that are most dangerous to the community. It 
 may be a curious question of casuistry whether it is a 
 more immoral thing to commit adultery, or to incite to 
 intimidation which leads to crime and outrage, persist- 
 ing in it ( with knowledge of its effect. ' 1 There can, 
 at least, be no doubt which of these two acts is more 
 injurious to the State. 
 
 The maintenance of a high standard of right and 
 wrong in the field of politics is certainly one of the first 
 of national interests, and it becomes increasingly diffi- 
 cult with the democratic tendency to throw public 
 affairs more and more into the hands of professional 
 politicians. To other classes the House of Commons 
 has lost much of its old attraction. The extraordinary 
 prolongation of its sessions ; the growth of mere ob- 
 struction in its debates ; the increased prominence of 
 parliamentary manoeuvre, requiring a more incessant 
 attendance ; the vast amount of stump oratory, and 
 other wearisome work, which is now expected both 
 from a candidate and a member, are making public life 
 far more burdensome than in the past, and are gradu- 
 ally alienating from it men who have no strong per- 
 sonal object to gain. The influences that have begun 
 to dominate at elections neither attract nor favour the 
 best men. Such men will not readily consent to be 
 mere delegates or puppets of a caucus, and they are not 
 likely to be skilful in conciliating by vague promises 
 groups of impracticable theorists, and in employing 
 the language of class bribery. 
 
 The withdrawal of nearly all forms of local govern- 
 ment from magistrates and from nominated bodies, and 
 
 1 Special Commission Report, pp. 88, 92.
 
 CH. ii. ELECTIVE LOCAL GOVERNMENT 239 
 
 the great multiplicity of elected and democratic bodies, 
 tend in the same direction. In the cases happily, 
 in the present century, very rare in England in which 
 public funds were corruptly administered for the 
 benefit of the few, the introduction of the elective sys- 
 tem on a broad basis may be a valuable corrective, 
 though no one would maintain that local administra- 
 tion is, on the whole, purer in America than it has 
 long been in England. It is contended, however, with 
 justice, in favour of the elective system that it forms 
 one of the best schools or training-grounds for the 
 politician ; that it gives an intelligent interest in pub- 
 lic affairs to multitudes who had long been very indif- 
 ferent to them ; that it furnishes a security that the 
 wants of all classes should be brought to light, and at 
 least discussed ; and that it infuses a new strength and 
 energy into local administration. 
 
 All this is, I believe, very true, and very important. 
 At the same time there are manifest and serious draw- 
 backs. One of them is increased expense, which near- 
 ly always follows when a nominated or magisterial 
 body is replaced by a democratic elected one ; another 
 is a great multiplication of antagonisms and dissensions. 
 In many quiet country parishes, where Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, Liberals and Conservatives, long lived 
 in almost perfect amity, social fissures are now deepen- 
 ing, and constantly recurring elections are keeping up 
 a permanent fever of contention. The elections for 
 the school board, for the county council, for the parish 
 council, the parliamentary elections, which now imply 
 constant party meetings extending through the greater 
 part of the session, are ranging the different parties 
 more and more in hostile committees and opposing 
 platforms, and whatever good may result is certainly 
 produced by a great deal of ill-feeling and discomfort.
 
 240 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 Nothing, too, as we have already seen, is more clearly 
 established by American experience than that very 
 frequent contested elections tend to lower the moral 
 tone of politics, and to throw them more and more 
 into the hands of the professional politician. 
 
 It would, I believe, be a mistake to suppose that 
 under the new conditions wealth will disappear, or 
 even exercise a greatly diminished power in politics, 
 but the rich men who will chiefly enter Parliament are 
 not the kind who are most desirable. Three classes 
 appear to have an increasing prominence. There are 
 those who, having amassed large fortunes in trade, 
 commerce, or manufacture, desire above all things 
 social position, and are prepared to sacrifice large sums 
 to attain it. The social precedence which a seat in 
 Parliament affords, and the possibilities of rank which 
 are open to every rich man who steadily supports his 
 party, become their guiding motives, and very often 
 shape the whole course of their political calculations. 
 There are also prosperous lawyers who enter Parlia- 
 ment for professional objects, knowing that it is the 
 path which leads directly to the chief honours in their 
 profession ; and there is the large class of business men 
 connected with public companies, who find a political 
 position useful to their financial enterprises. The in- 
 creasing number of directors in Parliament, and the 
 desire of companies to have members of Parliament for 
 their directors, are significant signs, not, I think, of 
 good omen for the purity of politics. As State func- 
 tions multiply, including many things that were once 
 left to private commercial enterprise, the position of 
 member of Parliament is likely to have an increasing 
 value in the fields of patronage, industry, and finance. 
 Men of these different classes are often among the most 
 dangerous of demagogues. Private aims predominate
 
 CH. ii. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 241 
 
 with them over public ones. If they can attain them, 
 they care little for a large expenditure or sacrifice of 
 money, and their special interests are usually only 
 very slightly identified with the permanent interests of 
 the country. 
 
 Two or three measures which are much advocated 
 would confirm the power of the professional politician. 
 I have already spoken of the abolition of university 
 representation. It is not a measure which would have 
 very extensive consequences, but it would at least expel 
 from Parliament a small class of members who repre- 
 sent in an eminent degree intelligence and knowledge 
 diffused throughout the country ; who, from the man- 
 ner of their election, are almost certain to be men of 
 political purity and independent character, and who, 
 for that very reason, are especially obnoxious to the 
 more unscrupulous type of demagogue. Their expul- 
 sion would be a considerable party advantage to one 
 faction in the State, and it is therefore likely to be 
 steadily pursued. 
 
 A more considerable measure would be that of throw- 
 ing the whole or a large part of the expenses of elec- 
 tions on the rates. There is much to be said in its 
 defence. It is not a natural thing that men should be 
 expected to pay largely for discharging what should be 
 a public duty, for rendering what should be a public 
 service. Payment from the rates would render it much 
 easier for men of moderate fortunes to enter the House, 
 and it would very possibly diminish the appetite for 
 place, or for the less legitimate forms of gain, which 
 are often sought merely for the purpose of recovering 
 an expenditure already made. Men who have paid 
 much for a position easily persuade themselves that it 
 is legitimate to make profit out of it, and to regard 
 their expenditure as an investment. But, unless pay- 
 
 VOL. J. 16
 
 242 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 ment from public sources were restricted to candidates 
 who obtained a considerable amount of support at the 
 poll, it would multiply useless and mischievous con- 
 tests, and, like the payment of members, which would 
 probably follow it, besides adding largely to the cost 
 of government, it would greatly smooth the path of the 
 professional agitator or wirepuller. 
 
 The reader Avill, I hope, understand that in the fore- 
 going remarks I am describing tendencies which appear 
 to me to be in operation and not fully accomplished 
 facts. It would take a long time, and many disastrous 
 revolutions, to break down the firm texture of English 
 political life. The old feelings of traditional reve- 
 rence ; the long-established organisations of property 
 and class and corporate existence ; the shrewdness and 
 sobriety of judgment, and, above all, the sound moral 
 feeling which a long and noble history has implanted in 
 all classes of the British people, have not disappeared, 
 though power is passing mainly into the hands of the 
 most uninstructed, and therefore least intelligent, 
 classes, and though low motives are in consequence 
 acquiring a greater prominence in English politics. 
 Still, there have been encouraging signs that a politi- 
 cian who is ready to sacrifice his character in order 
 to win power or popularity may make the sacrifice 
 without obtaining the reward. Manufactured and or- 
 ganised agitations ; ingenious combinations of hetero- 
 geneous elements ; skilful attempts to win votes by 
 distributing class bribes or inflaming class or national 
 animosities, have not always proved successful. The 
 deliberate judgment of the constituencies on a great 
 question which strongly arouses national feeling will, 
 I believe, seldom be wrong, though there is an in- 
 creased danger that they may be for a time misled, 
 and that such influences as I have described may
 
 CH. ii. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS 243 
 
 obtain a temporary ascendency in the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 The high standard, both of professional honour and 
 of competence, that has long prevailed in our perma- 
 nent services is certainly unimpaired, and, in days 
 when parliamentary government is in its decadence, 
 the importance to national wellbeing of a good perma- 
 nent service can hardly be overrated. Parliament it- 
 self, though it shows many evil signs, has escaped some 
 which may be detected in other legislatures. It would 
 be difficult to exaggerate the value of the standing 
 order which provides that the House of Commons shall 
 make no money grant except at the initiative of the 
 responsible Ministers of the Crown. Probably no other 
 provision has done so much to check extravagance and 
 to place a bound to that bribery by legislation which is 
 one of the distinctive dangers of democracy ; and the 
 absence of such a rule has been justly described as one 
 of the great sources of the corruption and extravagance 
 of French finance. The Committee system also, which 
 seems likely to become in England, as it has already 
 become in America, the most important thing in parlia- 
 mentary government, is still essentially sound. The 
 House of Commons as a whole is becoming so unfit for 
 the transaction of the details of business that it will 
 probably more and more delegate its functions to Com- 
 mittees ; and these Committees submit great questions 
 to a thorough examination, bring together the most 
 competent practical judges and the best available infor- 
 mation, weaken the force of party, and infuse into 
 legislation something, at least, of a judicial spirit. 
 
 I have already alluded to the great political value of 
 the competitive system of examination as applied to 
 the public services. It has undoubtedly many and 
 grievous drawbacks, and few good judges will deny
 
 244 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. u. 
 
 that examinations have been overdone in England, and 
 that in these examinations mere book knowledge has 
 been too prominent. Sometimes, indeed, there has 
 been an almost grotesque dissimilarity between the 
 character of the examination and the career to which 
 it leads ; as, for example, when questions about Spen- 
 ser's ' Faerie Queene/ or about English parliamentary 
 history, or about classical literature, are said to have 
 turned the scale for or against a candidate in an 
 army examination. Many of the qualities that are 
 most useful in the administration of affairs and the 
 management of men can be neither given nor tested by 
 examination. Tact, knowledge of men, sound judg- 
 ment, promptitude and resolution in times of danger, 
 and that charm of manner which adds so much, espe- 
 cially in Eastern nations, to the success of administra- 
 tions, lie wholly beyond the range of the examination 
 hall. There are positions in life in which the wild, idle, 
 high-spirited boy, whose natural bent is all to sport 
 and to adventure, but who is utterly without the turn 
 of mind or character that triumphs in examinations, is 
 more likely to succeed than the plodding, industrious 
 boy who will win the prize. The competitive system 
 is in theory a very democratical one, but, like many 
 democratic measures, it does not altogether fulfil its 
 promise. It is a system which gives a wholly dispro- 
 portionate share of the world's goods to a small minori- 
 ty who are endowed with a particular kind of capacity. 
 It is a system also in which money plays a great part, 
 for it has become all but impossible for boys to succeed 
 in the most keenly contested examinations unless they 
 have had the advantage of special and expensive teach- 
 ing. It is curious to observe how often, under the old 
 aristocratic system of patronage, a poor man gained a 
 place on the ladder of promotion which he could not
 
 CH. II. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS 245 
 
 have reached under the present system. An officer 
 who, like so many of his profession, found himself 
 towards the close of a useful and honourable life with 
 only a very humble competence, could, under the old 
 system, always obtain for his son a commission with- 
 out purchase in the army. His son must now enter by 
 an examination, and he will hardly succeed unless the 
 father is able to give him the advantage of an experi- 
 enced crammer. 
 
 In India the competitive system may prove a serious 
 danger. In that country the nimbleness of mind and 
 tongue which succeeds in examinations is, to a degree 
 quite unknown in Europe, separated from martial 
 courage, and from the strength of nerve and character 
 that wins the respect of great masses, and marks out 
 the rulers of men. In the opinion of the best judges, 
 a system which would bring to the forefront the weak, 
 effeminate Bengalese, to the detriment of the old go- 
 verning races of India and of the strong, warlike popu- 
 lations of the North, would be the sure precursor of a 
 catastrophe. 
 
 But, with all its drawbacks, the competitive system 
 has been, I think, in England a great blessing, and the 
 disadvantages that attend it have been mitigated By 
 more intelligent kinds of examination and by a judi- 
 cious mixture of patronage and competition, which 
 gives some power of selection to men in responsible 
 positions. The competitive system realises, on the 
 whole, more perfectly than any other that has been yet 
 devised the ideal of the Revolution : ' La carrier e 
 ouverte aux talents.' If patronage were always exercised 
 with perfect wisdom and public spirit, it would, no 
 doubt, bring forward better men, but there is no real 
 reason to believe that the class who, in Great Britain, 
 are produced by the competitive system are, on the
 
 246 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 whole, at all inferior to their predecessors. At the 
 same time, its value in keeping the public services 
 pure from corruption can hardly be overstated. It is 
 the one real protection against the complete dominance 
 of the ( spoils system,' and it is a protection which is 
 likely to last. In a democratic age it is very difficult 
 to correct democratic evils except by democratic reme- 
 dies. It would be impossible to measure the corrup- 
 tion which would ensue if all the powers of patronage 
 and nomination that were once in the hands of govern- 
 ments and aristocracies were placed in the hands of 
 popular bodies, to be scrambled for by professional 
 politicians or used as bribes by contending factions. 
 
 It is a truth which is not sufficiently recognised, that 
 the general character of a nation cannot always be fairly 
 judged by the character of its public men or of its politi- 
 cal actions. In a really sound representative system 
 this remark would not apply. One of the truest tests 
 of a good constitution is, that it brings into habitual 
 political action the best characteristics of the nation. 
 But in the extremes both of despotism and of democracy 
 political action is often a strangely deceptive guide to 
 national character. Governments sometimes pursue a 
 constantly aggressive, military, and violent policy, sim- 
 ply because power is in the hands of a small class, and 
 because the bulk of the nation are so mild, peaceful, 
 and loyal that they can be easily led. In democracies, 
 as America has abundantly shown, politics may be an 
 equally faithless mirror of the best side of the national 
 character. The politics of a nation and the character 
 of its public men may deteriorate, not because the 
 aggregate intelligence or virtue of the nation has di- 
 minished, but simply because the governing power has 
 descended to classes who are less intelligent, less scru- 
 pulous, or more easily deceived.
 
 CH. II. POLITICS AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 247 
 
 If it be true as there seems great reason to be- 
 lieve that parliamentary government in England has 
 entered on its period of decadence, it becomes a ques- 
 tion of the highest importance to ascertain whether 
 this implies a general decadence in the national cha- 
 racter. I do not myself believe it. It appears to me 
 hardly possible to compare the present generation of 
 Englishmen with the generation of our grandfathers 
 and great-grandfathers without believing that, on the 
 whole, English character has improved. The statistics 
 of crime are, no doubt, in this respect an imperfect test, 
 for the criminal class always forms only a small section 
 of the community, and an increase or diminution of 
 actual criminal offences often depends upon circum- 
 stances that are only very slightly connected with the 
 average morals of the community. As far, however, 
 as this test goes, it is eminently satisfactory, for there 
 can be no doubt that most forms of grave crime, in 
 proportion to population, have, in the present genera- 
 tion, greatly diminished. Nor is this surprising, for 
 no feature of our century is more remarkable than the 
 skill with which, by reformatories and industrial and 
 other schools, by factory laws, by the diminution of in- 
 sanitary dwellings, and by the better regulation of the 
 drink traffic, modern philanthropy has succeeded in 
 restricting or purifying the chief sources of national 
 crime. As a single illustration of the change that has 
 taken place, I may mention that in 1834 it was officially 
 stated in Parliament that not less than one-fifth of the 
 army stationed in England had, in the two preceding 
 years, passed through the common gaols. 1 The great 
 diminution of ordinary crime in England is especially 
 remarkable, because both in France and in the United 
 
 1 Hansard, xxv. 281.
 
 248 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 States there has been, in the present generation, a great 
 and a deplorable increase. 
 
 Not less conspicuous is the improvement that has 
 taken place in the decorum, civilisation, and humanity 
 of the bulk of the poor ; in the character of their tastes 
 and pleasures ; in their enlarged circle of interests ; in 
 the spirit of providence which, under the influence of 
 savings banks and kindred institutions, has arisen 
 among them. The skilled artisans in our great towns, 
 within the memory of living men, have become, not 
 only the most energetic, but also one of the most intel- 
 ligent and orderly elements, in English life. No one 
 who has come into close contact with their political 
 organisations, or trade unions, or mechanics' institutes, 
 or free libraries, or who has watched the working-class 
 audience of some great scientific lecturer, will deem 
 this an exaggeration. The spirit of humanity has im- 
 mensely increased, both in the form that shrinks from 
 the infliction of suffering and in the form that seeks 
 out suffering in order to alleviate it. Churches and 
 creeds will come and go ; but the best index of the 
 moral level of a community is to be found in the 
 amount of unselfish action that is generated within it. 
 I do not believe that there has ever been a period in 
 England, or in any other country, when more time, 
 thought, money, and labour were bestowed on the alle- 
 viation of suffering, or in which a larger number of 
 men and women of all classes threw themselves more 
 earnestly and more habitually into unselfish causes. 
 Both within and without the Church the passion for 
 social reform and philanthropic action has, to a large 
 extent, displaced theological enthusiasm ; but, at the 
 same time, the increased activity of the Established 
 Church is very apparent, the standard of duty among 
 its clergy is appreciably raised, and its patronage is ad-
 
 CH. II. SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT 249 
 
 ministered in a far better and purer spirit than in the 
 past. 
 
 All this is, no doubt, compatible with the growth of 
 some special forms of vice. It may perhaps be com- 
 patible with a decline of those stronger and more ro- 
 bust qualities that chiefly lead to political greatness. 
 Whether in this last field there has been any decadence 
 in England is a question on which it is difficult to pro- 
 nounce. The last occasion in which England was en- 
 gaged in a life-and-death struggle against overwhelming 
 odds was in the Indian Mutiny ; and, in that now dis- 
 tant crisis, it must be owned that there was no failing 
 in the stronger, fiercer, and more tenacious qualities 
 that have made England what she is. Amid all the 
 much-obtruded sentimentalisms of our time there are 
 indications that the fibre of the race is still unimpaired. 
 The old love of manly sports was never more abun- 
 dantly displayed ; in the great fields of adventure and 
 discovery, in the forms of commercial and industrial 
 enterprise that most tax the energies and resources of 
 men, modern Englishmen bear their full part, and no 
 other people are doing so much to explore, subdue, 
 and civilise far-distant and savage lands. 
 
 Have their governing qualities declined ? Have the 
 Englishmen of our day learnt to prefer words to things 
 and plausibilities to facts, and men who are cunning 
 in the arts of parliamentary fence and political ma- 
 noeuvre to men of wise judgment and solid character ? 
 Carlyle believed that they had, and there have been 
 symptoms in these later days that support his opi- 
 nion. I believe, however, that they will nearly all 
 be found in close connection with the influence of a 
 democratic Parliament. When Englishmen escape 
 from its interference and its contagion, their old high 
 governing qualities seldom fail to shine. No piece oi
 
 250 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 more skilful, successful, and beneficent administration 
 has been accomplished in our day, under circumstances 
 of great difficulty, than the English administration of 
 Egypt, and no achievement of secular government 
 since the Roman Empire can compare in its magnitude 
 and splendour with the British Empire in India. The 
 men who built up that gigantic empire, who have 
 maintained for so many generations and over so vast 
 an area peace and prosperity and order, who have put 
 a stop to so many savage wars and eradicated so many 
 cruel customs, are the statesmen of whom England 
 should be most proud. There is no sign that they 
 have lost their cunning ; and if such men and such 
 modes of government could have been employed nearer 
 home, many old injustices and discontents would have 
 long since passed away. 
 
 He would be a sanguine man who ventured to pre- 
 dict with confidence the long duration of this supreme 
 monument of the genius and the character of our race ; 
 but most good judges will agree that the great danger 
 that menaces it is to be found neither at Calcutta 
 nor at St. Petersburg, but at Westminster. It is 
 to be found in combinations of fanaticism with in- 
 trigue that are peculiarly dangerous in a country ruled 
 by feeble governments, and disintegrated parliaments, 
 and ignorant constituencies ; it is to be found in the 
 introduction into India of modes and maxims of 
 government borrowed from modern European demo- 
 cracies, and utterly unsuited to an Oriental people ; it 
 is to be found in acts of injustice perpetrated by 
 Parliament in obedience to party motives and to the 
 pressure of local interests. Two shameful instances of 
 this kind are very recent. The Commission sent out 
 to India to inquire into the opium traffic in 1893 was 
 wholly due to the action in the House of Commons of
 
 CH. II. INDIAN GOVERNMENT 251 
 
 a little knot of fanatics and agitators in England, un- 
 prompted by any voice in India, and carried contrary 
 to the whole force of experienced Indian opinion. 
 Yet it was at first determined that a great part of its 
 cost should be thrown on the Indian taxpayer. Still 
 graver in its probable effects Avas the policy which for- 
 bade India, in a time of deep financial distress, to raise 
 a revenue by import duties on English cotton, in ac- 
 cordance with the almost unanimous desire of her ad- 
 ministrators and her educated public opinion. No 
 one ever doubted that, if India possessed representa- 
 tive institutions, or if the opinions of English adminis- 
 trators in India or of Indian administrators at home 
 had been taken, such duties Avould have been imposed. 
 But votes might have been lost, an agitation might 
 have been raised in England, and both parties feared 
 to run the risk. 
 
 Fortunately, in these two cases the false steps that 
 had been taken did not prove irrevocable. The Minis- 
 ter for India (Sir Henry Fowler), to his infinite credit, 
 had the courage to insist at all hazards upon revising 
 them, and he found sufficient patriotism in the Op- 
 position to enable him to secure the support of a large 
 majority in the House of Commons. Seldom indeed 
 in recent years has the chord of genuine public spirit 
 in that House been so powerfully and so successfully 
 struck. But the original faults were very grave, and 
 they illustrate the dangers to which democratic parlia- 
 mentary government with a weak executive exposes 
 the great interests of the Empire. 
 
 The blame must be divided between both parties. 
 In both parties the minister representing India has, I 
 believe, usually done his best, short of resigning his 
 office ; but when a small group of voters may turn 
 the balance, the great interests of India are but too
 
 252 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IL 
 
 likely to be sacrificed to the party game. It is often 
 said that England holds India by the sword ; but this, 
 though largely, is not wholly true. If the belief of 
 the great masses of the Indian people in the essential 
 integrity and beneficence of English rule is ever 
 shaken, one of the chief pillars of our power will have 
 been destroyed. 
 
 Our Indian experience, however, at least shows that 
 the governing qualities of the race remain ; and the 
 same truth is taught by the admirable corporate govern- 
 ment which has grown up in our great towns. It is 
 very doubtful whether the spirit of municipal and local 
 patriotism was more strongly developed either in an- 
 cient Greece, or, during the Middle Ages, in the great 
 towns of Italy and Flanders or along the Baltic, than 
 it now is in Birmingham, or Liverpool, or Manchester. 
 The self-governing qualities that are displayed in these 
 great centres, the munificence and patriotism with 
 which their public institutions are supported, the 
 strong stream of distinctive political tendency that 
 emanates from them, are among the most remarkable 
 and most consolatory facts of English life. In France, 
 the ascendency of Paris has almost atrophied political 
 life in the provincial towns, and the capital has again 
 and again shown itself sufficiently powerful to re- 
 verse the decision of the country. In America, the 
 corruption of municipal government in nearly all the 
 more important cities is the worst side of the national 
 life. England has hitherto escaped both of these 
 evils, and the political weight of the chief provincial 
 towns is unquestionable. The Manchester school of 
 the last generation, and the Birmingham school of the 
 present generation, have been among the most power- 
 ful influences in modern politics. 
 
 The growth of an independent provincial spirit haa
 
 CH. II. INFLUENCE OF THE TELEGRAPH 253 
 
 been much accelerated by the telegraph. The politi- 
 cal influence of this great invention, though various 
 and chequered, has been scarcely less powerful than 
 that of the railway. It has brought the distant de- 
 pendencies of the Empire into far closer connection 
 with the mother country ; but it is very doubtful 
 whether the power it has given to the home ministers 
 of continually meddling with the details of their ad- 
 ministration is a good thing, and there have been 
 times of disagreement when a rapid communication be- 
 tween foreign countries might have led rather to war 
 than to peace. Government by telegraph is a very 
 dangerous thing ; and it has been often said that if an 
 Atlantic telegraph had connected England with the 
 United States in the first excitement of the 'Trent* 
 affair, enabling the two nations, when their blood was 
 still hot, to exchange their impressions, a war could 
 scarcely have been averted. The telegraph, on the 
 other hand, has greatly strengthened the Central 
 Government in repressing insurrections, protecting 
 property, and punishing crime. It has at least modi- 
 fied the Irish difficulty, by bringing Dublin within a 
 few minutes' communication of London. It has had 
 enormous economical consequences, equalising prices, 
 stimulating speculation, destroying in a great measure 
 the advantage of priority of time which the inhabi- 
 tants of great centres naturally had in many competi- 
 tions. 
 
 The effect, however, on which I would now specially 
 dwell is its great power in decentralising politics. 
 The provincial press, no doubt, owes much to the re- 
 peal of the stamp duty and the paper duty : but the 
 immense development and importance it has assumed 
 within the lifetime of men who are still of middle age 
 are mainly due to the existence of telegraphic commu-
 
 254 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n 
 
 nication. All kinds of foreign and domestic news, 
 and even full reports of debates in Parliament that are 
 of any local interest, are printed in an Irish, or Scotch, 
 or Liverpool paper as early as in London. The local 
 newspaper is thus able, in its own district, to antici- 
 pate the news of the London papers, and in conse- 
 quence, over large areas of the country where the 
 metropolitan press once exercised an enormous influ- 
 ence, a London newspaper is now seldom seen. With 
 its increased importance and circulation, the provincial 
 press can command far more talent than in the past, 
 and it has become one of the most important agencies, 
 both in indicating and in forming national opinion. 
 
 I do not know that it was ever clearly foreseen that 
 while railways were doing so much to centralise, the 
 telegraph would do so much to decentralise, multiply- 
 ing in England powerful and independent centres of 
 political thought and education, building up a provin- 
 cial press which often fully rivals in ability that of the 
 metropolis, while, within its own spheres of influence, 
 it exercises a far greater ascendency. This has been 
 one of the great political facts of our time, and, on the 
 whole, it seems to me to have been a beneficial one. 
 Eepresentative institutions will probably perish by 
 ceasing to be representative, genuine opinion being 
 overlaid and -crushed by great multitudes of ignorant 
 voters of one class. In our day, the press is becoming 
 far more than the House of Commons the representa- 
 tive of the real public opinion of the nation. 
 
 Its growth is but one of the many signs of the in- 
 tense and many-sided intellectual and moral energy 
 that pervades the country. There are fields, indeed, 
 both of thought and action, in which the greatest men 
 of our generation are dwarfed by their predecessors ; 
 but if we measure our age by the aggregate of its
 
 CH. It ENGLAND NOT DECADENT 255 
 
 vitality, by the broad sweep of its energies and achieve- 
 ments, the England of our century can hardly fail to 
 rank very high. In art, in science, in literature, in 
 the enlargement of the bounds of knowledge, in the 
 popularisation of acquired knowledge, in inventions 
 and discoveries, and in most of the forms of enterprise 
 and philanthropy, it has assuredly done much. It 
 has produced in Darwin a man who has effected a 
 greater revolution in the opinions of mankind than 
 anyone, at least since Newton, and whose name is 
 likely to live with honour as long as the human race 
 moves upon the planet ; while in Gordon it has pro- 
 duced a type of simple, self-sacrificing, religious hero- 
 ism which is in its own kind as perfect as anything, 
 even in the legends of chivalry. A country which has 
 produced such men and such works does not seem to 
 be in a condition of general decadence, though its Con- 
 stitution is plainly worn out, though the balance of 
 power within it has been destroyed, and though dis- 
 eases of a serious character are fast growing in its poli- 
 tical life. The future only can tell whether the energy 
 of the English people can be sufficiently roused to check 
 these evils, and to do so before they have led to some 
 great catastrophe.
 
 256 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 
 
 I DO not think that any one who seriously con- 
 siders the force and universality of the movement of 
 our generation in the direction of democracy can doubt 
 that this conception of government will necessarily, at 
 least for a considerable time, dominate in all civilised 
 countries, and the real question for politicians is the 
 form it is likely to take, and the means by which its 
 characteristic evils can be best mitigated. As we have, 
 I think, abundantly seen, a tendency to democracy 
 does not mean a tendency to parliamentary govern- 
 ment, or even a tendency towards greater liberty. On 
 the contrary, strong arguments may be adduced, both 
 from history and from the nature of things, to show 
 that democracy may often prove the direct opposite of 
 liberty. In ancient Some the old aristocratic republic 
 was gradually transformed into a democracy, and it 
 then passed speedily into an imperial despotism. In 
 France a corresponding change has more than once 
 taken place. A despotism resting on a plebiscite is 
 quite as natural a form of democracy as a republic, and 
 some of the strongest democratic tendencies are dis- 
 tinctly adverse to liberty. Equality is the idol of de- 
 mocracy, but, with the infinitely various capacities and 
 energies of men, this can only be attained by a con- 
 stant, systematic, stringent repression of their natural 
 development. Whenever natural forces have unre- 
 stricted play, inequality is certain to ensue. Demo- 
 cracy destroys the balance of opinions, interests, and
 
 CH. in. DEMOCRACY IS NOT LIBERTY 257 
 
 classes, on which constitutional liberty mainly de- 
 pends, and its constant tendency is to impair the 
 efficiency and authority of parliaments, which have 
 hitherto proved the chief organs of political liberty. 
 In the Middle Ages, the two most democratic institu- 
 tions were the Church and the guild. The first taught 
 the essential spiritual equality of mankind, and placed 
 men taken from the servile class on a pedestal before 
 which kings and nobles were compelled to bow ; but it 
 also formed the most tremendous instrument of spi- 
 ritual tyranny the world has ever seen. The second 
 organised industry on a self-governing and representa- 
 tive basis, but at the same time restricted and regulated 
 it in all its details with the most stringent despotism. 
 
 In our own day, no fact is more incontestable and 
 conspicuous than the love of democracy for authorita- 
 tive regulation. The two things that men in middle 
 age have seen most discredited among their contempo- 
 raries are probably free contract and free trade. The 
 great majority of the democracies of the world are now 
 frankly protectionist, and even in free-trade countries 
 the multiplication of laws regulating, restricting, and 
 interfering with industry in all its departments is one 
 of the most marked characteristics of our time. Nor 
 are these regulations solely due to sanitary or humani- 
 tarian motives. Among large classes of those who 
 advocate them another motive is very perceptible. A 
 school has arisen among popular working-class leaders 
 which no longer desires that superior skill, or industry, 
 or providence should reap extraordinary rewards. 
 Their ideal is to restrict by the strongest trade-union 
 regulations the amount of work and the amount of the 
 produce of work, to introduce the principle of legal 
 compulsion into every branch of industry, to give the 
 trade union an absolute coercive power over its mem- 
 VOL. i. 17
 
 258 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CR. m. 
 
 bers, to attain a high average, but to permit no supe- 
 riorities. The industrial organisation to which they 
 aspire approaches far more nearly to that of the Middle 
 Ages or of the Tudors than to the ideal of Jefferson 
 and Cobden. I do not here argue whether this ten- 
 dency is good or bad. No one at least can suppose that 
 it is in the direction of freedom. It may be permitted 
 to doubt whether liberty in other forms is likely to be 
 very secure if power is mainly placed in the hands of 
 men who, in their own sphere, value it so little. 
 
 The expansion of the authority and the multiplica- 
 tion of the functions of the State in other fields, and 
 especially in the field of social regulation, is an equally 
 apparent accompaniment of modern democracy. This 
 increase of State power means a multiplication of re- 
 strictions imposed upon the various forms of human 
 action. It means an increase of bureaucracy, or, in 
 other words, of the number and power of State officials. 
 It means also a constant increase of taxation, which is 
 in reality a constant restriction of liberty. One of the 
 first forms of liberty is the right of every man to dis- 
 pose of his own property and earnings, and every tax is 
 a portion of this money taken from him by the force 
 and authority of the law. Many of these taxes are, no 
 doubt, for purposes in which he has the highest in- 
 terest. They give him the necessary security of life, 
 property, and industry, and they add in countless ways 
 to his enjoyment. But if taxes are multiplied for 
 carrying out a crowd of objects in which he has no 
 interest, and with many of which he has no sympathy, 
 his liberty is proportionately restricted. His money 
 is more and more taken from him by force for purposes 
 of which he does not approve. The question of taxa- 
 tion is in the highest degree a question of liberty, and 
 taxation under a democracy is likely to take forms that
 
 C0. in. DEMOCRACY IS NOT LIBERTY 259 
 
 are peculiarly hostile to liberty. I have already pointed 
 out how the old fundamental principle of English free- 
 dom, that no one should be taxed except by his con- 
 sent, is being gradually discarded ; and how we are 
 steadily advancing to a state in which one class will 
 impose the taxes, while another class will be mainly 
 compelled to pay them. It is obvious that taxation is 
 more and more employed for objects that are not com- 
 mon interests of the whole community, and that there is 
 a growing tendency to look upon it as a possible means of 
 confiscation ; to make use of it to break down the power, 
 influence, and wealth of particular classes ; to form a 
 new social type ; to obtain the means of class bribery. 
 
 There are other ways in which democracy does not 
 harmonise well with liberty. To place the chief power 
 in the most ignorant classes is to place it in the hands 
 of those who naturally care least for political liberty, 
 and who are most likely to follow with an absolute de- 
 votion some strong leader. The sentiment of nation- 
 ality penetrates very deeply into all classes ; but in all 
 countries and ages it is the upper and middle classes 
 who have chiefly valued constitutional liberty, and 
 those classes it is the work of democracy to dethrone. 
 At the same time democracy does much to weaken 
 among these also the love of liberty. The instability 
 and insecurity of democratic politics ; the spectacle of 
 dishonest and predatory adventurers climbing by popu- 
 lar suffrage into positions of great power in the State ; 
 the alarm which attacks on property seldom fail to 
 produce among those who have something to lose, may 
 easily scare to the side of despotism large classes who, 
 under other circumstances, would have been steady 
 supporters of liberty. A despotism which secures 
 order, property, and industry, which leaves the liberty 
 of religion and of private life unimpaired, and which
 
 260 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 enables quiet and industrious men to pass through life 
 untroubled and unmolested, will always appear to 
 many very preferable to a democratic republic which is 
 constantly menacing, disturbing, or plundering them. 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that the French 
 despotic Empire after 1852 rested on bayonets alone. 
 It rested partly on the genuine consent of those large 
 agricultural classes who cared greatly for material pro- 
 sperity and very little for constitutional liberty, and 
 partly on the panic produced among the middle classes 
 by the socialist preaching of 1848. 
 
 The dangers to be apprehended from democracy 
 are enormously increased when the transformation is 
 effected by sudden bounds. Governments or societies 
 may be fundamentally changed, without producing 
 any great convulsion or catastrophe, if the continuity 
 of habit is preserved, if the changes are made by slow, 
 gradual, and almost imperceptible steps. As I have 
 already said, it is one of the evils of our present party 
 system that it greatly accelerates this progress. Very 
 few constitutional changes are the results of a genuine, 
 spontaneous, unforced development. They are mainly, 
 or at least largely, due to rival leaders bidding against 
 each other for popularity; to agitators seeking for 
 party purposes to raise a cry ; to defeated statesmen 
 trying, when they are condemned by existing constitu- 
 encies, to regain power by creating new ones. The 
 true origin of some of the most far-reaching changes 
 of our day is, probably, simply a desire so to shuffle 
 cards or combine votes as to win an election. With a 
 powerful Upper Chamber and a strong organisation of 
 property in the electorate, the conservative influences 
 are sufficient to prevent a too rapid change. But 
 when these checks are weakened and destroyed, and 
 when there are no constitutional provisions to take
 
 CH. in. THE IRISH REPRESENTATION 261 
 
 their place, the influences working in the direction of 
 change acquire an enormously augmented force, the 
 dangers of the process are incalculably increased, and 
 the new wine is very likely to burst the old bottles. 
 
 It is impossible to foretell with confident accuracy in 
 what form societies will organise their governments if, 
 under the pressure of democracy, our present system of 
 parliamentary government breaks down. A study of 
 the methods which many different countries have 
 adopted, and especially of the manner in which Ame- 
 rica has dealt with the dangers of democracy, fur- 
 nishes us with perhaps the best light we can obtain. 
 But, within the framework of the British Constitu- 
 tion, a few remedies or mitigations of existing evils 
 have been suggested, which may be easily, or at least 
 without any insuperable difficulty, introduced. 
 
 The first and most obvious is a change in the Irish 
 representation. The presence in the House of Com- 
 mons of a body of men who are entirely detached from 
 the general interests of the Empire, and prepared to 
 subordinate all Imperial concerns to their own special 
 policy, must always bring with it some danger ; and 
 there could hardly be a greater folly than to allow such 
 an element to possess an abnormal and wholly exces- 
 sive share in the representation. Few more foolish or 
 wicked acts have been done in modern times than the 
 lowering of the suffrage in Ireland, by which this great 
 evil and danger was deliberately raised to its present 
 magnitude, while not a single step was taken, either 
 by curtailing representation, or redistributing seats, or 
 securing a representation of minorities, to mitigate the 
 evil. Such a policy, indeed, would seem simple mad- 
 ness if party interest did not furnish an explanation. 
 It is acknowledged that the Irish representation, if 
 measured by the test of numbers alone, is about
 
 262 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 twenty-three seats in excess of its proper number. If 
 the far more rational test of numbers and taxation 
 combined be taken, the excess is still greater. It is an 
 excess, too, which is mainly in one portion of Ireland, 
 and in one class the most ignorant, the most disloyal, 
 the most amenable to sinister influence. The steady 
 action of this party has been to disintegrate and de- 
 grade parliamentary government, to support every 
 measure in the direction of anarchy or plunder. Yet 
 it is well known that for some years the Government 
 of England depended for its existence, not only on the 
 Irish vote, but on the illegitimate strength of that vote. 
 If we look through the more revolutionary and dange- 
 rous measures of the last few years, we shall find that 
 very few have been carried through all their stages by 
 an English majority and not many by a, British majo- 
 rity, while some of the worst measures could never 
 have been carried by the votes of the whole kingdom if 
 the Irish representation had not been disproportion- 
 ately large. And the men who have kept a Govern- 
 ment in power, and largely influenced its policy, have 
 been men who are avowedly and ostentatiously indiffe- 
 rent to the welfare of the Empire, men whose votes on 
 questions vitally affecting British or Imperial interests 
 are notoriously governed by considerations in which 
 these interests have no part. It is owing to the exces- 
 sive number of such men in Parliament that a system 
 of taxation has been carried through the House of Com- 
 mons which may break up the social organisation on 
 which a great part of the wellbeing of England has de- 
 pended for nearly a thousand years. No one supposes 
 that the Irish surplus which turned the balance felt 
 the smallest interest in the result. 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive a situation either 
 more dangerous, or more absurd, or more humiliating
 
 CH. in. THE IRISH REPRESENTATION 263 
 
 than this. According to all rational conceptions of 
 constitutional government, it should be the object of 
 the legislator to strengthen the influence of intelli- 
 gence, loyalty, and property in the representation, and 
 in every change to improve, or not to injure, the cha- 
 racter of Parliament. If, however, such ideas are dis- 
 carded as obsolete and behind the age, if the new 
 worship of mere numbers prevails, to the utjter disre- 
 gard of all the real interests of the State, the present 
 representation of Ireland is still completely indefensible. 
 The argument from the 100 votes stipulated by the 
 Union treaty has been torn to pieces by the legislation 
 of the last few years. A party which has abolished the 
 Established Church of Ireland, which the Irish Parlia- 
 ment made ' an essential and fundamental part of the 
 Union/ and which threatens to abolish the Established 
 Church of Scotland, which was guaranteed with equal 
 solemnity at both the Scotch and the Irish Unions, 
 cannot avail itself of such an argument. And the ab- 
 surdity becomes still more manifest when it is femem- 
 bered that the great industrial counties in Ireland, 
 which represent its most progressive and loyal portions, 
 are not over-represented, but under-represented, and 
 that, as the result of the present system, in three 
 provinces property, loyalty, and intelligence are prac- 
 tically disfranchised. 
 
 There can be little doubt that a reduction, and at 
 the same time a rearrangement, of the Irish represen- 
 tation would greatly improve the constitution of par- 
 ties, and it would certainly be a great blessing to Ireland. 
 Should this reduction be effected, it is to be hoped that 
 the seats taken from Ireland may not be added to Great 
 Britain, and that statesmen will avail themselves of the 
 opportunity to effect some slight diminution of the 
 numbers of the House.
 
 264 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 Nearly all the methods by which it has been at- 
 tempted to secure in Parliament a representation of 
 the various classes and interests of the community 
 seem passing away under the influence of democracy. 
 Unequal constituencies, restrictions of the suffrage, 
 property qualifications, special representations of pro- 
 perty, are all denounced as opposed to the spirit of the 
 age. Direct class representation also, which has borne 
 a large part in the history of representative govern- 
 ment, has been steadily declining, though it has in our 
 own day some able defenders, 1 and though it is, I think, 
 by no means impossible that in some future stage of the 
 world's history it may be largely revived. The appor- 
 tionment of political power between distinctly separated 
 classes has, indeed, been one of the oldest and most 
 fruitful ideas in political philosophy. It existed in 
 Athens even before the days of Solon, and Solon, in 
 his revision of the Athenian Constitution, divided the 
 citizens into four classes, according to the amount of 
 their j*roperty, subjecting each class to a special pro- 
 
 1 See, e.g., the remarkable C'est le fait de toutes les mi- 
 book of M. Adolphe Prins, norites electorates sous le re- 
 L 1 Organisation de la Liberte girne de la majorit6 numerique. 
 (Brussels, 1895). M. Prins ob- . . . Le suffrage universel mo- 
 serves : ' II est incontestable derne c'est surtout le suffrage 
 que le suffrage universel sans des passions, des courants irre- 
 cadres, sans organisation, sans flechis, des partis extremes. II 
 groupement, est un systeme fac- ne laisse aucune place aux idees 
 tice ; il ne donne que 1'ombre moderees et il ecrase les partis 
 de la vie politique. II n'atteint moderes. La victoire est aux 
 pas le seul but vraiment poli- exaltes. La representation des 
 tique que 1'on doive avoir en interets, qui contient les pas- 
 vue, et qui est non de faire vo- sions par les idees, qui modere 
 ter tout le monde, mais d'arri- 1'ardeur des partis par 1'action 
 ver a representer le mieux les des facteurs sociaux, donne a la 
 interets du plus grand nombre. societe plus d'equilibre ' (pp. 
 ... On peut avoir le droit 186, 187, 201). 
 de vote sans etre represente.
 
 CH. in. CLASS REPRESENTATION 265 
 
 portion of taxation, and giving each class special and 
 peculiar privileges in the State. 1 In the Roman repub- 
 lic the citizens were divided into six different classes, 
 according to the amount of their property, the lowest 
 class comprising the poorest citizens ; and each class 
 was subdivided into a number of ' centuries/ propor- 
 tioned to what was considered their importance in the 
 State, and each century had a single vote in enacting 
 laws and electing magistrates. Cicero claims for this 
 system that it gave some voice to every class, but a 
 greatly preponderating voice to those who had most 
 interest in the wellbeing of the State. 2 A similar idea 
 inspired the special representation of the three es- 
 tates of Lords, Clergy, and Commons, which grew up 
 in the Middle Ages, and which, played a great part in 
 the early constitutional history of England, France, 
 and Spain. The four orders of Nobles, Clergy, Bur- 
 gesses, and Peasants were separately represented in 
 Sweden up to 1866, and the same system still survives 
 in the Constitution of Finland. In the Prussian Con- 
 stitution of 1850 an attempt is made to maintain a 
 balance of classes by dividing the electors ' of the first 
 degree' into three different classes, according to the 
 direct taxes they pay, and giving each class a separate 
 and equal power of election. In the still more recent 
 Constitution of Austria the electors are divided into 
 four great classes the large territorial proprietors, the 
 towns, the chambers of commerce, and the rural com- 
 
 1 See Grote's History, iii. stitution is attributed to Servius 
 
 118-21. Tullius, but probably acquired 
 
 2 ' Ita nee prohibebatur quis- its most characteristic features 
 
 quam jure suffragii, et is vale- much later. It was for some 
 
 bat in suffragio plurimum, cujus time greatly abused by the first 
 
 plurimum intererat esse in op- class, who possessed the majo- 
 
 timo statu civitatum ' (Cicero, rity of centuries, and vpted first. 
 de Rep ublica, ii . 22) . This Con-
 
 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 raunes and each category returns its own members to 
 the Chamber of the Deputies. But it is evident that 
 the present stream of political tendency is not flowing 
 in this direction, and it is remarkable that the legisla- 
 tors who framed the Constitution for the German Em- 
 pire did not follow the example of Prussia, but based 
 the representative chamber on direct universal suffrage. 
 It is now chiefly in the upper chambers that class repre- 
 sentation may be found. 
 
 The question, however, of proportionate representa- 
 tion, or the representation of minorities, stands on a 
 different basis from the representation of classes. It 
 can hardly be contended that the substitution of a 
 representation of the whole nation for a representation 
 of a mere majority is contrary to democratic principles. 
 It is manifest that, under the existing system, multi- 
 tudes of electors are in effect permanently disfranchised 
 and unrepresented because they are in a permanent 
 minority in the constituencies in which they live. The 
 majority possesses not merely a preponderance, but a 
 monopoly ; and in a constituency where three-fifths vote 
 one way and two-fifths the other, the whole representa- 
 tion is in the hands of the former. Where constitu- 
 encies are very unequal in their magnitude it is quite 
 possible that a majority of the representatives may be 
 returned by a minority of the electors, as the minority 
 in a large constituency will often outnumber the ma- 
 jority in a small one. With equalised constituencies 
 and widely extended suffrage another, but not less seri- 
 ous, evil will prevail. A single class the most nu- 
 merous, but also the most ignorant will generally 
 exceed all others, and other classes in large numbers 
 of constituencies will be wholly unrepresented. In 
 such a. state of things, the importance of providing 
 some representation for minorities is extremely great.
 
 CH. HI. PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 267 
 
 and it continually happens that the proportion of par- 
 ties in the representation differs very widely from the 
 proportion in the electorate. When two-thirds of a 
 constituency vote for one party, and one-third for the 
 other, it is obviously just that the majority should 
 have two-thirds, and the minority one-third, of the 
 representation. 
 
 The importance of this question has been widely felt 
 during the last few years in many countries, especially 
 since the powerful chapter in which Mill discussed it. 
 ' In a really equal democracy/ he wrote, ' every or any 
 section would be represented, not disproportionately, 
 but proportionately. A majority of the electors would 
 always have a majority of the representatives, but a 
 minority of the electors would have a minority of the 
 representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully 
 represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is 
 not equal government, but government of inequality 
 and privilege, . . . contrary to the principles of de- 
 mocracy, which professes equality as its very root and 
 foundation/ ' 
 
 There are several methods by which this represen- 
 tation of minorities may be obtained with more or less 
 perfection. The most perfect is that which was first 
 proposed by Mr. Hare in 1859. It has undergone 
 several slight modifications, at the hands either of Mr. 
 Hare or of his disciples ; but it will here be sufficient 
 to state its principle in the simplest form. The legis- 
 lator must first ascertain the number of voters who 
 are entitled to return a member ; which is done by 
 the easy process of dividing the number of voters in the 
 kingdom, or in one portion of the kingdom, by the 
 number of seats. Every candidate who can gain this 
 
 Mill On Representative Government, p. 133.
 
 268 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. HI. 
 
 number of votes is to be elected, whether these votes 
 come from his own or from other constituencies. It is 
 proposed that each elector should have one vote, but 
 should vote on a paper on which the candidate he pre- 
 fers stands first, while the names of other candidates 
 follow in the order of preference. If, when the paper 
 is drawn, the candidate at the head of the list has al- 
 ready obtained the requisite number of votes, the vote 
 is to pass to the first of the succeeding candidates who 
 is still deficient. No candidate is to be credited with a 
 greater number of votes than is required for his elec- 
 tion, and his superfluous votes are in this manner to be 
 transferred to other candidates to make up their quota. 
 And this transfer is to be made quite irrespectively of 
 the locality for which they stand. 
 
 It cannot, I think, be said that there is anything 
 very mysterious or perplexing in this proceeding, 
 though it would probably be some little time before 
 the electors became accustomed to it, and though it 
 would impose some difficulties of detail and some rather 
 complicated calculations upon the officials who worked 
 it. An element of chance would always remain, as the 
 direction of the votes would partly depend upon the 
 order in which the papers were drawn ; and it would 
 probably be found impossible to adapt the system to 
 bye-elections, which might continue as at present. If 
 all the seats were not filled by candidates who had ob- 
 tained the requisite number of votes, those who ap- 
 proximated most nearly to the number might be 
 chosen to fill the vacancies. The plan is not put for- 
 ward as absolutely perfect, but it is contended for it 
 that it would give at every general election a far more 
 accurate representation of the wishes of the electorate 
 than our present system ; that it would utilise a great 
 number of votes which are now lost or wasted ; that it
 
 CH. in. HARE'S SYSTEM 269 
 
 would rekindle political life among large classes who 
 are at present in a hopeless minority in their consti- 
 tuencies ; that it would diminish the oscillations of 
 politics, by preventing the wholly disproportionate 
 change of power that so often follows a slight shifting 
 in the electorate ; and that it would greatly improve 
 the intellectual level of the House of Commons, by 
 making it the interest of party managers to select can- 
 didates of acknowledged eminence, and by giving such 
 candidates far greater chances of success. It has been 
 said that it would destroy local representation ; but it 
 is answered that a strong local candidate would usually 
 have most chance of obtaining the required number of 
 votes, and that it would be mainly the voters who are 
 in a minority in their constituency, and are now vir- 
 tually disfranchised, who would -transfer their votes. 
 On the great majority of papers a local candidate 
 would almost certainly head the list. It is urged that 
 the system realises more perfectly than any other the 
 democratic principle of absolute equality, while it at 
 the same time secures the representation of all consider- 
 able minorities. Under no other system would the 
 representative chamber reflect so truly, in their due 
 numerical proportion, the various classes, interests, 
 and opinions of the nation. 
 
 There have been, as I have said, several slight modi- 
 fications of this system usually, I think, not im- 
 provements. M. de Girardin has urged that all local 
 constituencies should be abolished, and that the whole 
 country should be treated as one great constituency. 
 Another proposal is, that each candidate should have a 
 right to have the votes for him that are in excess of 
 those required for his election transferred to some 
 other candidate whom he had previously named. I do 
 not think that, if Mr. Hare's system were adopted,
 
 270 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IIL 
 
 there would be any great difficulty in working it, and 
 it would probably materially improve the Constitution ; 
 but it is very doubtful whether, in a democratic age, 
 public opinion would ever demand with sufficient per- 
 sistence a representation of minorities, or whether the 
 British nation could ever be induced to adopt a system 
 which departs so widely from its traditional forms and 
 habits. It is remarkable, however, that a system very 
 like that of Mr. Hare had, without his knowledge, 
 been adopted on a small scale in Denmark as early as 
 1855. It was due to a distinguished statesman named 
 Andreae, who was also a distinguished mathematician ; 
 and, with some modifications and restrictions, it still 
 continues. 1 
 
 Two other methods have been proposed for giving 
 representation to minorities which, though much less 
 perfect than the plan of Mr. Hare, diverge much less 
 from the current notions about representation. One 
 is the system of three-cornered constituencies that is, 
 of constituencies returning three members, in which 
 every elector has only a right to two votes, and in 
 which a minority exceeding a third could, in conse- 
 quence, secure one representative. This system was 
 proposed by Lord John Eussell in 1854, but was not 
 received with favour. In 1867 the House of Lords, 
 on the motion of Lord Cairns, introduced it into the 
 Reform Bill, and it became law, but without any wide 
 redistribution of seats. If the three-cornered system 
 had been made general, it would probably have been 
 readily accepted, and soon been looked upon as na- 
 tural ; but, being applied only to thirteen constituen- 
 
 i See La Representation Pro- presentation Proportionnelle 
 poriionndle, published by the (Paris, 1888), pp. 338-66. 
 Societe pour 1' Etude de la Re-
 
 CH. ill. THE REFORM BILL OF 1885 271 
 
 cies, it was an exceptional thing, and not popular. 
 Birmingham and one or two other great towns resented 
 the addition of a third member, whose vote in a party 
 division might counteract that of one of the two rep- 
 resentatives they already possessed, and therefore 
 diminish instead of increase their political strength. 
 In cases where the majority equalled or slightly ex- 
 ceeded two-thirds much difficult and expensive organi- 
 sation was required to enable it to retain the three 
 seats to which, according to its numbers, it was en- 
 titled. Bright, who himself sat for Birmingham, 
 opposed the system with great bitterness and persis- 
 tence, and the Eadical party were generally hostile to 
 it. It was accordingly abolished in the Eeform Bill of 
 1885, which broke up the great majority of the con- 
 stituencies into smaller divisions, each retaining one 
 member. It was contended that such subdivision im- 
 proved the chances of a minority ; but the case of 
 Ireland abundantly shows how little reliance can be 
 placed on this security, 1 and the adoption of such seats 
 greatly added to the difficulty of establishing any gene- 
 ral system of minority representation. 
 
 ' Nothing is more remarkable/ writes Mr. Hare in 
 speaking of this episode, ' than that the attempts to 
 retrace the steps that have been made towards render- 
 ing the representative bodies comprehensive, and not 
 exclusive in their character, should all emanate from 
 members of the Liberal party, which is understood to 
 insist upon equality in political freedom, without par- 
 tiality in favour of person or place. The abolition of 
 the restricted vote was put forward as a pretended vin- 
 dication of electoral rights, while, by delivering the 
 
 1 See on this subject an admirable pamphlet by Mr. Aubrey de 
 Vere, called Ireland and Proportional Representation (1885).
 
 272 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IIL 
 
 electoral power of every community over to the majo- 
 rity, it would practically disfranchise a third, or even 
 more, of the electors/ 1 
 
 The other system is that of the cumulative vote, by 
 which, in a constituency returning three or more 
 members, each elector has a right to as many votes as 
 there are members, and may either distribute them, or 
 concentrate them, if he pleases, on a single candidate. 
 This method is more likely to be popular than the 
 limited vote, as it gives a privilege instead of imposing 
 a restriction, and it would undoubtedly be effectual in 
 enabling any considerable minority to return a mem- 
 ber. It was strongly, but unsuccessfully, advocated 
 by Mr. Lowe in 1867, and it was introduced into the 
 school board elections in 1870. Various inequalities 
 and anomalies have been pointed out in its working, 
 but, on the whole, it is undoubtedly efficacious in giv- 
 ing minorities a real representation. It is manifest, 
 however, that it can only be really useful in constitu- 
 encies represented by more than two members. 
 
 These various methods are attempts to attain an end 
 which was, on the whole, roughly though unsystemati- 
 cally attained under the older methods of represen- 
 tation. Various other devices have been proposed, 
 which, however, have at present no chance of being 
 accepted. Perhaps the only exception is a x low educa- 
 tional qualification, obliging the electors at least to be 
 able to read and write. Such a qualification was much 
 recommended by Mill, and it has passed into several 
 democratic constitutions. It was first introduced in 
 the French Eevolutionary Constitution of 1795, but it 
 was not reproduced in any of the subsequent French 
 constitutions. It exists, however, in Portugal, Italy, 
 
 Hare On the Election of Representatives^ 4th ed. p. 14.
 
 CH. in. PLURAL VOTING 273 
 
 and Koumania, and in some of the republics of South 
 America. 1 The most recent and most extensive in- 
 stance of the adoption of plural voting has been in the 
 new Constitution of Belgium. The electors are di- 
 vided into three classes. One vote is given to all male 
 persons above twenty -five years of age who have resided 
 for a year in one constituency ; an additional vote is 
 given to married men and widowers, of not less than 
 thirty-five years, with families, paying a personal tax 
 of five francs to the State on the buildings they in- 
 habit, and also to the owners of property of a certain 
 amount ; while a third and smaller class, formed out 
 of men who have received a higher education, filled a 
 public function, or belonged to a learned profession, 
 are entitled to three votes. In this very democratic 
 constitution a form of compulsion is introduced which 
 does not, I believe, exist in any other contemporary 
 constitution. All voters who have not obtained a 
 special exemption from a judge are compelled to vote, 
 and are liable to a fine if they abstain. 
 
 It is too soon to form a conclusive opinion on either 
 the value or the permanence of the Belgian system of 
 plural voting, incorporated in an extremely democratic 
 constitution. It is especially interesting to English 
 observers, as being an attempt to carry out in some 
 measure one of the favourite ideas of Mill. 
 
 Mill, was not insensible to the danger and injustice of 
 dissociating the power of voting taxes from the neces- 
 sity of paying them, and to the fact that unqualified 
 universal suffrage leads plainly and rapidly to this 
 form of robbery. Universal suffrage he valued in the 
 highest degree as a system of education, and he was 
 quite prepared, for educational purposes, to give the 
 
 1 Revue de Droit International^ xxiv. 97. 
 VOL. i. 18
 
 274 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. HI. 
 
 most incompetent classes in the community an enor- 
 mous power of determining the vital interests of the 
 Empire, regulating the industry, and disposing of the 
 property of their neighbours. He imagined that ^he 
 could mitigate or avert the danger by two expedients. 
 One was to extend direct taxation to the very lowest 
 class, imposing a small annual tax in the form of capi- 
 tation on every grown person in the community. If 
 this direct tax could be made to rise or fall with the 
 gross expenditure of the country, he believed that 
 every elector would feel himself directly interested in 
 wise and economical administration. Paupers and 
 bankrupts, and those who had not paid their taxes, 
 were to be excluded from the suffrage. Is it a rash 
 thing to say that the very first measure of a Kadical 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer who desired to win a 
 doubtful election under the system of universal suffrage 
 would be to abolish this capitation tax ? 
 
 The other expedient was a very great extension of 
 plural voting. Every man and every woman, accord- 
 ing to Mill, should have a vote, but in order to correct 
 the great dangers of class legislation and a too low 
 standard of political intelligence, large classes should 
 be strengthened by a plurality of votes. Employers of 
 labour, foremen, labourers in the more skilled trades, 
 bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, might all be 
 given two or more votes. Similar or greater advan- 
 tages might be given to the members of the liberal 
 professions, to graduates of universities, to those who 
 had passed through different kinds of open examina- 
 tion. The old system, according to which those who 
 possessed property in different constituencies had a 
 vote in each, should be preserved, although it was an 
 imperfect one ; but it should be considerably extended. 
 ' In any future Reform Bill which lowers greatly the
 
 CH. in. PLURAL* VOTING 275 
 
 pecuniary conditions of the suffrage it might be a wise 
 provision to allow all graduates of universities, all 
 persons who had passed creditably through the higher 
 schools, all members of the liberal professions, and 
 perhaps some others, to be registered specifically in 
 these characters, and to give their votes as such in any 
 constituency in which they choose to register, retain- 
 ing, in addition, their votes as simple citizens in the 
 localities in which they reside.' * 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious how utterly opposed all 
 these views are to the predominating tendency of mo- 
 dern English Eadicalism, with its watchword of one 
 man, one vote, and its steadily successful efforts to 
 place the property and the liberty of the Empire under 
 the complete dominion of the poorest and the most 
 ignorant. In the first cast of the Reform Bill of 1867 
 Disraeli introduced a number of qualifications very 
 much in the spirit of those which had been advocated 
 by Mill. While enormously extending and lowering 
 the suffrage connected with the ownership and occupa- 
 tion of property, he proposed to confer a number of 
 votes of another description. There was an educa- 
 tional franchise, to be conferred on all graduates of 
 universities, on all male persons who had passed at any 
 senior middle-class examination of any university of 
 the United Kingdom, on all priests and deacons of the 
 Established Church, all ministers of other denomi- 
 nations, all barristers, pleaders, attorneys, medical men, 
 or certificated schoolmasters. There was a pecuniary 
 franchise, to belong to every man who, during the 
 preceding two years, had a balance of not less than 
 fifty pounds in a savings bank, or in the Bank of 
 England, or in any parliamentary stock, or who paid 
 
 Mill On Representative Government, pp. 165-71.
 
 276 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 twenty shillings for assessed taxes or income-tax ; and 
 there was a clause enabling voters in a borough to be 
 registered on two different qualifications, and to exer- 
 cise in consequence a dual vote. 
 
 It was intended by these franchises to qualify the 
 ' ascendency of mere numbers by strengthening in the 
 electorate intelligence, education, property, and fru- 
 gality. All such attempts, however, were opposed by 
 Mr. Gladstone and his followers, and the new fran- 
 chises were very lightly abandoned by their author. 
 They were usually condemned and ridiculed as ( fancy 
 franchises ' a curious instance of the manner in which, 
 in English politics, a nickname that is neither very 
 witty nor very descriptive can be made to take the 
 place of serious argument. 
 
 No such efforts to improve the electorate are now 
 likely to obtain even a respectful hearing. Whether, 
 however, they have passed for ever is another question. 
 When the present evils infecting our parliamentary 
 system have grown still graver ; when a democratic 
 House, more and more broken up into small groups, 
 more and more governed by sectional or interested 
 motives, shall have shown itself evidently incompetent 
 to conduct the business of the country with honour, 
 efficiency, and safety ; when public opinion has learnt 
 more fully the enormous danger to national prosperity, 
 as well as individual happiness, of dissociating power 
 from property, and giving the many an unlimited 
 right of confiscating by taxation the possessions of the 
 few, some great reconstruction of government is sure 
 to be demanded. Fifty, or even twenty-five years 
 hence, the current of political opinion in England 
 may be as different from that of our own day as con- 
 temporary political tendencies are different from those 
 in the generation of our fathers. Expedients and ar-
 
 CH. ill. THE REFERENDUM 277 
 
 guments that are now dismissed with contempt may 
 then revive, and play no small part in the politics of 
 the future. 
 
 One great possible constitutional change, very new 
 to English public opinion, has risen with remarkable 
 rapidity into prominence in the last few years, and is 
 perhaps destined hereafter to have an extensive influ- 
 ence. I mean the Swiss Referendum. Eousseau, in 
 his ' Contrat Social/ maintained that all laws ought to 
 be voted by universal male suffrage, and that no law 
 which had not received this direct sanction was bind- 
 ing. It is probable that in this, as in some other parts 
 of his political philosophy, he was much influenced by 
 his Swiss experience, for- the old form of government 
 known as the Landsgemeinde, according to which all 
 the adult males assemble twice a year to vote their laws 
 and elect their functionaries by universal suffrage, ex- 
 isted widely in his time, both in the town governments 
 and the canton governments of Switzerland. It is a 
 form of government which has played a great part in 
 the early history of mankind, but it is manifestly un- 
 suited to wide areas and large populations. It was 
 abolished in our own century in Zug and in Schwytz, 
 but it may still be seen in Uri, Unterwalden, Appen- 
 zell, and Glarus. The French Convention, in 1793, 
 attempted to carry out the doctrine of Eousseau by in- 
 troducing into its Constitution a provision that, in case 
 a certain proportion of the electors desired it, there 
 should be a popular vote upon every law ; and although 
 this Constitution was never put into force, the same 
 doctrine was, as we have seen, in some degree carried 
 out in the shape of plebiscites directly sanctioning 
 several changes of government. 
 
 In Switzerland it has taken the form of the Refe- 
 rendum, which appears to have grown out of the Lands-
 
 278 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 gemeinde. It became a regular and permanent element 
 in Swiss government after the French Revolution of 
 1830, and in recent times it has been largely extended. 
 The Referendum is not intended as a substitute for 
 representative government, but as a final court of ap- 
 peal, giving the electors, by a direct vote, the right of 
 veto or ratification upon measures which had already 
 passed the legislative chambers. For many years it 
 was confined to the separate cantons, and it took differ- 
 ent forms. Sometimes it was restricted to new taxes 
 and changes in the constitutions of the cantons. In 
 several cantons it is chiefly optional, taking place only 
 when a specified number of electors demand it. In 
 other cantons it is compulsory, the constitution pro- 
 viding that all laws passed by the representative body 
 must be submitted to a direct popular vote in order to 
 acquire validity. In all the cantons there is now a 
 compulsory Referendum on every proposition to alter 
 the cantonal constitution, and in many cantons there is 
 a compulsory Referendum on every expenditure of pub- 
 lic money, beyond a certain specified sum, varying ac- 
 cording to their extent and population. The Catholic 
 canton of Fribourg is now the only one which confines 
 it to questions of constitutional revision. 
 
 The Referendum was introduced into the Federal 
 system by the Constitution of 1848, but it was only 
 made applicable to the single case of "constitutional re- 
 vision. Every change in the Constitution made by the 
 Federal Legislature required the ratification of a direct 
 popular vote. In the Constitution of 1874, however, the 
 province of the Referendum was largely extended, for 
 it was provided that all Federal laws, as well as general 
 Federal decrees which were not of an urgent nature, 
 should be submitted to the popular vote on the demand 
 of 30,000 qualified voters or of eight cantons. A re-
 
 CH. in. THE REFERENDUM 279 
 
 markable provision was also inserted in this Constitu- 
 tion giving the people some right of initiative, as well 
 as ratification, in matters of constitutional revision. If 
 50,000 voters demanded it, a popular vote must be 
 taken on the question whether the Constitution should 
 be revised ; and, if it was in favour of revision, the two 
 Federal Councils were renewed for the purpose of un- 
 dertaking the task. A revision of the Constitution 
 which was carried in 1891 went much further. It en- 
 titled 50,000 voters to obtain a popular vote which 
 might decree directly the introduction of a new article, 
 or the abolition or modification of an old article of the 
 Helvetic Constitution. 1 In all these ways the nation 
 directly intervenes to dictate or to make its own laws, 
 and the power of the representative bodies is to that 
 extent abridged. A corresponding tendency to give the 
 popular vote an initiative in legislation has appeared in 
 some of the separate cantons. 
 
 Laveleye has collected an interesting series of exam- 
 ples of the manner in which this power has been used. 2 
 On the whole the popular vote, when it extends over 
 the entire Confederation, more frequently negatives 
 than ratifies the measures submitted to it. The ten- 
 dencies which it most strongly shows are a dislike to 
 large expenditure, a dislike to centralisation, a dislike 
 to violent innovation. The Eeferendum is more fre- 
 quently employed in cantonal than in Federal legislation. 
 Between the enactment of the Constitution of 1874 and 
 July 1891 about 130 laws passed through the Federal 
 Chamber. Of these, sixteen only, exclusive of some 
 constitutional modifications, were submitted to the 
 
 ' Dareste, Constitutions Mo- See, too, the chapter on the 
 
 dernes, ii. 658. Swiss Referendum in Oberholt- 
 
 a Laveleye, Le Gouvernement zer's Referendum in America, 
 
 dans la Democratic, ii. 146-70. pp. 10-14.
 
 280 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 popular vote, and, of these sixteen, eleven were rejected. 
 The chief charges that have been brought against the 
 popular vote are, that it refuses adequate stipends to 
 public servants, and is very niggardly in providing for 
 works of public utility, especially when they relate to 
 interests that are not easily appreciated by agricultural 
 peasants. On the whole, it has been decidedly con- 
 servative, though there have been a few exceptions. 
 It sanctioned the severely graduated taxation which 
 exists in some of the Swiss cantons ; but in Neuchatel 
 the system of graduated taxation, having been accepted 
 by the Grand Council, was rejected by the Referendum, 
 and the same thing has happened still more recently in 
 the canton of Berne. 1 One remarkable vote, which was 
 taken in 1879, restored to the different cantons the 
 power of introducing capital punishment into their 
 criminal codes, which had been taken from them by 
 the Constitution of 1874. A somewhat curious recent 
 vote has prohibited the Jews from killing their cattle in 
 the way prescribed by their law. In this case the anti- 
 Semitic feeling and a feeling of what was supposed to 
 be humanity to animals probably blended, though in 
 very unequal proportions. 
 
 The popularity of the Referendum in Switzerland is 
 clearly shown by the rapidity with which its scope has 
 been extended. There is a very remarkable movement 
 of the same kind in America, where in State politics 
 
 1 See the Report on Graduated that witnessed the rejection of 
 Taxation in Switzerland pre- the most important measure 
 sented to the Foreign Office in which it had passed in the pre- 
 1892, p. 15. Mr. Buchanan, vious session of the Cantonal 
 the author of this Report, men- Grand Council.' This shows 
 tions the remarkable fact that how clearly the Referendum 
 in this canton ' the Radical party vote can be kept separate from 
 was returned to power by a very party questions, 
 large majority on the same day
 
 CH. ni. THE REFERENDUM IN AMERICA 281 
 
 the tendency runs strongly in favour of a substitution 
 of direct popular legislation for legislation through the 
 medium of representative bodies. Every change in a 
 State Government is now made by summoning a con- 
 vention for that express purpose, and the revision de- 
 termined on by this convention must be sanctioned by 
 a direct popular vote. In this respect, therefore, the 
 State constitutions of the United States rest on ex- 
 actly the same basis as the cantonal governments of 
 Switzerland, and the same system has been widely ex- 
 tended to various forms of municipal and county go- 
 vernment. In many State constitutions it is prescribed 
 that the State capital can only be changed by a popular 
 vote, and in one or two constitutions the same restric- 
 tion applies to transfers of great local institutions. In 
 a large number of cases, as I have already noticed, the 
 extreme corruption of the State legislatures has led the 
 people to introduce clauses into their State constitu- 
 tions limiting strictly the power of the legislatures to 
 impose taxes or incur debts, and obliging them to sub- 
 mit all expenditure beyond the assigned limits to a 
 direct popular vote. 
 
 This is, however, only a small part of the legislation 
 which is now carried by direct popular vote. Conven- 
 tions summoned for the purpose of amending the State 
 constitutions have taken the largest possible view of 
 their powers : they have laid down rules relating not 
 only to organic constitutional change, but to every im- 
 portant subject of legislation, withdrawing those sub- 
 jects wholly, or partially, from the competency of the 
 State legislatures, and every enactment made by these 
 conventions requires for its validity the ratification of 
 a direct popular vote. 
 
 This movement is but little known in England, and 
 although I have already referred to it in another con-
 
 282 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. in. 
 
 nection, it is sufficiently important to warrant some 
 repetition. In England, a large class of politicians are 
 now preaching a multiplication of small democratic 
 local legislatures as the true efflorescence and perfec- 
 tion of democracy. In America, no fact is more clearly 
 established than that such legislatures almost invari- 
 ably fall into the hands of caucuses, wirepullers, and 
 professional politicians, and become centres of jobbing 
 and corruption. One of the main tasks of the best 
 American politicians has, of late years, been to with- 
 draw gradually the greater part of legislation from the 
 influence of these bodies, and to entrust it to conven- 
 tions specially elected for a special purpose, and em- 
 powered to pass particular laws, subject to direct 
 ratification by a popular vote. I can here hardly do 
 better than to quote at some length the American 
 writer who has recently treated this subject with the 
 fullest knowledge and detail. ' It is very usual/ writes 
 Mr. Oberholtzer, ' for conventions in late years, at the 
 time of submitting constitutions, to submit special 
 articles or sections of articles for separate consideration 
 by the people. These pertain to subjects upon which 
 there is likely to be much public feeling. . . . Sub- 
 jects so treated by the conventions have been slavery, 
 woman's suffrage, the prohibition of the liquor traffic, 
 the location of state capitals, &c. . . . There has been 
 within recent times a radical change in our ideas in 
 regard to State constitutions, and our conceptions as to 
 what matters are suitable for a place in these instru- 
 ments. At the beginning they were, as constitutions 
 are supposed to be, statements of the fundamentals 
 of government. . . . Now, however, very different 
 constitutional standards obtain, and in the States of 
 every section of the country the same tendency is 
 visible, until we have to-day come to a point when our
 
 CH. III. THE REFERENDUM IN AMERICA 283 
 
 State constitutions are nothing short of codes of laws 
 giving instruction to the. Legislature and the other 
 agents of Government on nearly every subject of gene- 
 ral public concern, and often stating the methods 
 which shall be used in legislating, if not, indeed, actu- 
 ally legislating, on local questions. . . . The constitu- 
 tions have been the repositories for much of the 
 legislation which before was left to be enacted by the 
 legislatures/ 1 
 
 This writer then proceeds to show how the State 
 constitutions as amended by the conventions now make 
 pamphlets of from fifty to seventy-five pages long, in- 
 cluding almost all matters of education, taxation, 
 expenditure, and local administration ; the organisa- 
 tion and regulation of the railroads, of the militia, of 
 the trade in drink, of the penal and reformatory in- 
 stitutions ; clauses prohibiting lotteries, prize fights, 
 or duels, establishing a legal day's work, even defining 
 the relations of husbands and wives, and debtors and 
 creditors. 
 
 All these subjects are withdrawn from the province 
 of the State legislature, and are dealt with by conven- 
 tions ratified by a direct popular vote. ' Indeed,' con- 
 tinues our writer, ' there are now few matters which 
 are subjects for legislation at all that, according to the 
 new conception of a constitution, may not be dealt with 
 by the conventions. It is only after considering the 
 nature of this new conception that the Keferendum as 
 exemplified in America is seen to have its closest like- 
 ness to the institution as it exists to-day in Switzerland.' 
 
 ' Side by side with this movement to make codes of 
 laws of our constitutions, and to restrict in many ways 
 
 1 Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America, pp. 38-44 (Philadel- 
 phia, 1893).
 
 284 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. HI. 
 
 the powers of the State legislatures, has grown up a 
 movement tending directly to the almost entire aboli- 
 tion of these bodies. In nearly all the States, by the 
 development of the last few years, the conventions 
 have substituted biennial for annual legislative ses- 
 sions. These sessions, now being held only half as 
 often, are further limited so that they may not extend 
 over more than a certain number of days. . . . Those 
 States which still retain the system of annual sessions 
 as, for instance, New York and New Jersey con- 
 stantly find cause for dissatisfaction, and the feeling of 
 distrust for these bodies is taking deeper hold of the 
 people every year. The feeling, indeed, has reached a 
 conviction nearly everywhere that the powers of the 
 legislatures should be still further curtailed, and in 
 but one State Georgia has there been shown any in- 
 clination to return to original principles/ 
 
 ' With the change in the character of the constitu- 
 tions, has of necessity come a change in the character 
 of constitutional amendments. Statute legislation, of 
 late years, has been more and more disguised in these 
 amendments, and sent to the Referendum. No better 
 evidence of this is to be found than in the frequency 
 of amendments to prohibit the manufacture and traffic 
 in intoxicating liquors, a subject as far removed as any 
 well could be from the original idea as to a proper 
 matter for treatment in a constitution. Of these 
 elections, in nine years there were nineteen, begin- 
 ning with Kansas, Nov. 2, 1880, and closing with 
 Connecticut, Oct. 7, 1889." 
 
 These passages are, I think, very significant, as 
 
 1 Oberholtzer, The Referendum on Direct Legislation by the 
 in America, pp. 45-46. See, People, The American Com,' 
 too, the chapter of Mr. Bryce monwealth, ii. 67-82.
 
 CH. in. THE REFERENDUM 285 
 
 showing certain tendencies of democracy which are 
 as yet little recognised in England, but which are 
 probably destined to contribute largely towards mould- 
 ing the governments of the future. I must refer my 
 reader to the curious work which I am citing for 
 detailed evidence of the many instances in which, in 
 different States of the American Eepublic, local mea- 
 sures about taxation, and debt ; changes in the State 
 territorial boundaries, jurisdiction, or municipal ar- 
 rangements, or in the suffrage, the system of repre- 
 sentation, or the liquor laws, have been settled by a direct 
 popular vote of the same character as the Swiss Ke- 
 ferendum. This system appears to have almost wholly 
 arisen in America since 1850, J and it has grown rapidly 
 in public favour. It has been the subject of many, 
 and sometimes conflicting, decisions in the law courts, 
 but in the great majority of States it has obtained a 
 firm legal footing, and it is transforming the whole 
 character of State government. 
 
 It is not surprising that the Kef erendum is now begin- 
 ning seriously to occupy those political thinkers who can 
 look beyond the contests of the hour and the immediate 
 interests of a party. Laveleye has devoted much atten- 
 tion to it/ and it was much discussed in Belgium dur- 
 ing the recent democratic revision of the Constitution. 
 It was proposed, as a safeguard against the dangers to 
 be feared from that great and sudden change, that the 
 King should possess the power of submitting measures 
 which had passed through the Chambers to a direct 
 popular vote in the form of a Referendum. The pro- 
 posal was (as I think, unfortunately) defeated, but 
 there have been several minor indications of its growing 
 
 i Oberholtzer, p. 105. ment dans la Democratic, ii. 
 
 8 Laveleye, Le Gouverne- 169-70.
 
 286 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 popularity. The Referendum has, in more than one 
 case, been employed in Belgium in questions of muni- 
 cipal government. The vote which is required in 
 England for the establishment in any borough of a free 
 library supported by the rates, and the system of local 
 option so strenuously advocated by many temperance 
 reformers, and which a growing party desires to apply 
 to the hours of labour in different trades, belong to this 
 category. The Referendum now occupies a prominent 
 place in the programme of the Labour party in Aus- 
 tralia, and in most of the Socialist programmes in 
 Europe, while its incorporation in the British Consti- 
 tution has of late years found several advocates of a 
 very different order of opinion, and has been supported 
 by the brilliant pen and by the great authority of Pro- 
 fessor Dicey. 1 
 
 It is a question which is indeed well worthy of seri- 
 ous consideration. If such a system could be made to 
 work, it would almost certainly do something to cor- 
 rect, by an eminently democratic method, democratic 
 evils that are threatening grave calamities to the Em- 
 pire. It would make it possible to introduce into 
 England that distinction between constitutional ques- 
 tions and ordinary legislation which in America and in 
 nearly all Continental countries not only exists, but is 
 maintained and fortified by the most stringent pro- 
 visions. In the days when the balance of power be- 
 tween the different elements in the Constitution was 
 still unimpaired, when the strongly organised conser- 
 vative influences of class and property opposed an 
 
 1 See an admirable article by been also ably discussed in the 
 
 Professor Dicey on this subject National Review for February, 
 
 in the Contemporary Review, March, and April 1894. 
 April 1890. The subject has
 
 CH. IIL THE REFERENDUM 287 
 
 insuperable barrier to revolutionary change, such a 
 distinction might be safely dispensed with. In the 
 conditions of the present day, no serious thinker can 
 fail to perceive the enormous danger of placing the 
 essential elements of the Constitution at the mercy^ of 
 a simple majority of a single Parliament, a majority, 
 perhaps, composed of heterogeneous and discordant 
 fractions, combined for a party purpose, and not larger 
 than is required to pass a Bill for regulating music- 
 halls or protecting sea-birds' eggs. 
 
 The Eeferendum, in its first and most universal ap- 
 plication, is intended to prevent this evil by making it 
 impossible to carry constitutional changes without the 
 direct and deliberate assent of the people. It would also 
 have the immense advantage of disentangling issues, 
 separating one great question from the many minor 
 questions with which it may be mixed. Confused or 
 blended issues are among the gravest political dangers 
 of our time. Revolutionary and predatory measures 
 are much less likely to be carried on their merits than 
 because their proposers have obtained a majority by 
 joining with them a sufficient number of other mea- 
 sures appealing to different sections of the electorate. 
 With the multiplication of groups this evil is con- 
 stantly increasing, and it is in this direction that many 
 dangerous politicians are mainly working. In the 
 House of Commons, a measure may often be carried 
 which would never have had a chance of success if the 
 members could vote on their own conviction of its 
 merits ; if they could vote by ballot ; if they could 
 vote as they thought best, without destroying a minis- 
 try, or endangering some wholly different measure 
 which stood lower down in the ministerial programme. 
 Motives of the same kind, absolutely distinct from an 
 approval or disapproval of one great measure, govern the
 
 288 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 votes of the electorate, and largely determine the course 
 of parties and legislation. It would be a great gain to 
 English politics if a capital question could be decided 
 by the electorate on its own merits, on a direct and sim- 
 ple- issue. If the nation is moving towards revolution, 
 it should at least do so with its eyes open, and with a 
 clear and deliberate intention. 
 
 It would probably be found that such a vote would 
 prove the most powerful bulwark against violent and 
 dishonest change. It would bring into action the 
 opinion of the great silent classes of the community, 
 and reduce to their true proportions many movements 
 to which party combinations or noisy agitations have 
 given a wholly factitious prominence. It might restore 
 in another form something of the old balanced Consti- 
 tution, which has now so nearly passed away. The 
 transcendently important function of the House of 
 Lords in restraining the despotism of the Commons, 
 and referring great changes to the adjudication of the 
 people, is now rarely exercised and violently assailed. 
 If, when the House of Lords differed on a question of 
 grave national importance from the Commons, it pos- 
 sessed, or, if possessing, it would exercise, the power of 
 submitting that question to the direct vote of the elec- 
 torate, the most skilful demagogue would find it difficult 
 to persuade the people that it was trampling on their 
 fights. If the power of insisting on a Referendum 
 was placed, as in Switzerland, in the hands of a large 
 body of voters, it would still form a counterpoise and 
 a check of the most important kind. 
 
 It is contended for it that it would not only extri- 
 cate one capital measure from the crowd of minor 
 measures with which it is associated, but would also 
 lift it above the dominion of party, and thus greatly 
 increase the probability of its representing the genuine
 
 OH. ill. THE REFERENDUM 289 
 
 wishes of the electorate. It would enable the nation 
 to reject a measure which it dislikes, without destroy- 
 ing a ministry of which it approves. The vote would 
 not be on the general policy of the Government. It 
 would be exclusively on the merits of a single measure, 
 and it would leave the ministerial majority in the 
 House of Commons unchanged. Few persons will 
 doubt that a measure brought in this manner before 
 the electorate would be voted on with a much fuller 
 consideration and a much more serious sense of re- 
 sponsibility than if it came before them mixed up with 
 a crowd of other measures, and inseparably connected 
 with a party issue. At a general election, the great 
 majority of votes are given for a party or a statesman, 
 and the real question is, which side should rule the 
 country. By the ^Referendum the electorate can give 
 its deliberate opinion, not upon men, but upon mea- 
 sures, and can reject a measure without placing the 
 Government of the country into other hands. 
 
 It is often said that there are large classes of ques- 
 tions on which such a popular opinion could be of 
 little worth. To this I have no difficulty in subscrib- 
 ing. It is very doubtful whether a really popular vote 
 would have ratified the Toleration Act in the seven- 
 teenth century, or the abolition of the capital punish- 
 ment of witches in the eighteenth century, or Catholic 
 Emancipation in the nineteenth century, or a crowd of 
 other measures that might be enumerated. It is now, 
 however, too late to urge such an argument. De- 
 mocracy has been crowned king. The voice of the 
 multitude is the ultimate court of appeal, and the right 
 of independent judgment, which was once claimed for 
 the members of Parliament, is now almost wholly dis- 
 carded. If the electorate is to judge policies, it is 
 surely less likely to err if it judges them on a clear 
 yoL. i. 19
 
 290 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 and distinct issue. In such a case it is most likely to 
 act independently, and not at the dictation of party 
 wirepullers. It is to be remembered, too, that the 
 Referendum is not intended as a substitute for repre- 
 sentative government. All the advantages of parlia- 
 mentary debate would still remain. Policies would not 
 be thrown before the electorate in a crude, undigested, 
 undeveloped state. All measures would still pass 
 through Parliament, and the great majority would be 
 finally decided by Parliament. It would only be in a 
 few cases, after a measure had been thoroughly dis- 
 cussed in all its bearings, after the two Houses had 
 given their judgment, that the nation would be called 
 to adjudicate. The Referendum would be an appeal 
 from a party majority, probably made up of discordant 
 groups, to the genuine opinion of the country. It 
 would be an appeal on a question which had been 
 thoroughly examined, and on which the nation had 
 every means of arriving at a conclusion. It would be 
 a clear and decisive verdict on a matter on which the 
 two branches of the Legislature had differed. 
 
 It is argued against the Referendum that many of 
 the differences between the two Houses are differences 
 not of principle, but of detail. A Bill is before Parlia- 
 ment on the general policy of which both parties and 
 both Houses are agreed, but one clause or amendment, 
 dealing with a subsidiary part, produces an irreconcila- 
 ble difference. The popular vote, it has been said, 
 would be an instrument wholly unfit to discriminate 
 between the portion of a Bill that should be preserved 
 and the part that should be rejected. I do not, how- 
 ever, think that there is much weight in this argu- 
 ment. After all discussions of details, a Bill, if it is 
 to become law, must now pass through its third read- 
 ing, and be accepted or rejected as a whole by a single
 
 CH. ra. THE REFERENDUM 291 
 
 vote. All that is proposed by the Referendum is, that 
 there. should be one more step before its enactment. 
 If the House of Lords objected essentially to some Bill 
 which the House of Commons had more than once 
 adopted, it might pass that Bill with the addition of a 
 clause providing that it should not become law until it 
 had been ratified by a direct popular vote. If the two 
 Houses, agreeing upon the general merits of a Bill, 
 differed irreconcilably upon one clause, instead of the 
 Bill being wholly lost the Houses might agree that it 
 should be passed in one or other form with a similar 
 addition. By this simple method the Referendum 
 might be put in action, and as the appeal would be to 
 the existing electorate, no insuperable difficulties of 
 machinery would be likely to arise. 
 
 Another objection is, that the Referendum would 
 have the effect of lowering the authority of the House 
 of Commons, which is now, in effect, the supreme 
 legislative authority in the Empire. This is undoubt- 
 edly true, and, in my own judgment, it would be one 
 of its great merits. The old saying of Burghley, that 
 'England never can be ruined but by her Parliament,' 
 was never more true than at the present time, and the 
 uncontrolled, unbalanced authority of a single repre- 
 sentative body constituted like our own seems to me 
 one of the gravest dangers to the Empire. In our age 
 we must mainly look to democracy for a remedy. Ac- 
 cording to the theories which now prevail, the House 
 of Commons has absolutely no right as against its elec- 
 tors, and it is to the electors that the Referendum 
 would transfer, in a far more efficient manner than at 
 present, the supreme authority in legislation. If the 
 House of Commons moves during the next quarter of 
 a century as rapidly on the path of discredit as it has 
 done during the quarter of a century that has passed,
 
 292 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. ra. 
 
 it is not likely that many voices would be found to 
 echo this objection. 
 
 The foregoing arguments seem to me, at least, to 
 show that the Referendum is not a question to be 
 lightly dismissed. It might furnish a remedy for great 
 and growing evils which it is very difficult to cure, and 
 it would do so in a way which is in full accordance with 
 the democratic spirit of the time. Further than this 
 I should not venture to go. To carry out successfully 
 a scheme so widely diverging from old English modes 
 of thought, to foresee and guard against the possible 
 evils connected with it, would need the experience 
 and discussion of many minds. It is obviously much 
 easier to apply such a system to a small and sparse 
 population like that of Switzerland, than to a dense 
 population like our own ; and the ascendency of party 
 has so long been supreme in England that it is not 
 likely that the Referendum could withdraw questions 
 wholly from its empire. It is probable that the vote 
 would often be taken under the glamour of a great 
 name ; its result would be looked upon as a party 
 triumph, and for some time it would not be easy to 
 persuade the British public that a ministry should re- 
 main in power when its capital measure had been de- 
 feated. The experience, however, of Switzerland and 
 America shows that, when the Referendum takes root 
 in a country, it takes political questions, to an immense 
 degree, out of the hands of wirepullers, and makes it 
 possible to decide them mainly, though perhaps not 
 wholly, on their merits, without producing a change of 
 government or of party predominance. 
 
 Difficulties arising from both Houses of Parliament 
 would, no doubt, have to be encountered. The House 
 of Commons would naturally dislike to surrender any 
 part of its power, even into the hands of its masters.
 
 CH. in. THE REFERENDUM 293 
 
 The House of Lords, as at present constituted, is 
 viewed with such suspicion by large classes that they 
 would object to a measure which might increase its 
 power, even though that increase was wholly derived 
 from association with the most extreme form of demo- 
 cracy. The great and pressing question of the reform 
 of the Upper House would probably have to precede 
 the adoption of the Referendum. 
 
 It seems to me also clear, that in a country like Eng- 
 land the Referendum could never become an habitual 
 agent in legislation. Perpetual popular votes would be 
 an intolerable nuisance. To foreign politics the Refe- 
 rendum would be very inapplicable, and in home poli- 
 tics it ought only to be employed on rare and grave 
 occasions. It should be restricted to constitutional 
 questions altering the disposition of power in the State, 
 with, perhaps, the addition of important questions on 
 which, during more than one Parliament, the two 
 Houses of the Legislature had differed. 
 
 Within these limits it appears to me full of promise, 
 and it is to be hoped that political thinkers may keep 
 their minds open upon the subject. For some con- 
 siderable time to come all questions are likely to be sub- 
 mitted to the adjudication of the greatest number, and 
 statesmen must accept the fact, and endeavour to make 
 it as little dangerous as possible. It has been the 
 opinion of some of the ablest and most successful po- 
 liticians of our time that, by adopting a very low 
 suffrage, it would be possible to penetrate below the 
 region where crotchets and experiments and crude Uto- 
 pias and habitual restlessness prevail, and to reach the 
 strong, settled habits, the enduring tendencies, the 
 deep conservative instincts of the nation. Such an 
 idea was evidently present in the minds both of Louis 
 Napoleon and of Lord Beaconsfield, and it probably
 
 294 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 largely influenced the great statesman who based the 
 German Constitution on universal suffrage. How far 
 it may be true I do not here discuss. It is probable 
 that the recent turn in English politics has added con- 
 siderably to the number of those who believe in it. It 
 seems to me, at least, certain that popular opinion is 
 likely to be least dangerous if it is an unsophisticated 
 opinion on a direct issue, as far as possible uninfluenced 
 by agitators and professional politicians. It is very pos- 
 sible that its tendencies might be towards extreme Con- 
 servatism ; but the pendulum has moved so long and 
 so violently in the opposite direction that a period of 
 pause, or even of reaction, might not appear an evil. 
 
 The welcome the reader will extend to such consi- 
 derations will depend largely upon his view of the ex- 
 isting state of the Constitution. If he believes that 
 parliamentary government in its present form is firmly 
 established, working well, and likely to endure, he will 
 naturally object to any change which would alter fun- 
 damentally the centre of power. If he believes that 
 some of the most essential springs of the British Con- 
 stitution have been fatally weakened, and that our 
 system of government is undergoing a perilous process 
 of disintegration, transformation, and deterioration, he 
 will be inclined to look with more favour on possible 
 remedies, even though they be very remote from the 
 national habits and traditions. 
 
 Another method by which the evils of a decaying 
 parliamentary system may be in some degree mitigated 
 is by the extension of the powers of committees. The 
 only possible manner in which a large assembly of men 
 can directly and efficiently discharge much business is 
 by the strict organisation of parties, which throws the 
 whole initiation and direction into a few competent 
 hands. But under the best organisation a large as-
 
 CH. in. AMERICAN COMMITTEES 295 
 
 sembly is unfit for the investigation of details, and 
 when the discipline of Parliament and of parties gives 
 way its incapacity becomes very manifest. In the 
 United States, as is well known, congressional, or, as 
 we should say, parliamentary, legislation is almost 
 entirely in the hands of committees. Fifty or sixty 
 committees of the House of Kepresentatives, and a 
 somewhat smaller number of committees of the Senate, 
 are appointed at the beginning of every Congress. 
 Each of them usually consists of about eleven mem- 
 bers ; they sit for two years, and they are entrusted 
 with unlimited powers of curtailing, altering, or ex- 
 tending the Bills that come before them. They do not 
 receive those Bills after discussion in the Chambers. 
 Both the first and second readings are granted as a 
 matter of course, and it is in the committees that Bills 
 receive their full investigation and definite shape. 
 The deliberations there are usually secret, and nearly 
 always unreported. The great majority of the Bills are 
 stifled in committee, either by long postponement or 
 by unfavourable reports. Those which are favourably 
 reported have to receive the sanction of Congress ; but 
 they are usually only discussed in the shortest and 
 most cursory manner, and in the vast majority of cases 
 the task of framing legislation lies in reality, not with 
 the Chambers, but with these small delegated bodies. 
 Mr. Bryce has described the process in detail, and he 
 observes that ' the House has become not so much a 
 legislative assembly as a huge panel from which com- 
 mittees are selected/ 1 
 
 1 Since Mr. Bryce's book of conducting business in legis- 
 
 appeared, an American politi- lative bodies, which has become 
 
 cian, discussing the decline of general, must also be taken 
 
 oratory in the United States, into account. Legislation by 
 
 says : ' A change in the method committees, instead of by the
 
 296 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 The system is extremely unlike our own. The mi- 
 nisters do not sit in Congress, and therefore cannot 
 guide it ; and they do not depend for their tenure of 
 office upon its approval. The Speaker, who in Eng- 
 land represents the most absolute impartiality, is, in 
 America, the most powerful of party leaders, for he 
 nominates the members of the committees, by whom 
 legislation is virtually made. As Mr. Bryce observes, 
 Congress loses its unity and much of its importance, 
 and parliamentary oratory dwindles into insignificance. 
 The public, who know that the real business of legisla- 
 tion is transacted in small secret bodies, come to look 
 on Congress and its proceedings with great indiffer- 
 ence ; and legislation being mainly the product of a 
 number of small and independent bodies, is much 
 wanting in cohesion and harmony. 
 
 If these were the only consequences, they might 
 readily be accepted. Some of them, indeed, would 
 appear to many of us positive advantages. Unfortu- 
 
 whole body, is the prevailing committee-room, and puts it in 
 
 method of the present day. Al- charge of another committee of 
 
 most the entire consideration three, to determine beforehand 
 
 and shaping of the most impor- when it shall be considered by 
 
 tant measures which now come the bodies who are to pass upon 
 
 before legislative bodies is done it, for how long a time, and in 
 
 in the committee-room before what shape, and by what num- 
 
 they are reported for action, ber of supporters and opponents, 
 
 Little more than ratification of to be selected as prize comba- 
 
 committee work remains after a tants are selected by the oppo- 
 
 measure leaves the committee- sing sides in a ring, and the 
 
 room. There are exceptions, hour by the clock when such 
 
 but this is the rule. Conse- consideration shall cease does 
 
 quently, the opportunity for de- any one conceive it possible 
 
 bate is greatly abridged, and for that anything deserving the 
 
 extended oration almost entirely name of oratory or eloquence 
 
 cut off. . . . Add to this modern can be the outcome of such a 
 
 method that other invention of contest ? ' (The Hon. Henry 
 
 recent years, which takes up Dawes in The Forum^ October 
 
 legislation thus prepared in the 1894, p. 153).
 
 CH. Hi. ENGLISH COMMITTEES 297 
 
 nately, the corruption, log-rolling, and intrigue that 
 so deeply infect American politics appear to be abun- 
 dantly displayed in the work of the committees. 1 
 
 The system, however, is essentially different from par- 
 liamentary government. It places the task of framing 
 laws in the hands of small groups of shrewd business 
 men, who work without any of the disturbing influences 
 of publicity ; and it diminishes, though it certainly 
 does not destroy, the injurious influence on public 
 business of anarchy and deterioration in Congress. In 
 France a different system prevails, but most legisla- 
 tion is practically done in 'bureaux/ or subdivisions of 
 the Chamber, which are appointed for the considera- 
 tion of particular subjects. In England the action of 
 the whole House is much greater ; but the commit- 
 tee system appears to be the healthiest part of our 
 present parliamentary system, and it has been consider- 
 ably extended by the adoption of standing committees 
 in the House of Commons in 1883, and in the House 
 of Lords in 1891. 2 The committees are of several 
 kinds. There are the select committees, which are 
 appointed by either House for the purpose of inves- 
 tigating complex subjects, and which have the power 
 of calling witnesses before them. The new Stand- 
 ing Committees of Law and Trade, commonly called 
 grand committees, consist of from sixty to eighty mem- 
 bers, representing different sections of the House, and 
 they generally include Cabinet ministers. Various Bills 
 are referred to them from the committee stage by a pro- 
 cess of devolution, and their divisions on disputed points 
 are duly recorded. Besides these there is the Commit- 
 tee of Public Accounts, which, with the assistance of 
 
 1 Bryce's American Common- * May's Parliamentary Pro- 
 wealth, i. 204-18. cedure (Palgrave's edition).
 
 298 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cii. in. 
 
 -the departmental officials, exercises a close and useful 
 supervision over the details of finance. 1 
 
 It is probable that the power, and perhaps the num- 
 ber, of the committees will be increased, and that in 
 this manner the much-impaired business capacity of 
 the House may be considerably recruited. The pro- 
 cess of devolution is likely, in some manner and under 
 some conditions and restrictions, to be extended, either 
 by special parliamentary committees, or in other ways, 
 to bodies representing different portions of the Empire. 
 The expense of carrying to London great masses of 
 non-political private business which might be as effi- 
 ciently and much more cheaply settled at home, is a 
 real and serious grievance ; and the obstruction to par- 
 liamentary business caused by the introduction of many 
 matters that ought never to be brought before the 
 supreme legislature of an empire, is now keenly felt. 
 Sooner or later some change in this system must be 
 effected, and a much larger proportion of Irish and 
 Scotch business than at present is likely to be entrusted 
 to bodies specially representing those countries. I do 
 not propose to enter at large into this question. The 
 two limitations that should be observed are, I think, 
 sufficiently obvious. The one is, that no body should 
 be set up which would be likely to prove in times of 
 danger a source of weakness or division to the Empire. 
 The other is, that Parliament should never so far abdi- 
 cate its supreme duty of doing justice to all sections of 
 the people as to set up any body that is likely to oppress 
 or plunder any class. If these two conditions are fully 
 and efficiently secured, local government may be wisely 
 and largely extended. There is, however, no greater 
 
 1 There is an excellent account of the working of these commit- 
 tees in Sir R. Temple's Life in Parliament.
 
 CH. in. VOTES OP CENSURE 299 
 
 folly in politics than to set up a political body without 
 considering the hands into which it is likely to fall, or 
 the spirit in which it is likely to be worked. 
 
 One change in the internal regulation of Parliament 
 has also been powerfully urged for the purpose of cor- 
 recting the instability and intrigue which a multipli- 
 cation of independent parliamentary groups is certain 
 to produce. It is, that a government should not con- 
 sider itself bound either to resign or dissolve on ac- 
 count of an adverse division due, perhaps, to a chance 
 or factious combination of irreconcilable minorities, but 
 should retain office until a formal vote of want of con- 
 fidence indicates clearly the desire of the House of 
 Commons. It does not, however, appear to me that 
 this change would be, on the whole, an improvement. 
 The fact that it has never been made in France, where 
 the evil of instability in the government arising from 
 the group system in Parliament has attained its ex- 
 treme limits, shows how difficult it would be to implant 
 it in parliamentary institutions. A defeat in the House 
 of Lords does not overthrow a ministry ; a defeat in 
 the House of Commons on a particular question may 
 be always remedied, if the House desires it, by a vote 
 of confidence. If the change we are considering would 
 mitigate the evil of parliamentary disintegration, it 
 would, as it seems to me, aggravate the not less serious 
 evil of the despotism of party caucuses. It continually 
 happens that a government, long before the natural 
 duration of a Parliament has expired, loses the confi- 
 dence of the House of Commons and of the country, 
 and it is very undesirable that, under these circum- 
 stances, it should continue in office. It is, however, 
 seldom likely that its majority would be destroyed by 
 a formal vote of want of confidence. Liberals would 
 hesitate to vote definitely as Tories, or Tories as Li-
 
 300 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. ra. 
 
 berals, and the pressure of party organisations would 
 override genuine opinions. It is on side-issues or in- 
 cidental questions that the true feeling of. the House is 
 most likely to be displayed and a bad ministry defeated. 
 After all due weight has been given to the possible 
 remedies that have been considered, it still seems to me 
 that the parliamentary system, when it rests on man- 
 hood suffrage, or something closely approaching to 
 manhood suffrage, is extremely unlikely to be perma- 
 nent. This was evidently the opinion of Tocqueville, 
 who was strongly persuaded that the natural result of 
 democracy was a highly concentrated, enervating, but 
 mild despotism. 1 It is the opinion of many of the 
 most eminent contemporary thinkers in France and 
 Germany, and it is, I think, steadily growing in Eng- 
 land. This does not mean that Parliaments will cease, 
 or that a wide suffrage will be abolished. It means 
 that Parliaments, if constructed on this type, cannot 
 permanently remain the supreme power among the na- 
 tions of the world. Sooner or later they will sink by 
 their own vices and inefficiencies into a lower plane. 
 They will lose the power of making and unmaking 
 ministries, and it will be found absolutely necessary to 
 establish some strong executive independently of their 
 fluctuations. Very probably this executive may be 
 established, as- in America and under the French Em- 
 pire, upon a broad basis of an independent suffrage. 
 Very possibly upper chambers, constituted upon some 
 sagacious plan, will again play a great restraining and 
 directing part in the government of the world. Few 
 persons who have watched the changes that have passed 
 over our own House of Commons within the last few 
 years will either believe or wish that in fifty years' time 
 
 1 La Democratic en Amerique, 4 me partie.
 
 CH. in. LOCAL GOVERNMENT 301 
 
 it can exercise the power it now does. It is only too 
 probable that some great catastrophe or the stress of a 
 great war may accelerate the change. 
 
 I do not speak of the modern extensions of local go- 
 vernment in the counties or towns as diminishing the 
 authority of democratic Parliaments. These extensions 
 have been themselves great democratic triumphs, trans- 
 ferring to bodies resting on a very low suffrage powers 
 which were either in the hands of persons nominated 
 by the Crown, or in the hands of persons whose elec- 
 tion depended on a high property qualification, and 
 especially on the possession of landed property. The 
 preceding pages will have abundantly illustrated the 
 dangers that are to be feared from unchecked demo- 
 cracy in this field. In England there is a great belief 
 in the educational value of this kind of government. 
 It is true that an honest, well-meaning local govern- 
 ment may begin by making many mistakes, but will 
 soon acquire the habits of good government. On the 
 other hand, if local government falls into the hands of 
 corrupt, self-seeking, dishonest men, it will promote 
 quite other habits, and will have very little tendency 
 to improve. Prolonged continuity of jobbing is not an 
 education in which good statesmen are likely to be 
 formed, and few things have done so much to demo- 
 ralise American political life as the practices that pre- 
 vail in municipal government and in the management 
 of ' the machine/ 
 
 On the whole, it can hardly be questioned that, in 
 spite of great complexities and incoherences of admi- 
 nistration, and of many strange anomalies, England 
 has been for many years singularly happy in her local 
 governments. The country gentlemen who chiefly 
 managed her county government, at least discharged 
 their task with great integrity, and with a very exten-
 
 302 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 sive and minute knowledge of the districts they ruled. 
 They had their faults, but they were much more nega- 
 tive than positive. They did few things which they 
 ought not to have done, but they left undone many 
 things which they ought to have done. There was in 
 general no corruption ; gross abuses were very rare, 
 and public money was, on the whole, wisely and eco- 
 nomically expended ; but evils that might have been 
 remedied were often left untouched, and there was 
 much need of a more active reforming spirit in county 
 administration. 
 
 Our town governments, also, since the great Mu- 
 nicipal Act of 1835, have been, on the whole, very 
 successful. They have not fallen into the hands of 
 corrupt politicians like the greater number of the mu- 
 nicipal governments in America ; the statesmen of the 
 period of the first Reform Bill never failed to maintain 
 a close connection between the power of taxing and the 
 obligation of paying rates and taxes, and the strong 
 controlling influence they gave to property in municipal 
 government, and in the administration of the poor 
 laws, secured an honest employment of public money. 
 The first and most vital rule of all good government is, 
 that those who vote taxes should contribute, to some 
 appreciable extent, to paying them ; that those who 
 are responsible for the administration of affairs should 
 themselves suffer from maladministration. This car- 
 dinal rule is, if possible, even more applicable to local 
 than to imperial government. Imperial government 
 is largely concerned with wide political issues. Local 
 government is specially, and beyond all things, a ma- 
 chine for raising and employing money. In every 
 sound company the directors must qualify for their 
 post by being large shareholders, and the shareholders 
 who have the largest interest have the greatest number
 
 CH. in. LOCAL GOVERNMENT 303 
 
 of votes. This is the first and most obvious rule for 
 obtaining an honest and frugal administration of money, 
 and the success and purity of English local government 
 have been largely due to the steadiness with which the 
 great statesmen who followed the Reform Bill of 1832 
 acted upon it. 
 
 It has been reserved for the present generation of 
 statesmen to do 'all that is in their power to destroy it. 
 It has come to be regarded as a Liberal principle that 
 it is a wrong thing to impose rating or property quali- 
 fications on those who vote rates and govern property. 
 Thus, by the Act of 1894 all property qualifications for 
 vestrymen and poor-law guardians have been abolished. 
 The rating qualification for voting is no longer neces- 
 sary. The ex-officio and nominated guardians, who 
 were always men of large experience and indisputable 
 character, have been swept away ; the obviously equita- 
 ble rule that ratepayers should have votes for guardians 
 in proportion to the amount of their contributions has 
 been replaced by the rule of one voter, one vote. The 
 old property qualifications for the electors of district 
 boards have been abolished, and at the same time those 
 boards have acquired additional powers over different 
 kinds of property. With many politicians the evident 
 ideal of city government is, that a great owner of town 
 property, who necessarily pays the largest proportion of 
 the municipal taxation, whose interests are most indis- 
 solubly associated with the prosperity of the city, and 
 who, from his very prominence, is specially likely to 
 be made the object of predatory attacks, should have no 
 more voice than the humblest tenant on his estate in 
 imposing, regulating, distributing, and applying muni- 
 cipal taxation. 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive a system more cer- 
 tain to lead to corruption and dishonesty ; and other
 
 304 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 circumstances contribute to enhance the danger. If 
 taxation were as limited in its amount, and public 
 expenditure restricted to as few objects as in the past 
 generation, it would signify comparatively little how 
 its burden was distributed. But one of the most 
 marked tendencies of our time is the enlargement of 
 the area of State functions and the amount of State 
 expenditure. The immense increase of local taxation, 
 and especially local debt, that has taken place within 
 a very few years has long excited the alarm of the most 
 serious politicians in England. The complications of 
 local taxation are so great that it is probably not pos- 
 sible to obtain complete accuracy on this subject, but 
 there can be no question of the appalling rapidity with 
 which the movement has advanced. In a very useful 
 paper published under the auspices of the Cobden Club 
 in 1882, it was calculated that the local indebtedness of 
 England and Wales had risen between 1872 and 1880 
 from 80,000,000?. to 137,096, 607?. ' In 1891, it was 
 stated in the House of Commons to be 195,400,000?. 
 In the following year it was stated that, in the preced- 
 ing fifteen years, the national debt had fallen from 
 768,945,757?. to 689,944,026?., but that during the 
 same period the municipal debt had risen from 92,820,- 
 100?. to 198,671,312?.' There seems no sign of this 
 tendency having spent its force, and schemes involving 
 vast increases of municipal expenditure are manifestly 
 in the air. It is at this time that the policy of sepa- 
 rating the payment of taxes from the voting of taxes 
 is most largely adopted. Unfortunately, the very ten- 
 dencies that make it so dangerous increase its popu- 
 
 1 Local Government and Tax- Lord Wemyss in an Address on 
 
 ation of the United Kingdom Modern Municipalism (1893), 
 
 (Cobden Club), p. 480. p. 11. 
 
 a See some facts collected by
 
 CH. in. MILITARY AND NAVAL EXPENDITURE 305 
 
 larity, and therefore its attractiveness to politicians, 
 whose great object is to win votes and tide over an 
 election. 
 
 The enormous increase which has also taken place in 
 the State taxation of nearly every civilised country 
 during the last forty-five years is certainly one of the 
 most disquieting features of our time. It is to be at- 
 tributed to several different causes. The worst is that 
 gigantic increase of national debts and of military ex- 
 penditure which has taken place in Europe since the 
 Kevolution of 1848. National indebtedness has reached 
 a point that makes the bankruptcy of many nations an 
 almost inevitable result of any prolonged European 
 war ; and the immense burden of unproductive ex- 
 penditure that is drawn from every nation for the pur- 
 pose of pay ing the national creditors, gives revolutionary 
 literature a great part of its plausibility, and forms one 
 of the strongest temptations to national dishonesty. 
 The incentive is the stronger as most national debts are 
 largely held by foreigners, and as there is no interna- 
 tional organisation corresponding to a bankruptcy court 
 for coercing or punishing a defaulting nation. Of this 
 military expenditure it will here be sufficient to say 
 that it is far from measured by the direct taxes which 
 are raised ; and the withdrawal of a vast proportion of 
 human effort from productive employment, and the 
 enslavement, during the best part of their lives, of a 
 vast proportion of the population of Europe, have 
 probably contributed, as much as any other single 
 cause, to the revolutionary tendencies of our time. 
 
 England need not, I think, take to herself much 
 blame in these respects^ If she has not done all that 
 she might have done since the great French war to 
 diminish her debt, she has at least done very much, 
 and far more than any other European country, while 
 VOL. i. 20
 
 306 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 her military and naval expenditure has usually been 
 rather below than above what is needed for her abso- 
 lute security. The growth, however, of this expendi- 
 ture has been very great. Between 1835 and 1888 it 
 is said to have increased by no less than 173 per cent. 1 
 This is, however, mainly due to the gigantic armaments 
 on the Continent, and to the enormous increase in the 
 cost and the constant changes in the type of ships and 
 guns. The burden is a terrible one ; but every one who 
 will look facts in the face must recognise that the ex- 
 istence at each given moment of an English fleet of over- 
 whelming power is the first and most vital condition 
 of the security of the nation. An island Power which 
 cannot even support its population with food ; which 
 depends for its very existence on a vast commerce ; 
 which from the vastness of its dominions and inte- 
 rests is constantly liable to be involved in dispute with 
 other Powers, and which presents peculiar temptation 
 to an invader, could on no other condition maintain her 
 independence, and it is a healthy sign that English 
 public opinion realises the transcendent importance of 
 the fact, and has more than once forced it upon poli- 
 ticians who were neglecting it. 
 
 What may be the final result of this growing ex- 
 penditure no man can say. It is possible, and by no 
 means improbable, that the increasing power of guns 
 and torpedoes may make large ships useless in war, 
 and may again revolutionise, and perhaps greatly 
 cheapen, naval war. It is possible, and perhaps proba- 
 ble, that the means of defence may obtain an over- 
 whelming preponderance over the means of attack. 
 Small and poor nations which have taken an honour- 
 able part in the naval history of the past find it im- 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, Traite des finances^ ii. 168.
 
 CH. in. MILITARY AND NAVAL EXPENDITURE 307 
 
 possible to enter into serious competition with the 
 costly navies of the present, and it is probable that the 
 richest nations will, sooner or later, find it impossible 
 without ruin to maintain at once the position of a 
 first-rate military and a first-rate naval Power. The 
 time may come when some great revolution of opinion 
 or some great internal convulsion may check or re- 
 verse the tendency of the last half -century, and bring 
 about a great movement for disarmament. Till that 
 time arrives there can be little hope of any serious 
 diminution of this great branch of national expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 I know few things more melancholy or more instruc- 
 tive than to compare the present state of Europe in 
 this respect with the predictions of the Manchester 
 school, and of the writers who, within the memory of 
 many of us, were looked upon as the most faithful 
 representatives of advanced thought. Some of my 
 readers will doubtless remember the enthusiasm and 
 admiration with which, in 1857, the first volume of 
 Buckle's great History was welcomed. In spite of 
 much crudeness, many shortcomings, and great dog- 
 matism, it was a book well fitted to make an epoch on 
 its subject. The vast horizons it opened ; the sweep 
 and boldness of its generalisations ; its admirable lite- 
 rary qualities, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge, 
 for progress, and for liberty that animated it, captivated 
 and deeply influenced a whole generation of young 
 men. One of the most confident of Buckle's predic- 
 tions was, that the military spirit had had its day ; 
 that the * commercial spirit/ which is now * invariably 
 pacific/ would speedily reduce it to insignificance ; 
 that, although it might linger for a time among the 
 most backward and semi-barbarous nations of Europe, 
 like Kussia and Turkey, all the higher talent, all the
 
 308 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. nt 
 
 stronger ambitions, all the force of public opinion in 
 the civilised world, would be steadily against it. 
 
 The American Civil War, the war of France and 
 Italy against Austria, the war of Prussia and Austria 
 against Denmark, the war of Prussia and Italy against 
 Austria, the great Franco-German War of 1870, speed- 
 ily followed, and Europe in time of peace has become 
 a gigantic camp, supporting armies which, in their 
 magnitude and their perfection, are unparalleled in the 
 history of the world. It was estimated in 1888 that 
 Germany, Austria, France,, Italy, and Eussia, could 
 probably together put in the field more than sixteen 
 millions of soldiers in time of war, and that their 
 united armies in time of peace were not less than 
 2,315,000 men. 1 
 
 Two facts connected with this military develop- 
 ment are especially significant. One is, that the trad- 
 ing and commercial spirit has now become one of the 
 chief impulses towards territorial aggrandisement. 
 ' Trade/ as it has been truly said, ( follows the flag/ 
 With the present system of enormous manufacturing 
 production and stringent protective barriers, it has be- 
 come absolutely necessary for a great manufacturing 
 State to secure for itself a sufficient market by incor- 
 porating new territories in its dominions. In hardly 
 any period of her history has England annexed so 
 much territory as in the last half-century, and al- 
 though many of these annexations are due to the 
 necessity which often compels a civilised power as a 
 mere measure of police and self-defence to extend its 
 frontier into the uncivilised world, much also must be 
 attributed to commercial enterprise. 
 
 England has not been alone in this respect. Few 
 
 Revue At Droit International, xi. 99.
 
 CH. in. ANNEXATIONS 309 
 
 more curious spectacles have been exhibited in the pre- 
 sent century than that of the chief civilised nations of 
 Europe dividing among themselves the African conti- 
 nent without even a shadow or pretext of right. Ex- 
 perience has already shown how easily these vague and 
 ill-defined boundaries may become a new cause of 
 European quarrels, and how often, in remote African 
 jungles or forests, negroes armed with European guns 
 may inflict defeats on European soldiers which will be- 
 come the cause of costly and difficult wars. 
 
 Another very remarkable fact has been the growing 
 feeling in the most civilised portions of Europe in 
 favour of universal military service. Not many years 
 ago it would scarcely have found a conspicuous defen- 
 der, except perhaps Carlyle, outside purely military 
 circles ; but no competent judge can fail to observe the 
 change which has of late years taken place. The system 
 has now struck a deep root in the habits of Continental 
 life, and in the eyes of a considerable and able school 
 it is rather a positive good than a necessary evil. 
 
 Its defenders contend, in the first place, that these 
 gigantic armies make rather for peace than for war. 
 The tremendous force of the weapon, the extreme 
 difficulty of managing it ; the uncertainty that more 
 than ever hangs over the issue of a struggle ; the 
 complete paralysis of all industrial life that must now 
 accompany a great war, and the utter ruin that may 
 follow defeat, impose a severe restraint on the most 
 ambitious statesman and the most excited population ; 
 while vast citizen armies, which must be dragged from 
 domestic life and peaceful industry to the battlefield, 
 will never be pervaded with the desire for war that 
 animates purely professional soldiers. I have heard, 
 indeed, one of the most competent judges of the politi- 
 cal and military state of Europe predict that the most
 
 310 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 dangerous period to European peace will be that which 
 follows a disarmament, reducing the armies of the rival 
 Powers to moderate and manageable dimensions. 
 
 But, in addition to this consideration, a strong con- 
 viction has grown up of the moral and educational 
 value of military discipline. It is urged that, in an 
 age when many things contribute to weaken the na- 
 tional fibre and produce in large classes a languid, 
 epicurean, semi-detached cosmopolitanism, universal 
 service tends strongly to weld nations together, to 
 strengthen the patriotic feeling, to form a high stan- 
 dard of civic duty and of self-sacrificing courage, to 
 inspire the masses of the population with the kind and 
 the intensity of enthusiasm that is most conducive to 
 the greatness of nations. It carries the idea and sen- 
 timent of nationhood to multitudes whose thoughts 
 would otherwise have never travelled beyond the narrow 
 circle of daily wants or of village interests. The effect 
 of universal service in Italy in civilising half-barba- 
 rous populations, in replacing old provincial jealousies 
 and prejudices by the sentiment of a common national- 
 ity, has been abundantly displayed. In some cases a 
 measure of ordinary education is now combined with 
 military service, and the special education which disci- 
 pline in itself produces is, it is contended, peculiarly 
 needed in our day. ' The true beginning of wisdom,' 
 a wise old Hebrew writer has said, ' is the desire of 
 discipline/ ' and it is probably on this side that modern 
 education is most defective. Military service at least 
 produces habits of order, cleanliness, punctuality, obe- 
 dience, and respect for authority, and, unlike most 
 forms of popular education, it acts powerfully on the 
 character and on the will. A few years spent in this 
 
 1 Wisdom of Solomon, vi. 17.
 
 CH. in. THE MILITARY SYSTEM 311 
 
 school and amid the associations of the barrack will not 
 tend to make men saints, but it is likely to do much to 
 strengthen and discipline their characters, and to fit 
 them to play a useful and honourable part in civil life. 
 It at least gives them the tastes and habits of civilised 
 men, corrects many senseless prejudices, forms brave, 
 steady, energetic, and patriotic citizens. It mitigates 
 the problems of the unemployed and of pauperism, and 
 exercises a reforming influence on the idlest and most 
 disorderly elements in society. Such men are far more 
 likely to be reclaimed by the strong, steady pressure of 
 military discipline than by any teaching of the Churches 
 or the schools. 
 
 In all countries, it is truly said, when peace has con- 
 tinued long, and when wealth and prosperity have 
 greatly increased, insidious vices grow up which do 
 much to corrode the strength of nations. Lax princi- 
 ples, low ideals ; luxurious, self-indulgent, effeminate 
 habits of thought and life prevail ; the robuster quali- 
 ties decline ; the power of self-sacrifice is diminished, 
 and life in all its forms takes a less serious cast. The 
 catastrophe of a great war is often Nature's stern cor- 
 rective of these evils, but every wise statesman will 
 look for remedies that are less drastic and less perilous. 
 Of these, a few years of universal military discipline is 
 one of the most powerful. It is the best tonic for a 
 debilitated system. 
 
 Some admirers have gone even further. There is a 
 theory, which, I believe, took its rise in Germany, but 
 which has found adherents in England, that the gigan- 
 tic armies of the Continent in reality cost nothing, for 
 the productive powers of men are so much increased by 
 a few years of military discipline that society is amply 
 compensated for the sacrifice it has made. Two or 
 three years of a life are taken from productive employ-
 
 312 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. m. 
 
 ment and supported from national funds, but the re- 
 mainder is rendered greatly more productive. 
 
 I have endeavoured to state the case of the supporters 
 of universal service in its strongest form. I do not 
 think that it can be doubted that it contains some 
 truth ; but, like much truth that has been long ne- 
 glected, it has been thrust into an exaggerated and 
 misleading prominence. The question is one of ex- 
 treme importance for the English-speaking race, for, if 
 the education of universal military service does all that 
 is attributed to it, the Continental nations which have 
 generally adopted it must necessarily, in the long run, 
 rise to a higher plane than the English race, who, on 
 both sides of the ocean, have steadily rejected it. To 
 me, at least, the theory of the inexpensiveness of the 
 Continental military system seems to be a complete 
 paradox, in the face of the overwhelming and ever- 
 increasing burden of debt and taxation distinctly due 
 to the military system, which is crushing and paralysing 
 the industry of Europe and threatening great nations 
 with speedy bankruptcy. It is true that military dis- 
 cipline often forms valuable industrial qualities ; but 
 it is also true that the conscription breaks the habits 
 of industrial life at the very age when it is most impor- 
 tant that they should be formed, and that, in countless 
 cases, the excitements and associations of military life 
 utterly unfit men for the monotony of humble labour, 
 pursued, perhaps, in some remote hamlet, and amid 
 surroundings of abject poverty. 
 
 With the present gigantic armies, wars have, no 
 doubt, become less frequent, though they have become 
 incomparably more terrible ; but can anyone seriously 
 contend that the unrestrained and reckless military 
 competition of the last few years has given Europe 
 any real security, or that either the animosities or the
 
 OH. in. THE MILITARY SYSTEM 313 
 
 aspirations that threaten it have gone down ? Are 
 its statesmen confident that an ambitious monarch, or 
 a propitious moment ; or an alliance or an invention 
 that materially changes the balance of forces, or some 
 transient outburst of national irritation injudiciously 
 treated, might not at any moment set it once more in a 
 blaze ? To strew gunpowder on all sides may, no doubt, 
 produce caution, but it is not the best wa} r of prevent- 
 ing an explosion. Never in the history of mankind 
 have explosive elements of such tremendous potency 
 been accumulated in Europe, and, with all our boasted 
 democracy, the issues of peace or war have seldom 
 rested so largely with three or four men. In the pre- 
 sent condition of the world, it would be quite possible 
 for the folly of a single ruler to bring down calamities 
 upon Europe that might transfer the sceptre of civili- 
 sation to the other side of the Atlantic. 
 
 The security of internal peace given by a great army, 
 and the influence of military discipline in forming 
 habits of life and thought that are opposed to anarchi- 
 cal and revolutionary tendencies, have been much dwelt 
 on. But if the military system does much to employ 
 and reclaim the dangerous classes, if it teaches loyalty 
 and obedience and respect, it also brings with it bur- 
 dens which are steadily fomenting discontent. Cer- 
 tainly, the great military nations of the world are not 
 those in which Anarchy, Socialism, and Nihilism are 
 least rife. Of all the burdens that a modern Govern- 
 ment can impose on its subjects, incomparably the 
 heaviest is universal compulsory military service, and, 
 to a large minority of those who undergo it, it is the 
 most irritating and the most crushing servitude. Nor 
 should it be forgotten that, if this system furnishes 
 Governments with tremendous engines of repression, 
 it is also preparing the time when every revolutionary
 
 314 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 movement will be made by men who have the knowledge 
 and experience of military life. A great military Power 
 continually augmenting its army in hopes of repressing 
 anarchy presents a spectacle much like that which may 
 be seen at a Spanish bullfight when the banderilla has 
 been planted by a skilful hand,, and when every bound 
 by which the infuriated animal seeks to shake off the 
 barb that is lacerating its flesh only deepens and exas- 
 perates the wound. 
 
 No reasonable man will deny that a period of steady 
 discipline is, to many characters, an education of great 
 value an education producing results that are not 
 likely in any other way to be equally attained. It is 
 especially useful in communities that are still in a low 
 stage of civilisation, and have not yet attained the ha- 
 bits of order and respect for authority, and in commu- 
 nities that are deeply divided by sectional and provincial 
 antipathies. It is, I think, equally true that improve- 
 ments have been introduced into modern armies which 
 have greatly raised their moral tone. But, when all 
 this is admitted, the shadows of the picture remain 
 very marked. Deferred marriage, the loosening of 
 domestic ties, the growth of ideals in which bloodshed 
 and violence play a great part, a diminished horror of 
 war, the constant employment of the best human inge- 
 nuity in devising new and more deadly instruments of 
 destruction all these things follow in the train of the 
 great armies. It is impossible to turn Europe into a 
 camp without in some degree reviving the ideals and 
 the standards of a military age. 
 
 Discipline teaches much, but it also represses much, 
 and the dead-level and passive obedience of the mili- 
 tary system are not the best* school of independent 
 thought and individual energy. To the finer and more 
 delicate flowers of human culture it is peculiarly pre-
 
 CH. IIL THE MILITARY SYSTEM 315 
 
 judicial. Strongly marked individual types, highly 
 strung, sensitive, nervous organisations, are the soils 
 from which much that is most beautiful in our civili- 
 sation has sprung. Beyond all other things, enforced 
 military service tends to sterilise them. Among such 
 men it is difficult to overestimate either the waste and 
 ruin of high talent, or the amount of acute and useless 
 suffering that it produces. To democracies these things 
 are of little moment, and they seem lost in the splen- 
 dour and pageantry of military life. But the statistics 
 that are occasionally published, exhibiting the im- 
 mensely disproportionate number of suicides in some 
 of the chief armies of the Continent, show clearly the 
 suffering that is festering beneath. 
 
 Taine has devoted to the growth of the military sys- 
 tem several pages of admirable power and truth, and he 
 justly describes conscription as the natural companion 
 'or brother of universal suffrage one of the two great 
 democratic forces which seem destined for some time 
 to rule the world. 1 The levelling and intermingling of 
 classes it produces renders it congenial to a democratic 
 age, and the old system of obtaining exemptions and 
 substitutions for money has been generally abolished. 
 In the majority of cases, those who desired exemption 
 were men with no military aptitude, so the army proba- 
 bly gained by the substitution. It was a free contract, 
 in which the poor man received what the rich man 
 paid, and by which both parties were benefited. It 
 gave, however, some privilege to wealth, and democracy, 
 true to its genuine instinct of preferring equality to 
 liberty, emphatically condemned it. 
 
 There is, however, another aspect of the question 
 which has impressed serious observers on the Conti- 
 
 1 Origines de la France Contemporaine : Le Regime Modeme, i. 
 284-96.
 
 316 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 nent. In spite of the affinity I have mentioned, it 
 would be hardly possible to conceive a greater contrast 
 in spirit and tendency than exists in some essential 
 respects between the highly democratic representative 
 Governments and the universal military service, which 
 are simultaneously nourishing in a great part of Europe. 
 The one is a system in which all ideas of authority and 
 subordination are discarded, in which the skilful talker 
 or demagogue naturally rules, in which every question 
 is decided by the votes of a majority, in which liberty 
 is perpetually pushed to the borders of license. The 
 other is a system of the strictest despotism and subor- 
 dination, of passive obedience without discussion or re- 
 monstrance ; a system with ideals, habits, and standards 
 of judgment utterly unlike those of popular politics ; a 
 system which is rapidly including, and moulding, and 
 representing the whole adult male population. And 
 while parliamentary government is everywhere show- 
 ing signs of growing inefficiency and discredit, the 
 armies of Europe are steadily strengthening, absorbing 
 more and more the force and manhood of Christendom. 
 Some observers are beginning to ask themselves whether 
 these two things are likely always to go on together, 
 and always to maintain their present relation whether 
 the eagles will always be governed by the parrots. 
 
 The great growth of militarism in the latter half 
 of the nineteenth century has, I think, contributed 
 largely, though indirectly, to the prevailing tendency 
 to aggrandise the powers of government and to seek 
 social reforms in strong, coercive organisations of so- 
 ciety. It is also the chief source of the immense in- 
 crease of taxation, which has so seriously aggravated the 
 dangers of a period of democratic transformation. It is 
 not, indeed, by any means the only source. Something 
 is due to the higher wages, the better payment of f unc-
 
 OH. in. NATIONAL EDUCATION 317 
 
 tionaries and workmen of every order, which has fol- 
 lowed in the train of a higher standard of life and 
 comfort.- This beneficent movement was much ac- 
 centuated in a period of great prosperity, and it has 
 continued with little abatement, though economical 
 conditions have much changed. 
 
 A much more considerable cause, however, of the 
 increase of national expenditure is to be found in the 
 many new duties that are thrown upon the State. The 
 most important of these has been that of national edu- 
 cation. Hardly any change in our generation has been 
 more marked than that which made the education of 
 the poor one of the main functions of the Government. 
 In 1833, a parliamentary grant of 20,OOOZ. was, for the 
 first time, made in England to assist two societies en- 
 gaged in popular education. In 1838, the parliamen- 
 tary grant was raised to 30,000/. a year. It soon passed 
 these limits ; but the great period of national expendi- 
 ture on education is much more recent. Before the 
 Act of 1870 the State, in encouraging primary educa- 
 tion, confined itself to grants in aid of local and volun- 
 tary bodies. It built no schools, and it made no 
 provision for education where local agencies were want- 
 ing. The Act of 1870, providing for the establishment 
 of a school in every district where the supply of educa- 
 tion was deficient ; the Act of 1876, making it penal 
 for parents to neglect the education of their children, 
 and the Act of 1891, granting free education, were the 
 chief causes of the rapid rise in this branch of expendi- 
 ture. In 1892 the total expenditure of school boards 
 in England and Wales amounted to the enormous sum 
 of 7,134,3862. The number of free scholars was about 
 3,800,000, and the number of children paying fees or 
 partial fees was about 1, 020,000. 1 
 
 1 See the statistics in Whitaker's Almanack for 1894, pp. 601, 605.
 
 318 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 England lias, in this respect, only acted on the same 
 lines as other civilised countries. She has acted on the 
 supposition that, in the competition of nations, no un- 
 educated people can hold its own, either in industrial 
 or political competitions, and that democratic govern- 
 ment can only be tolerable when it rests on the broad 
 basis of an educated people. Probably few persons 
 will now altogether doubt these truths, though some- 
 thing of the old belief in the omnipotence of education 
 may have passed away, and though some qualifying 
 considerations may have come into sight. The old 
 Tory doctrine, that national education may easily be 
 carried to a point which unfits men for the manual 
 toil in which the great majority must pass their lives, 
 was certainly not without foundation. Formerly, the 
 best workman was usually content to remain in his 
 class, and to bring up his children in it. He took a 
 pride in his work, and by doing so he greatly raised its 
 standard and character. His first desire is now, much 
 more frequently, to leave it, or at least to educate his 
 children in the tastes and habits of a class which he 
 considers a little higher than his own. That a man. 
 born in the humbler stages of society, who possesses 
 the power of playing a considerable part in the world, 
 should be helped to do so is very desirable ; but it is by 
 no means desirable that the flower of the working-class, 
 or their children, should learn to despise manual labour 
 and the simple, inexpensive habits of their parents, in 
 order to become very commonplace doctors, attorneys, 
 clerks, or newspaper writers. This is what is continu- 
 ally happening, and while it deprives the working- 
 classes of their best elements, it is one great cause of 
 the exaggerated competition which now falls with 
 crushing weight on the lower levels of the intellectual 
 professions.
 
 CH. in. SOME RESULTS OF POPULAR EDUCATION 319 
 
 Education, even to a very humble degree, does much 
 to enlarge interests and brighten existence ; but, by a 
 melancholy compensation, it makes men far more im- 
 patient of the tedium, the monotony, and the contrasts 
 of life. It produces desires which it cannot always 
 sate, and it affects very considerably the disposition and 
 relations of classes. One common result is the strong 
 preference for town to country life. A marked and un- 
 happy characteristic of the present age in England is 
 the constant depletion of the country districts by the 
 migration of multitudes of its old, healthy population 
 to the debilitating, and often depraving, atmosphere of 
 the great towns. The chief causes of this change are, 
 no doubt, economical. In the extreme depression of ag- 
 riculture, every farmer finds it absolutely essential to 
 keep his wage bill at the lowest point, and therefore to 
 employ as few labourers as possible. Machinery takes 
 the place of hand labour. Arable land, which supports 
 many, becomes pasture land, which supports few. But 
 everyone who has much practical acquaintance with 
 country life will, I believe, agree that the movement has 
 been greatly intensified by the growing desire for more 
 excitement and amusement which, under the influ- 
 ence of popular education, has spread widely through 
 the agricultural labourers. Hopes and ambitions that 
 are too often bitterly falsified draw them in multitudes 
 to the great towns. 
 
 This restlessness and discontent produce considerable 
 political effects. Education nearly always promotes 
 peaceful tastes and orderly habits in the community, 
 but in other respects its political value is often greatly 
 overrated. The more dangerous forms of animosity 
 and dissension are usually undiminished, and are often 
 stimulated, by its influence. An immense proportion 
 of those who have learnt to read, never read anything
 
 320 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 but a party newspaper very probably a newspaper spe- 
 cially intended to inflame or to mislead them and the 
 half-educated mind is peculiarly open to political Uto- 
 pias and fanaticisms. Very few such men can realise 
 distant consequences, or even consequences which are 
 distant but one remove from the primary or direct one. 
 How few townsmen, in a political contest, will realise 
 that the neglect or depression of agriculture beats down 
 town wages, by producing an immigration of agricul- 
 tural labourers ; or that a great strike in times of manu- 
 facturing depression will usually drive the industry 
 on which they depend for their food, in part at least, 
 out of the country ; or that a highly graduated system 
 of taxation, which at first brings in much money at the 
 cost of the few, will soon lead to a migration of the 
 capital which is essential to the subsistence of the many. 
 Every politician knows how difficult it is in times of 
 peace to arouse the public to the importance of the 
 army and navy, on which the very existence of the Em- 
 pire may depend, or to questions affecting national 
 credit, or to questions affecting those distant portions 
 of the Empire which feed, by their commerce, our 
 home industries. Few men clearly realise that each 
 popular exemption from taxation, each popular sub- 
 sidy that is voted, means a corresponding burden im- 
 posed on some portion of the community ; or that 
 economies which leave Civil Servants underpaid almost 
 always lead to wastefulness, inefficiency, and corrup- 
 tion. Men seldom bestow on public questions the same 
 seriousness of attention that they bestow on their pri- 
 vate concerns, and they seldom look as far into the 
 future. National interests continually give way to 
 party or to class interests. The ultimate interests even 
 of a class are subordinated to the immediate benefit of 
 a section of it. Proximate ends overshadow distant
 
 CH. in. SHORTSIGHTED POLITICS 321 
 
 consequences, and when the combative instinct, with 
 all its passion and its pride, is aroused, even proximate 
 interests are often forgotten. In few fields have there 
 been more fatal miscalculations than in the competition 
 and struggle of industrial life, and they are largely due 
 to this cause. 
 
 All classes are liable to mistakes of this kind, but 
 they are especially prevalent among the half-educated, 
 who have passed out of the empire of old habits and 
 restraints. Such men are peculiarly apt to fall under 
 misleading influences. They are usually insensible to 
 the extreme complexity of the social fabric and the 
 close interdependence of its many parts, and to the 
 transcendent importance of consequences that are often 
 obscure, remote, and diffused through many different 
 channels. The complete illiteracy of a man is a 
 strong argument against entrusting him with politi- 
 cal power, but the mere knowledge of reading and 
 writing is no real guarantee, or even presumption, 
 that he will wisely exercise it. In order to attain this 
 wisdom we must look to other methods to a wide dif- 
 fusion of property, to a system of representation that 
 gives a voice to many different interests and types. 
 The sedulous maintenance of the connection between 
 taxation and voting is, perhaps, the best means of ob- 
 taining it. 
 
 These considerations are not intended to show that 
 education is not a good thing, but only that its political 
 advantages have not always proved as unmixed and as 
 great as has been supposed. In the age in which we 
 live, the incapacity and impotence that result from 
 complete illiteracy can hardly be exaggerated, and 
 every Government, as it seems to me, should make it 
 its duty to provide that all its subjects should at least 
 possess the rudiments of knowledge. It is also a mat- 
 VOL. i. 21
 
 322 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 ter of much importance to the community that there 
 should be ladders by which poor men of real ability can 
 climb to higher positions in the social scale. This is 
 an object for which private endowments have largely 
 and wisely provided, and, unless the flow of private 
 benevolence is arrested by the increasing action of the 
 State, endowments for this purpose are sure to mul- 
 tiply. Another order of considerations, however, 
 comes into play when great revenues are raised by com* 
 pulsion for the purpose of establishing a free national 
 education which has more the character of secondary 
 than primary education. The childless are taxed for 
 the education of children, and large classes of parents 
 for the support of schools they will never use. Paren- 
 tal responsibility, as well as parental rights, are dimi- 
 nished, and a grinding weight of taxation, for a purpose 
 with which they have little or no real sympathy, falls 
 upon some of the most struggling classes in the com- 
 munity. 
 
 There can be little doubt that this form of taxation 
 is likely to increase. A large party desire to provide 
 at the expense of the State, not only free education, 
 but also free school-books, free recreation-grounds, and 
 at least one meal during school-hours. Sectarian jea- 
 lousies and animosities, in more than one country, add 
 largely to the cost of education by an unnecessary mul- 
 tiplication of schools, or by establishing a ruinous com- 
 petition between State schools and schools established 
 by voluntary subscription or supported by religious 
 denominations. At the same time, the standard of 
 popular and free, or, in other words, State-paid educa- 
 tion, seems steadily rising. A crowd of subjects which 
 lie far beyond the limits of primary education are 
 already taught, either gratuitously or below cost price. 
 In most countries, education in all its stages seems be-
 
 CH. IIL SANITARY REFORM 323 
 
 coming more and more a State function, bearing more 
 and more the State stamp, and more and more sup- 
 ported from public funds. 
 
 This is one main cause of the increase of the revenue 
 drawn by the Government from the people. There 
 are others, on which we may, I think, look with more 
 unhesitating approval. The great work of sanitary 
 reform has been, perhaps, the noblest legislative 
 achievement of our age, and, if measured by the suffer- 
 ing it has diminished, has probably done far more for 
 the real happiness of mankind than all the many ques- 
 tions that make and unmake ministries. It received its 
 first great impetus in the present century from the 
 Public Health Act of 1848, and in our own generation 
 it has been greatly and variously extended. There can 
 be no nobler or wiser end for a statesman to follow 
 than to endeavour to secure for the poor, as far as is 
 possible, the same measure of life and health as for the 
 rich. Among the many addresses that were presented 
 to the Queen in her Jubilee year, none appeared to me 
 so significant as that which was presented by the sani- 
 tary inspectors, summing up what had been done in 
 England during the first fifty years of the reign. They 
 observed that the general health of Her Majesty's sub- 
 jects had advanced far beyond that of any great State 
 of Europe or of the United States ; that the mean 
 duration of life of all the Queen's subjects had been 
 augmented by three and a half years ; that in the last 
 year's population of England and Wales there had been 
 a saving of 84,000 cases of death, and of more than 
 1,700,000 cases of sickness, over the average rates of 
 death and sickness at the beginning of the reign ; that 
 the death-rate of the home army had been reduced by 
 more than half, and the death-rate of the Indian army 
 by more than four-fifths.
 
 324 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. m. 
 
 All this cannot be done without the constant inter- 
 vention of Government. On the subject of sanitary 
 reform the case of the extreme individualist will always 
 break down, for disease is most frequently of a con- 
 tagious and epidemical character, and the conditions 
 from which it springs can never be dealt with except 
 by general, organised, coercive measures. The real 
 justification of the law imposing compulsory vaccina- 
 tion on an unwilling subject is, not that it may save his 
 life, but that it may prevent him from being a centre 
 of contagion to his neighbours. In all legislation 
 about drainage, pollution of rivers, insanitary dwell- 
 ings, the prevention of infection, and the establishment 
 of healthy conditions of labour, spasmodic and indi- 
 vidual efforts, unsupported by law, will always prove 
 insufficient. As population increases, and is more and 
 more massed in large towns ; as the competition for 
 working men's houses within a limited area grows more 
 intense ; as industry takes forms which bring great 
 numbers of working-men and women under the same 
 roof, and as multiplying schools increase the danger of 
 children's epidemics, the need for coercive measures of 
 sanitary regulation becomes more imperious. 
 
 A Government can have no higher object than to 
 raise the standard of national health, and it may do so 
 in several different ways. It may do much to encou- 
 rage those most fruitful and beneficial of all forms of 
 research research into the causes of disease and the 
 methods of curing it. It may bring within the reach 
 of the poorest class the medical knowledge and appli- 
 ances which, in a ruder state of society, would be a 
 monopoly of the rich. It may make use of the great 
 technical knowledge at its command to establish quali- 
 fications for medical practice which will restrain the 
 quack, who trades on the fears and weaknesses of the
 
 CH. in. SANITARY REFORM 325 
 
 ignorant much as the professional money-lender does 
 on their improvidence and inexperience. It may also 
 greatly raise the health of the community by measures 
 preventing insanitary conditions of life, noxious adul- 
 terations, or the spread of contagion. 
 
 In this, no doubt, as in other departments, there are 
 qualifications to be made, dangers and exaggerations 
 to be avoided. Sanitary reform is not wholly a good 
 thing when it enables the diseased and feeble members 
 of the community, who in another stage of society 
 would have died in infancy, to grow up and become 
 parent stocks, transmitting a weakened type or the 
 taint of hereditary disease. The diminution of mor- 
 tality which sanitary science effects is mainly in infant 
 mortality, and infant mortality is a far less evil than 
 adult mortality, and in not a few cases it is a blessing 
 in disguise. It is true, too, that mere legislation in 
 this, as in other fields, will prove abortive if it is not 
 supported by an intelligent public opinion. As one of 
 the wisest statesmen of our age has truly said, * Sanitary 
 instruction is even more essential than sanitary legisla- 
 tion, for if in these matters the public knows what it 
 wants, sooner or later the legislation will follow ; but 
 the best laws, in a country like this, are waste paper if 
 they are not appreciated and understood/ : 
 
 It is possible that a Government, acting at the 
 dictation of a profession which is strongly wedded to 
 professional traditions and etiquette, and which at the 
 same time deals with a subject very far removed from 
 scientific certainty, may throw obstacles in the way of 
 new treatments and remedies that may prove of great 
 benefit to mankind. It is also possible, and, indeed, 
 probable, that it may carry the system of regulation to 
 
 1 Speeches and Addresses of Lord Derby, i. 176.
 
 326 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cu. in. 
 
 an exaggerated extent. Some portions of the Factory 
 Acts are open to this criticism, though it will usually 
 be found that in these cases other than sanitary con- 
 siderations have entered into this legislation. It is, 
 however, a universal rule that when a. system of re- 
 gulation has begun, it will tend to increase, and 
 when men entrusted with sanitary reforms become a 
 large profession, they will naturally aggrandise their 
 power, exaggerate their importance, and sometimes 
 become meddlesome and inquisitorial. M. Leon Say 
 has lately pointed out the dangers of this scientific 
 Protectionism, which is leading sanitarians to attempt 
 to watch our lives in the minutest detail ; and another 
 distinguished French authority has bluntly declared 
 that a new '89 will be needed against the tyranny of 
 hygiene, in order to regain our liberty of eating and 
 drinking, and to limit the incessant meddling of sani- 
 tarians in our private lives. 1 Legislators constantly 
 overlook the broad distinction between lines of con- 
 duct that are injurious, but injurious only to those 
 who follow them, and lines of conduct that can be 
 clearly shown to produce danger or evil to the com- 
 munity. In the latter case Government interference 
 is always called for. In the former, in the case of 
 adults there is at least a strong presumption against it. 
 As a general rule, an adult man should regulate his 
 own life, and decide for himself whether he will run 
 exceptional risks with a view to exceptional rewards. 
 
 But, when all this is admitted, there is hardly any 
 other field in which Governments can do, or have 
 done, so much to alleviate or prevent human suffering. 
 Neither Governments nor their advisers are infallible ; 
 
 1 See an essay by M. Raffalovich in Mackay's Plea for Liberty, 
 >. 217.
 
 CH. in. REFORM OF CRIMINALS 327 
 
 but in this case Governments act with the best lights 
 that medical science can give, and they act, for the 
 most part, with perfect good faith, and without any 
 possibility of party advantage. The prolongation of 
 human life is much. The diminution or alleviation 
 of disease and suffering is much more. Sanitary re- 
 form cannot be effectually carried out without a heavy 
 expenditure, which is borne in the shape of taxes by 
 the community. But, looking at this expenditure 
 merely from an economical point of view, no expen- 
 diture that a Government can make is more highly 
 remunerative. Sir James Paget has estimated the loss 
 of labour by the wage classes from excessive, pre- 
 ventible sickness, at twenty millions of weeks per 
 annum. Sir Edwin Chadwick writes : ' The burden 
 of lost labour, of excessive mortality, and of excessive 
 funerals from preventible causes were largely under- 
 estimated in 1842 at two millions per annum in the 
 Metropolis. In England and Wales, those same local 
 burdens of lost labour and excessive sickness may now 
 be estimated at upwards of twenty-eight million pounds 
 per annum/ l 
 
 A very similar line of reasoning may be employed to 
 justify the great increase of national expenditure in 
 England, and in most other countries, in the field of 
 prisons and reformatories. The enormous improve- 
 ments that have taken place in the prison system du- 
 ring the present century have added largely to the 
 expenditure of nations, but they have put an end to 
 an amount of needless suffering, demoralisation, and 
 waste of human character and faculty that it is difficult 
 to overestimate. ' The best husbandry/ as Grattan 
 once said, ' is the husbandry of the human creature/ 
 
 1 Chadwick on Unity, p. 63.
 
 328 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 To distinguish between crime that springs from 
 strongly marked criminal tendency and crime that is 
 due to mere unfavourable circumstances, or transient 
 passion, or weakness of will ; to distinguish among 
 genuine criminal tendencies between those which are 
 still incipient and curable, and those which have ac- 
 quired the force of an inveterate disease, is the basis of 
 all sound criminal reform. It cannot be carried out 
 without much careful classification and many lines of 
 separate treatment. The agencies for reclaiming and 
 employing juvenile criminals ; the separate treatment 
 of intoxication ; the broad distinction drawn between 
 a first offender and an habitual criminal ; the prison 
 regulations that check the contagion of vice, have all 
 had a good effect in reducing the amount of crime. 
 Most of these things cost much, but they produce a 
 speedy and ample return. Money is seldom better or 
 more economically spent than in diminishing the sum 
 of human crime and raising the standard of human 
 character. In this case, as in the case of sanitary re- 
 form, it may be truly said that legislators act under 
 the best available advice and with perfect singleness of 
 purpose. On such questions very few votes can be 
 either gained or lost. 
 
 The same thing cannot be said of all extensions of 
 Government functions. No feature is more cha- 
 racteristic of modern democracy than the tendency to 
 regulate and organise by law co'untless industries which 
 were once left to private initiative and arrangement ; 
 to apply the machinery of the State to countless func- 
 tions which were once discharged by independent bodies, 
 or private benevolence, or co-operation. A vast increase 
 in many forms of expenditure and in many different 
 kinds of officials is the inevitable consequence, impos- 
 ing great additional burdens on the taxpayer, and each
 
 CH. in. EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS 329 
 
 new departure in the field of expenditure is usually 
 made a precedent and a pretext for many others. I 
 cannot go as far as Mr. Herbert Spencer and some 
 other writers of his school in denouncing this as 
 wholly evil, though I agree with them that the dan- 
 gerous exaggerations and tendencies are chiefly on this 
 side. Much of this increased elaboration of govern- 
 ment seems to me inevitable. As civilisation becomes 
 more highly organised and complex, as machinery 
 increases and population and industries agglomerate, 
 new wants, interests, a"nd dangers arise, which im- 
 periously require increased regulation. It is impos- 
 sible to leave a great metropolis or a vast, fluctuating, 
 industrial population with as little regulation as a 
 country village or a pastoral people. Compare the old 
 system of locomotion by a few coaches or waggons with 
 our present railway system; or our old domestic in- 
 dustries with our present gigantic factories, stores. and 
 joint-stock companies ; or the old system of simple, 
 isolated cesspools with the highly complex drainage on 
 which the safety of our great towns depends, and it 
 will be evident how much new restraining and regulat- 
 ing legislation is required. The growth of philan- 
 thropy, and the increasing light which the press throws 
 on all the sides of a nation's life, make public opinion 
 keenly sensible of much preventible misery it would 
 have either never known or never cared for, and science 
 discloses dangers, evils, and possibilities of cure of which 
 our ancestors never dreamed. 
 
 All these things produce a necessity for much ad- 
 ditional regulation, and a strong pressure of public 
 opinion for much more. If Governments, as distin- 
 guished from private companies, have some disadvan- 
 tages, they have also some important advantages. They 
 can command a vast amount of technical skill. They
 
 330 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 can act with a simultaneity and authority, and on a 
 scale which no private organisation can emulate, and 
 in England, at least since the old system of patronage 
 has been replaced by the present system of examination 
 and constant control, the State can usually count upon a 
 very large supply of pure and disinterested administra- 
 tors. On some subjects Governments are much less 
 likely than private companies to be deflected by corrupt 
 or sinister motives, and an English Government has the 
 great advantage of possessing the best credit in the 
 world, which enables it to give many enterprises an 
 unrivalled stability and security, and to conduct them 
 with unusual economy. The application of British 
 credit to schemes for the benefit of the poor, or the 
 solution of great social questions, has of late years been 
 largely extended, and seems likely steadily to advance. 
 There is also some difference between the action of a 
 representative Government, including, utilising, and 
 commanding the best talent in all classes, and a 
 despotic or highly aristocratic Government, which is 
 in the hands of a few men, and acts under very little 
 restraint and control, like a kind of Providence apart 
 from the nation. 
 
 In many departments the conveniences of State ac- 
 tion are very great. Few persons, for example, would 
 withdraw the post-office from Government hands. 
 Private enterprise might perform its functions with 
 equal efficiency in the chief centres of population, but 
 Government alone could carry on the enterprise uni- 
 formly and steadily, in all countries, in the districts 
 that are unremunerative as well as in those which are 
 profitable. It would be difficult to conceive a more 
 flagrant violation of the English fetish of Free Trade 
 than the regulation of cab fares by authority ; but the 
 convenience of the system is so great that no one
 
 CH. in. SUCCESSFUL STATE ACTION 331 
 
 wishes to abolish it. Banking for the benefit of pri- 
 vate persons is certainly not a natural business of Go- 
 vernment, but Government machinery and Government 
 credit have built up a system of savings banks and 
 post-office banks which has been a vast blessing to 
 the poor, encouraging among them, to an eminent 
 degree, providence and thrift, and at the same time 
 giving them a direct interest in the stability of the 
 Empire and the security of property. Few things 
 have conferred more benefits on agriculture than the 
 large sums which have been advanced to landlords for 
 drainage, at a rate of interest sufficient to secure the 
 State from loss, but lower than they could have ob- 
 tained in a private market. Of all the schemes that 
 have been formed for improving the condition of Ire- 
 land, the most promising is that for the creation of a 
 peasant-proprietary by means of loans issued at a rate 
 of interest which the State, and the State alone, could 
 command, and repaid by instalments in a defined num- 
 ber of years. This is a type of legislation which is 
 almost certain in the future to be widely and variously 
 applied. 
 
 All these excursions outside the natural sphere of 
 Government influence should be carefully and jealously 
 watched ; but there are some distinctions which should 
 not be forgotten. Government enterprises which are 
 remunerative stand on a different basis from those 
 which must be permanently subsidised by taxation, or, 
 in other words, by forced payments, in most cases 
 largely drawn from those who are least benefited by 
 them. If it be shown that the State management of 
 some great enterprise can be conducted with efficiency, 
 and at the same time made to pay its expenses ; if it 
 can be shown that, by the excellent credit of the State, 
 a State loan or a State guarantee can effect some useful
 
 332 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 change or call into being some useful enterprise with- 
 out loss to the State or to its credit, a large portion of 
 the objections to this intervention will have been re- 
 moved. It is also very important to consider whether 
 the proposed intervention of the Government lies apart 
 from the sphere of politics, or whether it may become 
 a source or engine of corruption. It may do so by 
 placing a large addition of patronage in the hands of 
 the executive ; and it may do so still more dangerous- 
 ly by creating new and corrupt reasons for giving or 
 soliciting votes. Few persons, for example, can doubt 
 that, if the Socialist policy of placing the great indus- 
 tries of the country in the hands of municipalities 
 were carried out, numbers of votes would be syste- 
 matically given for the sole purpose of obtaining advan- 
 tages for the workmen connected with these industries, 
 at the cost of the community at large. 
 
 Another element to be considered is, whether the 
 things the State is asked to assist are of a kind that 
 can flourish without its aid. There are forms of sci- 
 ence and literature and research which can by no pos- 
 sibility be remunerative, or at least remunerative in 
 any proportion to the labour they entail or the ability 
 they require. A nation which does not produce and 
 does not care for these things can have only an inferior 
 and imperfect civilisation. A Government grant which 
 would appear almost infinitesimal in the columns of a 
 modern Budget will do much to support and encourage 
 them. Expenditure in works of art and art schools, 
 in public buildings, in picture-galleries, in museums, 
 adds largely to the glory and dignity of a nation and to 
 the education of its people. It is continually increas- 
 ing that common property which belongs alike to all 
 classes ; and it is a truly democratic thing, for it makes 
 it possible for the poor man to know and appreciate
 
 ca in. LIMITS OF STATE ACTION 333 
 
 works of art which, without State intervention, he 
 would have never seen, and which would have been 
 wholly in the hands of the rich and cultivated few. 
 The total indifference of English Governments during 
 a long period to artistic development is one of the 
 great causes that art has flowered so tardily in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 In many countries in Europe dramatic art is assisted 
 by subsidies to the opera and the classical theatre. 
 Such subsidies stand on a different ground from those 
 which I have just noticed, for they minister directly to 
 the pleasures of the rich ; though a brilliant theatre, 
 by drawing many strangers to the metropolis, probably 
 ultimately benefits the poor. It is not likely that Eng- 
 lish democratic opinion would tolerate an expenditure 
 of this kind ; and it may be observed that the con- 
 nection between Governments and amusement is much 
 closer in most Continental countries than in England. 
 In these countries a large portion of the money raised 
 for the relief of the poor and the suffering is levied 
 upon public amusements. 1 
 
 The objections to the vast extension of State regula- 
 tions and of State subsidies are very many. There is, 
 in the first place, what may be called the argument of 
 momentum, which Herbert Spencer has elaborated 
 with consummate skill and force. 2 It is absolutely 
 certain that, when this system is largely adopted, it 
 will not remain within the limits which those who 
 adopted it intended. It will advance with an accele- 
 rated rapidity ; every concession becomes a precedent 
 or basis for another step, till the habit is fully formed 
 of looking on all occasions for State assistance or re- 
 
 1 See Le droit des pauvres par Cros-Mayrevielle (1889). 
 tur les spectacles en Europe, 5 The Man versus the State.
 
 334 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 striction, and till a weight of taxation and debt has 
 been accumulated from which the first advocates of the 
 movement would have shrunk with horror. There is 
 the weakening of private enterprise and philanthropy ; 
 a lowered sense of individual responsibility ; diminished 
 love of freedom ; the creation of an increasing army of 
 officials, regulating in all its departments the affairs of 
 life ; the formation of a state of society in which vast 
 multitudes depend for their subsistence on the bounty 
 of the State. All this cannot take place without im- 
 pairing the springs of self-reliance, independence, and 
 resolution, without gradually enfeebling both the 
 judgment and the character. It produces also a weight 
 of taxation which, as the past experience of the world 
 abundantly shows, may easily reach a point that means 
 national ruin. An undue proportion of the means 
 of the individual is forcibly taken from him by the 
 State, and much of it is taken from the most indus- 
 trious and saving, for the benefit of those who have 
 been idle or improvident. Capital and industry leave 
 a country where they are extravagantly burdened and 
 have ceased to be profitable, and even the land itself 
 has often been thrown out of cultivation on account of 
 the weight of an excessive taxation. 
 
 The tendency to constantly increasing expenses in 
 local taxation is, in some degree, curtailed by enact- 
 ments of the Imperial Parliament limiting in various 
 ways the powers which it concedes to local bodies of 
 raising taxes or incurring debts. That the restrictions 
 are often unduly lax, few good judges will question ; 
 yet it is the constant effort of local bodies, which are 
 under democratic influence, to extend their powers. 
 Parliament itself is unlimited, and Parliament, on 
 financial questions, means simply the House of Com- 
 mons. The constituencies are the only check, but a
 
 CH. in. ABUSES OF STATE ACTION 335 
 
 vast proportion of the expenditure of the State is in- 
 tended for the express purpose of bribing them. De- 
 mocracy as it appeared in the days of Joseph Hume 
 was pre-eminently a penurious thing, jealously scruti- 
 nising every item of public expenditure, denouncing 
 as an intolerable scandal the extravagance of aristo- 
 cratic government, and viewing with extreme disfavour 
 every enlargement of the powers of the State. It has 
 now become, in nearly all countries, a government of 
 lavish expenditure, of rapidly accumulating debt, of 
 constantly extending State action. 
 
 It is, I believe, quite true that the functions of 
 Government must inevitably increase with a more com- 
 plicated civilisation. But, in estimating their enor- 
 mous and portentously rapid aggrandisement within 
 the last few years, there is one grave question which 
 should always be asked. Is that aggrandisement due 
 to a reasoned conviction that Government can wisely 
 benefit, directly, different classes by its legislation ? or 
 is it due to a very different cause to the conviction 
 that, by promising legislation in favour of different 
 classes, the votes of those classes may most easily be 
 won ? 
 
 A large portion of the increased expenditure is also 
 due, not to subsidies, but to the increased elaboration 
 of administrative machinery required by the system of 
 constant inspection and almost universal regulation. 
 Nothing is more characteristic of the new democracy 
 than the alacrity with which it tolerates, welcomes, 
 and demands coercive Government interference in all 
 its concerns. In the words of Mr. Goschen, ' The ex- 
 tension of State action to new and vast fields of busi- 
 ness, such as telegraphy, insurance, annuities, postal 
 orders, and parcel post, is not the most striking fea- 
 ture. What is of far deeper import is its growing in-
 
 336 DEMOCKACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 terference with the relations between classes, its in- 
 creased control over vast categories of transactions be- 
 tween individuals. . . . The parent in dealing with 
 his child, the employer in dealing with his workmen, 
 the shipbuilder in the construction of his ships, the 
 shipowner in the treatment of his sailors, the house- 
 owner in the management of his house property, the 
 landowner in his contracts with his tenants, have been 
 notified by public opinion or by actual law that the 
 time has gone by when the cry of laissez-nous faire 
 would be answered in the affirmative. The State has 
 determined what is right and wrong, what is expedient 
 and inexpedient, and has appointed its agents to enforce 
 its conclusions. Some of the highest obligations of hu- 
 manity, some of the smallest businesses of everyday life, 
 some of the most complicated transactions of our in- 
 dustrial and agricultural organisations, have been taken 
 in hand by the State. Individual responsibility has 
 been lessened, national responsibility has been height- 
 ened.' ' 
 
 Nor can the change of tendency in this respect be 
 measured merely by actual legislation. It is to be seen 
 still more clearly in the countless demands for legisla- 
 tive restriction that are multiplying on all sides ; in 
 the Bills which, though not yet carried into law, have 
 received a large amount of parliamentary support ; in 
 the resolutions of trade-union congresses, or county 
 councils, or philanthropic meetings or associations ; in 
 the questions asked and the pledges exacted at every 
 election ; in the great mass of socialistic or semi- 
 socialistic literature that is circulating through the 
 country. Few things would have more astonished 
 
 1 Laisscz faire ; or, Government Interference, by the Right Hon. 
 G. Goschen. Address delivered at Edinburgh, 1883, p. 4.
 
 CH. in. GRADUATED TAXATION 337 
 
 the old Radicals of the Manchester school than to be 
 told that a strong leaning towards legislative compul- 
 sion was soon to become one of -the marked character- 
 istics of an 'Advanced Liberal/ and 'all contracts to 
 the contrary notwithstanding ' a favourite clause in 
 democratic legislation. 
 
 Accompanying this movement, and naturally grow- 
 ing out of the great change in the disposition of power, 
 is the marked tendency to throw taxation to a greater 
 extent on one class of the community, in the shape of 
 graduated taxation. In certain forms and to a certain 
 measure this has always existed in England. The 
 shameful exemption from taxation enjoyed by both 
 nobles and clergy in nearly all Continental countries 
 up to the eve of the French Eevolution was unknown 
 in England, and it had always been an English custom 
 to impose special taxes on the luxuries of the rich. 
 Tocqueville, in a remarkable passage, which has been- 
 often quoted, observed that ' for centuries the only 
 inequalities of taxation in England were those which 
 had been successively introduced in favour of the ne- 
 cessitous classes. ... In the eighteenth century it 
 was the poor who enjoyed exemption from taxation in 
 England, in France it was the rich. In the one case, 
 the aristocracy had taken upon its own shoulders the 
 heaviest public charges in order to be allowed to govern. 
 In the other case, it retained to the end an immunity 
 from taxation in order to console itself for the loss of 
 government/ ' Arthur Young, in a little speech which 
 he made to a French audience at the beginning of the 
 Revolution, described vividly the difference subsisting 
 in this respect between the two countries. ' We have 
 many taxes/ he said, f in England which you know 
 
 1 L'Ancien Regime, pp. 146-47. 
 VOL. i. 23
 
 338 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 nothing of in France, but the tiers ltat the poor 
 do not pay them. They are laid on the rich. Every 
 window in a man's house pays, but if he has no more 
 than six windows he pays nothing. A seigneur with a 
 great estate pays the vingtiemes and tallies, but the 
 little proprietor of a garden pays nothing. The rich 
 pay for their horses, their carriages, their servants, and 
 even for liberty to kill their own partridges ; but the 
 poor farmer pays nothing of this ; and,, what is more, 
 we have in England a tax paid by the rich for the re- 
 lief of the poor.' 1 Both the window-tax and the house- 
 tax of the eighteenth century were graduated taxes, 
 rising in an increased proportion according to the value 
 of the dwelling. A similarly progressive scale of tax- 
 ation was introduced by Pitt for carriages, pleasure- 
 horses, and male servants, the duty on each of these 
 rising rapidly according to the numbers in each estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 The doctrine that revenue should be raised chiefly 
 from luxuries or superfluities has been very largely 
 recognised in English taxation, and since the great 
 fiscal reforms instituted by Sir Eobert Peel it has been 
 carried out to an almost complete extent. A working- 
 man who is a teetotaller and who does not smoke is 
 now almost absolutely untaxed, except in the form of a 
 very low duty on tea and on coffee. In the opinion of 
 many good judges, this movement of taxation, though 
 essentially beneficent, has been carried, in England, to 
 an exaggerated point. It is not right, they say, that 
 any class should be entirely exempt from all share in 
 the Imperial burden, especially when that class is en- 
 trusted with political power, and has a considerable 
 voice in imposing and adjusting the expenditure of the 
 
 1 Pinkerton's Voyages^ iv. 200.
 
 OH. in. EXEMPTIONS PROM TAXATION 33 
 
 nation. Taxes on articles of universal consumption 
 are by far the most productive. They ought always to 
 be kept low, for when they are heavy they produce not 
 only hardships, but injustice, as the poor would then 
 pay an unduly large proportion of the national reve- 
 nue ; but, on the other hand, their complete repeal is 
 a matter of very doubtful expediency. 
 
 In England, however, the policy of absolutely abol- 
 ishing the taxes on the chief objects of a poor man's 
 necessary consumption has been steadily carried out by 
 both parties in the State. Tory Gpvernments abol- 
 ished the salt duty in 1825 and (after many reductions) 
 the sugar duty in 1874 ; while Liberal Governments 
 abolished the coal duty and the tax on candles in 1831, 
 the last vestige of the corn duty in 1869, the taxes on 
 soap and on licenses for making it in 1853 and 1870. 
 Both parties have also concurred in freeing nearly 
 every article of a working-man's attire, by removing 
 the duties on wool, calico, and leather. 1 It may be 
 questioned whether this policy has been carried to its 
 present extreme because legislators believed it to be 
 wise, or because they believed that it would prove popu- 
 lar with the electors. Such measures furnish exactly 
 the kind of topic that is most useful on the platform. 
 
 There is another principle of taxation which has 
 been advocated by Bentham and Mill, and which, be- 
 fore their time, was propounded by Montesquieu. It 
 is that a minimum income which is sufficient to secure 
 to a labouring family of moderate size the bare neces- 
 saries, though not the luxuries, of life, should remain 
 exempt from all taxation. Strictly speaking, this prin- 
 ciple is, no doubt, inconsistent with the imposition of 
 taxation on any article of first necessity ; but it has 
 
 1 DowelPs History of Taxation.
 
 340 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 been largely adopted in England in the exemption of 
 the poorest class of houses from taxation, and in the 
 partial or complete exemption of small incomes from 
 the income-tax. Successive Acts of Parliament have 
 wholly freed incomes under IQOL, under 1501. , and un- 
 der 160/. a year from the tax, and have granted abate- 
 ments in the case of incomes under 2001., under 400Z., 
 under 500Z., and, finally, in the budget of 1898 under 
 700?. a year. The large majority of the electors who 
 return the members of the House of Commons now pay 
 nothing to the income-tax. 
 
 By all these measures a system of graduated taxation 
 has steadily grown up. A few lines from a speech made 
 by Lord Derby in 1885 give a clear picture of what in 
 his day had been done. ' Take the income-tax. We 
 exempt altogether incomes up to a certain point, and 
 we exempt them partially up to a higher point. Take 
 the house-tax. What have you got there ? Total 
 exemption of all that class of houses in which working- 
 men usually live. Take the death duties. They abso- 
 lutely spare property below a certain limited amount. 
 Take the carriage-tax. The class of conveyances used 
 by poor persons, or used otherwise than for purposes of 
 pleasure, are made specially free of charge. Take the 
 railway-passenger tax. It falls on first and second class 
 passengers, and leaves the third class untouched. . . . 
 In our poor law, now 300 years old, we have adopted a 
 system so socialistic in principle that no Continental 
 Government would venture even to look at it/ 1 
 
 Articles of luxury or ostentation used exclusively by 
 the rich are, in many instances, specially taxed. Such, 
 for example, are the taxes on armorial bearings, on the 
 more expensive qualities of wine, on menservants, and 
 on sporting. In some cases taxes of this kind have 
 
 The Times, November 2, 1885.
 
 CH. in. PRINCIPLE OF JUST TAXATION 341 
 
 been abolished, because the expense of collecting them, 
 or the expense of distinguishing between the better and 
 the cheaper descriptions of a single article, made them 
 nearly wholly unproductive. But, in general, the 
 strong leaning of our present system in favour of the 
 poor cannot reasonably be questioned ; and it becomes 
 still more apparent when we consider not merely the 
 sources, but the application, of the taxes. The pro- 
 tection of life, industry, and even property, is quite as 
 important to the poor man as to the rich, and the most 
 costly functions which Governments have of late years 
 assumed are mainly for his benefit. Primary educa- 
 tion, the improvement of working-men's dwellings, 
 factory inspection, savings banks, and other means of 
 encouraging thrift, are essentially poor men's questions. 
 
 Adam Smith, in a well-known passage, has laid down 
 the principle on which, in strict equity, taxation should 
 be levied. ' The subjects of every State ought to con- 
 tribute to the support of the Government as nearly as 
 possible in proportion to their respective abilities ; that 
 is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively 
 enjoy under the protection of the State. The expense 
 of government to the individuals of a great nation is 
 like the expense of management to the joint-tenants of 
 a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in pro- 
 portion to their respective interests in the estate.' 1 
 
 According to this principle, the man with 1,000?. a 
 year should pay ten times the taxes of a man with 100?. 
 a year, and the man with 10,000?. a year ten times the 
 taxes of a man with 1,000?. a year. In the words of 
 Thiers, ' Every kind of revenue, without exception, 
 ought to contribute to the needs of the State, for all 
 depend upon it for their existence. Every exemption 
 
 Wealth of Nations, Book v. chapter ii.
 
 342 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 from taxation is an injustice. . . . The true principle, 
 which was established in 1789, is that every man, with- 
 out exception, in proportion to what he gains or what 
 he possesses, should contribute. To exempt labour in 
 order to strike property, or to tax property in exor- 
 bitant proportions, would only'be to add a new iniquity 
 as great as that which was abolished in 1789. . . . 
 Society is a company of mutual insurance, in which 
 each man should pay the risk in proportion to the 
 amount of property insured. If he has insured a house 
 of the value of 100,000 francs (the rate being 1 per 
 cent.), he owes 1,000 francs to the company. If the 
 insured house is worth a million, he owes 10,000 francs. 
 . . . Society is a company, in which each man has 
 more or less shares, and it is just that each should pay 
 in proportion to their number, whether they be ten, or 
 100, or 1,000, but always according to the same rate 
 imposed on all. There should be one rule for all, 
 neither more nor less. To abandon this would be as 
 if a merchant were to say to his customers, " You are 
 richer than your neighbour, and must therefore pay 
 more for the same goods/' It would only lead to end- 
 less confusion, and open out boundless, incalculable, 
 possibilities of arbitrary imposition/ 1 
 
 The great majority of serious economists have, I be- 
 lieve, agreed that, as a matter of strict right, this doc- 
 trine is the true one. Adam Smith, however, clearly 
 saw that human affairs cannot, or will no~t, be governed 
 by the strict lines of economic science, and he fully 
 recognised that it may be expedient that taxes should 
 be so regulated that the rich should pay in proportion 
 something more than the poor. In England, the sys- 
 tem of graduated taxation which I have described has 
 
 La Propriete, livre iv. chaps, ii., iii.
 
 OH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 343 
 
 passed fully into the national habits, and is accepted 
 by all parties. The taxation of luxuries, as distin- 
 guished from necessaries, has been productive of much 
 good, and is much less liable than other forms of gradu- 
 ated taxation to abuse. The exemption of small in- 
 comes from all direct taxation undoubtedly brings with 
 it grave dangers, especially when those who are ex- 
 empted form the bulk of the electorate, and are thus 
 able to increase this taxation to an indefinite extent, 
 without any manifest sacrifice to themselves. At the 
 same time, few persons will object to these exemptions, 
 provided they are kept within reasonable limits, are 
 intended solely as measures of relief, and do not lead to 
 lavish expenditure. It does not necessarily follow that, 
 because a class are a minority in the electorate, they 
 are in grave danger of being unduly taxed. As long as 
 they still form a sufficiently considerable portion to 
 turn the balance in elections, they have the means of 
 vindicating their rights. It is the duty of the Govern- 
 ment to provide that the taxes are moderate in amount, 
 and are levied for the bond fide purpose of discharging 
 functions which are necessary or highly useful to the 
 State. There is, however, another conception of taxa- 
 tion, which has of late years been rapidly growing. It 
 has come to be regarded as a socialistic weapon, as an 
 instrument of confiscation, as a levelling agent for 
 breaking down large fortunes, redistributing wealth, 
 and creating a new social type. 
 
 The growing popularity of graduated taxation in the 
 two forms of an exemption of the smaller incomes from 
 all direct taxation, and of the taxation of large incomes 
 on a different scale or percentage from moderate ones, 
 is very evident, and it is accompanied by an equally 
 strong tendency towards a graduated taxation of capi- 
 tal and successions. Precedents may, no doubt, be
 
 344 DEMOCKACY AND LIBERTY en. m. 
 
 found in earlier times. A graduated income-tax ex- 
 isted in ancient Athens, and was warmly praised by 
 Montesquieu. Graduated taxation was imposed with 
 much severity and elaborated with great ingenuity in 
 Florence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth 
 centuries. But it is chiefly of late years, and since 
 democratic influence has predominated, that the ques- 
 tion of graduated taxation has been pushed into the 
 forefront. It exists, though only to a very moderate 
 degree, in Prussia and most of the German States, and 
 a Prussian law of 1883 considerably enlarged the num- 
 ber of exemptions. 1 It prevails in slightly different 
 forms in a large number of the Swiss cantons, and 
 especially in the cantons of Vaud, Zurich, Geneva, Uri, 
 and the Grisons. Thus, in the Canton de Vaud real 
 property is divided into three classes properties of a 
 value not exceeding 1,000?., properties that are valued 
 between 1,000?. and 4,000?., and properties of a value 
 above 4,000?. The first class are taxed at the rate of 
 1?., the second at the rate of 1?. 10s., and the third at 
 the rate of 2?. per 1,000?. Personal property is divided 
 into seven classes, each of them taxed at a separate rate. 
 Fortunes exceeding in capital value 32,000?., and in- 
 comes exceeding 1,600?., are subject to the highest 
 rate. In Zurich a different system is adopted. Though 
 both capital and income are progressively taxed, the 
 rate of that tax is the same for all, but the amount 
 liable to taxation becomes proportionately larger as the 
 fortune or the income increases. Thus, five-tenths of 
 the first 800?. of a capital fortune, six-tenths of the 
 next 1,200?., seven-tenths of the next 2,000?., eight- 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, Traite des Finances, i. 139-74 ; Say, Solutions 
 Democratiques de la Question des Impots, ii. 184-224.
 
 CH. in. GRADUATED TAXATION 345 
 
 tenths of the next 4,000?., and ten-tenths of anything 
 above it, are taxed. 1 
 
 In the Netherlands the capital value of every fortune 
 has, by a recent law, to be annually stated, and it is 
 taxed according to that value on a graduated scale. 
 Ten thousand florins are untaxed ; after that the tax 
 on capital gradually rises from one to two in a thou- 
 sand. There is also a progressive tax on revenue, but 
 with exemptions intended to prevent capital from being 
 twice taxed. In New Zealand and the Australian colo- 
 nies there is much graduated taxation, chiefly directed 
 against the growth of large landed properties. In New 
 Zealand the ordinary land-tax is thrown upon 12,000 
 out of 90,000 owners of land. There is an additional 
 and graduated land-tax on properties which, after de- 
 ducting the value of improvements, are worth 5,000/. 
 and upwards. It rises from \d. to 2d. in the pound, 
 and there is also a special and graduated tax on absen- 
 tees. The income-tax is tid. in the pound on the first 
 taxable 1,OOOZ., and Is. in the pound on higher rates. 2 
 In Victoria there is a graduated succession duty, vary- 
 ing from 1 to 10 per cent. 3 In France the question of 
 graduated, or, as it is called, progressive, taxation has 
 of late been much discussed ; but, with the exception 
 of a graduated house-tax, 4 attempts in this direction 
 have, until quite recently, been defeated. In the United 
 States, as I have noticed in a former chapter, proposals 
 for graduated taxation have received a serious check 
 in the decision of the Supreme Court in 1894, which 
 appears to establish that, in the imposition of direct 
 Federal taxation, the Congress must only recognise 
 
 1 See a Foreign Office Report Book, 1894, pp. 245-47. 
 
 on Graduated Taxation in Swit- 3 Dilke's Problems of Greater 
 
 zerland (1892). Britain, ii. 277. 
 
 2 New Zealand Official Year 4 Ibid. pp. 278-79.
 
 346 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 State divisions and the number of citizens. During 
 the war of secession, however, a graduated income-tax 
 for a short time existed. The first war income-tax, 
 which was established in 1861, taxed all incomes above 
 800 dollars at the same rate ; but the second income- 
 tax, which was enacted in July 1862, established a 
 system of graduation, which was, however, nearly all 
 repealed in 1865. The English Budget of 1894 went far 
 in the direction of graduated taxation, both by the ad- 
 ditional exemptions granted in the income-tax and by 
 the new system of graduation. 
 
 Recent discussions have made the arguments which 
 have been adduced by economists against graduated 
 taxation very familiar. It is obvious that a graduated 
 tax is a direct penalty imposed on saving and industry, 
 a direct premium offered to idleness and extravagance. 
 It discourages the very habits and qualities which it 
 is most in the interest of the State to foster, and it is 
 certain to operate forcibly where fortunes approach the 
 limits at which a higher scale of taxation begins. It is 
 a strong inducement at that period, either to cease to 
 work or to cease to save. It is at the same time per- 
 fectly arbitrary. When the principle of taxing all for- 
 tunes on the same rate of computation is abandoned, 
 no definite rule or principle remains. At what point 
 the higher scale is to begin, or to what degree it is to 
 be raised, depends wholly on the policy of Governments 
 and the balance of parties. The ascending scale may 
 at first be very moderate, but it may at any time, when 
 fresh taxes are required, be made more severe, till it 
 reaches or approaches the point of confiscation. No 
 fixed line or amount of graduation can be maintained 
 upon principle, or with any chance of finality. The 
 whole matter will depend upon the interests and wishes 
 of the electors ; upon party politicians seeking for a
 
 CH. in. GRADUATED TAXATION 347 
 
 cry and competing for the rotes of very poor and very 
 ignorant men. Under such a system all large proper- 
 ties may easily be made unsafe, and an insecurity may 
 arise which will be fatal to all great financial under- 
 takings. The most serious restraint on parliamentary 
 extravagance will, at the same time, be taken away, 
 and majorities will be invested with the easiest and 
 most powerful instrument of oppression. Highly gra- 
 duated taxation realises most completely the supreme 
 danger of democracy, creating a state of things in 
 which one class imposes on another burdens which" it 
 is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast 
 schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the 
 whole cost will be thrown upon others. 
 
 The belief is, no doubt, very fallacious, but it is very 
 natural, and it lends itself most easily to the clap-trap 
 of dishonest politicians. Such men will have no diffi- 
 culty in drawing impressive contrasts between the luxu- 
 ry of the rich and the necessities of the poor, and in 
 persuading ignorant men that there can be no harm in 
 throwing great burdens of exceptional taxation on a 
 few men, who will still remain immeasurably richer 
 than themselves. Yet, no truth of political economy 
 is more certain than that a heavy taxation of capital, 
 which starves industry and employment, will fall most 
 severely on the poor. Graduated taxation, if it is ex- 
 cessive or frequently raised, is inevitably largely drawn 
 from capital. It discourages its accumulation. It 
 produces an insecurity which is fatal to its stability, and 
 it is certain to drive great masses of it to other lands. 
 
 The amount to be derived from this species of taxa- 
 tion is also much exaggerated. The fortunes of a few 
 millionaires make a great show in the world, but they 
 form in reality a very insignificant sum, compared 
 with the aggregate of moderate fortunes and small sav-
 
 348 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. m. 
 
 ings. Unless the system of graduation be extended, as 
 in Switzerland, to very moderate fortunes, it will pro- 
 duce little, and even then the exemptions that accom- 
 pany it will go far to balance it. It is certain, too, that 
 it will be largely evaded. There is, it is true, a great 
 distinction to be drawn in this respect between real 
 and personal property. Land is of such a nature that 
 it cannot escape the burden which is imposed on it, 
 but there are many ways in which personal property 
 can escape. Confidential arrangements between mem- 
 bers of a family or partners in a business, foreign in- 
 vestments payable to foreign bankers, an increasing 
 portion of wealth sunk in life annuities, insurances 
 made in companies that are not subject to British taxa- 
 tion, securities payable to bearer, which it will be im- 
 possible to trace, will all multiply, and the frauds that 
 are so much complained of in income-tax returns will 
 certainly increase. No graver error can be made by 
 a financier than to institute a system which is so bur- 
 densome and so unjust that men will be disposed to 
 employ all their ingenuity to evade it. With the vast 
 and various field of international investment that is 
 now open to them they are sure, in innumerable in- 
 stances, to succeed, and no declaration, no oath, no 
 penalty will effectually prevent it. Taxation is, ul- 
 timately, the payment which is made by the subject 
 for the security and other advantages which he derives 
 from the State. If the taxation of one class is out of 
 all proportion to the cost of the protection they enjoy ; 
 if its members are convinced that it is not an equitable 
 payment, but an exceptional and confiscatory burden 
 imposed upon them by an act of power because they 
 are politically weak, very many of them will have no 
 more scruple in defrauding the Government than they 
 would have in deceiving a highwayman or a burglar.
 
 CH. in. GRADUATED TAXATION 349 
 
 It would be pressing these arguments too far to 
 maintain that a graduated scale of taxation is always 
 and necessarily an evil. In this, as in most political 
 questions, much will depend upon circumstances and 
 degrees. It is, however, sufficiently clear that any 
 financier who enters on this field is entering on a 
 path surrounded with grave and various dangers. 
 Graduated taxation is certain to be contagious, and it 
 is certain not to rest within the limits that its origina- 
 tors desired. No one who clearly reads the signs of 
 the times as they are shown in so many lands can doubt 
 that this system of taxation is likely to increase. It 
 would be hardly possible that it should be otherwise 
 when political power is placed mainly in the hands of 
 the working-classes ; when vast masses of landed pro- 
 perty are accumulated in a few hands ; when profession- 
 al politicians are continually making changes in the 
 incidence of taxation a prominent part of their elec- 
 tioneering programmes ; when almost every year en- 
 larges the functions, and therefore the expenditure, 
 of the State ; when nearly all the . prevalent Utopias 
 take a socialistic form, and point to an equalisation of 
 conditions by means of taxation. Under such condi- 
 tions the temptation to enter upon this path becomes 
 almost invincible. 
 
 It is a question of great importance to consider to 
 what result it is likely to lead. To suppose that any 
 system of taxation can possibly produce a real equality 
 of fortunes, or prevent the accumulation of great 
 wealth, seems to me wholly chimerical ; though it is 
 quite possible that legislators in aiming at these objects 
 may ruin national credit, and bring about a period of 
 rapid commercial decadence. Highly graduated taxa- 
 tion, however, is likely to have great political and social 
 effects in transforming the character of wealth. It will
 
 350 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 probably exercise a special influence on landed property, 
 breaking up or greatly diminishing those vast estates 
 which are so distinctive a feature of English life. The 
 tendencies which are in operation acting in this direc- 
 tion are very powerful. Land, as it is at present held 
 by the great proprietors, is usually one of the least 
 profitable forms of property. The political influence 
 attached to it has greatly diminished. The magisteri- 
 al and other administrative functions, that once gave 
 the great landlord an almost commanding influence in 
 his county, are being steadily taken away, and county 
 government in all its forms is passing into other hands. 
 If government is effectually divorced from property, 
 and if a system of graduated taxation intended to 
 equalise fortunes becomes popular, great masses of 
 immovable land must become one of the most unde- 
 sirable forms of property. No other excites so much 
 cupidity, or is so much exposed to predatory legisla- 
 tion. Under all these circumstances, we may expect 
 to see among the great landowners a growing desire to 
 diminish gradually their stake in the land, thus re- 
 versing the tendency to agglomeration which for many 
 generations has been dominant. 
 
 The change, in my opinion, will not be wholly evil. 
 It is not a natural thing that four or five country places 
 should be held by one man ; that whole counties should 
 be almost included in one gigantic property ; that square 
 miles of territory should be enclosed in a single park. 
 The scale of luxury and expenditure in English country 
 life is too high. The machinery of life is too cumber- 
 some. Its pleasures are costly out of all proportion to 
 the enjoyment they give. Nor, on the other hand, is 
 it desirable that great landed properties should be held 
 together when the fixed and necessary charges are so 
 great that they become overwhelming whenever agri-
 
 CH. in. ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE 351 
 
 cultural depression, or any other form of adversity, 
 arrives, while the girls and younger children of the 
 family are left to a poverty which seems all the more 
 acute from the luxurious surroundings in which they 
 have been brought up. If the result of graduated tax- 
 ation should be to produce a more equal division of 
 property between the members of a family ; if rich men, 
 instead of making an allowance to their sons, should 
 seek to avoid death duties by capitalising and at once 
 handing over the amount ; if the preservation of game 
 should be on a less extravagant scale ; if estates should 
 become smaller and less encumbered, and the habits of 
 great country houses somewhat less luxurious than at 
 present, these things would not injure the country. 
 
 Other consequences, however, of a far less desirable 
 character are certain to ensue, and they are conse- 
 quences that will fall more heavily upon the poor than 
 upon the rich. Only a very small fraction of the ex- 
 penditure of a great landowner can be said to contri- 
 bute in any real degree to his own enjoyment. The 
 vast cost of keeping up a great place, and the scale of 
 luxurious hospitality which the conventionalities of 
 society impose, count for much. Parks maintained 
 at great expense, and habitually thrown open to public 
 enjoyment ; the village school, or church, or institute 
 established and endowed ; all local charities, all county 
 enterprises largely assisted ; costly improvements, which 
 no poor landlord could afford ; much work given for the 
 express purpose of securing steady employment to the 
 poor, these things form the largest items in the budget 
 of many of the great landowners. Nor should we omit 
 to mention remissions of rent in times of depression 
 which no poor man could afford to make, and very low 
 rents kept unchanged during long periods of increasing 
 prosperity.
 
 352 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. m. 
 
 In every considerable class there will be the good and 
 the bad, the generous and the grasping ; but, on the 
 whole, no candid man will deny the extremely liberal 
 spirit in which the large landed properties in England 
 have been administered. Whatever ultimate benefits 
 may be obtained by their dissolution, it is certain that 
 the first effect will be to extinguish great centres of 
 beneficence and civilisation, to diminish employment, 
 to increase the severity of contracts, and in many other 
 ways to curtail the pleasures and augment the hard- 
 ships of the deserving poor. It is often said that 
 wealthy Americans, not having the ambition of found- 
 ing families, give more than wealthy Englishmen for 
 public purposes ; but I believe that an examination of 
 the unselfish expenditure of the larger English land- 
 lords on objects connected with their estates would 
 show that they in this respect fall little, if at all, below 
 the Transatlantic example. It is, probably, only in 
 England that we frequently see the curious spectacle 
 of men with incomes of several thousands a year over- 
 whelmed by lifelong pecuniary troubles, not because of 
 any improvidence, or luxurious habits or tastes, but 
 simply because their incomes are insufficient to bear 
 the necessary expenses of their great position. 
 
 It seems likely, under the influences I have described, 
 that a great change, both for good and evil, will take 
 place. Land will probably, in future, be more divided, 
 will change hands more frequently, will be treated in a 
 more purely commercial spirit than in the past. Coun- 
 try places taken for mere pleasure, and unconnected 
 with any surrounding property or any landlord duties, 
 will be more frequent. It is not probable that yeomen 
 farmers will multiply as long as it is economically more 
 advantageous for a farmer to rent than to purchase his 
 farm ; but land will be bought and sold more frequently,
 
 OH. in. PROBABLE CHANGES 353 
 
 in moderate quantities, as a speculation, let at its ex- 
 treme value, and divested of all the feudal ideas that 
 are still connected with it. The old historic houses 
 will, no doubt, remain, but they will remain, like the 
 French castles along the Loire, memories of a state of 
 society that has passed away. Many will be in the 
 hands of rich merchants or brewers, and perhaps 
 American millionaires. They will often be shut up, 
 as a measure of economy, for long periods. They will 
 no longer be the centres of great landed properties, or 
 represent a great county influence or a long train of 
 useful duties. Parks will be divided. Picture-gal- 
 leries will be broken up. Many noble works of art 
 will cross the Atlantic. The old type of English 
 country life will be changed, and much of its ancient 
 beauty will have passed away. 
 
 Assuming, as is most probable, that these changes 
 are effected gradually and without violent convulsion, 
 they by no means imply the impoverishment of those 
 who are now the great landed proprietors. No one can 
 doubt that, at the present day, the members of this 
 class would be better off if they had less land and more 
 money ; if their properties were in such forms that 
 they had more power of modifying their expenditure 
 according to their means. They will have to pass 
 through a trying period of transition, but, as they are 
 remarkably free from the prejudices and narrow con- 
 ventionalities that incapacitate some Continental aris- 
 tocracies in the battle of life, they will, probably, soon 
 adapt themselves to their new circumstances. With 
 ordinary good fortune, with skilful management, with 
 the rich marriages they can always command, with the 
 excellent legal advice that is always at their disposal, 
 they will probably succeed in many instances in keep- 
 ing together enormous fortunes, and the time is far 
 VOL. i. 23
 
 354 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 distant when a really able man, bearing an historic 
 name, does not find that name an assistance to him in 
 .his career. But the class will have lost their territorial 
 influence. Public life, dominated, or at least largely 
 influenced, by professional politicians of the American 
 type, will become more distasteful to them. They will 
 find themselves with few landlord or county duties, 
 and with much less necessary hospitality to perform, 
 and they will probably content themselves with smaller 
 country establishments, and spend much more of their 
 time in brighter lands beyond the sea. 
 
 The effects of highly graduated taxation on personal 
 property will also be considerable, but probably not so 
 great as on real property. It will strengthen the dis- 
 position of a rich man to divide as much as possible his 
 investments, as all great masses of homogeneous, im- 
 movable property will become specially insecure. It 
 will, in this respect, increase a movement very dan- 
 gerous to English commercial supremacy, which labour 
 troubles and organisations have already produced. Most 
 good observers have'come to the conclusion that an ap- 
 preciable influence in the commercial depression of the 
 last few years has been the reluctance of rich men to 
 embark on extensive enterprises at a time when labour 
 troubles are so acute, so menacing, and so likely to 
 exercise an influence on legislation. Far-seeing men 
 hesitate to commit themselves to undertakings which 
 can only slowly arrive at maturity when they see the 
 strong bias of popular legislation against property, and 
 the readiness with which a considerable number of 
 modern statesmen will purchase a majority in the 
 House of Commons by allying themselves with the 
 most dishonest groups, and countenancing the most 
 subversive theories. Every influence which, in any 
 department of industrial life, increases risks and di-
 
 CH. Hi. DIVIDED WEALTH 355 
 
 minishes profits must necessarily divert capital, and, 
 whatever other consequences may flow from the fre- 
 quent strikes and the formidable labour organisations 
 of our time, it cannot be denied that they have both 
 of these effects. If, in addition to these things, it 
 becomes the policy of Governments to seek to defray 
 national expenditure more and more by exceptional 
 taxation, levied for the sake of popularity exclusively 
 on the rich, the tendency to abstain from large manu- 
 facturing and commercial enterprises will be greatly 
 accentuated. Such enterprises will not cease, but they 
 will become less numerous. Many manufacturers will 
 probably follow the example which some have already 
 set, and throw out branch establishments in foreign 
 countries. A manufacturer who has some thousand 
 pounds on hand, instead of employing them, as he 
 would once have done, in extending his business, will 
 be inclined to divide them in distant investments. It 
 need scarcely be pointed out how dangerous all this is 
 to a country which has a population much beyond its 
 natural resources, and mainly dependent upon the 
 enormous, unflagging, ever-extending manufacturing 
 and commercial enterprise which vast accumulations 
 and concentrations of capital can alone produce. 
 
 Another consequence, which has, perhaps, not been 
 sufficiently considered, is the tendency of large fortunes 
 to take forms which bring with them no clear and defi- 
 nite duties. The English landed system, which seems 
 now gradually passing away, had, to a very eminent 
 degree, associated great fortunes and high social po- 
 sition with an active life spent in the performance of 
 a large number of administrative county and landlord 
 duties. It in this way provided, perhaps as far as any 
 social institution can provide, that the men who most 
 powerfully influence others by their example should on
 
 356 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IIL 
 
 the whole lead useful, active, and patriotic lives. A 
 great manufacturer and the head of a great commercial 
 undertaking is still more eminently a man whose wealth 
 is indissolubly connected with a life of constant and 
 useful industry. 
 
 Wealth, however, takes many other forms than these, 
 and, if I mistake not, a conspicuous characteristic of 
 our century has been the rapid multiplication of the 
 idle rich. In the conditions of modern life it is quite 
 possible for a man to have a colossal fortune in forms 
 that require absolutely no labour, and bring with them 
 no necessary or obvious duties. If he is content with 
 the low rate of interest of the very best securities, he 
 need scarcely give a thought to the sources of his in- 
 come. If, as is probable, the whole or a portion of his 
 fortune is invested in more speculative securities, it 
 will require from him some time and thought, but it 
 will not necessarily bring with it any imperative duties 
 towards his fellow-creatures. It is true that a rich man 
 of this kind is in reality a large employer of labour. 
 As a shareholder he is part proprietor of railroads, 
 steam-packets, dockyards, mines, and many other wide- 
 ly different, and probably widely scattered, industrial 
 enterprises and organisations. But he has no real 
 voice in the management of these concerns. He knows 
 nothing of the conditions of the countless labourers 
 who, in many countries and many climes, are toiling 
 for his profit. He looks on his investments simply as 
 sources of income. His sole information concerning 
 them is probably confined to a few statistics about 
 dividends, traffic returns, encumbrances, and trade 
 prospects. 
 
 We are all familiar with great numbers of more or 
 less wealthy men whose fortunes are of this description. 
 Under the influences that I have described such for-
 
 CH. in. WEALTH DISSOCIATED FROM LABOUR 357 
 
 tunes seem to me likely to multiply. The tendency of 
 most great forms of industry is evidently towards vast 
 joint-stock companies with many shareholders. With 
 improved means of communication, the securities and 
 enterprises of many countries are easily thrown into a 
 common market, and national and municipal debts, 
 which create one of the easiest and most important 
 forms of investment, are rapidly increasing. One of 
 the first signs that a barbarous nation is adopting the 
 manners of Occidental civilisation is, usually, the crea- 
 tion of a national debt, and democracies are certainly 
 showing themselves in no degree behind the most ex- 
 travagant monarchies in the rapidity with which they 
 accumulate national and local indebtedness. Nor 
 should we forget the effect which frequent revolutions 
 and violent social and industrial perturbations always 
 exercise on the disposition of fortunes. These things 
 seldom fail to depress credit, to increase debt, to de- 
 stroy industry, to impoverish nations ; but they also 
 furnish many opportunities by which the skilful, the 
 fortunate, and the unscrupulous rise rapidly to easily 
 acquired wealth. If we take them in conjunction with 
 the influences that are in so many directions dissociat- 
 ing great wealth from landed property and adminis- 
 trative functions, and adding to the risks of extensive 
 industrial undertakings, it will appear probable that 
 the fortunes of the future will be much less connected 
 with active duties than those of the past. 
 
 The prospect is not an encouraging one. A man of 
 very superior powers will, no doubt, always find his 
 work, and to such a man a fortune of this description 
 will be an incalculable blessing. It will save him from 
 years of drudgery and anxiety, and it will give him at 
 the outset of his career the priceless advantage of inde- 
 pendence. To men of lofty moral qualities it will at
 
 358 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. m. 
 
 least be no injury. Such men will feel strongly the ina- 
 lienable responsibilities of wealth, and will find in the 
 fields of social and philanthropic activity ample scope for 
 their exertions. Many, too, who are not men of conspi- 
 cuous mental or moral force will have some strong taste 
 for art, or literature, or country pursuits, or science, or 
 research, which will secure for them useful and honour- 
 able lives. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that even 
 these will always be exceptions. The majority of men 
 fail to find their work unless it is brought before them 
 prominently by circumstances, or forced upon them by 
 the strong pressure of necessity. Wealth which brings 
 with it no ties and is obtained and enjoyed with no 
 effort is to most men a temptation and a snare. All 
 the more dissipated capitals and watering-places of 
 Europe and America are full of examples of men in 
 this position, living lives of absolute frivolity, disso- 
 ciated from all serious interests, ever seeking with 
 feverish eagerness for new forms of pleasure, raising the 
 standard of luxury and ostentation, and often, in still 
 graver ways, depressing the moral tone of the society 
 in which they live. 
 
 Considerations of this kind will probably be treated 
 with much disdain by Kadical critics. They will truly 
 say, that the section of society referred to forms only a 
 very small portion of the population, and they will ask 
 whether nations are to frame their institutions with 
 the object of providing occupation for the spoilt chil- 
 dren of fortune, and saving them from their own fri- 
 volity or .vice. No one, I suppose, would maintain 
 that they should do so ; but, in estimating the ad- 
 vantages and disadvantages of different institutions, 
 many weights enter into either scale which would not 
 of themselves be sufficient to turn the balance. It is, 
 however, a grave error to suppose that the evils I have
 
 CH. ni. DEMOCRACY AND WEALTH 359 
 
 described can be confined to the classes who are imme- 
 diately concerned. It is impossible that the upper 
 class of a nation can become corrupt, frivolous, or 
 emasculated without affecting deeply and widely the 
 whole body of the community. Constituted as human 
 nature is, rich men will always contribute largely to 
 set the tone of society, to form the tastes, habits, ideals 
 and aspirations of other classes. In this respect, as in 
 many others, the gradual dissociation of the upper 
 classes from many forms of public duty is likely to 
 prove a danger to the community. 
 
 It is an evil which appears wherever democracy be- 
 -comes ascendant, though its progress varies much in 
 different countries. The strong traditions, the firmly 
 knit organisation of English life, has hitherto resisted 
 it much more effectively than most nations. No one 
 can say that the upper classes in England have as yet 
 abandoned politics. Those who fear this change may 
 derive some consolation from observing how largely 
 the most Eadical Cabinets of our time have consisted 
 of peers and connections of peers, and from counting 
 up the many thousands of pounds at which the average 
 private incomes of their members may be estimated. 
 Nor, indeed, can it be said that English democracy, on 
 either side of the Atlantic, shows any special love for a 
 Spartan, or Stoical, or Puritan simplicity. Mr. Cecil 
 Khodes once described a prominent politician as 'a, 
 cynical sybarite who was playing the demagogue ' ; and 
 it must be owned that professions of a very austere 
 democracy have not unfrequently been found united 
 with the keenest appetite for wealth, for pleasure, and 
 even for titles. The political and economical influ- 
 ences, however, which I have endeavoured to trace 
 have established in England, as elsewhere, a tendency 
 which is not the less real becatise it has not yet tri-
 
 360 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. in. 
 
 nmphed, and the experience of American political and 
 municipal life throws much light upon the path along 
 which we are moving. The change in the House of 
 Commons is becoming visible to every eye, and one of 
 the most important questions for the future is the pos- 
 sibility of maintaining an Upper Chamber as a perma- 
 nent and powerful element in the Constitution.
 
 CH. iv. GOVERNMENT BY ONE CHAMBER 361 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ARISTOCRACIES AND UPPER CHAMBERS 
 
 OF all the forms of government that are possible among 
 mankind, I do not know any which is likely to be 
 worse than the government of a single, omnipotent, 
 democratic Chamber. It is at least as susceptible as 
 an individual despot to the temptations that grow out 
 of the possession of an uncontrolled power, and it is 
 likely to act with much less sense of responsibility and 
 much less real deliberation. The necessity of making 
 a great decision seldom fails to weigh heavily on a 
 single despot, but when the responsibility is divided 
 among a large assembly, it is greatly attenuated. Every 
 considerable assembly, also, as it has been truly said, 
 has at times something of the character of a mob. Men 
 acting in crowds and in public, and amid the passions 
 of conflict and of debate, are strangely different from 
 what they are when considering a serious question in 
 the calm seclusion of their cabinets. Party interests 
 and passions ; personal likings or dislikes ; the power 
 of rhetoric ; the confusion of thought that springs from 
 momentary impressions, and from the clash of many 
 conflicting arguments ; the compromises of principle 
 that arise from attempts to combine for one purpose 
 men of different opinions or interests ; mere lassitude, 
 and mere caprice, all act powerfully on the decisions 
 of an assembly. Many members are entangled by 
 pledges they had inconsiderately given, by some prin- 
 ciple they had admitted without recognising the full
 
 362 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IT. 
 
 extent to which it might be carried, or by some line of 
 conduct they had at another period pursued. Personal 
 interest plays no small part : for the consequence and 
 pecuniary interests of many members are bound up 
 with the triumph of their party, while many others 
 desire beyond all things a renewal of their mandate. 
 They know that a considerable part of the constitu- 
 encies to which they must ultimately appeal is com- 
 posed of fluctuating masses of very ignorant men, easily 
 swayed by clap-trap, by appeals to class interests or 
 class animosities, and for the most part entirely inca- 
 pable of disentangling a difficult question, judging dis- 
 tant and obscure consequences, realising conditions 
 of thought and life widely different from their own, 
 estimating political measures according to their true 
 proportionate value, and weighing nicely balanced 
 arguments in a judicial spirit. 
 
 The confusion becomes still greater when Parliaments 
 divide into a number of small independent groups, each 
 of them subordinating general political interests to the 
 furtherance of some particular interests and opinions, 
 and when the art of parliamentary government consists 
 mainly of skill in combining in the division lobby these 
 heterogeneous fractions. The first condition of good 
 legislation on any particular question, as of most other 
 good work, is that it should be single-minded that it 
 should represent the application of the best available 
 faculty to a special purpose. There is scarcely a con- 
 tested question determined in Parliament in which 
 motives wholly different from the ostensible ones, and 
 wholly unconnected with the immediate issue, do not 
 influence many votes. It is also rather the rule than 
 the exception that a general election produces a change 
 of Government, and the defeated minority of one Par- 
 liament becomes the majority in the next.
 
 CH. iv. GOVERNMENT BY ONE CHAMBER 363 
 
 There is, certainly, no proposition in politics more 
 indubitable than that the attempt to govern a great, 
 heterogeneous empire simply by such an assembly must 
 ultimately prove disastrous, and the necessity of a se- 
 cond Chamber, to exercise a controlling, modifying, 
 retarding, and steadying influence has acquired almost 
 the position of an axiom. Of all the many parlia- 
 mentary constitutions now existing in the world, 
 Greece, Mexico, and Servia are, I believe, the only 
 ones in which independent and sovereign nations have 
 adopted the system of a single Chamber, and, among 
 these, Servia is^enly a partial exception. According 
 to the Constitution of this little country, legislation 
 is, in ordinary times, conducted by the king and a sin- 
 gle national assembly, in which one out of every four 
 members must be nominated by the king, and which 
 exercises strictly limited and defined powers ; but the 
 sovereign has a right of convoking when he pleases a 
 second and much larger assembly, which alone is com- 
 petent to deal with grave questions affecting the Con- 
 stitution and the territory of the State. 1 Norway, 
 being united with Sweden, is not an absolutely inde- 
 pendent country, but it is one of the countries where 
 legislative power is virtually in the hands of a single 
 Chamber. The Storthing is a single Chamber, elected 
 at a single election, but, when it meets, it elects out of 
 its own body a second Chamber, consisting of a fourth 
 part of its members. The extreme concentration of 
 power resulting from this system is one of the great 
 causes of the dangerous tension that exists in the rela- 
 tions of Sweden and Norway. 
 
 1 Demombrynes's Les Consti- pire, and a few small Powers 
 
 tutions Europeennes, i. 715-24. holding a completely subordi- 
 
 I do not include the Grand nate position in the German 
 
 Duchy of Finland, the Provin- system, in which single Cham- 
 
 cial Diets in the Austrian Em- bers exist.
 
 364 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. rv. 
 
 The experience of the past abundantly corroborates 
 the views of those who dread government by a single 
 Chamber. In the English Commonwealth such a sys- 
 tem for a short time existed ; but the abolition of the 
 House of Lords was soon followed by the expulsion of 
 the Commons, and when Cromwell resolved to restore 
 some measure of parliamentary government, he clear- 
 ly saw that two Chambers were indispensable, and 
 he revived on another basis the House of Lords. In 
 America, Franklin had strongly advocated a single 
 Chamber ; and in the American Confederation, which 
 was formally adopted by the thirteen States in 1781, 
 and which represented the United States in the first 
 years of their independent existence, the Congress con- 
 sisted of only one branch. It was invested with very 
 small powers, and was almost as completely over- 
 shadowed by the State rights of its constituents as the 
 Cromwellian House of Commons had been by the mili- 
 tary power of the Commonwealth. But the very first 
 article of the American Constitution, which was framed 
 in 1787, divided the Congress into a Senate and a 
 House of Eepresentatives. In all the separate States 
 the bicameral system exists, and it also exists in all the 
 British colonies which have self-governing powers. In 
 Prance, Turgot and Sieyes advocated a single Chamber, 
 and in the French Constitution of 1791 all power was 
 placed in the hands of such a body, the result being 
 one of the most appalling tyrannies in the history of 
 mankind. In 1848 the same experiment was once more 
 tried, and it once more conducted France through an- 
 archy to despotism. 
 
 It is not necessary for my present purpose to enter 
 into any disquisition about the origin and early evolu- 
 tion of the House of Lords. For a long period of 
 English history it was a small and a diminishing body,
 
 CH. iv. THE POWER OF THE LORDS 365 
 
 and in the fifteenth century the spiritual, or life peers, 
 considerably outnumbered the temporal, or hereditary 
 ones. The Reformation had a capital influence on the 
 constitution of the House. By removing the mitred 
 abbots, it made the temporal peers a clear majority, 
 while the vast distribution of monastic property among 
 some of the great families added enormously to their 
 influence. From this time the lay, or hereditary peer- 
 age steadily increased. Only twenty - nine temporal 
 peers had been summoned to the first Parliament of 
 Henry VII., and fifty-one was the largest number sum- 
 moned under Henry VIII. ; but 119 peers were sum- 
 moned to the Parliament of 1640, and 139 to the 
 Parliament of 1661. 1 At the close of the seventeenth 
 century the temporal peerage amounted to about 150 ; 
 in the first Parliament of George III., to 174. In 
 1642, the bishops were excluded by Act of Parliament 
 from the House of Lords, which thus became, for the 
 first time in its history, a purely hereditary body ; and 
 in 1649 the House of Lords was abolished by the vote 
 of the House of Commons. At the Restoration this 
 vote being, of course, treated as null, the House re- 
 vived, and by an Act of Parliament of 1661 the bishops 
 were again introduced into its ranks. 
 
 The Revolution, unlike the Commonwealth, had no 
 injurious effect upon it. The change of dynasty was 
 largely due to the action of the heads of a few great 
 aristocratic families ; the House of Lords bore a very 
 conspicuous part in regulating its terms ; and it is 
 probably no exaggeration to say that the steady Whig 
 preponderance in that House mainly secured the Revo- 
 lution settlement during the long period of the dis- 
 puted succession. It is true that, in the re-division of 
 
 May's Const. Ifist., i. 232-35.
 
 366 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 power which resulted from the decline of royal influ- 
 ence at the Revolution, the larger share fell to the 
 House of Commons, and by the time of Walpole that 
 House, in its corporate capacity, was certainly the 
 strongest body in the State ; but individual peers exer- 
 cised an enormous influence over its composition. The 
 system of small nomination boroughs was chiefly due 
 to the fluctuations in wealth and population in the 
 community, and to the practical annihilation of the old 
 prerogative of the sovereign of revising the representa- 
 tion by summoning new and rising places to send 
 members to the Commons. Most of those seats passed 
 under the patronage of peers, either on account of the 
 vast territorial possessions which they had inherited, or 
 by the frequent ennobling of great merchant-princes, 
 who, by means of venal boroughs, had acquired politi- 
 cal power, and who obtained their peerages as the re- 
 ward of political services. 
 
 The place which is occupied by the small boroughs 
 in English history is a very great one. At the time 
 when the Revolution settlement was seriously disputed 
 they gave the Whig party a steady preponderance of 
 parliamentary power, thus securing it from those vio- 
 lent fluctuations of opinion which, if the Legislature 
 had been really popular, would have almost certainly 
 proved fatal to the unsettled dynasty. They contri- 
 buted, also, powerfully to the general harmony between 
 the two Houses, and they enabled the House of Com- 
 mons to grow steadily in influence, without exciting any 
 hostility on the part of the Upper House. Perhaps 
 the most dangerous moment in the history of the peer- 
 age was in 1719, when the ministry of Sunderland and 
 Stanhope endeavoured to make it a close body, by 
 strictly limiting the number of the House, and almost 
 wholly depriving the sovereign of the power of creating
 
 CH. iv. THE UNION WITH SCOTLAND 367 
 
 new peers. Chiefly by the exertions of Walpole, this 
 measure was defeated in the Commons, and no attempt 
 was made to revive it ; and the presence in the House 
 of Commons of large numbers of heirs to peerages, or 
 of younger members of noble families, strengthened 
 the harmony between the two Houses. 
 
 The union with Scotland not only introduced sixteen 
 peers into the House of Lords : it also introduced a 
 new principle, as those peers were elected for a single 
 Parliament by their fellow-peers. For a long period 
 they were far from improving the constitution of the 
 House, for this small alien section of an ancient but 
 very poor aristocracy proved exceedingly subservient to 
 Government control. The system of election also 
 tended greatly to the misrepresentation of the peerage ; 
 for it was by a simple majority, and the party which 
 preponderated in the Scotch peerage returned, in con- 
 sequence, the whole body of the representative peers. 
 The position of the minority was at this time very 
 anomalous ; for while the method of election made it 
 impossible for them to enter the House of Lords as 
 representative peers, they were at the same time inca- 
 pacitated by law from sitting in the House of Com- 
 mons, and the House of Lords, in 1711, passed a 
 resolution declaring that, although the sovereign might 
 confer an English peerage on a Scotch peer, he had 
 not the right of introducing him into their House. 
 The disability was, in some degree, evaded by the de- 
 vice of conferring English peerages on the eldest sons 
 of Scotch peers ; but it was accepted as law until 1788, 
 when the question was referred to the judges, who 
 unanimously pronounced the resolution of 1711 to have 
 been unauthorised by the Act of Union, and it was 
 accordingly rescinded by a vote of the House of Lords. 
 From this time the right of conferring English peer-
 
 368 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 ages on the minority of Scotch peers who are excluded 
 by their politics from the number of representative 
 peers, has been largely exercised. 
 
 On the accession of George III. the position of the 
 House of Lords was greatly changed. Hitherto the 
 Whig party had predominated in its ranks, and the 
 first object of the young King was to break down 
 the power of a group of great Whig peers, who had 
 accumulated masses of borough influence, and who 
 had long dominated in the State. This is not the 
 place to relate the long, and on the whole successful, 
 struggle by which the King attained his ends ; but it 
 must be noticed that during his whole reign peers 
 drawn from the Tory party were created in large num- 
 bers with the object of giving a new complexion to 
 the House of Lords. The inducement to these crea- 
 tions was, probably, considerably increased by the 
 abolition of sinecure places, under Burke's measure of 
 economical reform, which deprived the minister of a 
 large part of his former means of rewarding political 
 services. 
 
 The Irish Union introduced into the House of Lords 
 a new body of twenty-eight representative peers. In 
 Ireland, as in Scotland, the vicious system of election 
 by simple majority, which inevitably gives one party 
 in the peerage a monopoly, was adopted ; but no ques- 
 tion was ever raised about the power of the Crown to 
 introduce Irish peers into the House of Lords by the 
 bestowal of English peerages ; and in other respects 
 the Scotch precedent was not exactly followed. The 
 Scotch peers were elected for one Parliament, but the 
 Irish peers for life. The Scotch peers who were not 
 in the House of Lords were absolutely excluded from 
 sitting in the House of Commons ; but an Irish peer 
 who was not a representative peer might sit in the
 
 CH. iv. THE SPIRITUAL PEERS 369 
 
 Commons for an English, Scotch, or Welsh constitu- 
 ency. The Scotch peerage was closed at the Union, 
 the sovereign being deprived of all power of creating 
 Scotch peerages. The Irish peerage was only limited 
 at the Union, for the sovereign retained the power of 
 creating one Irish peerage whenever three Irish peer- 
 ages were extinguished a useless power, which has in 
 our own day become almost obsolete. 
 
 Another important difference was that, the Scotch 
 Church being Presbyterian, the Scotch Union left the 
 spiritual peers unchanged, while the Irish Union in- 
 troduced a new body of spiritual peers, sitting by a 
 new principle of rotation. This slight addition of an 
 archbishop and four bishops disappeared when the 
 Irish Church was disestablished ; but it represents 
 the only modern increase which has taken place in 
 the number of the spiritual peers to counterbalance the 
 great increase of the temporal ones. Several new Eng- 
 lish bishoprics, it is true, have been in the present cen- 
 tury created ; but the legislation that authorised them 
 expressly provided that there should be no increase in 
 the number of bishops in the House of Lords. 1 Two 
 archbishops arid the bishops of London, Durham, 
 and Winchester invariably sit in the House ; but of 
 the remaining bishops, only the twenty-one senior bi- 
 shops sit in the House of Lords, and an unwritten 
 conventionality greatly restricts their interference in 
 purely secular politics. 
 
 Few things, indeed, in English history are more 
 significant than the change which has taken place in 
 the political influence of the Church. Great Church- 
 men once continually held the highest offices in the 
 Government. But no clergyman has taken part in an 
 
 1 See, e.g., 10 & 11 Viet., c. 108, a. 2. 
 VOL. i. 24
 
 370 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 English Government since the reign of Queen Anne, 
 though in Ireland a succession of great governing pre- 
 lates continued far into the eighteenth century. The 
 spiritual element in the House of Lords has become a 
 small fraction in the House, and the presence of that 
 small element has come to be looked upon as an ano- 
 maly. Yet the bishops sit in the House of Lords by 
 an older title than any section of the lay peerage, with 
 the possible exception of the earls, and for a consider- 
 able period of English history they formed the ma- 
 jority of the House. 1 They represent, in a certain 
 measure, the principle of life peerages, to which mo- 
 dern Liberal tendencies are steadily flowing ; for, al- 
 though they sit in the House by an order of succession, 
 it is a succession of office, and not a succession of 
 lineage ; and the manner in which they are appointed 
 furnishes a strong presumption that they possess a 
 more than average capacity, a more than average 
 knowledge of the condition of great sections of the 
 English people, and, especially, a more than average 
 share of that administrative ability which is so valuable 
 in the government of nations. 
 
 The strong Tory character that the House of Lords 
 assumed in the reign of George III. has been in many 
 ways a misfortune in English history, but it is far from 
 certain that it was unpopular. The House of Lords 
 was never at this period in as violent conflict with the 
 popular sentiment as the House of Commons in the 
 Wilkes case. The most memorable conflict between 
 the two Houses in this reign took place when the 
 House of Lords overthrew the coalition ministry, 
 which commanded a great majority in the House of 
 
 1 See Freeman's essay on this subject in the fourth series of his 
 Historical Essays.
 
 OH. iv. THE TORY PEERAGE 871 
 
 Commons, and supported Pitt in holding office for 
 three months in opposition to that majority ; but the 
 dissolution of 1784 decisively vindicated the policy of 
 the Lords, and proved that on this question they most 
 truly represented the sentiment of the nation. The 
 strong hostility to reform which undoubtedly prevailed 
 in the House of Lords in the closing years of the 
 eighteenth century and in the early decades of the 
 nineteenth century represented with, probably, unex- 
 aggerated fidelity the reaction of opinion which had 
 passed over England in consequence of the horrors 
 and calamities of the French Revolution, and its anti- 
 Catholic sentiment was fully shared by the English 
 people. The total defeat, at the election of 1807, of 
 the party which advocated a policy of most moderate 
 Catholic concession is a decisive proof. It was not, 
 indeed, until 1821 that any considerable divergence on 
 this question was shown between the two Houses. It 
 will usually, I think, be found that the House of 
 Lords at this time, in the actions which later periods 
 have most condemned, represented a prejudice which 
 was predominant in the country, though it often re- 
 presented it in a slightly exaggerated form, and with 
 a somewhat greater persistence than the House of 
 Commons. The presence of a spiritual element did 
 not prevent the Upper House being behind the House 
 of Commons in the great work of diminishing, and at 
 last abolishing, the horrors of the slave trade ; and the 
 authority of some great lawyers who sat in the House 
 of Lords was the direct cause of its opposition to some 
 of the most necessary legal reforms, and especially to 
 the mitigation of the atrocities of the criminal code. 
 
 There are, however, two facts which must always 
 be borne in mind in comparing the House of Lords in 
 the corrupt and unreforming period between the out-
 
 372 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 break of the great French war and the Reform Bill of 
 1832 with the House of Lords in our own day. What- 
 ever may be said in the present day of the class preju- 
 dices, the class apathy, or even the class interests, of 
 its members, no candid man will deny that it is an 
 eminently independent body, absolutely free from all 
 taint or suspicion of corruption, and there is, probably, 
 no legislative body in the world in which motives of 
 mere personal interest bear a smaller share. In the 
 early period of the century, on the contrary, a great 
 and dominating section of the peerage consisted of 
 men who were directly bound to the Crown by places 
 or pensions ; while the indirect advantages of the peer- 
 age, in the distribution of the vast patronage in Church 
 and State, were so great that the whole body was bound 
 to the existing system of government by personal and 
 selfish motives of the strongest kind. ' The far greater 
 part of the peers/ wrote Queen Caroline to George 
 IV. in 1820, ' hold, by themselves and their families, 
 offices, pensions, and emoluments solely at the will 
 and pleasure of your Majesty. There are more than 
 four-fifths of the peers in this situation/ Wilberforce 
 mentioned, in 1811, that more than half the House of 
 Lords 'had been created or gifted with their titles' 
 since 1780, and the special object of these creations 
 had been to make the House completely subservient to 
 the Crown and to the Executive. 1 
 
 The other consideration is the borough patronage, 
 to which I have already referred. It identified the 
 interests of the peerage in the closest degree with op- 
 position to reform. It was not only an interest of 
 power and of family, but also an interest of property, 
 for these boroughs were notoriously bought and sold. 
 
 Walpole's History of England, i. 150.
 
 CH. iv. THE PEERAGE BEFORE 1832 373 
 
 Before Curwen's Act, which was passed in 1809, im- 
 posing penal ties on such sales, they were practised with 
 scarcely any concealment, and after that Act they still 
 continued. The analysis of the representation given 
 in Oldfield's ' Kepresentative History/ which was pub- 
 lished in 1816, shows that, out of the 513 members 
 who then represented England and Wales, no less than 
 218 were returned by the influence or nomination of 
 eighty-seven peers. Scotland was represented by forty- 
 five members, of whom thirty-one were returned by 
 twenty-one peers. Ireland was represented by 100 
 members, of whom fifty-one were returned by thirty- 
 six peers. Six peers returned no less than forty-five 
 members to the House of Commons. 1 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious from these facts that, while 
 the forms of the Constitution have remained sub- 
 stantially unchanged, its character and working have 
 been essentially and fundamentally altered by the Re- 
 form Bill of 1832, and no one can wonder that the 
 House of Lords should have resisted that Reform Bill 
 with a persistence which nothing short of imminent 
 danger of a revolution and the threat of a great im- 
 mediate creation of peers could overcome. It is, rather, 
 wonderful that a peerage exercising such power should 
 have been, on the whole, so steadily in touch with the 
 popular feeling ; that English legislation should have 
 been so free from the privileges of taxation and many 
 kindred abuses in favour of the aristocracy, which 
 existed in most Continental countries ; that the sys- 
 
 I 
 
 tem of nomination boroughs should have been so 
 largely employed in bringing poor men of genius and 
 promise into the House of Commons ; that so large a 
 number of members of the Upper House should have 
 
 May, i. 282-306 ; Oldfield, vi. 285-300.
 
 374 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. TV, 
 
 been in the van of every great movement of reform. 
 Even in the conflict of 1832 this characteristic was 
 clearly shown. Some of the oldest and greatest aristo- 
 cratic families in the kingdom led the popular cause. 
 It was noticed that, of the peers created before 1790, 108 
 voted in favour of the Bill, and only four against it, 1 
 while, until the very last stage of the struggle, no class 
 of members in the House of Lords were more strenu- 
 ously opposed to the Bill than the bishops. 
 
 Since this great measure the position of the House of 
 Lords in the Constitution has fundamentally altered. 
 It no longer claims a co-ordinate power with the House 
 of Commons in legislation : it exercises a secondary 
 position in the Constitution. But if it has sometimes 
 retarded measures that were both useful and urgent, it 
 also discharges functions of great and of increasing 
 utility. It exercises a suspensory veto, delaying mea- 
 sures which have acquired only an uncertain, transitory, 
 or capricious majority, until they have become clearly 
 the deliberate desire of the constituencies. In the sys- 
 tem of party government it constantly happens that 
 the popularity of a statesman, or the ascendency of a 
 party, or the combination at an election of many dis- 
 tinct interests or motives acting simultaneously on 
 many different classes of electors, brings into power a 
 Government many of whose measures have never re- 
 ceived the real sanction of the electors. Sometimes 
 lines of policy of great importance are first started in 
 the course of a session. Often measures of great im- 
 portance are brought forward in Parliament which 
 at the election had been entirely subsidiary with the 
 electors, or with great sections of them, or which had 
 come to them with the disadvantage of novelty, and 
 
 1 Molesworth's History, i. 203.
 
 CH. IV. FUNCTIONS OP THE LORDS 375 
 
 had never been thoroughly understood or thoroughly 
 canvassed. Public opinion in England rarely occupies 
 itself seriously with more than one great question at a 
 time, and those deliberate and widespread convictions, 
 on which alone a national policy can be firmly and 
 safely based, are only arrived at after a long period of 
 discussion. Nothing can be more frequent than for 
 a measure to obtain a majority in the House of Com- 
 mons which has never been either approved of or 
 considered by the bulk of the electors by whom that 
 majority was returned. In all such cases it is a matter 
 of vital importance that there should be a delaying 
 power, capable of obstructing measures till they have 
 been distinctly sanctioned by the electorate, till they 
 have come to represent the reasoned and deliberate 
 opinion of the constituencies. 
 
 It is extremely important, too, that something of a 
 judicial element should be infused into politics. In 
 policies that are closely connected with party conflicts, 
 the question of party interest will always dominate in 
 the House of Commons over the question of intrinsic 
 merits. A bad measure will often be carried, though 
 it may be known to be bad, when the only alternative 
 is the displacement of a ministry supported by a ma- 
 jority. Under these circumstances, the existence of 
 a revising Chamber which is so constituted that it can 
 reject a measure without overthrowing a ministry, and 
 which is not dependent on the many chances of a 
 popular election, is one of the best guarantees of sound 
 legislation. 
 
 It is, also, one of the greatest and most distinctive 
 excellences of British legislation that it is in general 
 framed, not on the system of giving a decisive victory 
 to one set of interests, and obtaining perfect symmetry 
 or logical coherence, but with a view of satisfying, as
 
 376 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IT. 
 
 far as possible, many different and conflicting interests, 
 classes, and opinions. The permanence and efficacy 
 of legislation, according to English notions, depends 
 essentially on its success in obtaining the widest mea- 
 sure of assent or acquiescence, and provoking the 
 smallest amount of friction and opposition. In carry- 
 ing out this policy the action of the House of Lords 
 has been of capital importance. Very frequently it re- 
 presents especially the minority which is overpowered 
 in the other House. The will of the majority in the 
 stronger Chamber ultimately prevails, but scarcely a 
 great contentious measure passes into the Statute Book 
 without compromises, modifications, or amendments 
 designed to disarm the opposition, or to satisfy the 
 wishes of minorities, or to soften the harsher features 
 of inevitable transitions. The mere consciousness that 
 there is another and a revising assembly, whose assent 
 is indispensable to legislation, has a moderating influ- 
 ence on majorities and ministries which it is difficult 
 to overvalue. The tyranny of majorities is, of all forms 
 of tyranny, that which, in the conditions of modern 
 life, is most to be feared, and against which it should 
 be the chief object of a wise statesman to provide. 
 
 It is an easy and frequent device of Radical writers 
 to assail the House of Lords by enumerating the mea- 
 sures of incontestable value which it had for a time 
 rejected or delayed. That it has in its long history 
 committed many faults no candid man will deny, 
 though it is by no means equally clear that they have 
 greatly exceeded those which have been committed by 
 the other House. In my own opinion the side of its 
 policy which, in the present century, has been the 
 worst is that relating to religious disqualifications, and 
 the fact is the more remarkable because, in the genera- 
 tion that followed the Revolution, the House of Lords
 
 CH. iv. CHARACTER OF ENGLISH LEGISLATION 377 
 
 was incontestably more liberal than the House of Com- 
 mons in all questions relating to Nonconformists. In 
 more modern times this has not been the case, and the 
 doctrine that the existence of an Established Church 
 implied that State funds should be devoted only to one 
 form of religion, and that the great fields of State 
 power, education, influence, and employment should 
 be guarded by religious qualifications against the ad- 
 herents of other faiths, prevailed in the House of Lords 
 long after it had broken down in the Commons. It is 
 a doctrine which has played a great, and, as I believe, 
 most mischievous, part in English history. In the 
 present century it has probably found its most power- 
 ful defence in the early writings and speeches of Mr. 
 Gladstone. 
 
 At the same time, many things may be alleged which 
 will at least mitigate the blame that, on such grounds, 
 may be attached to the House of Lords. An assembly 
 which is essentially representative of property and 
 tradition, whose chief duty is much less to initiate 
 legislation than to prevent that which is hasty and 
 unwise, and which fulfils rather the function of a 
 brake or of a drag than of a propelling force, will in- 
 evitably be slower than the other House to adopt con- 
 stitutional or organic changes. The legislative reforms 
 which the House of Lords is so much blamed for hav- 
 ing rejected all became law with its consent ; and, on 
 the whole, England need not fear comparison with any 
 other country in the enlightened character of her legis- 
 lation. If a few countries have moved more rapidly, 
 very few have moved so surely, and the permanence of 
 her reforms and the tranquillity with which they were 
 effected are largely due to the existence of a Chamber 
 which delayed them till they had been thoroughly 
 sifted and incoutestably sanctioned by the nation, and
 
 378 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 which disarmed opposition by introducing compromises 
 and amendments to meet the wants of discontented 
 minorities. Of the measures the House of Lords is 
 accused of mutilating or delaying, many had been re- 
 peatedly rejected by the House of Commons itself, or 
 had never been brought clearly and directly before the 
 constituencies ; or had been supported in the Lower 
 House by small, doubtful, and diminishing majorities ; 
 or had excited little more than an academic interest, 
 touching no real feeling throughout the nation. It 
 has seldom, if ever, rejected measures on which the 
 will of the people had been decisively and persistently 
 expressed. 
 
 The moment of its greatest unpopularity was, pro- 
 bably, that of the Eeform Bill of 1832, and it was the 
 firm persuasion of the Radical wing of the triumphant 
 party that one early and inevitable consequence of the 
 extended suffrage would be the destruction, or at least 
 the total transformation, of the House of Lords. The 
 Whig ministers, it is true, gave no countenance to 
 these attacks, but the agitation against the Lords was 
 actively maintained by O'Connell and by a considerable 
 body of English Radicals. One attempt was made to 
 deprive it of its veto, and another to expel the bishops 
 from its walls ; and the incompatibility of an heredi- 
 tary legislative body with a democratic Parliament was 
 continually affirmed in language much like that which 
 we so abundantly heard before the election of 1895. 
 The result of this agitation is very instructive. On 
 some of the questions on which the Houses differed 
 the House of Lords yielded, insisting only on minor 
 compromises. On the important question of the ap- 
 propriation of Irish Church funds to secular purposes 
 it succeeded in carrying its point. The agitation for 
 an organic change in the Constitution was soon found
 
 CH. IV. HEREDITARY LEGISLATORS 379 
 
 to excite more alarm than approbation in the country. 
 The current of opinion turned strongly against the agi- 
 tators, and against the Government which those agita- 
 tors supported. In less than ten years the revolution 
 of opinion was complete, and the election of May 1841 
 brought a Conservative minister into power at the head 
 of an overwhelming majority. 
 
 We may next consider the advantages and disadvan- 
 tages of the hereditary principle in the Upper House. 
 It was a saying of Franklin that there is no more rea- 
 son in hereditary iQgislators than there would be in 
 hereditary professors of mathematics. In England, 
 however, there is no question of placing the making 
 of laws in the hands of an hereditary class. All that 
 the Constitution provides is, that the members of this 
 class should have a fixed place, in concurrence with 
 others, in accomplishing the task. It is absurd to ex- 
 pect that the eldest son of a single family shall always 
 display exceptional, or even average, capacity, and this 
 is one of the main arguments against hereditary de- 
 spotic monarchy, which places in the hands of one 
 man, selected on the principle of strict heredity, one 
 of the most arduous and responsible tasks which a 
 human being can undertake. It is not, however, ab- 
 surd to expect that more than five hundred families, 
 thrown into public life for the most part at a very 
 early age, animated by all its traditions and ambitions, 
 and placed under circumstances exceedingly favourable 
 to the development of political talent, should produce 
 a large amount of governing faculty. The qualities 
 required for successful political life are not, like poetry 
 or the higher forms of philosophy, qualities that are of 
 a very rare and exceptional order. They are, for the 
 most part, qualities of judgment, industry, tact, know- 
 ledge of men and of affairs, which can be attained to a
 
 380 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv 
 
 high degree of perfection by men of no very extraordi- 
 nary intellectual powers. Outside the circle of the 
 leisured classes, most men only rise to great positions 
 in political life at a mature age, and after a long strug- 
 gle in other spheres. Their minds have already taken 
 their definite ply. Their best thoughts and efforts 
 have, during many years, been devoted to wholly dif- 
 ferent pursuits. When they come into the House of 
 Commons, they have, in many departments, still to 
 learn the rudiments of their art. Even if they are men 
 of real and solid attainments, they .have commonly lost 
 their flexibility, and defects of manner or of tact which 
 might be easily corrected in youth, but which become 
 indelible in mature life, often obstruct a political career 
 far more seriously than much graver causes. Everyone 
 who has come in close contact with parliamentary life 
 knows how seriously the popularity and influence of 
 members of very real attainments have been impaired 
 by the professorial manner, or the legal manner, or 
 the purely academic habit of mind, or the egotism 
 and false sentiment that often accompany a self-made 
 man ; or the incapacity for compromise, for avoiding 
 friction, for distinguishing different degrees of im- 
 portance and seriousness, which characterises a man 
 who has not had the education of a man of the world. 
 A man, too, who is not marked out in any way by his 
 position for parliamentary distinction is more tempted 
 than those of another class to make sacrifices of prin- 
 ciple and character to win the prize. He is likely to 
 be more absolutely dependent on party organisations, 
 more governed by the desire for office, or title or social 
 distinction. 
 
 The position of a young man, on the other hand, 
 who has the fortune to belong to one of the great go- 
 verning families is very different. He usually obtains
 
 OH. rv. SOCIAL ADVANTAGES IN POLITICS 381 
 
 the best education the country can give him, and he 
 possesses the inestimable advantage of coming from an 
 early age into close, constant, unconstrained intercourse 
 with men who are actively engaged in the government 
 of the country. In many great families the whole in- 
 tellectual atmosphere is political. Political topics are 
 those which are most constantly discussed around him, 
 and the pride and greatness of the family lie mainly in 
 the political distinction which has been achieved by its 
 members in the past, and the political influence and 
 connections they possess in the present. Examples 
 and incentives are thus formed, which seldom fail to 
 act powerfully on a young man of talent and ambition, 
 and the path that is before him is clearly marked out. 
 He travels, and knows something of foreign languages, 
 and although his knowledge of the Continent is, usu- 
 ally, exceedingly superficial, it is above the average 
 that is attained in trade or in the professions ; while 
 the social element in which he moves requires from 
 him some tincture of general reading. He has, usu- 
 ally, the immense advantage of entering the House of 
 Commons when he is still a young man, and he very 
 probably soon fills one of the subordinate offices. As 
 an actual or expectant landlord ; as a magistrate ; as 
 the political leader of his district ; as the initiator or 
 president of many local institutions or movements, he 
 obtains an early aptitude for business, an intimate 
 knowledge of the characters and circumstances of 
 great sections of the people, which will be more use- 
 ful to him than any lesson that he can learn from 
 books. The manners of a gentleman come to him al- 
 most as a birthright, and no good judge will fail to 
 recognise their importance in political life. Self-con- 
 fidence unalloyed by arrogance or egotism ; the light 
 touch, the instinctive tact which lessens friction and
 
 382 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 avoids points of difference-; the spirit of compromise 
 and conciliation, which is so useful in the management 
 of men and in the conduct of affairs, are the natural 
 products of the atmosphere in which he was born. 
 Having a great independent position, he is less acces- 
 sible than poorer men to the sordid motives that play 
 so large a part in public life ; while the standard of 
 honour of his class, though it by no means covers the 
 whole field of morals, at least guards him against that 
 large department of bad acts which can be designated 
 as ungentlemanly. 
 
 The reader will, of course, understand that this de- 
 scription has only a very general application. There 
 are many cases in which great names and positions are 
 associated only with lives of mischievous self-indul- 
 gence or scandalous vice. There are circles where 
 luxury is carried to such a pitch that men almost come 
 to resemble that strange species of ant which is so de- 
 pendent on the ministrations of its slave ants that it 
 would starve to death if these were not present to feed 
 it. The enormous and elaborate waste of time, the 
 colossal luxury of ostentation, the endless routine of 
 dressing and gossip and frivolous amusements that 
 prevail in some great country houses, form an atmo- 
 sphere which is well fitted to kill all earnestness of 
 purpose and conviction. The pleasures of life are 
 made its business. The slaughter of countless beasts 
 and birds is treated as if it were a main object of ex- 
 istence. Life is looked down upon as from an opera- 
 box, till all sense of its seriousness seems to vanish, 
 and the conflicts of parties are followed with a merely 
 sporting interest, much like that which is centred on 
 the rival horses at Newmarket or Ascot. 
 
 It is no less true that there are numerous cases in 
 which men who were born in spheres far removed from
 
 CH. iv. THE CLASS AVERAGE 383 
 
 those of the governing families have exhibited in high 
 perfection all the best qualities which the aristocratic 
 system is calculated to foster. But we are dealing 
 here with class averages, and few persons, I think, will 
 dispute the high average of capacity for government 
 which the circumstances of English aristocratic life 
 tend to produce. An English aristocracy, as has been 
 often observed, is essentially different from those fo- 
 reign aristocracies which constitute a separate caste. 
 Its members have always largely intermarried with com- 
 moners. Their children, except the eldest, descend 
 speedily into the ranks of commoners ; they are usually 
 obliged to make their own positions by their own ef- 
 forts, and, since the great reforms that have taken 
 place in the bestowal of patronage, without unfair ad- 
 vantages ; and there is no part of the British Empire 
 in which members of great British families may not be 
 found sharing alike the most arduous labours and the 
 most hard-won prizes. 
 
 It is, unfortunately, a truth only too abundantly at- 
 tested that, as a general rule, few greater misfortunes 
 can befall a young man than to inherit at an early age 
 such a fortune as places at his feet an ample range of 
 enjoyments without the necessity of any kind of labour. 
 Strong intellectual tastes and powers, and unusual 
 force of character, will make their way through any 
 circumstances, but the common lot of man is to be 
 commonplace though there are few imputations which 
 most men more bitterly resent and it is not natural 
 for a young man of small talent and very ordinary cha- 
 racter to devote himself to steady labour when no 
 necessity urges him, and when all the means of self- 
 indulgence are at his disposal. On the Continent such 
 young men commonly gravitate to the towns, where 
 a life of pleasure soon passes into a life of vice. In
 
 384 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 England, the passion for field sports has at least the 
 advantage of supplying a large sphere of unintellectual 
 and absorbing amusement which is healthy, manly, 
 and innocent ; but, as I have already observed, the 
 special preservative in England of the character of 
 such men lies in a social condition which assigns to a 
 wealthy class a large circle of necessary duties, and 
 makes the gratuitous discharge of public functions the 
 appanage and sign of dignity. 
 
 Another consideration must be mentioned, of a dif- 
 ferent and more delicate kind. There can be little 
 doubt that the conditions most favourable for a high 
 average of morality are to be found in the temperate 
 zones of life, removed from the ignorance, the degra- 
 ding associations, and the keen temptations of want, 
 and also from the luxurious, enervating, self-indulgent 
 habits of superabundant wealth. The one great moral 
 advantage which specially belongs to the latter sphere 
 is the facility of early marriage which an assured com- 
 petence gives, and which provides in a very critical 
 period of life a strong regulating influence of character. 
 It will, I think, be found that these marriages are 
 more general among rich men connected with a landed 
 aristocracy than among those -whose fortunes have been 
 rapidly made by commerce or speculation. Questions 
 of succession hold a larger place in the lives of the 
 former class. An established position and the posses- 
 sion of a great historic house bring duties of hospitality 
 which make marriage almost a necessity, and which 
 are rarely fully learned except by early practice ; and 
 the women who give the tone and the attraction to Eng- 
 lish aristocratic society seldom fail, even in the most 
 frivolous and pleasure-loving circles, to insist on a de- 
 gree of decorum in the relation of the sexes which is not 
 always found in corresponding societies in other lands.
 
 CH. iv. ARISTOCRATIC MARRIAGES AND TASTES 385 
 
 The importance of this question of marriage is very 
 great, and modern science has thrown mnch light on 
 its far-reaching consequences. Marriages confined to a 
 restricted caste, such as are usual in royal families and, 
 in a less degree, in some foreign aristocracies, seldom 
 fail to result in physical, mental, or moral debility. 
 An aristocracy which marries mainly and habitually 
 for wealth is likely to be a dwindling body. The great 
 heiress who concentrates in her own person the for- 
 tunes of a family is commonly such because she comes 
 from a family in which children are unusually few, or 
 in which deaths are unusually numerous, and the intro- 
 duction of such women into a family has, therefore, a 
 natural tendency to lower the average of its produc- 
 tivity. 1 But where marriages are not unduly limited 
 by conventional restraints, and where wealth is not 
 too exclusively sought, the great advantage of choice 
 which an illustrious position gives in what is called, 
 not quite unjustly, the ' matrimonial market/ has an 
 undoubted tendency to improve and invigorate a race, 
 by grafting into its stock an unusual proportion of 
 more than common physical and mental endowments. 
 Country lives and tastes, and the general character of 
 their marriages, have thus combined to give the upper 
 classes in England a high physical average, which has 
 contributed in no small degree to their influence in the 
 world. Whatever else may be said of them, no one at 
 least can accuse them of being an effete and debilitated 
 class. The energy with which they throw themselves 
 into their sports and travels and political contests, the 
 mark they have made in so many fields, the prominent 
 part they have taken in the initiation of so many enter- 
 prises, the skill, industry, and success with which they 
 
 See Mr. Gaiton's Hereditary Genius^ pp. 131-40. 
 VOL. i. 25
 
 386 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 have managed great properties and guided local affairs, 
 are sufficiently evident. 
 
 There is no better sign of the vitality of a class than 
 its flexibility of adaptation ; and in this respect the 
 upper classes in England have been, in the present 
 century, abundantly proved. When the great demo- 
 cratic movement deprived them of a monopoly or a 
 preference in vast fields of administration and patron- 
 age, they did not shrink from public life, but at once 
 accepted the new conditions, flung themselves boldly 
 and skilfully into all the competitions of English life r 
 and retrieved by talent and personal popularity a great 
 part of the ascendency of which they had been de- 
 prived by law. A still graver trial followed when 
 agricultural depression fell with terrible effect on the 
 main sources of their income. Few things are more 
 striking in modern English history than the courage 
 and high spirit with which the landed gentry of Eng- 
 land, both of the higher and lower grades, have, on the 
 whole, met the trial, discarding conventional rules 
 and restraints which limited their means of acquiring 
 fortune, bearing with uncomplaining fortitude great 
 changes of life and habits, throwing themselves boldly 
 into a multitude of new industrial enterprises, send- 
 ing their children to seek a livelihood in the counting- 
 houses of merchants, the ranches of Mexico, or the 
 diamond-fields of Africa. 
 
 That very shrewd and competent observer, Arch- 
 bishop Magee, once remarked that nothing struck him 
 more in the House of Lords than the large amount of 
 curious special knowledge possessed by its members. 
 When the most out-of-the-way subject was started there 
 seemed always, he said, some obscure peer on the back 
 benches who had made this subject a study, and knew 
 all about it. In the fields of literature, philosophy,
 
 CH. iv. USES OF AN ARISTOCRACY 387 
 
 and science, the achievements of members of that 
 House have been very considerable ; and in numerous 
 cases, where no original work is produced, an un- 
 usually high level of scholarship and research has 
 been attained. But it is naturally in political life that 
 the superior qualities of the class have been most dis- 
 played. No one who is well acquainted with English 
 history can fail to be struck with the very large number 
 of its members who have fully held their own in the 
 conflicts of the House of Commons, and who have dis- 
 charged great public duties with an industry and a 
 skill that have been universally recognised. A few of 
 these statesmen have been men who would have risen 
 from almost any rank of life to power and influence. 
 The majority have been men of good, but not ex- 
 traordinary, ability who, if they had been born in hum- 
 bler spheres, would probably have led creditable and 
 successful lives, but have been little heard of, but who, 
 being placed by their positions on the threshold of 
 public life, and enabled from an early age, and with 
 many advantages, to devote themselves to it, have at- 
 tained a proficiency in statesmanship that has been of 
 great service to their country. Among the Prime 
 Ministers since the Eeform Bill of 1832 there have 
 been several who represent names and families that have 
 been for centuries illustrious in English history ; and, 
 in our own generation, one of the most brilliant of 
 these Prime Ministers has been able, without incurring 
 the smallest imputation of nepotism, to appoint his 
 eldest son, and another of them to appoint his nephew, 
 to a foremost place in his Administration. 
 
 The value of this state of things to the nation at 
 large is very great. There are countries where a pub- 
 lic man is nothing before he comes to office, and no- 
 thing when he quits office, and almost omnipotent while
 
 388 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ce. iv. 
 
 he holds office, and where this is the case public affairs 
 seldom fail to be corruptly, selfishly, and recklessly 
 administered. It is of no small importance that a na- 
 tion should possess a class of public men, of undoubted 
 competence and experience, who have a large stake in 
 the prosperity of the country, who possess a great posi- 
 tion independent of politics, who represent very emi- 
 nently the traditions and the continuity of political 
 life, and who, whatever may be their faults, can at least 
 be trusted to administer affairs with a complete personal 
 integrity and honour. In the fields of diplomacy, and 
 in those great administrative posts which are so nume- 
 rous in an extended empire, high rank, and the manners 
 that commonly accompany it, are especially valuable, 
 and their weight is not felt least powerfully in deal- 
 ing with democracies. The monarchy and the aristo- 
 cracy, which some writers regard as merely ornamental 
 portions of the constitution, contribute in a degree 
 which is not often realised to its greatness and its co- 
 hesion. It is not the British House of Commons, but 
 the British Throne, that is the centre of the loyalty 
 and affection of the Colonies. The disruption of 
 America from the British Empire was largely due to 
 the encroachments of Parliament on the ancient pre- 
 rogative of the Crown ; and no small part of the suc- 
 cess of English colonial government is due to the class 
 of men who have been appointed governors. They 
 have represented in high perfection the type of aristo- 
 cratic statesman which English institutions produce, 
 and they have displayed a higher average of compe- 
 tence and character than either hereditary sovereigns 
 or elected presidents. An aristocratic Government 
 mainly built up this great Empire in the past. The 
 aristocratic element within it undoubtedly contributes 
 to its successful administration in the present. Nor is
 
 CH. iv. ITS REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER 389 
 
 it a matter of indifference that a large proportion of the 
 men who have held high office in India and the Colo- 
 nies return after their period of office to the House of 
 Lords, bringing to it a knowledge of Indian and colo- 
 nial affairs that is seldom equalled in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 So far I have spoken chiefly of the ancient heredi- 
 tary element in the House of Lords, but it must not be 
 forgotten that this element is constantly recruited from 
 without. In addition to the members of the episcopal 
 bench, great landlords, great merchants and manufac- 
 turers, great lawyers (in superabundant measure), 
 great soldiers, sailors, and administrators, are con- 
 stantly pouring into the House of Lords ; and it is also 
 the resource of many experienced statesmen who for 
 some cause are excluded from a Cabinet or a House of 
 Commons, or who from advancing years, or failing 
 health, or quiet tastes, find the strain of the House of 
 Commons excessive or distasteful. The system of pro- 
 motion is far from perfect, and some of its defects will 
 be hereafter considered ; but it at least gives the House 
 of Lords a diversified and representative character. To 
 those who can look beyond names and forms to the sub- 
 stance of things, it is sufficiently evident that a body 
 which is not elective may be eminently representative, 
 reflecting and maintaining with great fidelity the inter- 
 ests, characters, wishes, and opinions of many different 
 classes in the community. It is equally certain that a 
 body which is elected on the widest popular suffrage 
 may be so largely returned by a single class, or by igno- 
 rant men duped by artful men, that it may totally fail 
 to represent in their true proportion and degree the 
 genuine opinions and the various interests of its con- 
 stituents. 
 
 Judging by this test, the House of Lords will, I
 
 390 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IT. 
 
 think, rank very high. Man for man, it is quite possi- 
 ble that it represents more ability and knowledge than 
 the House of Commons, and its members are certainly 
 able to discuss public affairs in a more single-minded 
 and disinterested spirit. In all questions of law ; in 
 all the vast range of subjects connected with county 
 government, agricultural interests, 'and the state of the 
 agricultural poor ; in questions connected with the 
 Church and the army ; and it may, I think, be added, 
 with foreign policy, and often with Indian and colonial 
 policy, its superiority of knowledge is very marked. It 
 contains important representatives of the great manu- 
 facturing and commercial interests, some of the greatest 
 owners of town property, some of the most experienced 
 administrators of distant portions of the Empire. Ap- 
 pointments to the episcopacy are now made in a much 
 more rational fashion than in the days of what were 
 called the ' Greek Play Bishops,' when this dignity was 
 chiefly reserved for men who had attained distinction 
 in classical scholarship. Probably the majority of 
 modern bishops have been rectors of large parishes in 
 town or country ; have come into close touch with the 
 lives of the poorer /classes in the community; have 
 spent many years in disinterested labour for their bene- 
 fit, and have had rare opportunities of understanding 
 their real wants, characters, tendencies, difficulties, and 
 temptations. As the reader will have gathered, I do 
 not greatly admire the action of the bishops in the 
 House of Lords on purely ecclesiastical questions, and 
 especially on questions affecting religious liberty. But, 
 on large classes of questions relating to the poor, it is 
 difficult to overrate the indirect value a legislative body 
 derives from the presence of men who possess the kind 
 of knowledge and the kind of ability which are to be 
 found in a superior parish clergyman. Philanthropists
 
 CH. iv. ITS REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER 391 
 
 who have devoted themselves to social questions with 
 eminent skill and generosity have been found within 
 the House of Lords. It always includes a large amount 
 of matured and experienced statesmanship, and a great 
 majority of those who take an active part in its pro- 
 ceedings have been at least members of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 Such an assembly may have serious defects, and it is 
 certainly not fitted in the nineteenth century to take the 
 leading place in the Constitution ; but no candid man 
 will deny that it is largely representative, and that it 
 includes in a rare degree the qualities and the elements 
 that are most needed in revising and perfecting legisla- 
 tion. Its members are the natural heads of the gentry, 
 and especially of the landed gentry, and it represents 
 their sentiments and is supported by their strength. 
 Wise statesmanship will always seek to strengthen go- 
 vernment by connecting it with the chief elements of 
 independent influence, power, and popularity that exist 
 throughout the nation. No one who has any real 
 knowledge of the English people will doubt the high 
 place the aristocracy holds among these elements. Ev- 
 ery electioneering agent knows that the son of a great 
 peer is one of the best parliamentary candidates he can 
 run. More than 190 members of the present House of 
 Lords have been previously elected to the House of 
 Commons, and a great proportion of them have passed 
 directly from the Lower into the Upper House. 1 In 
 choosing directors for companies, presidents for chari- 
 ties, chairmen for public meetings, initiators for almost 
 
 1 In a speech by Mr. Curzon, of Commons. In the Constitu- 
 
 in a debate on the House of tional Year-Book for 1893 the 
 
 Lords (March 9, 1888), it is number at that time is said (p. 
 
 stated that there were then 194 60) to be 192. 
 peers who had sat in the House
 
 392 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 every kind of social, industrial, political, or philanthro- 
 pic movement, the English people naturally turn to 
 this quarter. The adulation of rank in great bodies of 
 men is often irrational, even to absurdity, and is con- 
 nected with a vein of vulgarity that runs deeply through 
 English nature. But, whatever may be thought of it, 
 it at least shows that the position assigned to the House 
 of Lords in the Constitution is not a mere arbitrary, or 
 exotic, or archaic thing, but represents a real and living 
 force of opinion and affection. Political leaders may 
 talk the language of pure democracy from the platform, 
 but no Cabinet, however Eadical, has ever sat in Eng- 
 land which did not consist largely of peers and of men 
 who were connected with peers, while the great ma- 
 jority of the other members have been, usually, posses- 
 sors of considerable independent fortunes. 
 
 Nor is the popular English sentiment about rank in 
 all respects vulgar or irrational. In a vast crowded 
 population established position does something to raise 
 a man into the clear light of day ; it forms some gua- 
 rantee of independence and of integrity ; and something, 
 at least, of the prevailing feeling is due to a well- 
 founded conviction that the British aristocracy have 
 been distinguished as a class for their high standard, 
 both of personal honour and of public duty. It is idle 
 to suppose that great masses will ever judge men mainly 
 by their intellectual or moral qualities. Other and 
 lower measures will inevitably prevail ; and, as I have 
 elsewhere said, ' When the worship of rank and the 
 worship of wealth are in competition, it may at least 
 be said that the existence of two idols diminishes by 
 dividing the force of each superstition, and that the 
 latter evil is an increasing one, while the former is 
 never again likely to be a danger/ In England, the 
 aristocratic classes have no longer the complete pre-
 
 CH. rv. INCREASING LUXURY 393 
 
 ponderance of wealth they once possessed, and the 
 great depression of land has contributed materially to 
 alter their position ; but they are still a very wealthy 
 class, and some of their members are among the richest 
 men in the world. But great wealth in their hands is 
 at least not mere plutocracy. It is connected with, 
 and tempered by, another order of ideas. It is associ- 
 ated with an assured social position, with an hereditary 
 standard of honour, with great responsibilities, with a 
 large circle of administrative duties. If aristocracy 
 were to cease to be a power in England, its social in- 
 fluence would chiefly pass to mere wealth, and its po- 
 litical influence would largely pass to the managers of 
 party organisations, and to demagogues. 
 
 The evils that spring from mere plutocracy are great, 
 and increasing. One of the most evident is the enor- 
 mous growth of luxurious living. The evil does not, 
 in my opinion, lie in the multiplication of pleasures. 
 Amusement, no doubt, occupies a very disproportionate 
 place in many lives, and many men grossly mismanage 
 their pleasures, and the amount of amusement expected 
 by all classes and ages has within the last generation 
 greatly increased. But those who have realised the in- 
 finite pathos of human life, and the vast variety of 
 human tastes, characters and temptations, will hesitate 
 much to abridge the sum of human enjoyment, and 
 will look with an indulgent eye on many pleasures 
 which are far from cultivated, elevating, and refined, 
 provided they are not positively vicious, and do not 
 bring with them grave and manifest evils. What is 
 really to be deplored is the inordinate and ever-in- 
 creasing expenditure on things which add nothing, or 
 almost nothing, to human enjoyment. It is the race 
 of luxury, the mere ostentation of wealth, which 
 values all things by their cost.
 
 394 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 This feeling is wholly distinct from the love of art. 
 To minds infected with it beauty itself is nothing if it 
 is common. The rose and the violet make way for the 
 stephanotis and the orchid. Common fruits and vege- 
 tables are produced at great expense in an unnatural 
 season. The play is estimated by the splendour of its 
 scenery. Innumerable attendants, gorgeous uphol- 
 stery, masses of dazzling jewellery, rare dishes from dis- 
 tant countries, ingenious and unexpected refinements 
 of costly luxury, are the chief marks of their entertain- 
 ments, and the hand of the millionaire is always seen. 
 Nor is the evil restricted to the small circle of the very 
 rich. From rank to rank the standard of social re- 
 quirement is raised, making society more cumbrous, 
 extravagant, and ostentatious, driving from it by the 
 costliness of its accessories many who are eminently 
 fitted to adorn it, and ruining many others by the com- 
 petition of idle, joyless, useless display. It is a ten- 
 dency which vulgarises and materialises vast fields of 
 English life, and is preparing great catastrophes for 
 the future. 
 
 The acquisition of gigantic fortunes in trade or 
 speculation, and the desire to attain by these fortunes 
 a high social position, are the main causes of this in- 
 creasing luxury, which is so prominent in England 
 and America, and which contrasts so unfavourably 
 with the far simpler and more human social inter- 
 course of many foreign countries. Economists per- 
 haps press their case too far when they assert that this 
 kind of expenditure is wholly unproductive. The at- 
 traction of luxury, and of the social consideration it 
 implies, is a great spur to labour, and especially to the 
 continuance of labour after a moderate competence has 
 been acquired. But economists are not wrong in point- 
 ing out the enormous waste of the means of happiness
 
 CH. iv. INCREASING LUXURY 395 
 
 which it implies, and its moral and political evils are at 
 least as great as its economical ones. 
 
 An aristocracy occupying an undisputed social po- 
 sition might do much to check this tendency. At a 
 time when the class whom they specially represent are 
 passing through the dark shadow of a ruinous agri- 
 cultural depression, it would be peculiarly graceful and 
 patriotic if those among them who, through their ur- 
 ban properties or their mineral wealth, have escaped 
 the calamity would set, without compulsion, the ex- 
 ample of a simpler scale of living. Some of them have 
 done so. Others have themselves retained, amid very 
 luxurious surroundings, much personal simplicity of 
 life and tastes. The doctrine of the moral obligation 
 attaching to wealth is one of the oldest of the moral 
 convictions of mankind. ' If thou art exalted after 
 having been low/ says an Egyptian writer who is be- 
 lieved to have lived no less than 3,800 years before the 
 Christian era, 1 ' if thou art rich after having been 
 needy, harden not thy heart because of thy elevation. 
 Thou hast but become a steward of the good things be- 
 longing to the gods.' On the whole, this truth is pro- 
 bably more acted on by rich men whose properties are 
 connected with land than by any others. England 
 always furnishes many examples of great fortunes 
 expended with noble, judicious, and unselfish munifi- 
 cence, sometimes in public works which no moderate 
 fortune could undertake, very often in raising the 
 whole level of comfort and civilisation over an exten- 
 sive property. One of the greatest landlords in Eng- 
 land told me that he calculated that, in his own case, 
 for every 100?. that came out of land, 75Z. went back to 
 
 1 The Prisse Papyrus. See Miss Edwardes's Pharaohs, Fellahs^ 
 and Explorers, p. 220.
 
 396 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 it. Many others, as patrons of art, have blended their 
 personal gratification with much benefit to the country. 
 
 Much, too, of what appears luxury is not really 
 selfish. The vast parks that surround so many great 
 country houses are in numerous cases thrown open 
 with such a liberality that they are virtually public 
 property, though supported exclusively by private 
 means ; and those houses themselves, and the art trea- 
 sures which they contain, have been for the most part 
 freely exhibited to the world. It must, however, be 
 acknowledged that the great wave of increasing luxu- 
 ry which has swept over England has been fully felt 
 in aristocratic circles, and especially in country life. 
 Among the not very numerous mistakes that have been 
 made by the great English landed gentry as a class, 
 one of the most conspicuous has, I think, been that 
 enormous over - preservation of game which grew up 
 in the last years of the eighteenth century, 1 and has 
 steadily increased to our own day. It has diminished 
 the productiveness of great areas of English land, 
 brought into the country a new form of extravagant 
 luxury, and essentially altered and lowered the charac- 
 ter of field sports. The Epicurean sportsman who, 
 without even the trouble of loading his guns, shoots 
 down by hundreds the pheasants which are bred like 
 chickens upon his estates, and which are driven by an 
 army of beaters into his presence, is by no means a 
 beautiful figure in modern country life, however great 
 may be the skill which he displays. 
 
 But the worst aspect of plutocracy is the social and 
 political influence of dishonestly acquired wealth. 
 
 1 See the article on ' Battue time in some Continental coun- 
 
 Shooting ' in Elaine's Encyclo- tries before it was introduced 
 
 pcedia of Field Sports. Battue into England, 
 shooting had existed for some
 
 CH. iv. PLUTOCRACY 397 
 
 While most of the fields of patronage and professional 
 life have been greatly purified during the present cen- 
 tury, the conditions of modern enterprise in the chief 
 European countries, and still more in the United 
 States, give much scope for kinds of speculation and 
 financing which no honest man would pursue, and by 
 which, in many conspicuous instances, colossal fortunes 
 have been acquired. It is an evil omen for the future 
 of a nation when men who have acquired such fortunes 
 force their way into great social positions, and become 
 the objects of admiration, adulation, and imitation. 
 One of the first duties, and one of the chief uses, of 
 courts and aristocracies is to guard the higher walks of 
 society from this impure contact ; and when courts and 
 aristocracies betray their trust, and themselves bow 
 before the golden idol, the period of their own downfall 
 is not far distant. 
 
 No one who is acquainted with society in England, 
 France, and America can be blind to the disquieting 
 signs of the increasing prominence of this evil. With 
 the decline of rank and the breaking down of old cus- 
 toms, conventionalities, and beliefs, the power of wealth 
 in the world seems to grow. Where cynicism and scep- 
 ticism have sapped the character, wealth comes too fre- 
 quently to be looked on as the one reality of life, and 
 as atoning for every misdeed. When the decent inter- 
 val has elapsed, when the period of colossal swindling 
 has been duly succeeded by the period of lavish and 
 splendid hospitality, mingled, perhaps, with ostenta- 
 tious charity, the love of pleasure and luxury begins to 
 operate, and the old social restrictions give way. In 
 England, it may be truly said that the existence and 
 social supremacy of an aristocracy is some barrier 
 against the predominance of ill-gotten riches. Peer- 
 ages are often granted to men whose chief claim is
 
 398 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. rv- 
 
 their wealth, but, with few and doubtful exceptions, 
 this has been only done when wealth has been honestly 
 acquired, and, on the whole, usefully, or at least re- 
 spectably, employed. In political life, it is to be feared, 
 the standard is less high. If modern British Govern- 
 ments are not greatly maligned, there have been in- 
 stances in which peerages and other honours have been 
 very literally bought, though by a circuitous process, 
 in the shape of large contributions to party funds ; and 
 other instances where they have been notoriously given 
 to fix waverers, to reward apostasies, to induce poli- 
 ticians to vote for measures which they would other- 
 wise have opposed. But it is, perhaps, not too much 
 to say that this is the only form of dishonesty which 
 has of late years been rewarded by a seat in the House 
 of Lords. For the most part, the influence of Court 
 and aristocracy has been on the side of social puri- 
 ty and financial integrity, though there have been ob- 
 vious and lamentable exceptions. 
 
 The foregoing considerations will, I think, serve to 
 show that the hereditary element exercises a more se- 
 rious and far-reaching influence over the well-being of 
 the nation than is sometimes supposed. At the same 
 time, it is impossible to deny that the House of Lords 
 does not occupy the position, and that its deliberations 
 do not carry with them the weight, that might be ex- 
 pected from the elements of which it is composed. An 
 assembly seems sometimes strangely greater, and some- 
 times strangely less, than its members, and few things 
 are more curious than the contrast between the too 
 evident debility of the House of Lords in its, corporate 
 capacity, and the great weight and influence of a large 
 number of individual peers. As Bagehot has justly 
 observed, the- peers who exercise the greatest influence 
 in county life are seldom those who appear most promi-
 
 CH. iv. DEBILITY OF THE HOUSE 399 
 
 nently in the debates of the House of Lords. Except 
 on great and critical occasions, the attendance in the 
 House is very small : on an average only about a fifth 
 part of its members are present, and important deci- 
 sions have sometimes been taken in the presence of not 
 more than a dozen members. 1 Every peer who passes 
 from the House of Commons to the House of Lords is 
 struck by its chilling, well-bred apathy, by the inatten- 
 tion and indifference of the few men who, on normal 
 occasions, are scattered over its empty benches while 
 some statesman of first-class eminence is unfolding his 
 policy. A few remarks, chiefly addressed to the re- 
 porters, by the leader of the House, by the leader of 
 the Opposition, by a great lawyer on each side, and, 
 perhaps if the dinner-hour is not too near by one or 
 two independent peers, usually constitute its debates. 
 There are few atmospheres in which young and rising 
 talent has so much difficulty in emerging. 
 
 No such apathy is displayed by individual peers in 
 the affairs of their counties ; or by the special Com- 
 mittees of the House of Lords, which often do admi- 
 rable work ; or by the members of that House who take 
 part in the joint Committees of the two Houses ; and 
 in the few questions which strongly rouse the interest 
 of the House its debates are often models of grave, elo- 
 quent, and exhaustive discussion. Many causes con- 
 spire to the prevailing tone. The rule that only three 
 members were needed to form a quorum had a very 
 mischievous effect, and a considerable improvement has 
 been produced by a recent standing order which pro- 
 
 1 See May's Constitutional that in the session of 1885 the 
 
 History, i. 271-72. In his average attendance in the House 
 
 speech on the reform of the of Lords was 110, which was 
 
 House of Lords (March 19, almost exactly a fifth part. 
 1888), Lord llosebery stated
 
 400 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 vides that if on a division thirty lords are not present 
 the business on hand shall be adjourned. 
 
 Another slight improvement was the suspension, in 
 1868, of the old privilege of the peers to vote by proxy. 
 It was not, perhaps, a matter of great practical im- 
 portance, for votes are rarely determined by debate, 
 and on party questions men's opinions are early 
 formed, and may be easily anticipated. The system of 
 pairing, even for long periods, is fully recognised in 
 the House of Commons, and proxies, as is well-known, 
 are largely employed in the very important meetings 
 for the management of companies. At the same time, 
 it was easy to attack, and impossible altogether to de- 
 fend, a system by which the men who gave the verdict 
 were not those who heard the arguments ; and that 
 system had also the disadvantage of strengthening two 
 of the worst characteristics of the House the scanty 
 attendance of its members, and the excessive power 
 often exercised by a single peer. It also increased the 
 political importance of the class X)f peers who, by their 
 tastes and habits, are most unfit to be legislators, and 
 who, in fact, are habitual non-attendants. Many 
 members of the House of Lords are conscious that they 
 have no personal competence or turn for legislation. 
 Their tastes are of a wholly different description. They 
 would never have aspired to election, and, finding 
 themselves legislators by accident of birth, and having 
 no ambition or other strong motive to impel them, 
 they are scarcely ever seen within the House, unless 
 they are urgently summoned to some important party 
 division. Under the old system, however, they exer- 
 cised much habitual influence, as they readily gave 
 their proxies to their party chief. 
 
 The absence of such men from a legislative body is 
 certainly not to be regretted. Other members of the
 
 OH. iv. DEBILITY OF THE HOUSE 401 
 
 House feel that their proper sphere of action is else- 
 where. The bishops know that their special work lies 
 in their dioceses, and, although they were very promi- 
 nent in opposition to the Eeform Bill of 1832, an 
 unwritten conventionality now discourages them from 
 taking much part in politics that are unconnected with 
 their profession. Some great nobles are beginning to 
 feel, with Carlyle, that their true work lies in the wise 
 administration of their vast properties, and not in po- 
 litical contests, where they can only play a secondary 
 and somewhat humiliating part. The consciousness 
 that the House of Lords must always, in case of grave 
 difference, yield to the House of Commons ; that every 
 expression of independent opinion on its part is fol- 
 lowed by insolent threats of revolution, often counte- 
 nanced or instigated by leaders of one of the parties in 
 the State ; that one of its first objects is to avoid com- 
 ing into collision with the House of Commons, tends to 
 make it distasteful to men of high character and spirit. 
 It deprives it of the moral force and confidence without 
 which it can never have its due weight in the Consti- 
 tution. There is a widespread feeling among its more 
 intelligent members that a considerable amount of 
 well-bred political languor is very desirable in such a 
 Chamber. If it were animated by a strong and earnest 
 political spirit it would never acquiesce in the com- 
 pletely subordinate position assigned to it, especially as 
 this position is largely due to usurpation unsanctioned 
 by law. Collisions would inevitably arise, and some 
 organic change would follow. 1 
 
 1 See some yery just, but on Lord Rosebery's motion for 
 
 wonderfully candid and rather the reform of the House of 
 
 cynical, remarks of Lord Salis- Lords (March 19, 1888). 
 bury on this subject in a speech 
 
 VOL. i. 26
 
 402 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 Two other causes conspire in the same direction. 
 One of them is the jealousy which the House of Com- 
 mons feels at the initiation of Bills in the House of 
 Lords. A session of the House of Lords usually con- 
 sists of several months of almost complete inactivity, 
 followed by a few weeks when the pressure of work sent 
 up from the House of Commons is so great, and the 
 time in which it must be accomplished so short, that 
 it is impossible that the work of revision, which is the 
 special task of the Upper House, can be accomplished 
 with proper deliberation. Of all the many wastes of 
 power that take place in English political life, few are 
 more deplorable than this. Social questions have come 
 to be, in our day, of a far more real and pressing im- 
 portance than purely political ones ; and in the House 
 of Lords the country possesses a legislative body which, 
 from its composition, from its comparative leisure, and 
 from its position in the Constitution, is pre-eminently 
 fitted to deal with them. In almost every joint Com- 
 mittee relating to social questions peers have been 
 among the most active and most useful members. Yet, 
 during many months of the year the House of Lords is 
 almost idle. Its leaders know that the Commons would 
 look with distrust on any Bill originating with them, 
 and there is little use in introducing Bills which are 
 never likely to become law. 
 
 Another cause is the complete exclusion of the House 
 of Lords from all financial legislation. In the opinion 
 of the best historians, taxation was at one period im- 
 posed separately and independently by Lords and Com- 
 mons ; but the Lords taxed only their own body, and 
 the Commons the classes they represented. After this, 
 taxes affecting all classes alike were made by the Com- 
 mons, with the advice and assent of the Lords, and 
 usually as a result of a conference between the two
 
 OH. nr. AMENDING MONEY BILLS 403 
 
 Houses. 1 The sole right of the Commons to originate 
 money Bills was recognised at least as early as the reign 
 of Richard II., and in the reign of Charles I. the Com- 
 mons began to omit to make mention of the Lords in 
 the preambles of Bills of Supply, as though the grant 
 were exclusively their own, though the Lords were 
 always mentioned in the enacting words of the Statute. 
 But although the Upper House could not originate 
 money Bills, it had for some centuries the full right of 
 amending them. There are numerous cases of such 
 amendments having been agreed to, and the right was 
 not seriously questioned till after the Eestoration. In 
 1671 the Commons carried a resolution ' that, in all 
 aids given to the King by the Commons, the rate or 
 tax ought not to be altered ' ; and in 1678 they went 
 still further, and resolved ' that all aids and supplies, 
 and aids to His Majesty in Parliament, are the sole gift 
 of the Commons, and all Bills for the granting of any 
 such aids and supplies ought to begin with the Com- 
 mons, and that it is the undoubted and sole right of 
 the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint in such 
 Bills the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, 
 limitations, and qualifications of such grants, which 
 ought not to be changed or altered by the House of 
 Lords/ 
 
 The peers were by no means inclined to acquiesce in 
 these claims. In the conferences that ensued they ' ut- 
 terly denied any such right in the Commons, further 
 than was agreed for the beginning of money Bills only.' 
 ' In all other respects/ they said, ' and to all intents 
 and purposes, our legislative power is as full and free 
 as theirs ; we granted as well as they ; they could not 
 grant without us, not so much as for themselves, much 
 
 1 Stubbs's Const. Hist., iii. 282-83, 496-97.
 
 404 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 less for us ; we were judges and counsellors to consider 
 and advise concerning the ends and occasions for money 
 as well as they/ with the sole exception that the right 
 of beginning Bills was with the Commons. 
 
 Hallam has truly noticed how clearly the prepon- 
 derance of argument and precedent in these conferences 
 was on the side of the peers, 1 and a resolution of the 
 House of Commons alone has no legal validity ; but 
 yet the growing power of the Commons enabled them 
 to carry their point. It was never established by law, 
 it was never formally admitted by the other House ; 
 but it, nevertheless, became a received maxim of the 
 Constitution that the House of Lords was precluded, 
 not only from originating, but also from amending, 
 money Bills. After the Revolution this power was 
 tacitly extended by the habit of enlarging greatly the 
 number of Bills which were considered money Bills. 
 Even measures authorising fees, or imposing pecuni- 
 ary penalties, or making provision for the payment of 
 salaries, or for compensation for abolished offices, have 
 been treated as money Bills, and therefore beyond the 
 amending power of the Lords. 2 
 
 It has been, however, extremely difficult to maintain 
 this position consistently, for large classes of measures 
 which have no financial object have incidental, and 
 sometimes very remote, financial effects, and occasion- 
 
 1 Hallam's Const. Hist., iii. the development of the powers 
 28-30 (Cabinet edition). of the House of Lords. See, 
 
 2 Hallam's Const. Hist., iii. too, from opposite points of 
 30-33 ; May's Parliamentary view, Mr. Spalding's House of 
 Practice (ed. 1893), pp. 542-46. Lords, and Sir W. Charley's 
 Mr. Pike, in his Constitutional Crusade against the Constitu- 
 History of the House of Lords, tion, 1895. This last book is 
 and Mr. Macpherson on The especially useful as a collection 
 Baronage and the Senate, have of facts and speeches relating 
 recently traced in much detail to its recent history.
 
 CH. IV. REJECTION OF MONEY BILLS 405 
 
 ally, for the sake of public convenience, the House of 
 Commons has slightly relaxed its rule, and allowed 
 amendments to pass which indirectly involved salaries 
 or fees. Thus, for example, the operation of a Bill re- 
 lating to industrial schools has been prolonged by an 
 amendment in the Lords, although some pecuniary 
 consequences would follow the prolongation. Some- 
 times the whole financial clause in a non-financial Bill 
 has been rejected by the Lords, this being considered 
 to fall within the class of rejection, and not of amend- 
 ment. In 1831 a standing order was made directing 
 the Speaker, in cases where an amendment in the 
 Lords involved some pecuniary penalty, to report to 
 the House whether the object of the Lords appeared to 
 be ' to impose, vary, or take away any pecuniary charge 
 or burthen on the subject/ or whether they only in- 
 tended 'the punishment of offences, and the House 
 shall determine whether it may be expedient in such 
 particular case to insist upon the exercise of their pri- 
 vilege/ In 1849 the Commons agreed that they would 
 not insist on their privilege if the object of a pecuniary 
 penalty was merely to secure the execution of the Act, 
 or the punishment and prevention of offences, or when 
 fees were imposed in respect to a benefit taken or 
 service rendered, or when they form part of a private 
 Bill for a local or personal act. In 1858 they agreed, 
 in the case of private Bills, to accept 'any clauses 
 sent down from the House of Lords which refer to 
 tolls and charges for services performed, and which are 
 not in the nature of a tax/ Sometimes it has been 
 found convenient that non-financial Bills which, how- 
 ever, involve salaries or fees should originate in the 
 Lords. In these cases financial provisoes have been pre- 
 pared, discussed, and voted on in the Lords, but with- 
 drawn at the third reading. They were, therefore, not
 
 406 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 brought before the Commons as part of the Bill, but 
 they were printed in red ink on the margin, so that 
 the House of Commons had the suggestions of the 
 Lords informally before it, and was, of course, at liber- 
 ty to treat them as it pleased. By these expedients 
 some difficulties have been overcome and some con- 
 veniences attained without altering the received rule 
 that the Lords have no power of originating or amend- 
 ing money Bills. 1 
 
 One power, however, they seemed still to possess. 
 No tax could be legally imposed except by an Act of 
 Parliament, and as there can be no Act of Parliament 
 without the assent of the Lords, the Upper House had 
 at least the power of withholding that assent, and thus 
 rejecting the Bill. Nothing in law, nothing in history, 
 and, it may be added, nothing in reason, denied them 
 this power, and for some time after the right of amend- 
 ment had vanished it was fully acknowledged. But 
 this power also went the way of the royal veto. The 
 doctrine that taxation was essentially a matter for the 
 Commons alone grew and strengthened, especially du- 
 ring the controversies that arose out of the American 
 revolution. e Taxation/ Chatham once said, 'is no 
 part of the governing or legislative power. The taxes 
 are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. 
 In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike 
 concerned ; but the concurrence of the peers and 
 Crown to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the 
 form of law. The gift and grant is of the Commons 
 alone/ This . doctrine is very far from being beyond 
 controversy, but it had a popular sound, and it was 
 widely accepted. The House of Lords, shrinking from 
 
 1 May's Part. Practice, pp. 544-49 ; May's Const. Hist.) i. 482- 
 89.
 
 CH. IV. THE PAPER DUTIES 407 
 
 conflicts of privilege, and perhaps content with the 
 indirect influence which its members exercised in the 
 Commons, very rarely even discussed measures which 
 were exclusively or mainly financial, though it fre- 
 quently rejected or postponed measures incidentally 
 affecting taxation. 
 
 The last great conflict on this subject was in 1860, 
 when Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in the Government of Lord Palmerston, proposed the 
 abolition of the paper duties. The repealing measure 
 was introduced in the usual way as a separate Bill, but 
 it formed part of a large and complicated Budget in- 
 volving extensive remissions of indirect taxation, the 
 imposition of a number of small taxes, the reimposi- 
 tion of the income-tax which was intended to have 
 expired in this year its increase from 9d. to 10^. in 
 the pound, and a provision for bringing three-fourths 
 of this tax, instead of half only, into the Exchequer 
 within the financial year. The paper duty, which it 
 was determined to repeal, was estimated at 1,200, 000 1. 
 or IjSOO^OOZ. 1 
 
 Several things contributed to make so great a sacri- 
 fice of ordinary revenue at this time seem of doubtful 
 expediency. A commercial treaty with France had 
 just been concluded, and it would involve a great low- 
 ering of duties. The political relations with France 
 were, also, not unclouded, and the prevalent feeling of 
 distrust had shown itself in the expenditure of a very 
 large sum in fortifying our dockyards. A war with 
 China was raging, and it had assumed more formidable 
 dimensions during the period between the introduction 
 of the Budget and its completion in the Commons. 
 
 1 See Sir Stafford Northcote's Twenty Years of Financial Po- 
 licy, pp. 351-56.
 
 408 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. rr. 
 
 The renewal and the high and increasing rate of the 
 income-tax fell, also, heavily on large classes. The 
 feeling of the House of Commons was very significantly 
 shown by diminishing majorities. The second reading 
 of the repeal of the paper duties was carried by a ma- 
 jority of fifty-three. On the third reading the Govern- 
 ment majority had sunk to nine. 
 
 When a powerful and popular Government could 
 only command such a majority on the third reading of a 
 great contested measure, there could be little doubt that 
 the real opinion of the House of Commons was hostile 
 to that measure. It is probable that most members of 
 the Cabinet would have gladly postponed to another 
 year the repeal of the paper duties. But it is not easy 
 for a Government to recede from a position which it 
 has formally adopted ; and it was impossible for Lord 
 Palmerston to do so without breaking up his Govern- 
 ment when so important a colleague as Mr. Gladstone 
 was determined at all hazards to carry the measure. 
 The real opinions of Lord Palmerston are clearly dis- 
 closed in an extract which has been published from a 
 letter written by him to the Queen, announcing to Her 
 Majesty the extremely small majority by which the Bill 
 had passed its third reading in the Commons. ( This/ 
 he writes, 'may probably encourage the House of 
 Lords to throw out the Bill when it comes to their 
 House, and Viscount Palmerston is bound in duty to 
 say that, if they do so, they will perform a good public 
 service. Circumstances have greatly changed since the 
 measure was agreed to by the Cabinet, and although it 
 would undoubtedly have been difficult for the Govern- 
 ment to have given up the Bill, yet, if Parliament were 
 to reject it, the Government might well submit to so 
 welcome a defeat/ ' 
 
 1 Martin's Life of the Prince Consort^ v. 100.
 
 CH. IY. THE PAPER DUTIES 409 
 
 The House of Lords acted as Lord Palmerston anti- 
 cipated, and evidently desired. While the other Bills 
 relating to finance were accepted without question, 
 the Bill repealing the paper duties was thrown out by 
 a majority of no less than eighty-nine. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in a speech of extraordinary elo- 
 quence, which was eminently calculated, as it was 
 manifestly intended, to inflame and envenom the 
 difference between the Houses, denounced this pro- 
 ceeding as 'the most gigantic and the most dangerous 
 innovation that has been attempted in our times/ and 
 a large part of the Liberal party, both in the House 
 and in the country, were ready to support him in a 
 violent collision with the Lords. Lord Palmerston, 
 however, in a very difficult position, conducted the 
 controversy with a skill, tact, and moderation that 
 could not be surpassed, and by his eminently patriotic 
 conduct a great danger was averted. A Commission 
 was appointed to examine precedents, and, under the 
 influence of Lord Palmerston, the House of Commons 
 contented itself with carrying three resolutions. The 
 first asserted ' that the right of granting aids and sup- 
 plies to the Crown is in the Commons alone.' The 
 second, while acknowledging that the Lords had some- 
 times exercised the power of rejecting Bills relating to 
 taxation, stated that this power was justly regarded by 
 the Commons with peculiar jealousy, as affecting their 
 right to grant supplies ; and the third stated 'that, to 
 guard for the future against an undue exercise of that 
 power by the Lords, and to secure to the Commons 
 their rightful control over taxation and Supply, this 
 House has in its own hands the power so to impose 
 and remit taxes, and to frame Bills of Supply, that 
 the right of the Commons as to the matter, manner, 
 measure, and time may be maintained inviolate/
 
 410 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 These resolutions were carried unanimously, though 
 not without much criticism and after a long and in- 
 structive debate. It was asserted on the one side, and 
 not denied on the other, that the House of Lords 
 had acted in perfect accordance with the law of the 
 land. In the conferences that had taken place be- 
 tween the two Houses after the Eestoration, when the 
 right of amending money Bills was denied to the 
 Lords, the Managers, on the part of the Commons, 
 formally and expressly admitted the right of the Upper 
 House to reject them. This right, it was said, was a 
 settled principle of the Constitution, and it had never 
 been withdrawn, surrendered, or denied. The Consti- 
 tution, by making the assent of the House of Lords 
 essential to the validity of a tax, clearly implied that 
 the House of Lords had the right of withholding that 
 assent. Blackstone, while enumerating in emphatic 
 terms its disabilities in matters of finance, described its 
 right of rejecting money Bills as absolutely incon- 
 testable. 1 Nor was there on this point any real differ- 
 ence of opinion among writers on the Constitution. 2 
 ' Nothing/ said Lord Lyndhurst in the House of 
 Lords, ' can be found in the Parliamentary Journals, 
 or in any history of parliamentary proceedings, to 
 show that our right to reject money Bills has been 
 questioned/ The Commission which had just been 
 
 1 ' It would be extremely dan- House to exert any power but 
 
 gerous to give the Lords any that of rejecting. They will 
 
 power of framing new taxes for not permit the least alteration 
 
 the subject. It is sufficient that or amendment to be made by 
 
 they have a power of rejecting the Lords ' (Blackstone, Book i. 
 
 if they think the Commons too chapter ii.). 
 
 lavish or improvident in their a See Hallam's History of 
 
 grants. But so reasonably jea- England, iii. 31 ; May's Parlia- 
 
 lous are the Commons of this mentary Practice, p. 550 (ed. 
 
 valuable privilege, that herein 1893). 
 they will not suffer the other
 
 CH. IV. THE PAPER DUTIES 411 
 
 appointed to examine precedents had discovered be- 
 tween 1714 and 1860 about thirty-six cases of Bills re- 
 pealing duties or imposts of some kind, and a much 
 greater number of Bills imposing charges, which had 
 passed through the Commons, and which had failed in 
 the Lords. In all or nearly all these cases the action 
 of the House of Lords was unchallenged. 
 
 In the face of such facts it was surely absurd to 
 argue that the House of Lords was not within its 
 rights in throwing out the paper duties. And if it 
 had a right to do so, it was not difficult to defend the 
 expediency of its act. This great sacrifice of perma- 
 nent revenue had been urged on political rather than 
 financial grounds. It had been introduced at a time 
 when both the political and the financial prospects 
 were singularly overclouded, and since its first intro- 
 duction the circumstances of the country had greatly 
 changed, and the inexpediency of the measure had 
 greatly increased. The small and steadily declining 
 majorities in the House of Commons clearly showed 
 that, without strong party and ministerial pressure, it 
 could not have been carried. 
 
 In reply to these arguments it was contended that, 
 though the House of Lords had acted within its techni- 
 cal rights, its conduct in throwing out an important 
 Bill relating to the ways and means of the year was 
 contrary to 'constitutional usage/ and inconsistent 
 with the principle the Commons had frequently as- 
 serted, that 'all aids and supplies granted to Her 
 Majesty in Parliament are the sole and entire gifts of 
 the Commons.' By whose authority or action, it was 
 asked, would the paper duties be collected in the en- 
 suing year ? Would it not be solely by that of the 
 House of Lords ? If the Commons had combined in 
 a single measure the increase of the income-tax and
 
 412 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 
 
 the repeal of the paper duties, it would have been 
 confessedly beyond the power of the Lords to amend 
 the Bill by accepting one part of it and rejecting 
 the other. Was the course they had actually pur- 
 sued essentially different from this ? To reject an 
 important money Bill, and thereby disturb the balance 
 of the financial arrangements of the year, was in reality 
 a greater infringement of the sole competence of the 
 House of Commons in matters of finance than to in- 
 troduce into a money Bill some trifling amendment. 
 The precedents that had been adduced were jealously 
 scrutinised, and pronounced to be inapplicable. The 
 Bills that had been rejected had been political Bills, 
 discussed and rejected on political, and not on finan- 
 cial, grounds, and they were Bills by which finance 
 was only slightly, incidentally, and remotely affected. 
 Most of them were measures of protection, encoura- 
 ging different forms of industry by duties or bounties. 
 Others were measures imposing or remitting penalties, 
 creating or abolishing salaried offices. The rejection 
 of such Bills was a very different thing from an at- 
 tempt to recast or materially modify the Budget of the 
 year. For two hundred years, it was said, the House 
 of Lords had never taken such a step, never rejected 
 on purely financial grounds a Bill imposing or remit- 
 ting taxation. Great commercial interests would be 
 affected by its action, and still more by the precedent 
 it established, for men of business had hitherto always 
 assumed that they might take their measures and base 
 their calculations on the Budget as soon as it had 
 passed the Commons. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the weight of argu- 
 ment, the weight of power was on the side of the Com- 
 mons. As a matter of reason, indeed, resolutions had 
 been adopted and precedents formed which reduced
 
 CH. iv. TRIUMPH OP THE COMMONS 413 
 
 the whole question at issue to hopeless confusion. It 
 was absurd to assert, as the Commons had repeatedly 
 done, that money grants were their ' sole and entire 
 gift/ when -they were unable to grant a farthing with- 
 out the assent of the Lords ; and the power of rejection 
 and the power of amendment stood so much on the 
 same ground, and were in some cases so indissolubly 
 connected, that it was very difficult to accept the one 
 and to deny the other. By a tacit understanding, fully 
 acquiesced in, though unestablished by law, the House 
 of Lords had no power of amending money Bills, while 
 its power of rejecting them had been established by a 
 long chain of precedents, formally acknowledged by 
 the House of Commons, and admitted as unquestiona- 
 ble by every serious writer on the Constitution. Yet 
 it was very evident that the one power might be so 
 used as to be practically equivalent to the other. The 
 Commons, however, in the year after this dispute, 
 adopted a method which effectually prevented the 
 Lords from exercising any revising power in finance. 
 They combined the repeal of the paper duties with all 
 the other portions of the Budget in a single Bill, and 
 the Lords had, therefore, no power of rejecting one 
 part unless they took the responsibility of rejecting the 
 whole. This method has since become the usual one. 
 So completely has the sole competence of the House of 
 Commons been recognised, that it has become the cus- 
 tom to levy new duties and increased duties from the 
 time they had been agreed to by the House of Com- 
 mons, without waiting for the assent of the Lords and 
 of the Crown, which alone could give them the force of 
 law. 
 
 Much of the jealousy of the interference of the Lords 
 with financial matters which was displayed at the time 
 of the Restoration was due to the fact that this body
 
 414 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 was then greatly under the influence of the Crown, and 
 that the chief constitutional conflicts of that period lay 
 between the power of the Commons and the power of 
 the Crown. A still more important consideration was 
 the belief that a tax is the free gift of the people, and 
 that it ought, therefore, to be under the sole control of 
 the representatives of those who give it. Such a con- 
 trol was once considered a guarantee that no one could 
 be taxed unduly, unrighteously, or against his will. 
 The old principle of connecting indissolubly taxation 
 and representation has, probably, never been more 
 loudly professed than in the present day ; but this is 
 only one of the many instances in which men cheat 
 themselves by forms and phrases, while the underly- 
 ing meaning has almost wholly passed away. The 
 members of the House of Lords are owners of a great 
 proportion of the largest properties in Great Britain, 
 yet they have no part in enacting the imperial taxes 
 they pay. Their House is excluded from all participa- 
 tion in finance, and they have no voice in the House of 
 Commons. At the same time, the whole drift of demo- 
 cratic government is to diminish or to destroy the con- 
 trol which property in England once had over taxation. 
 As I have already observed, the true meaning and jus- 
 tification of the special political powers vested in large 
 tax-payers was, that those who chiefly pay should chiefly 
 control ; that the kinds of property which contribute 
 most to support government should have most weight 
 in regulating it ; that it is one of the first duties of a 
 legislator to provide that one class should not have the 
 power of voting the taxes, while another class were 
 obliged to pay them. It is plain that this fundamen- 
 tal element in the British Constitution is being rapidly 
 destroyed. One of the most popular and growing ideas 
 in English politics is, that by giving an overwhelming
 
 CH. IV. FINANCIAL CONTROL 415 
 
 voting power to the poorer classes they may be able to 
 attain a high level of well-being, by compelling the 
 propertied classes to pay more and more for their 
 benefit. 
 
 A broad distinction must be drawn between the 
 maxim that the Commons alone should have the right 
 to originate taxes, and the maxim that the Upper 
 House should have ,no power either of amending or 
 rejecting its financial legislation. The former right is 
 recognised, after the English model, in most of the 
 constitutions of free nations, though there are several 
 exceptions. The most remarkable are Austria, Prussia, 
 the German Empire, and the Swiss Federation, in all 
 of which a financial measure may be introduced equal- 
 ly either in the Upper or the Lower House. 1 In the 
 United States, the House of Representatives maintains 
 the sole right of originating taxes ; but in the State 
 legislatures a different principle prevails, and it is said 
 that there are twenty-one States in which financial 
 measures may be brought forward in either House. 2 
 In a few Continental constitutions the Upper Chamber 
 has the power of rejecting, but not of amending, money 
 Bills, 3 but in most constitutions it is granted both 
 powers ; and this is also the system in the United 
 States. 
 
 There is a great and manifest danger in placing the 
 most important of all branches of legislation in the 
 uncontrolled power of one House. It leaves the con- 
 stitution absolutely unbalanced in the department in 
 which beyond all others there is most danger, and 
 where balance and restriction are most required ; and 
 it is, I think, much to be desired that, if the Upper 
 
 i Morizot-Thibault, Des Droits de Finances, pp. 64, 69, 73, 94. 
 des Chambres Hautes en matiere 2 Ibid. p. 82. 3 Ibid. p. 134.
 
 416 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IV. 
 
 House should ever be so remodelled as to carry with it 
 increased weight in the country, it should be entrusted 
 with the same powers of control and revision in matters 
 of finance that are possessed by the American Senate. 
 The evils, however, that might in this department 
 be feared in England^ from the omnipotence of the 
 House of Commons have been greatly mitigated by two 
 facts. The one is, that a very large proportion of the 
 taxes of the country are permanent taxes, and are, 
 therefore, not the subjects of annual debate. The 
 other is the rule of the House of Commons, which I 
 have mentioned in a former chapter, that no petition, 
 and no motion for a grant or charge upon the public 
 revenue, can be received unless it is recommended by 
 the ministers of the Crown. Though this rule, giving 
 the responsible ministers the sole right of proposing 
 taxation, rests upon no law, but simply on a standing 
 order of 1706, it is no exaggeration to say that it is one 
 of the most valuable parts of the British Constitution. 
 In the great changes that have taken place in the dis- 
 position and balance of powers, many of the old con- 
 stitutional checks have become obsolete, inoperative, 
 or useless ; but the whole tendency of modern politics 
 has only increased the importance of the provision 
 which places the initiation in matters of finance exclu- 
 sively in Government hands. In the present state of 
 Parliaments, and with the motives that at present 
 govern English public life, it is difficult to exaggerate 
 either the corruption or the extravagance that might 
 arise if every member were at liberty to ingratiate him- 
 self with particular classes of interests by proposing 
 money grants in their favour. 
 
 The exclusion, however, of the House of Lords from 
 every form of financial control naturally deprived it of 
 its chief power in the State ; and it is still further
 
 CH. IV. JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS 417 
 
 weakened by the fact that the creation and overthrow 
 of ministries rest entirely with the other House. In 
 the theory of the Constitution, the sovereign chooses 
 the head of the Government, but, except in the very 
 rare cases of nearly balanced claims, the sovereign has 
 no choice. The statesman whom the dominant party 
 in the House of Commons follow as their leader is irre- 
 sistibly designated, and, if he is overthrown, it must 
 be by the vote of the House of Commons. Since the re- 
 signation of Lord Grey in May, 1832, no ministry has 
 resigned in consequence of a hostile vote of the Lords. 
 Some other changes may be noticed in the position 
 of the House. In addition to its legislative functions, 
 it is the supreme law court of the country, and this 
 very important privilege has been the subject of extraor- 
 dinary abuses. It is not here necessary to enter at any 
 length into the curious and intricate history of this 
 power. It seems to have grown out of the right the 
 peers once possessed, as counsellors of the King, to re- 
 ceive petitions for the redress of all abuses ; but it was 
 fully organised in successive stages, and in spite of 
 much opposition from the House of Commons, in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The right of 
 hearing judicial appeals extended to all the peers, even 
 to those who were perfectly unversed in matters of law ; 
 and for considerable periods after the Revolution, and 
 especially in the reigns of George II. and George III., 
 the Chancellor sat alone in the House of Lords, some- 
 times to hear appeals from himself, though two lay 
 peers had to be formally present in order to make 
 the requisite quorum. Somers, Hardwicke, Thurlow, 
 Mansfield, and Eldon have all heard appeals in this 
 fashion. 1 After this time lawyers multiplied in the 
 
 1 May's Const. Hist. i. 247. 
 VOL. i. 27
 
 418 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 House of Lords, and the appellate jurisdiction was 
 placed by custom exclusively in their hands ; though 
 in the case of O'Connell, when party passions were 
 strongly aroused, there was for a short time some dan- 
 ger that the lay lords would insist on their right of 
 intervening. The efficiency of the highest Court was 
 entirely a matter of chance. The Chancellor was 
 usually a good lawyer, but it has sometimes happened 
 that a considerable portion of the remainder of the tri- 
 bunal consisted of lawyers who, though they had been 
 in their day very eminent, were now suffering from all 
 the debility of extreme old age, and appeals were no- 
 toriously from the more competent tribunal to the less 
 competent one. 
 
 It seems strange that this state of things should 
 have been so long tolerated ; but, in truth, the English 
 people, though they have always been extremely tena- 
 cious of their right of making their own laws, have 
 usually been singularly patient of abuses in administer- 
 ing them. They bore during long generations ruinous 
 delays of justice which were elaborately calculated to 
 prolong litigation through periods often exceeding the 
 natural duration of a lifetime ; enormous multiplica- 
 tions of costly and useless archaic forms, intended main- 
 ly to swell the gains of one grasping profession. They 
 have suffered judges whose faculties were notoriously 
 dimmed by the infirmities of extreme old age to preside 
 over trials on which lives, fortunes, and reputations 
 depended ; and even now this profession, which, beyond 
 almost any other, requires the full clearness, concen- 
 tration, and energy of a trained intellect, is exempt 
 from the age limit which is so severely imposed on other 
 classes of Civil Servants. It is quite in accordance with 
 this spirit that they should have long endured, with 
 scarcely a murmur, such an appellate jurisdiction as I
 
 OH. iv. LIFE PEERAGES 419 
 
 have described. English writers often dwell, with just 
 pride, on the contrast between the political freedom en- 
 joyed in Great Britain and the political servitude that 
 existed in France in the eighteenth century. If they 
 compared, in their judicial aspects, the House of Lords 
 of that period with the Parliament of Paris, the compa- 
 rison would be much less flattering to the national pride. 
 
 The extremely unsatisfactory condition of the House 
 of Lords, considered as the supreme tribunal of the 
 country, was acutely felt in the present century, and 
 the opinion grew in ministerial circles that the best way 
 of strengthening it was by introducing into the House 
 a certain number of lawyers as life peers. The Cabinet 
 of Lord Liverpool at one time resolved upon this step, 
 but Lord Liverpool himself changed his mind, and it 
 was abandoned. In 1851, Lord John Russell offered a 
 life peerage to an eminent judge, but it was declined ;* 
 but in 1856 the Government of Lord Palmerston took 
 the startling step of creating by royal prerogative Baron 
 Parke a life peer, under the title of Lord Wensleydale. 
 The fact that he might just as well have been made an 
 hereditary peer, as he was considerably past middle life, 
 and had no living sQn, gave an unmistakable signifi- 
 cance to the creation. 
 
 As is well known, the attempt was successfully re- 
 sisted by the House of Lords. The opposition was led 
 with masterly ability by Lord Lyndhurst, and, with the 
 exception of a not very powerful Chancellor, it was sup- 
 ported by all the law lords in the House. It was ac- 
 knowledged, indeed, that such peerages had been made 
 in remote periods of English history, and that Coke, 
 and Blackstone following Coke, had asserted their le- 
 
 1 See a speech of Lord Granville in the debate on Lord Wens- 
 leydale's peerage, February 7, 1856.
 
 420 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 gality ; but the supporters of the measure were com- 
 pelled to admit that for the space of 400 years no 
 commoner had been introduced into the House of 
 Lords by such a patent as that of Lord Wensleydale. 
 There had, it is true, been a few peerages for life con- 
 ferred upon women. It was a dignity which seems 
 to have been specially selected for the mistress of the 
 King, and Charles II., James II., George I., and 
 George II., had in this way raised their mistresses to 
 the peerage. Since the creation of the Countess of 
 Yarmouth by George II., however, there had been no 
 peerage of this kind ; and a life peerage conferred on 
 a woman introduced no one into the House of Lords. 
 The only other attempt to establish a modern prece- 
 dent was derived from the fact that the sovereign pos- 
 sessed, and exercised, the power of conferring peerages 
 on childless men, with remainders to relations to whom 
 they could not, without special permission, have de- 
 scended. It was obvious, however, that this formed 
 no real precedent, for it was Nature, and not patent, 
 that prevented these peers from transmitting their peer- 
 ages in the usual way. 
 
 The legal maxim, Nullum tempus occurrit regi, was 
 quoted in defence of life peerages ; but in spite of it 
 the lawyers contended, as it seems to me with good rea- 
 son, that a prerogative which had been for 400 years 
 unexercised, and which was exercised only at a time 
 when the position of the sovereign and the aristocracy 
 in the Constitution was utterly different from what it 
 now is at a time when it was not unusual to sum- 
 mon to the House of Lords commoners who were mar- 
 ried to peeresses to represent their wives at a time 
 when the House of Lords was able, of its own authority, 
 to select a Eegent for the kingdom, ought not to be 
 revived by a mere act of power.
 
 Cfl. IV. LIFE PEERAGES 421 
 
 No reasonable man, indeed, will now regard the di- 
 rect influence of the sovereign as a danger to English 
 liberty ; but revivals of long-dormant royal preroga- 
 tives should be carefully watched, for they are certain 
 to pass into the hands of the Cabinet ministers. It 
 was a clear and well-established prerogative of the 
 Crown to remodel the representation by summoning 
 unrepresented places to send members to the House of 
 Commons, or by discontinuing to summon places which 
 had hitherto been represented. This prerogative had 
 been exercised at a much later period than that on 
 which the precedents for Lord Wensleydale's creation 
 were based, and it had even been heard of in our own 
 century. In the course of the debates on the Eeform 
 Bill of 1832, an Irish Solicitor-General had suggested 
 that the obstruction of the House of Lords might be over- 
 come by simply using the royal prerogative of creating 
 or disenfranchising constituencies in accordance with 
 the provisions of the Bill ; and O'Connell contended 
 that it was in the full legal power of the sovereign to 
 annul the Irish Union, without the intervention of 
 either Lords or Commons, by summoning Irish constitu- 
 encies to send their representatives to Dublin. No one 
 can for a moment imagine that a modern House of 
 Commons would tolerate such an exercise of the pre- 
 rogative, however well supported by historical and legal 
 authority ; nor would any Government venture to at- 
 tempt it. The prerogative of creating life peers had 
 not been resorted to by the ministers who took the 
 strongest measures to overcome the resistance or to in- 
 crease the numbers of the Upper House. Harley had 
 not thought of it when he made twelve peers to carry 
 the Peace of Utrecht ; or Pitt when, by lavish creations, 
 he carried the Irish Union ; or Grey when he obtained 
 the King's assent to the creation of a sufficient number
 
 422 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 of peers to carry the Reform Bill of 1832. On the 
 whole, therefore, the House of Lords seems to me to 
 have been thoroughly justified in maintaining that the 
 sovereign could not, by a patent of life peerage, in- 
 troduce new members into the House of Lords. An 
 other patent was accordingly made out, and Lord Wens- 
 leydale entered the House on the same terms as his 
 brother-peers. 
 
 The conduct of the House of Lords on this occasion 
 has been much blamed by some considerable authorities. 
 Freeman has denounced it with extreme violence, as a 
 departure from the precedents of early English history, 1 
 and Bagehot, with much more reason, has lamented 
 that the House neglected a great opportunity of invi- 
 gorating its constitution by making possible a gradual 
 infusion of life peers. 2 Powerful, however, as are the 
 arguments in favour of life peerages, I do not think 
 that they ought to have been created by a simple 
 revival of a long-dormant prerogative, without statu- 
 tory authority or limitation. An attempt was made by 
 Lord John Russell, in 1869, to introduce life peers un- 
 der the authority of an Act of Parliament, limiting the 
 number to twenty-eight, and providing that not more 
 than four should be made in one year. It was defeated 
 on its third reading ; and a very similar but rather 
 more extensive measure, which was introduced by Lord 
 Salisbury in 1888, was abandoned on account of the 
 hostility of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 The only object of the Government at the time of the 
 Wensleydale peerage seems to have been to strengthen 
 the appellate jurisdiction, by bringing into the House 
 competent lawyers whose fortunes were, perhaps, 
 
 1 Freeman's Historical Es- * On the Constitution, 
 says, 4th series, pp. 473-75.
 
 CH. iv. THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION 423 
 
 deemed inadequate for an hereditary peerage, and who 
 would not add to the very considerable number of no- 
 ble houses with a legal origin. The state of the appel- 
 late jurisdiction continued for several years to be a 
 matter of constant complaint, and it gave rise to much 
 discussion, and to some abortive measures. At length, 
 in 1873, Lord Selborne, as the Chancellor of a Liberal 
 Government, succeeded in carrying a Bill transferring 
 all English appeals from the House of Lords to a new 
 tribunal. Irish and Scotch appeals were left to be 
 dealt with in a separate Bill in the ensuing year, and 
 the measure that was actually carried was only to come 
 into force in the November of 1874. Before that date 
 an election and a change of Government took place, 
 and it devolved upon Lord Cairns, as the Conservative 
 Chancellor, to carry out the new policy. 
 
 He had in the preceding year supported, though not 
 without some reluctance, the measure of Lord Sel- 
 borne, and his first intention on arriving at power was 
 to complete it on the same lines, by transferring Scotch 
 and Irish appeals to the new tribunal. It soon, how- 
 ever, appeared that a strong hostile feeling had grown 
 up in the country. In England, it was found to be an 
 unpopular thing to deprive the House of Lords of its 
 ancient jurisdiction ; while Scotland and Ireland pro- 
 tested against the transfer of their appeals to any less 
 dignified body than a branch of the Imperial Legis- 
 lature. It was observed that a special clause of the 
 Scotch Act of Union had provided that there should 
 be no right of appeal from a Scotch to an English 
 court. On the other hand, it was generally felt that 
 it would be inexpedient to have different courts of 
 appeal for the different parts of the British Isles. In 
 the face of this strong demonstration of opinion Lord 
 Cairns changed his policy. The operation of Lord
 
 424 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IV. 
 
 Selborne's Bill was for a short time postponed, and the 
 Government resolved to revert in form,, though not in 
 substance, to the old system. It was enacted that all 
 appeals from Great Britain and Ireland should be heard 
 in the House of Lords, by a court consisting of those 
 members of the House who had held high judicial 
 offices in the State, with the addition of two, and 
 ultimately of four, eminent lawyers, who were to be 
 life peers, created under the Statute, and receiving 
 large salaries. The presence of three members was 
 made necessary to form a court. The life peers might 
 speak and vote on all questions like other peers, as 
 long as they continued to exercise their judicial func- 
 tions ; but if they resigned these they lost their seats, 
 though they retained their titles. It was also provided 
 that this judicial body might continue its sittings when 
 Parliament was prorogued. 
 
 It is, I think, no paradox to say that, of all the many 
 Eeform Bills which have been carried in our time, this 
 reform of the House of Lords has been the most suc- 
 cessful. It had a limited and defined object, and it 
 perfectly accomplished it, without producing any 
 countervailing evil. From the time of Lord Cairns's 
 law, the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords 
 has carried with it all the weight that should attach to 
 the supreme tribunal of a nation, and one, at least, of 
 the old reproaches of the House has been wiped away. 
 
 A modification of this law, which has considerable 
 constitutional importance, was proposed and carried in 
 1887, by a Conservative Government. It provided that 
 the law peers, if they resigned their judicial offices and 
 salaries, should still retain their seats in the House, and 
 be allowed to vote and speak like other peers. In this 
 way, for the first time in modern days, life peers with- 
 out official positions might sit in the House of Lords.
 
 CH. iv. MODERN CREATIONS 425 
 
 Another slight change in the constitution of the House 
 of Lords had been made in 1871, by an Act which de- 
 prived bankrupt peers of the right of sitting and voting. 
 
 Other changes far less favourable to it have taken 
 place. In no previous period of English history have 
 creations in the peerage been so numerous as in the 
 later portion of the present reign. A long succes- 
 sion of short ministries has contributed to increase the 
 number, each ministry being desirous of marking its 
 term of office by some creations, and the destruction, 
 through the competitive system, of most of the old 
 methods of rewarding politicians has had the same 
 effect. Much, too, is due to a certain vulgarisation or 
 cheapening of honours that has undoubtedly character- 
 ised the second half of the present century ; and to the 
 increased pressure of newly made wealth seeking social 
 position. 
 
 An examination of these creations furnishes some 
 rather curious results. If we take as our starting- 
 point the accession of Lord Grey to power in the 
 November of 1830, when the movement towards par- 
 liamentary reform acquired a decisive strength, we 
 shall find that from that period till the death of 
 Lord Palmerston, in October 1865, creations were com- 
 paratively few. Sir Robert Peel especially had a strong 
 sense of the danger of lowering the dignity of the peer- 
 age, and in his two ministries only twelve peers were 
 created. In the whole of this period of thirty-five 
 years, 148 hereditary peers were created ; 123 of them 
 by Liberal, and twenty-five by Conservative, ministries. 
 During this space of time the Liberal party were in 
 power for rather more than twenty-six years. 1 
 
 i A table of the additions to will be found in the Constitu* 
 the hereditary peerage made du- tional Year-Eook for 1893, j> 
 ring each ministry since 1830 63.
 
 426 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv 
 
 If we now pass to the twenty-seven years from the be- 
 ginning of 1866 to the end of 1892, we find no less than 
 179 hereditary peerages created eighty-five of them 
 by Liberal, and ninety-four by Conservative, ministers. 
 As the Liberals during this period were in power 
 for rather more than eleven, and the Conservatives 
 for rather more than fifteen, years, the proportion of 
 peerages created by the two parties was not very differ- 
 ent. On both sides the increased profusion of creations 
 is very great, and it is remarkable that, even in the 
 earlier period which I have reviewed, the number of 
 creations was considered by good judges both extrava- 
 gant and dangerous. 1 
 
 It will hardly, I think, be contended that modern 
 creations have added greatly to the weight and lustre 
 of the peerage. There have, no doubt, been many ex- 
 ceptions. In the field of politics a few very eminent 
 men have entered the Upper House while retaining all 
 their mental, though not all their physical, powers. 
 Others, of respectable, or even more than respectable, 
 ability, have gone into it because they have passed 
 under a cloud, because they have lost an election, or 
 been unsuccessful in an office, or come into collision 
 or rivalry with a colleague, or because a prime minister 
 wished to moderate or to muzzle them, or because he 
 desired to make room in his Cabinet for younger, 
 
 1 Thus, McCulloch, writing in single exception of Sir Robert 
 
 1846, says : ' There can be no Peel, have lavished peerages 
 
 doubt that the prerogative of with a profusion that has been 
 
 creating peers has been far too injurious alike to the dignity 
 
 liberally exercised, not to say and legitimate influence of the 
 
 abused, since the Revolution, peers and to the independence 
 
 and more especially since the of the Commons (McCulloch's 
 
 accession of George III. Mr. Account of the British Empire : 
 
 Pitt, and the ministers by whom ' House of Lords '). 
 he has been followed, with the
 
 CH. iv. MODERN CREATIONS 427 
 
 stronger, or more popular men. A few recruits, who 
 would have done honour to any assembly, have been 
 drawn from diplomacy, from the army and navy, from 
 the permanent offices, or from those great fields of 
 Indian administration in which so much of the strong- 
 est character and most masculine intellect of our gene- 
 ration is formed. Kinds of eminence that lie outside 
 the circle of Government employment and the legal 
 profession have been slightly touched. A great histo- 
 rian, who had been an active Whig politician, and who 
 supported his party powerfully both by his voice and 
 his pen, and a great novelist who had been for many 
 years a conspicuous Tory member of Parliament, were 
 raised to the lowest grade in the peerage ; and the same 
 dignity has been, more recently, conferred on one 
 writer, who (if we except his almost honorary Govern- 
 ment post of Laureate) had no special claim beyond 
 the fact that, for at least forty years, he was universally 
 recognised as one of the very greatest of living English- 
 men, the foremost poet of his own country, and, with 
 perhaps one exception, the foremost poet then living 
 in the world. But the bulk of the accessions to the 
 peerage come from other quarters? Great wealth, even 
 though it be accompanied by no kind of real distinc- 
 tion, especially if it be united with a steady vote in the 
 House of Commons, has been the strongest claim ; and, 
 next to wealth, great connections. Probably a large 
 majority of those who have of late years risen to the 
 peerage are men whose names conveyed no idea of any 
 kind to the great body of the English people. 
 
 It can scarcely be questioned that an infusion into 
 the aristocracy of a certain number of. rich merchant- 
 princes is an advantage. They represent a distinct 
 and important element in English life, and carry with 
 them great influence and capacity. It should not be
 
 428 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 forgotten that the most enduring aristocratic Govern- 
 ment that the modern world has known was that of 
 Venice, the work of a landless and mercantile aristo- 
 cracy. It is as little doubtful that the immense place 
 given to undistinguished wealth in the modern peerage 
 has contributed to lower its character. The existence 
 of a peerage has been always defended, among other 
 reasons, on the ground that it furnishes a reward for 
 great achievements ; and British Governments under- 
 take, though in a fitful and casual way, to distribute 
 State honours for many kinds of eminence. Perhaps 
 it would be better if they did not do so ; but, if they 
 attempt to measure kinds of eminence that are not 
 political, they should, at least, do so in a way that 
 bears some relation to the true value of things. An 
 Upper House depends much more than an elective As- 
 sembly on the personal weight and brilliancy of its 
 members, and perhaps the only kind of Upper House 
 that is likely in the long run to form some real 
 counterpoise to a democratic Assembly is one which in- 
 cludes a large proportion of a nation's greatest men, 
 representing supreme and acknowledged achievement 
 in many fields. 
 
 The House of Lords represents much, but it cer- 
 tainly does not represent this. If we ask what England 
 in the present century has contributed of most value 
 to the progress of the world, competent judges would 
 probably give a foremost place to physical science. In 
 no other period of the world's history have the disco- 
 veries in these fields been so numerous, so majestic, or 
 so fruitful. In no other period has so large a propor- 
 tion of the highest intellect taken this direction. In 
 no other department have English achievements, by the 
 acknowledgment of the whole scientific world, been so 
 splendid. There is, I believe, only a single very recent
 
 CH. iv. REWARDS OF GENIUS 429 
 
 example of purely scientific eminence being recognised 
 by a peerage. 
 
 Closely akin to science, and perhaps even more im- 
 portant among the elements of national well-being, are 
 the great healing professions. Here, too, our century 
 ranks among the most illustrious in the history of the 
 world. It has seen the discovery of anaesthetics, which 
 is one of the greatest boons that have ever been be- 
 stowed upon suffering humanity. It has produced the 
 germ theory of disease ; the antiseptic treatment in 
 surgery ; a method of removing ovarian tumours which 
 has successfully combated one of the most terrible and 
 most deadly of diseases ; a method of brain surgery 
 which has already achieved much, and which promises 
 inestimable progress in the future. It has vastly ex- 
 tended our knowledge of disease by the invention of 
 the stethoscope, the clinical thermometer, the laryngo- 
 scope, the ophthalmoscope, and in many other ways 
 which it is not here necessary to enumerate. England 
 may justly claim a foremost place in this noble work, 1 
 and many of her finest intellects have been enlisted in 
 its service. The title conferred on Lord Lister in 1897 
 is the first instance in which even the most splendid 
 achievement in this field has been recognised by a peer- 
 age. Another and lower dignity is the. stamp of hon- 
 our which the State accords to the very highest emi- 
 nence in medicine and surgery as if to show in the 
 clearest light how inferior in its eyes are the professions 
 which do most to mitigate the great sum of human 
 agony, to the professions which talk and quarrel and kill. 
 
 Art forms another important element in the full 
 development of national life. In this field, it is true, 
 
 1 An excellent sketch of Eng- Dr. Brudenell Carter on Medi- 
 lish achievements in this field cine and Surgery in Ward's 
 will be found in the essay by Reign of Queen Victoria.
 
 430 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CE. iv 
 
 England cannot claim any place at all comparable to 
 that which she has won in science, or in the healing 
 professions ; but if measured, not by a doubtful com- 
 parison of three or four of the greatest names, but by 
 the number of men of undoubted genius who have ap- 
 peared in a single generation, English art has never, I 
 believe, ranked so high as at present, and never com- 
 pared so favourably with the art of other nations. In 
 1896, for the first time, a peerage was conferred on an 
 English artist. The doors of the Upper House were 
 never opened to the men who, in this century, have ren- 
 dered the greatest services to the State and to humanity 
 to Simpson, whose discovery of chloroform has pre- 
 vented an amount of human suffering which it would 
 need the imagination of a Dante to realise ; to Stephen- 
 son, whose engineering genius has done more than that 
 of any other man to revolutionise the whole economical 
 and industrial condition of England ; to Chadwick, the 
 father of that great movement of sanitary reform which 
 has already saved more human lives than any, except, 
 perhaps, the very greatest, conquerors have destroyed ; 
 to Darwin, who has transformed our conceptions of the 
 universe and whose influence- is felt to the farthest 
 frontiers of speculative thought. For their own sakes 
 it is not to be. regretted that the claims of such men 
 were not thrown into humiliating competition with 
 those of the acute lawyers and politicians, the great 
 country gentlemen and the opulent brewers, who throng 
 the approaches to the Upper House ; but if such a House 
 is to continue, and, in a democratic age, is to retain its 
 weight and influence in the State, it is not likely that 
 elements of this kind can for ever be neglected. 
 
 The position of an hereditary Chamber in a demo- 
 cratic age is a problem of much difficulty and obscurity. 
 I have traced in a former chapter the force and the
 
 CH. iv. CONSERVATISM OF THE PEERAGE 431 
 
 danger of the current which is making all parts of the 
 political machinery of a piece, breaking down all the 
 inequalities, diversities of tendency, counterbalancing 
 and restraining influences, on which the true liberty 
 and the lasting security of nations so largely depends. 
 Such a movement is naturally inimical to the heredi- 
 tary principle in legislation, and the danger has been in- 
 tensified by the enormous increase during the last few 
 years in the political difference between the House of 
 Lords and one of the great parties in the State. This 
 fact is especially significant as about two-thirds of the 
 numerous creations that have been made in the present 
 reign have been made by Liberal Governments, while 
 an appreciable number of the earlier peerages consist of 
 members of those great Whig houses which have been 
 the oldest and steadiest supporters of civil and religious 
 liberty. It is true, as I have said, that an Upper House 
 is naturally a moderating, restraining, and retarding 
 body, rather than an impelling one ; that the bias of 
 an hereditary class is naturally on the side of habit and 
 tradition ; and that a very opulent class is inevitably 
 conservative in questions relating to property. But 
 these considerations are far from accounting for the full 
 measure of the change that has taken place. Till the 
 death of Lord Palmerston there was no great or steady 
 party preponderance in the House of Lords. It grew 
 up mainly under the policy of Mr. Gladstone ; but it 
 only acquired its overwhelming magnitude when that 
 statesman announced his determination to place the 
 government of Ireland in the hands of the party which 
 he had shortly before described as aiming at public 
 plunder and the dismemberrnent of the Empire. The 
 great body of the Liberal peers refused to follow him, 
 and although he had himself, in his different minis- 
 tries, created about eighty peerages, his followers in the
 
 432 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 House of Lords soon dwindled into little more than a 
 small number. of habitual office-holders. 1 
 
 The disproportion was very great ; but it must be 
 acknowledged that it would have been impossible 
 to form, by any fair means, an Upper Chamber consist- 
 ing of men of large property and considerable and in- 
 dependent positions, in which opinions hostile to Irish 
 Home Eule did not greatly preponderate. It must also 
 be added, that the elections of 1886 and 1895 have 
 shown beyond all possibility of doubt that, on the Home 
 Rule question, the House of Lords represented the true 
 sentiments of the democracy of the country. 
 
 And certainly the very remarkable parliamentary 
 history of England from 1892 to 1895 does not weaken 
 the conclusion. It appears that, under our present 
 conditions, some desire for a change of representation 
 and Government at every election acts with an almost 
 tidal regularity on the constituencies, though the 
 strength or weakness* of the revulsion depends upon the 
 policy of the rival parties. In the election of 1892, 
 and after a Conservative Government which had lasted 
 for more than six years, the Home Eule party obtained 
 a small and precarious majority of forty votes. In 
 England, and especially in the great towns of England, 
 it was utterly defeated ; in Great Britain as a whole 
 it was in a minority ; but the skilful organisation and 
 large over-representation of the Irish peasantry, and 
 the strength of the Church disestablishment party in 
 Wales, turned the balance, and a Government was 
 formed depending for its support on a small majority, 
 consisting of a number of discordant factions. The 
 
 1 In his speech on the reform Rule peers at about thirty, or 
 
 of the House of Lords, March about 5 per cent, of the House 
 
 19, 1888, Lord Rosebery esti- of Lords, 
 mated the number of the Home
 
 CH. iv. THE PARLIAMENT OF 1892-1895 433 
 
 remarkable House of Commons that sat in those years 
 passed a Bill placing the government of Ireland in the 
 hands of a separate Parliament, at the same time leav- 
 ing a powerful contingent of eighty Irish members in 
 the Parliament at Westminster ; it passed a vote in fa- 
 vour of the establishment of a separate Parliament in 
 Scotland ; it passed another vote in favour of breaking 
 up the British Isles into a federation, with a number 
 of distinct legislatures. It carried by a small majority, 
 though it afterwards rescinded, an amendment to the 
 Address, in March 1894, praying her Majesty ' that the 
 power now enjoyed by persons not elected to Parliament 
 by the possessors of the parliamentary franchise to pre- 
 vent Bills being submitted to your Majesty for your 
 Royal approval shall cease/ and expressing a hope that 
 ( if it be necessary your Majesty will, with and by the 
 advice of your responsible ministers, use the powers 
 vested in your Majesty to secure the passing of this 
 much-needed reform/ 
 
 The members of the Government clearly saw that it 
 was impossible to carry Home Rule by a direct appeal 
 to the nation. When the Home Rule Bill, which was 
 a capital portion of their policy, was rejected by an 
 overwhelming majority in the Lords, they did not ven- 
 ture to dissolve upon the question, and submit it to 
 the adjudication of the constituencies. They hoped to 
 secure a Home Rule majority on other grounds, by 
 creating and stimulating an agitation against the House 
 of Lords. The last speech delivered in Parliament by 
 Mr. Gladstone was truly described by Mr. Balfour as 
 'a declaration of war against the House of Lords/ 
 This and the Home Rule policy were the two legacies 
 which the retiring statesman bequeathed to his party. 
 
 As early as 1888 no less than seven members who 
 afterwards sat in the Radical Cabinet of 1892, voted in
 
 434 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 favour of a resolution of Mr. Labouchere stating ' that, 
 in the opinion of this House, it is contrary to the true 
 principles of representative government, and injurious 
 to their efficacy, that any person should be a member 
 of one House of the Legislature by right of birth, and 
 it is therefore desirable to put an end to any such ex- 
 isting rights/ 1 It is not surprising that such men 
 should have eagerly taken up the war against the 
 House of Lords, and Cabinet ministers took the fore- 
 most part in leading the assault. The policy of ' filling 
 the cup ' was openly avowed, and it meant that measure 
 after measure was to be introduced which was believed 
 to be popular, in order that the House of Lords might 
 reject them, and might in this way be discredited with 
 the electors. It was hoped that by such a policy the 
 tide of democratic feeling would rise with irresistible 
 force against the hereditary House. Mr. Morley rarely 
 made a speech on the platform without denouncing the 
 hereditary legislators. Mr. Shaw Lefevre informed his 
 constituents that ' the wisest course at the moment is 
 to reduce still further the power of the Lords, by de- 
 priving them of the power of veto/ thus reducing them 
 to an absolutely impotent body, with no power of even 
 retarding legislation. Sir William Harcourt declared 
 ' that a majority of a single vote in the House of Com- 
 mons is a more accurate representation of the popular 
 will than a majority of four hundred in the House of 
 Lords/ 2 
 
 Other ministers, and their supporters in Parliament, 
 followed suit, and outside the House Eadical organisa- 
 tions and Radical speakers and writers vied with one 
 another in the violence of their denunciations, in their 
 
 1 See Charley, The Crusade against the Constitution, pp. 514-16. 
 Ibid. pp. 437, 462.
 
 en. iv. AN ABORTIVE CRUSADE 435 
 
 contemptuous or arrogant predictions that the heredi- 
 tary principle had had its day. Catalogues of the pre- 
 tended misdeeds of the House of Lords during the last 
 fifty years were drawn up, without the slightest inti- 
 mation that it had ever fulfilled any one useful purpose. 
 One of the most malevolent and grossly partial of these 
 works 1 was widely circulated with the warm recom- 
 mendation of Mr. Gladstone. Another popular Radical 
 writer observed, in a highly jubilant strain, that at the 
 election of 1892 the country had given a clear mandate 
 to the House of Commons to enact a Home Eule mea- 
 sure ; that this was pre-eminently ' one of the Acts 
 upon which -a great and serious people never go back ' ; 
 and that the House of Lords was nothing more than a 
 farce and a nuisance, which must be speedily crushed. 
 He graciously added that its opposition might be over- 
 come by raising 500 sweeps to the peerage. 2 
 
 There were signs however, that all was not moving 
 as the leaders of this party desired. It was a curious 
 and significant fact that, on the retirement of Mr. 
 Gladstone, the party found it necessary or expedient, 
 after much heartburning, to go to the House of Lords 
 for their leader, putting aside the claims of their leader 
 in the Commons. Under the new system of local go- 
 vernment a vast multitude of elections were taking 
 place on an exceedingly democratic basis, and, to atten- 
 tive observers, no feature of these elections was more 
 remarkable than the extraordinary popularity of peers 
 as candidates, even in places where they had no special 
 local interests. It is only necessary to look through 
 the elections of the London County Council to recog- 
 nise this fact. It was evident, too, that the attempt to 
 
 1 Fifty Years of the House of ' Flow to Drive Home Rule 
 Lords. Home ' (Fortnightly Review, 
 
 2 Mr. Frederic Harrison, September, 1892).
 
 436 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IV. 
 
 create a popular agitation against the Lords was prov- 
 ing very impotent. Neither Great Britain, nor, indeed, 
 Ireland, showed the smallest indignation because the 
 House of Lords had rejected the Irish Home Rule Bill, 
 and because it had refused to consent to the scheme 
 for restoring, at the cost of a large sum of public 
 money, the tenants who had been evicted because they 
 had joined the conspiracy called ' the Plan of Cam-, 
 paign.' Nor were the ministers more successful in 
 their attempts to persuade the working-men that the 
 House of Lords had injured them because it had intro- 
 duced into the Employers' Liability Bill an amendment 
 providing that, if any body of workmen expressed by 
 a clear two-thirds vote their desire to make their own 
 insurance arrangements with their employers, and to 
 contract themselves out of the Bill, they should be 
 allowed to do as they wished. Divisions multiplied ; 
 bye-elections were unfavourable, and at last, after a 
 feeble life of three years, the Government fell, and the 
 inevitable dissolution speedily followed. On the eve 
 of the election Lord Rosebery clearly and emphatically 
 told the country that the real and supreme question at 
 issue was the House of Lords, and that Home Rule and 
 all the other government measures were involved in the 
 destruction of what he somewhat absurdly called its 
 ' legislative preponderance/ 
 
 The country had now the opportunity of expressing 
 its opinion about these men, their objects, and their 
 methods, and it gave an answer which no sophistry 
 could disguise and no stupidity could misunderstand. 
 The complete, crushing, and unequivocal defeat of the 
 Radical party in 1895 is certainly one of the most me- 
 morable events in the present generation. No circum- 
 stance of humiliation was wanting. The majority against 
 the late Government was greater than any which had
 
 CH. iv. THE GENERAL ELECTION OP 1895 437 
 
 been seen in England since the election of 1832. In 
 addition to several less important members of that 
 Government, four Cabinet ministers, including those 
 whose attacks on the House of Lords . I have quoted, 
 were defeated at the poll. In nearly every portion of 
 the Kingdom, and in town and country alike, the ver- 
 dict was the same. In constituencies where the mem- 
 bers of the party escaped disaster they usually did so 
 by a greatly decreased vote. But most conspicuous of 
 all was the emphatic condemnation of the New Liberal- 
 ism, not only in London, but also in the overwhelming 
 majority of the great provincial towns, where indus- 
 trial life is most intense, where vast masses of working- 
 men are agglomerated, and where the older Liberalism 
 had found its strongest and most enthusiastic support. 
 
 The lesson was a salutary one, and it is not likely to 
 be forgotten. It proved beyond dispute, what many 
 had begun to doubt the profound conservatism of the 
 great masses of the English people, and their genuine 
 attachment to the institutions of their country. It 
 showed clearly which section of the Liberal party in 
 the great Home Eule schism most truly reflected the 
 sentiments and the conviction of the nation. It showed 
 how enormously men had overrated the importance of 
 the noisy groups of Socialists, faddists, and revolution- 
 ists that float upon the surface of English political 
 thought like froth-flakes on a deep and silent sea. It 
 showed, also, not less clearly how entirely alien to Eng- 
 lish feeling was the log-rolling strategy which had of 
 late been growing so rapidly in English politics. 
 
 It would be uncandid and untrue to represent this 
 election as having turned solely on the question of the 
 House of Lords. As is always the case, many differ- 
 ent elements conspired to the result, and among them 
 must be included that periodical tidal movement to
 
 438 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 which I have already referred. At the same time, the 
 question of the Upper House was in the very fore- 
 ground of the battle, and was as directly at issue as it 
 is ever likely to be in England, unless she should 
 adopt the system of a Referendum. The result of the 
 election clearly showed that the House of Lords had 
 represented the opinion of the nation much more truly 
 than the House of Commons between 1892 and 1895 ; 
 that the country had no wish to overthrow it, or to de- 
 stroy its power, or to extirpate its hereditary element, 
 and that, as long as its members discharge their duty 
 faithfully, fearlessly, and moderately, they are not likely 
 to want popular support. 
 
 At the same time, there could be no greater error 
 than to infer from the triumph of 1895 that there is 
 no need of any change or reform in the Upper House, 
 widening its basis, increasing its strength and its re- 
 presentative character. With the overwhelming power 
 that is now placed in the hands of the House of Com- 
 mons ; with the liability of that House to great and 
 sudden fluctuations ; with the dangerous influence 
 which, in certain conditions of politics, small groups, 
 or side-issues, or personal dissensions or incapacities, 
 may exercise on the course of its decisions ; with the 
 manifest decay of the moderate and moderating ele- 
 ments in one of the great parties of the State, and 
 with a Constitution that provides none of the special 
 safeguards against sudden and inconsiderate organic 
 change that are found in America and in nearly all 
 Continental countries, the existence of a strong Upper 
 Chamber is a matter of the first necessity. It is 
 probable that the continuance, without a great cata- 
 strophe, of democratic government depends mainly 
 upon the possibility of organising such a Chamber, re- 
 presenting the great social and industrial interests in
 
 CH. ir. THE ROMAN SENATE 439 
 
 the country, and sufficiently powerful to avert the 
 evils that must, sooner or later, follow from the un- 
 bridled power of a purely democratic House of Com- 
 mons. There is no question in politics of a more 
 serious interest than the elements from which such a 
 body should be composed. 
 
 A brief glance at the constitutions of some other 
 countries may here be instructive. The most illustri- 
 ous of all examples of a great controlling, aristocratic 
 assembly is the Senate of ancient Eome, a body which 
 existed for no less than 1,300 years, and which, at 
 least during the period of the Bepublic, contributed 
 more than any other to mould the fortunes and the 
 character of the only State which both achieved and 
 long maintained supreme power in the world. Like 
 the House of Lords, it was at once a legislative and 
 a judicial body, though its legislative functions were 
 confined to sanctioning laws which had been voted by 
 the people, and were, as time went on, greatly im- 
 paired. It had, however, the right of imposing and 
 applying taxes. It had complete authority over fo- 
 reign policy, over the administration of the provinces, 
 and over the conduct of war. It watched, as a supreme 
 body, over the security of the State, and had even a 
 right in time of great danger to suspend the laws and 
 confer absolute powers on the consuls. Though it was 
 essentially a patrician body, it was not, until a late 
 period of the Empire, an hereditary body. One order 
 of magistrates possessed as such the right of entering 
 into it ; the bulk of the senators were chosen for life, 
 first by the consuls, and afterwards by the censors, but 
 chosen only out of particular classes. In the earlier 
 period they were exclusively patricians ; but they were 
 afterwards chosen from those who held magisterial 
 functions, and, as the magistrates were elected by the
 
 440 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. ir. 
 
 whole people, though by a very unequal suffrage, the 
 democratic influence thus obtained a real, though in- 
 direct, influence in the Senate. 
 
 During the last days of the Eepublic, and under the 
 Empire, the Senate went through other phases, which 
 it is not necessary for us to follow. Though greatly 
 hanged and greatly lowered, it survived every other 
 element of Koman freedom, and even after the estab- 
 lishment of the Byzantine Empire and amid the anar- 
 chy of the barbaric invasions it played no small part 
 in Eoman history. It is here sufficient to notice that 
 in the days of its vigour and greatness it was neither 
 an elective nor an hereditary body, though both elec- 
 tion and heredity had some influence over its compo- 
 sition ; and that, next to its own wisdom, it owed its 
 power chiefly to the number and importance of the 
 great functions that were confided to it. 1 
 
 If we pass over the great chasm which separates the 
 Roman Republic from our modern day, we shall find 
 little difference of opinion, among competent judges, 
 that the American Senate is the Upper Chamber, out 
 of England, which has hitherto ranked the highest. 
 Until very recent days all critics of the American Con- 
 stitution would have agreed with Story, that the Senate 
 is not only ' a most important and valuable part of the 
 system/ but is even ' the real balance-wheel, which ad- 
 justs and regulates its movements.' 2 Some discordant 
 voices have of late been heard, but as a work of con- 
 structive and prescient statesmanship it unquestion- 
 
 1 See Merivale'8 Hist, of sen and Gibbon, and, on its 
 
 Rome, iv. 9-14 ; Bluntschli, De later history, Gregorovius, Hist. 
 
 I'Etat, pp. 384-85 ; Laveleye, of Rome in the Middle Ages. 
 Gouvernement dans la Demo- " Commentaries on the Con' 
 
 cratie, ii. 19-22. See, too, the stitution of the United States t 
 
 notices of the Senate inMomm- ii. 182.
 
 CH. rv. THE AMERICAN SENATE 441 
 
 ably ranks very high, though one of its most important 
 characteristics is less due to deliberate foresight than to 
 an inevitable compromise. The smaller States refused 
 to join in the federation unless they obtained, in at 
 least one House, the security of an equal vote, and were 
 thus guaranteed against the danger of absorption by 
 their larger colleagues. In the Continental Congress, 
 which first met in 1774, it had been agreed that each 
 State should, in voting, count for only one ; and this 
 system was afterwards adopted in the Senate, with one 
 slight modification. In the Continental Congress the 
 vote had been by States. In the Senate each State was 
 represented by two members, but they voted as indi- 
 viduals, and might, therefore, take different sides. 
 
 By this process a powerful counterpoise was estab- 
 lished to the empire of mere numbers which prevailed 
 in the Lower House. Two members represented the 
 smallest as well as the largest State, and they were 
 chosen, not by a directly popular vote, but by the 
 State legislatures, which, like the Federal Legislature 
 consisted of two Houses. 1 
 
 The next question that arose was the length of time 
 during which the senators should hold their office. 
 Montesquieu had maintained that a senator ought to 
 be chosen for life, as was the custom in Eome and in 
 the Greek republics. Alexander Hamilton, the fore- 
 most political thinker of America, and probably Jay, 
 desired to adopt this system ; 2 but it was ultimately 
 agreed to adopt a limited period, considerably longer 
 than that which was assigned to the members of the 
 House of Eepresentatives. In this latter House the 
 term of office is only two years. In the Senate it is 
 
 i For the method of election, a Story, ii. 189. See, too, 
 see pp. 69, 70, of this yolume. Hamilton's Works^ i. 834.
 
 442 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 six years ; one-third of the Senate being renewed every 
 two years by the State legislatures. The Senate is 
 thus a permanent body subject to frequent modifica- 
 tions. It was the object of its framers to combine a con- 
 siderable measure of that continuity of policy which 
 should be one of the first ends of a legislator with 
 close and constant contact with State opinion ; to place 
 the Senate above the violent impulses, the transient 
 passions, the dangerous fluctuations of uninstructed 
 masses, but not above the genuine and steady currents 
 of national feeling. The qualifications of a senator 
 were also different from those of the members of the 
 other House. He must have been a citizen for nine 
 years, whereas in the other House seven years only 
 were required. He must be at least thirty years old, 
 while the members of the Lower House need only be 
 twenty-five. The age of thirty was probably adopted 
 in imitation of the Roman Senate. 
 
 The body, representing only the States, is a very 
 small one. It at first consisted of twenty-six members, 
 and with the multiplication of States has gradually 
 risen to ninety. 1 As might be expected ' from the 
 manner of election, nearly all its members are experi- 
 enced politicians, who have sat in the State legislatures 
 or the House of Representatives, or have held high 
 official posts, and in intellect, character and influence 
 they rise considerably above the average of American 
 public men. The Senate is presided over by the Vice- 
 President of the United States, who, however, is not 
 chosen by it, and who has no vote in it, except in the 
 event of equal division. As a legislative body it has 
 the same powers as the other House, except that it can- 
 not originate money Bills, though it may both alter 
 
 Including the senators for the new State of Utah.
 
 en. iv. THE AMERICAN SENATE 443 
 
 and reject them. It is not, like the House of Lords, 
 the supreme court of appeal, but public men accused 
 of violations of public trusts and duties may be im- 
 peached before it by the House of Representatives. 
 Its position in this respect resembles, but not exactly, 
 that of the British House of Lords. In America, two- 
 thirds of the members present must concur for a con- 
 viction ; the senators in cases of impeachment vote on 
 oath, or on affirmation, and not, like English peers, on 
 their honour ; their sentence does not extend further 
 than a removal from office and a disqualification from 
 holding office, and it leaves the convicted persons still 
 liable to indictment and punishment according to law. 
 If the person impeached is the President of the 
 United States, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
 presides over the Senate, as the Vice-President would 
 have a personal interest in the issue. It must be added 
 that impeachment has long been obsolete in England, 
 but is still sometimes employed in the United States. 
 Subject to the limits and conditions which the Ameri- 
 can Constitution lays down, it is a valuable and much- 
 needed restraint upon corruption. 
 
 But the most distinctive feature of the American 
 Senate is its large share in what in most countries 
 would be considered the functions of the Executive. 
 In foreign policy it exercises a commanding and most 
 salutary influence. The American Constitution has 
 carefully provided against the passion for organic 
 change which is natural to democracy ; but it was 
 more difficult to provide against the extreme dangers 
 that may ensue when foreign policy falls into the 
 hands of demagogues, is treated as a mere shuttlecock 
 of party, and conducted with a view to winning votes. 
 The United States have certainly not escaped this evil. 
 In few other countries has the language of public men,
 
 444 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 
 
 even in responsible positions, been more frequently 
 insulting to other nations, and especially to Great 
 Britain, on occasions when by such means some class 
 of electors might be won. If America had been a 
 European Continental power, surrounded by great 
 military empires, the attitude of her public men, and 
 even of her legislative bodies, towards other nations 
 and their affairs would have drawn her into many wars. 
 Fortunately for her, she escapes by her situation the 
 chief dangers and complications of foreign policy. In 
 England, at least, the motives that inspire the lan- 
 guage of her public men whenever an election is im- 
 pending are now well understood, and foreign affairs, 
 before they reach the stage when words are translated 
 into acts, pass into a calmer and wiser atmosphere. 
 No treaty with a foreign Power can be contracted, and 
 no ambassador or other negotiator can be appointed, 
 without the assent of the Senate, and the whole sub- 
 ject of foreign policy is therefore brought under the 
 supervision of the standing committee of that body. 
 
 Like the English Cabinet, it on these occasions de- 
 liberates and decides in secret. It is, indeed, one of 
 the most remarkable characteristics of the American 
 democracy, how much of its working is withdrawn 
 from the public eye. As I have already mentioned, 
 in the earlier period of its history the sittings of the 
 Senate were altogether secret, 1 and the rule of secrecy 
 still prevails in its ( executive sessions/ though, on a 
 demand of a fifth of the members present, the votes of 
 the members may be published. On the whole, this 
 arrangement does much to secure .a true, thorough, 
 and impartial examination of foreign policy, free from 
 the clap-trap and popularity hunting that too often 
 
 1 Bryce, i. 149.
 
 CH. iv. THE AMERICAN SENATE 445 
 
 accompany public discussion, and the corruption and 
 intrigue that usually follow complete secrecy. 
 
 In the last place, the Senate has a great part, in 
 concurrence with the President, in distributing the 
 patronage of the State. It is the President, indeed, 
 and the President alone, who selects, but the consent 
 of the Senate is required to the appointment. This 
 applies not only to the diplomatic and great executive 
 appointments, but also to the appointment of the 
 judges of the Supreme Court. Until 1867 the assent 
 of the Senate was only required to appointments, but 
 not to removals ; but a law of that year restricted the 
 sole power of the President to that of suspending an 
 official when Congress is not in session. 1 
 
 Such, in its general outlines, is this illustrious body, 
 which pla} r s so important a part in American history, 
 and has excited the envy and admiration of many 
 European statesmen and writers on politics. Its merits 
 are great and manifest, though there has been of late 
 eome tendency to believe that they have been exagge- 
 rated, and although it is, unfortunately, but too clear 
 that they have not been wholly retained. The sketch 
 which I have drawn in a former chapter of the later 
 course of American politics sufficiently proves it, and 
 sufficiently indicates the cause. The excellent system 
 of indirect and double election, which the framers of 
 the Constitution considered the best way of freeing 
 democracy from its baser and more foolish elements, 
 has not been able to withstand the pressure and the 
 ingenuity of caucuses and managers. The men who 
 are entrusted with the task of voting for the President 
 have long since been deprived by their electors of all 
 liberty of choice, and are strictly pledged to vote for 
 
 Ford's American Citizen's Manual^ p. 13.
 
 446 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 particular candidates. In the election of senators a 
 similar process has gradually, though more imperfectly, 
 prevailed. The State legislatures are essentially the 
 creatures of the caucus, and the members are pledged 
 when elected to vote for particular candidates for the 
 Senate. The system of the equality of the States has 
 been very valuable in counteracting one great danger 
 of democracy, but it introduced a danger of another 
 kind. The desire of the free and slave sections of the 
 country to multiply States of their own complexion, in 
 order to acquire or maintain a preponderance in the 
 Senate, was one main cause of the great Civil War. 
 The Senators are usually the most prominent states- 
 men of legislatures that are often exceedingly corrupt, 
 and the stream which springs from a tainted fountain 
 cannot be wholly pure. In spite of their small num- 
 ber and their careful selection, the members of the 
 American Senate have not been free from the taint or 
 suspicion of personal corruption. 1 
 
 Though in some respects greatly superior to the 
 British House of Lords as an Upper Chamber, the 
 Senate ranks in this respect clearly below it, and be- 
 low most of the Upper Houses in Europe. One of 
 the worst results of democracy, and especially one of the 
 worst results of the influence of American example 
 upon politics, is the tendency which it produces to 
 overrate the importance of machinery, and to under- 
 rate the importance of character in public life. It 
 is not surprising that it should be so, for the American 
 Constitution is, probably, the best example which his- 
 tory affords of wise political machinery. Nor are the 
 great men who formed it to be blamed if their succes- 
 
 1 See the admirable pages on the Senate in Mr. Bryce's Amer* 
 ican Commonwealth.
 
 CH. iv. THE AMERICAN SENATE 447 
 
 sors, by too lax laws of naturalisation and by breaking 
 down all the old restrictions and qualifications of race, 
 colour, and property, have degraded the electorate, 
 and in some serious respects impaired the working of 
 the Constitution. To me, at least, it seems more than 
 doubtful whether there is any political advantage 
 which is not too dearly bought if it leads to a perma- 
 nent lowering of the character of public men and of 
 the moral tone of public life. In the long run, the 
 increasing or diminishing importance of character in 
 public life is perhaps the best test of the progress or 
 decline of nations. It is an ominous sign for a nation 
 when its governors and legislators are corrupt, but it 
 is a still worse sign when public opinion has come to 
 acquiesce placidly in their corruption. 
 
 On the whole, however, the influence of the Ameri- 
 can Senate has been eminently for good ; but careful 
 observers believe that it has become more subservient 
 than it once was to the corrupt party influences that 
 sway American politics. Its veto upon public appoint- 
 ments has been, I believe, of great advantage, but it 
 has not always been exercised as it ought. There is 
 no diplomatic service in the world which has included 
 men of higher abilities or purer characters than that 
 of America ; but there is also, I suppose, no other civi- 
 lised nation where it would be possible for a Govern- 
 ment, for the purpose of ingratiating itself with a 
 particular class of voters, to select as their national 
 representative in a foreign country a man of another 
 nation who had recently fled from justice under the 
 gravest of imputations. The lines with which, not 
 long since, one of the best English observers, and one 
 of the most sincere English admirers of American in- 
 stitutions, sums up his impressions of the Senate are 
 not encouraging. ' So far as a stranger can judge/
 
 448 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 writes Mr. Bryce, ' there is certainly less respect for 
 the Senate collectively, and for most of the senators 
 Individually, now than there was eighteen years ago, 
 though, of course, there are among its members men 
 of an ability and character which would do honour to 
 any Assembly/ 1 
 
 I have dwelt at some length upon the Constitution 
 of the American Senate, as it is, on the whole, the 
 most remarkable of all modern instances of a successful 
 Upper Chamber not based on the hereditary principle. 
 It is, however, evident that much which is distinctive 
 in it, and which has contributed most to its peculiar 
 importance, is so alien to English ideas that it could 
 not be reproduced. It is hardly within the range of 
 possibility that the foreign policy of England and the 
 administration of the chief patronage of the Crown 
 should be placed under the direct control and supervi- 
 sion of an Upper Chamber sitting and deciding in 
 secret, nor are there any abuses in these departments 
 sufficiently grave to require so great a change. 
 
 It will not be necessary to bestow more than a cur- 
 sory glance on a few typical examples of the Senates, 
 or Upper Houses, of European countries. 2 In the 
 French Republic, by the constitutional law of 1875, 
 the Senate consisted of 300 members, of whom seventy- 
 five were elected for life by the two Houses combined, 
 and afterwards, as vacancies occurred, by the Senate 
 itself, while 225 were elected for nine years by the de- 
 
 1 Bryce's American Common- works, and is, of course, pub- 
 
 wealth, i. 161. lished separately. The reader 
 
 1 Full particulars of these con- may also consult Desplaces, 
 
 stitutions will be found in the Senats et Chambres ffautes, 
 
 works of Dareste and Demom- 1893 ; Morizot-Thibault, Droits 
 
 brynes, which I have already des Chambres Hautes en matiere 
 
 quoted. The revised Belgian de Finances^ 1891. 
 Constitution is later than these
 
 CH. iv. THE BUNDESRATH 449 
 
 partments and the colonies. In the case of this lat- 
 ter class the American system of indirect election is 
 adopted, deputies, delegates from the municipal coun- 
 cils and some other local authorities being the electors. 
 A third part of this portion of the Senate is renewed 
 every third year, and this system of partial renewal is 
 largely adopted in European Senates. It will be found 
 in those of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, 
 and Roumania, though the periods and proportions of 
 renewal are somewhat varied. In France, as in Den- 
 mark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, the senators 
 receive a small payment like the members of the Cham- 
 ber of Deputies. The French Senate can be converted 
 into a court of justice for the trial of political offences. 
 It possesses the same legislative powers as the Lower 
 Chamber, except that it cannot originate money Bills ; 
 and it has one special prerogative that the President 
 can only dissolve the Chamber of Deputies with its 
 consent. By a law of 1884 an important change was 
 introduced into its composition. The life peers were 
 not removed, but it was enacted that no more should 
 be created, and that all vacancies in this class should 
 be filled up, in the usual manner, by departmental 
 election. The whole body will thus spring from the 
 same elective source. 
 
 In the German Empire, the Bundesrath, or Federal 
 Council, is so unlike the usual type of Upper Cham- 
 bers that some writers hesitate to include it in that 
 category. It bears, indeed, in some respects a strong 
 resemblance to a privy council or a council of minis- 
 ters. It consists of fifty-eight members, appointed by 
 the governments of the different States in the German 
 Empire. In this representation, however, the Ameri- 
 can system of giving equal weight to all States has not 
 been adopted. The States are represented according 
 VOL. i. 29
 
 450 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IV. 
 
 to their importance, Prussia having seventeen voices. 
 The Chancellor of the Empire, who is himself chosen 
 by the Emperor, presides, and it is provided that the 
 presidence can only be in the hands of a representative 
 of Prussia or of Bavaria. 
 
 The powers of this body are very extensive and very 
 various. No measure can become a law of the Em- 
 pire, no treaty relating to the common affairs of the 
 Empire can become valid without its consent. No 
 change in the Constitution of the Empire can be effect- 
 ed if fourteen members of the Federal Council oppose 
 it. Its members have a right to appeal and speak in the 
 Keichstag, though they cannot be members of it. It 
 proposes measures which are to be brought before the 
 Keichstag, and new taxes are among the number, and 
 it sends delegates into that body to support them. It 
 has great administrative powers. It establishes from 
 among its members permanent commissions to preside 
 over the great departments of affairs which are com- 
 mon to the Empire. On each of these commissions at 
 least four States must be represented, besides the Em- 
 peror ; and there are provisions, which it is not here 
 necessary to describe, for giving special privileges on 
 special subjects or occasions to particular States. It 
 has the right, with the consent of the Emperor, to dis- 
 solve the Reichstag, and, except in the case of an at- 
 tack on German territory, its assent is required for a 
 declaration of Avar. It has the power of pronouncing 
 that States in the Imperial Confederation have failed 
 in fulfilling their federal obligation, and it can autho- 
 rise the Emperor to coerce them. Differences between 
 the members of the Confederation that are not provided 
 for by the letter of the Constitution, or cannot be 
 settled by legal tribunals, pass before the Federal 
 Council, but it does not possess in these cases a coer-
 
 CH. IV. 
 
 AUSTRIA 451 
 
 cive authority. It has also some right of supervision 
 over the administration of justice, especially in cases of 
 socialistic or anarchical agitation. The power of the 
 Emperor and the power of the Federal Council form 
 together such a formidable weight in the German Em- 
 pire that the real influence of the Keichstag has hither- 
 to been much less than that of the popular House in 
 most constitutional countries. 
 
 The constitutions of the States that compose the 
 German Empire are very various, and I will here only 
 refer briefly to that of Prussia, which is the most im- 
 portant. Its Upper House is composed of several dis- 
 tinct classes. There are members by hereditary right. 
 There are a small number who hold their seats by 
 virtue of great posts which they occupy. There are 
 members who are nominated for life absolutely by the 
 King, or on the presentation of certain classes of great 
 proprietors, of the universities, and of the principal 
 towns. The whole body consists of rather more than 
 300 members, and sixty must be present to form a 
 House. The Prussian House of Lords can only accept or 
 reject financial measures which are sent to it from the 
 Lower House. It can neither originate nor alter them. 
 
 The Austrian Upper Chamber is framed on much 
 the same composite principle as that of Prussia. In 
 1895 it consisted of the princes of the Imperial Family 
 who had attained their majority, sixty-eight hereditary 
 members, seventeen Catholic prelates, and 131 mem- 
 bers named for life. 1 Delegations from Austria and 
 Hungary, equal in numbers and elected in stated pro- 
 portions from the two Houses of the two countries, 
 sit alternately at Vienna and Buda-Pesth, and manage 
 those imperial affairs which are common to both nations. 
 
 1 Almanack de Gotha, 1896, p. 716.
 
 452 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. nr. 
 
 In Italy the composition of the Senate is more sim- 
 ple. With the exception of the princes of the royal 
 family, it consists exclusively of members nominated 
 for life by the King. No limit of numbers is imposed, 
 but the limit of age is forty years, and the members 
 have to be selected from eight categories. They are 
 chosen from the clergy, from the great scientific acade- 
 mies, from the Chamber of Deputies and provincial 
 councils, from the high functionaries of the State, from 
 the magistracy, the army, and the heads of families 
 who pay the highest taxes, and, finally, from those who 
 by their services or eminent merits have deserved well 
 of their country. The Italian Senate has all the legis- 
 lative powers of the Lower Chamber, with the excep- 
 tion of the origination of taxes, and, like most other 
 senates, it has the right of judging as a judicial body 
 grave political offences. 
 
 In Spain the Senate is composed of 360 members. 
 Half of these are elected in different proportions by the 
 clergy, the learned societies, the universities, the pro- 
 vincial councils, and by delegates from the most-taxed 
 commoners. These elected members are renewed by 
 halves every five years, and the sovereign has also the 
 right of dissolving this portion of the Senate. The 
 other half are permanent, and sit for life. Some of 
 them sit by their own right. To this category belong 
 the chief grandees of Spain and a number of important 
 functionaries in Church and State. The remainder 
 are nominated for life by the Sovereign, and are chosen 
 out of particular classes, much in the same way as in 
 Italy. The powers of the Senate are substantially the 
 same as in Italy. In Spain no measure can become 
 law unless it has been voted for by a majority of all 
 the members who constitute each Chamber. 
 
 In Switzerland the American system is adopted of
 
 OH. nr. ITALY, SPAIN, AND SWITZERLAND 453 
 
 having one Chamber, elected by the population in pro- 
 portion to its numbers, while the other Chamber is 
 elected by the different cantons, each canton being 
 equally represented by two deputies. 1 The respective 
 provinces of the Federal Government and of the go- 
 vernments of the cantons are minutely traced by the 
 Constitution, but the two Federal Assemblies have 
 almost equal, though in some respects slightly differ- 
 ing, powers, and, as I have already noticed, neither 
 has any special privilege in matters of taxation. A 
 curious feature of the Council of States is, that there 
 is no uniformity in the election of its members and in 
 the duration of their mandate. Each canton has a 
 right to send two deputies, but it may determine for 
 itself the mode of their election and the time for which 
 they are to sit. Sometimes these deputies are chosen 
 by the legislative bodies of the cantons, and sometimes 
 by direct popular election, and they are generally cho- 
 sen for either one year or three years. The two Cham- 
 bers usually sit separately, but for some purposes they 
 deliberate together, and in this case, in the event of a 
 difference, the greatly superior numbers in the more 
 popular House give it an overwhelming preponderance. 
 The two Houses sitting together choose the seven mem- 
 bers of the Federal Council, which is the executive 
 Government of the Confederation, and they select, out 
 of the seven members, the two who are to hold during 
 the ensuing year the position of President and Vice- 
 President of the Swiss Eepublic. The whole position 
 of the legislative bodies in Switzerland is materially 
 lowered by the Eeferendum, or power of appealing 
 directly to a popular vote upon proposed measures, 
 
 > In some cases a canton has been split into two, and in these 
 cases each half canton sends one member.
 
 454 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 which, as we have already seen, is the most remark- 
 able feature in the Swiss Republic. 
 
 In the Netherlands the Upper Chamber is elected 
 by the provincial States, and its members sit for nine 
 years, with a partial renewal every three years. With 
 the exception of a few important functionaries they 
 must have a considerable property qualification, which 
 is measured by the taxation they pay. By a singular, 
 and, as it seems to me, most unwise provision, the Upper 
 Chamber has no right either of initiating or of amend- 
 ing laws, and it therefore cannot exercise that influence 
 of modification or compromise which is the most valu- 
 able function of most Upper Houses. Its sole power 
 in legislation is to accept or reject in their totality the 
 measures that have been voted by the other Chamber. 
 It does not possess the power, which most Senates pos- 
 sess, of trying ministers who are impeached by the 
 Lower Chamber. This right of trial belongs to the 
 High Court of Justice ; and the members of this Court 
 are nominated by the King, who selects them from a list 
 of candidates which is submitted to him at each vacancy 
 by the Second Chamber. In the reform of the Con- 
 stitution which took place in 1887, the number of 
 members in the Upper Chamber was increased from 
 thirty-nine to fifty, and that in the Lower House from 
 eighty-six to 100. 
 
 In Belgium, by the Constitution of 1831 the Senate 
 was elected in a manner which is quite different from 
 those I have hitherto described, and which is pro- 
 nounced by the best Belgian writer on constitutions 
 to be ' detestable/ 1 It was elected directly, and on 
 the basis of mere numbers, by the same electors as the 
 House of Representatives. The principal differences 
 between the two Houses were, that the Senate was only 
 
 1 Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Democratie, ii. 455.
 
 CH. iv. THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 455 
 
 half as large a body as the Chamber of Deputies ; that 
 it was elected for eight instead of four years ; that its 
 members were unpaid, and that they could only be 
 selected from the larger taxpayers of the country. 
 The Senate is renewed by halves every four years ; 
 but the King has also the power of dissolving it, either 
 separately, or conjointly with the other Chamber. It 
 has the same legislative powers as the other House, 
 except that financial measures and measures relating to 
 the contingent of the army must be first voted by the 
 Lower House. It has no judicial functions, these 
 being reserved exclusively for the regular tribunals. 
 By the Constitution of 1893 great changes have been 
 made in the composition of the Senate, as well as of 
 the Lower House. A number of senators equalling 
 half the number of the members of the Chamber of 
 Deputies are now directly elected by the voters in the 
 provinces, in proportion to their population, and with 
 the provision that the electors must be thirty years old. 
 But, in addition to these, there is another class, chosen 
 by the provincial councils, each council returning from 
 two to four senators, according to the population of 
 the province it represents. The first of these two 
 classes of senators must be chosen from among citizens 
 who pay a certain amount of direct taxation. For the 
 second class no pecuniary qualification is required. The 
 sons of the sovereign, or, if he has no sons, the Belgian 
 princes who come next in the order of succession, are 
 senators in their own right. 
 
 The foregoing examples will be sufficient to illustrate 
 the different manners in which the problem of providing 
 an efficient Upper Chamber can be met. On the whole, 
 these Chambers in the Continental constitutions have 
 worked well, though they have in general not yet had 
 a very long experience, and most of them especially
 
 456 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. rv. 
 
 those of a composite character have included a large 
 proportion of the chief elements of weight and ability 
 in their respective countries. In the colonial constitu- 
 tions under the British Crown, where responsible Go- 
 vernments have been established, the usual type has 
 been one elective and popular Chamber and a smaller 
 Chamber, consisting of members who are either nomi- 
 nated for life directly by the Crown, or who sit by 
 virtue of high offices to which they have been ap- 
 pointed by the Crown, or, more frequently, of a com- 
 bination of both classes. In some cases, however, 
 election and nomination are mixed, and in others 
 the Upper House is completely elective, but subject 
 to a property qualification for the electors or members, 
 or for both. There are no less than seventeen colonies 
 under the British Crown with responsible Govern- 
 ments. Many of them are so small that inferences 
 drawn from them are scarcely applicable to a great 
 country, but a few of the Senates of the larger colonies 
 may be briefly sketched. 1 
 
 Thus, in the Dominion Parliament of the great Ca- 
 nadian confederation the Senate consists of eighty-one 
 members, nominated for life by the Governor-General 
 under the great seal of Canada, and selected in stated 
 proportions from the different provinces in the con- 
 federation. Each senator must be at least thirty years 
 old. He must have property to the value of four thou- 
 sand dollars and a residence in the province which he 
 represents, and he receives a payment of one thousand 
 dollars a year. Each province also has its own sepa- 
 rate Parliament, but they are not all constructed on 
 the same type. 
 
 1 An excellent summary will Constitutions, 1891. See, too, 
 be found in a little work of Mr. Martin's Statesman's Year-Book. 
 Arthur Mills, called Colonial
 
 OH. IT. COLONIAL SENATES 457 
 
 In Newfoundland the Legislative Council consists 
 of 15 members nominated by the Governor, while the 
 House of Assembly is elected by a democratic suffrage, 
 though a property qualification is retained for the 
 members. 
 
 In Africa, the Senate of the Cape of Good Hope 
 consists of twenty-two members, elected for ten years, 
 and presided over by the Chief Justice of the colony. 
 There is a property qualification both for electors and 
 members, and the members of both Houses are paid. 
 Full responsible government in this colony only exists 
 since 1872. The neighbouring colony of Natal was 
 made a distinct colony in 1856. Its Legislative Coun- 
 cil is formed of five official and two nominated mem- 
 bers, together with twenty-three members who are 
 elected for four years by electors possessing a certain 
 property qualification. Vast territories lie outside these 
 colonies, which are administered by commissioners ; 
 while the West African dependencies, with their large 
 native and almost infinitesimal European populations, 
 and the more important islands adjacent to Africa, are 
 managed by governors, with the assistance of councils. 
 
 In the numerous islands or island groups which are 
 subject to the British Crown there is much variety of 
 constitution. Thus, in the m Bahamas, in Barbadoes, 
 and in the Bermudas, we find the threefold constitu- 
 tion consisting of a governor, a popular elected As- 
 sembly, and a Legislative Council nominated by the 
 Crown. In the Leeward Islands, which were combined 
 into a single Government in 1882, the Federal Govern- 
 ment consists of a governor and a Legislative Council 
 of ten nominated and ten elected members, represent- 
 ing the different islands. In Jamaica there is now no 
 representative Assembly, but the governor is aided by 
 a Privy Council and a Legislative Council of fourteen
 
 458 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 
 
 ex-officio and nominated members and fourteen elected 
 members. The governor presides over the Legislative 
 Council. A measure involving expenditures can only be 
 introduced with his consent, but nine elected members 
 can veto it unless he pronounces it to be of paramount 
 importance. Most of the small islands are admini- 
 stered by a governor and a Legislative Council consisting 
 partly of official members and partly of members nomi- 
 nated by the Crown. It has been remarked that there 
 is a strong tendency of opinion in the island colonies 
 hostile to representative institutions, and in favour of 
 more concentrated government honestly administered. 
 Thus, in Grenada and St. Vincent representative insti- 
 tutions were abolished at the request of the people in 
 1876 and 1877, and a form of government by a governor 
 and Legislative Council, partly official and partly un- 
 official, has been adopted. A very similar change had 
 been effected, a few years earlier, in several of the islands 
 which formed part of the Leeward Islands. Jamaica, 
 in 1866, surrendered a representative Constitution that 
 had existed for 200 years, and accepted a far less demo- 
 cratic Constitution; and on the coast of Central America 
 representative institutions, after an experience of seven- 
 teen years, were abolished in British Honduras in 1870. 
 In Australia the colonial governments have passed 
 through several phases, and questions relating to the 
 formation of an Upper Chamber, its power over money 
 Bills, and its relations to the governor and the Lower 
 House, have been fiercely debated, and usually argued 
 chiefly upon British precedents. It is here only neces- 
 sary to state the nature of the Upper Council in each 
 colony. In New South Wales the Legislative Council 
 is nominated for life by the governor. The minimum 
 number is fixed at twenty-one; but this number has 
 been largely exceeded, and there was one unsuccessful
 
 Cfl. IV. COLONIAL SENATES - HEREDITY 459 
 
 attempt, in the premiership of Sir Charles Cowper in 
 1861, to overbear the Council by nominating a large 
 number of members in order to win a majority. It was 
 strongly condemned, both by public opinion in the 
 colony and by the authorities in England. 1 Four-fifths 
 of the members must be persons not holding any paid 
 office under the Crown, but this is not held to include 
 officers in the sea and land forces or retired officers on 
 pension. 2 In Queensland the Legislative Council is 
 formed on the same principle of nomination ; in Victo- 
 ria, in South Australia, in Western Australia, and in 
 Tasmania, it is an elective body, directly elected for 
 limited periods, but usually under a special property 
 qualification. In New Zealand the less democratic 
 method is adopted, and the Legislative Council consists 
 of members nominated by the governor. Before 1891 
 they were appointed for life ; but an Act of that year 
 made all new appointments tenable for seven years 
 only, though the councillors may be reappointed. 8 
 
 If we turn now from these various constitutions to 
 our own we shall find, I think, a very general agree- 
 ment among serious political thinkers that it would 
 be an extreme misfortune if the upper, or revising, 
 Chamber in the Legislature were abolished, and an 
 agreement, which, if less general, is still very wide, 
 that it must, in some not far distant day, be materially 
 altered. For my own part, I should consider it a mis- 
 fortune if the hereditary element, of which it is now 
 mainly composed, were not still largely represented in 
 it. The peerage occupies a vast place in English his- 
 tory and tradition. It has a widespread influence and 
 
 1 See Coghlan's Wealth and a Coghlan, p. 501. 
 
 Progress of New South Wales, 3 New Zealand Year-Book^ 
 
 p. 500. Kusden's History of 1894, p. 14. 
 Australia^ iii. 258-62.
 
 460 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 an indisputable popularity ; and, as I have endea- 
 voured to show, its members possess in a high degree 
 some of the qualities and capacities that are most 
 useful in the government of men. Their political pro- 
 minence not only represents, but also sustains and 
 strengthens, a connection between the upper classes of 
 the country and political life, to which England owes 
 very much, and in an age as democratic as our own it 
 may qualify some evils, and can produce no danger. 
 
 It must also be remembered that, without resorting 
 to revolutionary measures, no reform of the House of 
 Lords can be carried without its own assent, and it is 
 scarcely within the limits of possibility that it would 
 sanction a law which extinguished its hereditary ele- 
 ment. To carry such a measure in spite of it would 
 probably prove a long and most serious task. It has 
 become a fashion of late years, at times when the House 
 does, or threatens to do, something which is thought 
 unpopular to organise great London demonstrations 
 against it. Some thousands of men and women, 
 largely swollen by mere holiday-seekers, and repre- 
 senting at most a very doubtful voting preponderance 
 in two or three London constituencies, are accus- 
 tomed to assemble in Hyde Park, and by the mouth 
 of men who, for the most part, would be unable to find 
 a single constituency that would send them into Parlia- 
 ment, to proclaim themselves the voice of the nation, 
 and hurl defiance at the Upper House. In England 
 these things have little weight. In France they have 
 been more serious, for more than one revolution, for 
 which the immense majority of the French people had 
 never wished, has been accomplished by the violence of 
 a Paris mob. There can, however, be little doubt that, 
 if a proposal for the violent destruction of the House 
 of Lords were brought authoritatively before the coun-
 
 CH. iv. REFORMS OF THE PEERAGE 461 
 
 try, that House would find in the great silent classes of 
 the nation a reserve of power that would prove very for- 
 midable. Nor is it possible to predict what results 
 and what reactions would ensue if once the barriers of 
 law were broken down, and the torrent of revolution- 
 ary change let loose. It is not likely that true liberty 
 would gain by the struggle. 
 
 The British aristocracy, as we have seen, contains a 
 large number of members who possess every moral and 
 intellectual quality that is needed for a good legislator. 
 It includes also many members who have neither the 
 tastes, nor the knowledge, nor the capacity of legisla- 
 tors, and whose presence in the House of Lords proba- 
 bly tends more than any other single circumstance to 
 discredit it in the country. The obvious remedy is, 
 that the whole peerage should elect a certain number 
 of their members to represent them. Eighty or 100 
 peers returned in this way to the Upper House would 
 form a body of men of commanding influence and of 
 the highest legislative capacity. The Irish and Scotch 
 peerages already furnish examples of peers of the realm 
 who are not members of the Upper House, though they 
 are eligible for that position. It is much to be desired 
 that this class should be increased. Among other ad- 
 vantages, it would meet the case of men who, having 
 attained great eminence, or performed great services in 
 fields very widely removed from politics, are deserving 
 of the highest dignity the State can bestow, but who 
 have no natural aptitude for the task of a legislator. 
 On the whole, few better constituencies can be con- 
 ceived than the whole body of the peerage ; but the 
 elected peers should be chosen by a cumulative vote, or 
 by some other method which would secure the propor- 
 tionate representation of all shades of opinion, and not, 
 as is now the case in Ireland and Scotland, by a method
 
 462 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 that practically extinguishes minorities. Those peers 
 who were not elected, or who did not wish to be elected, 
 to the Upper House should have the right of standing 
 like other men for the Lower one. 
 
 To these ought, I think, to be added a number of 
 life peers limited by statute. Some of them might be 
 what are called 'official peerages/ Great positions of 
 dignity or responsibility, which are rarely attained 
 without exceptional ability and experience, which make 
 men the natural and official representatives of large 
 classes, and bring them into close touch with their in- 
 terests, sentiments, and needs, might well carry with 
 them the privilege of a seat in the Upper House. But, 
 in addition to these, the Crown should have the power 
 of conferring life peerages on men who, in many dif- 
 ferent walks, are eminently distinguished by their ge- 
 nius, knowledge, or services. In this way it would be 
 possible vastly to increase both the influence and the 
 efficiency of the Upper House, and to bring into it men 
 who do not possess the fortunes that are generally sup- 
 posed to be needed for an hereditary peerage. The life 
 peerages that are already possessed by the bishops and 
 by some law lords furnish a precedent. 
 
 Whether beyond the limits I have stated, the repre- 
 sentative principle should be introduced into the British 
 Upper House is a more difficult question. In com- 
 paring England with the Colonies, it must always be 
 remembered that a genuine aristocracy is a thing which 
 the Colonies do not possess, and which it is not pos- 
 sible to extemporise. It should be remembered, too, 
 that a new country, where few traditions have been 
 formed, where all the conditions of life and property 
 and class relations are very simple, and where the task 
 of legislation is restricted to a narrow sphere, may be 
 well governed under constitutions that would be very
 
 CH. IV. REFORMS OP THE PEERAGE 463 
 
 unsuited to a highly complex and artificial society, 
 which is itself the centre of a vast and most heteroge- 
 neous empire. American experience shows that the 
 system of double, or indirect election, cannot retain 
 its distinctive merits in times or countries where par- 
 ty spirit runs very high. The men who are elected by 
 this method simply represent the opinions of a party 
 majority in the electing body, and are designated by 
 the organisation by which that electing body is cre- 
 ated. 
 
 Some statesmen of considerable authority would vest 
 county councils and municipalities with large powers of 
 electing members to the Upper House. Whether these 
 for the most part very recently constructed bodies are 
 as yet so conspicuous for their influence or their judicial 
 wisdom that they could be safely entrusted with this task 
 seems to me very doubtful. If the projects which are 
 now vaguely agitated for breaking up the United King- 
 dom into a federation should ever in any form or 
 measure be accomplished, something might be done to 
 mitigate the weakness and the danger that such a dis- 
 integration would inevitably produce, by receiving in 
 the Upper House the representatives of local legisla- 
 tures ; and a similar system might with great advan- 
 tage be extended to the distant parts of the Empire. 
 Distant colonies, which lie wholly outside the range 
 of English party politics, and have no English party 
 objects to attain, would almost certainly send to an 
 Upper House men of superior character and abilities, 
 and their presence might have some real effect in 
 strengthening the ties that bind the Empire together. 
 
 It is impossible to predict what form public opinion 
 on these matters may assume. Some pressing party 
 interest, or passion, or personal ambition, will probably 
 in the last issue determine its course, unless timely wi*-
 
 464 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 dom in dealing with this momentous question is dis- 
 played by the true lovers of the Constitution. 
 
 Some other and minor reforms of the House of Lords 
 seem also to be loudly called for. One of these is the 
 conversion of an unlimited into a limited veto. A 
 power of preventing for all time measures which both 
 the House of Commons and the constituencies desire 
 should not be lodged Avith any non-elected legislative 
 body, and an unlimited creation of peers is the only 
 means which the Constitution provides for overcoming 
 the resistance of the House of Lords. That House, in 
 fact, never attempts to exert its full theoretical power 
 on any large question, though there have been occa- 
 sional and deplorable instances of its rejecting, through 
 long successions of Parliaments, in spite of constant 
 majorities in the Lower House, reforms affecting small 
 classes of people and exciting no widespread interest. 
 But on great questions, and on questions involving 
 party issues, this is never done ; and the very magni- 
 tude of the power theoretically vested in the House of 
 Lords is an obstacle to its moderate exercise. A veto 
 limited and defined by law would be more fearlessly 
 exercised and more generally accepted. The English 
 system of veto resembles in some respects the English 
 system of parliamentary impeachment, which, extend- 
 ing to life, liberty, and the confiscation of goods, is a 
 weapon of such tremendous force that it has become 
 completely obsolete ; while in America, impeachment, 
 carrying only very moderate penalties, is sometimes, 
 though rarely, employed. 
 
 It is well understood that, on all great questions, the 
 veto of the House of Lords is now merely suspensory, 
 securing that no important measure can be carried 
 which does not represent the distinct, the deliberate, 
 the decided opinion of the nation. When a policy
 
 CH. IV. A LIMITED VETO 465 
 
 which the House of Commons has adopted and the 
 House of Lords rejected has been clearly ratified by 
 the nation, voting on a distinct issue, and by consid- 
 erable and sustained majorities, the House of Lords 
 invariably accepts it. But the importance of the func- 
 tion it exercises in delaying great changes until this 
 sanction has been obtained can hardly be overesti- 
 mated. As I have already said, many measures pass 
 through the House of Commons which the constituen- 
 cies never desired, or even considered, because they 
 were proposed by ministers who, on totally different 
 questions, had obtained a parliamentary majority. 
 Other measures are the result of transient excitement 
 arising from some transient cause. Others are carried, 
 in the face of great opposition, by a bare, or perhaps 
 languid, divided, and dwindling majority. Other 
 measures are accepted, not because they are desired, 
 but because they cannot be rejected without overthrow- 
 ing a ministry. 
 
 With the increasing influence of ignorance in the 
 electorate, and the rapid disintegration of Parliaments 
 into independent groups, the necessity of a strong re- 
 vising tribunal, exercising a suspensory veto, becomes 
 continually greater. It is extremely desirable that the 
 'negative of the House of Lords should at least extend 
 over one Parliament, so that the particular questions 
 at issue should be brought directly before the electors. 
 It would also be very desirable that it should be finally 
 overcome, not by a bare majority of the House of Com- 
 mons, but by a majority of at least two-thirds. 
 
 The adoption of provisions making such majorities 
 necessary in many branches of legislation and admin- 
 istration would furnish a powerful safeguard against 
 revolutionary or tyrannical measures. In America, a 
 two-thirds majority must exist in both Houses in order 
 VOL. i. 30
 
 466 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 to overcome the veto of the President ; and we have 
 already seen the still stronger precautions that are 
 taken in the American Constitution against parliamen- 
 tary attacks on the Constitution, on contract, pro- 
 perty, or individual freedom. In theory, the unlimited 
 power of veto vested in the House of Lords forms a 
 sufficient barrier against such attacks. In practice 
 this protection has become far from sufficient. With- 
 out the existence of a real Constitution, limiting par- 
 liamentary powers, and protected, as in America, by a 
 Supreme Court, England will never possess, in these 
 vital points, the security which exists beyond the At- 
 lantic. Perhaps the best protection that could be 
 obtained without such a fundamental reorganisation 
 would be a law providing that no measure should be 
 carried against the resistance of the Upper House un- 
 less it had been adopted by two successive Houses of 
 Commons, and by majorities of at least two-thirds. 
 
 Such a change would, in theory, diminish the pow- 
 ers of the House of Lords. In practice it would, I 
 believe, considerably increase them ; and, if it were 
 accompanied by reforms such as I have indicated, it 
 would render the House very powerful for good. In 
 the days when government was mainly in the hands 
 of classes who were largely influenced by traditions, 
 precedents, and the spirit of compromise, tacit un- 
 derstandings, unrecognised by law, were sufficient to 
 define the provinces, to support, and at the same time to 
 limit, the powers of the different parts of the Consti- 
 tution. Power in England has "now passed into other 
 hands ; another spirit prevails, and it is very neces- 
 sary that every function and capacity should be clearly 
 recognised and accurately limited by law. 
 
 Another reform which would, I think, be very ad- 
 visable would be that in England, as in most Continen-
 
 OH. IV. MINISTERS IN BOTH HOUSES . 467 
 
 tal countries, Cabinet ministers should have the right 
 of opposing or defending their measures in both Houses, 
 though their right of voting should be restricted to 
 the House to which they belong. The great evil of 
 the present system is especially felt when the most 
 powerful minister is in the House of Lords, while the 
 decisive verdict on his policy lies with the Commons. 
 A policy explained by subordinates or delegates has 
 never the same weight of authority as when it is ex- 
 pounded by the principal. It is a manifest defect in 
 the Constitution that when the existence of a ministry 
 depends on a House of Commons decision on some 
 question of foreign policy, such a minister as Lord 
 Salisbury or Lord Rosebery should be excluded. It is 
 also a great evil that a Prime Minister, when forming 
 his ministry, should be restricted in his choice of the 
 men who are to fill posts of immense responsibility, 
 by a consideration of the House to which they belong, 
 A change which made such a restriction unnecessary 
 would certainly add to the efficiency of ministries, 
 and its benefits would far outweigh its disadvantages. 
 These disadvantages appear to be a slight increase of 
 the labour thrown on Cabinet ministers, and an un- 
 balanced increase of the debating (though not voting) 
 powers of the ministry, arising from the fact that the 
 chief ministers would have the power of speaking in 
 two Houses, while the leaders of the Opposition would 
 be confined to one. 1 The appearance, however, of a 
 Cabinet minister in the House to which he did not be- 
 long ought, I think, to be optional, and not obligatory. 
 The last reform I would suggest would be some 
 
 1 It would be, of course, possible to extend the privilege to 
 members of either House who had held Cabinet rank.
 
 468 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. IV. 
 
 relaxation of the present rule by which all the stages 
 through which a measure has passed are lost if the 
 measure is not completed in a single session. A com- 
 plete abolition of this rule, which would enable the 
 House of Commons to take up at the beginning of a 
 session the measures which were left unfinished in the 
 last, at the stages which they had then reached, pro- 
 vided there had been no dissolution in the interval, 
 has been often advocated. It has been argued that 
 the present system involves an enormous waste of time 
 and power, that this waste becomes continually more 
 serious with the increase of public business, that it 
 gives a great encouragement to deliberate obstruction. 
 Few things, indeed, seem more absurd than that a 
 measure which has been thoroughly discussed and re- 
 peatedly sanctioned by the House of Commons should 
 be lost at its last stage, not because of any parliamen- 
 tary defeat, but simply because the House, by mere 
 pressure of business, has been unable to complete its 
 work before it is prorogued for its holiday, and that in 
 the ensuing session the whole ground has to be trod- 
 den again by the same men. Such is the method of 
 doing business which is adopted by one of the busiest, 
 and also one of the most loquacious, assemblies in the 
 world. In most foreign legislatures a different method 
 is pursued. In Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, 
 the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Norway, 
 and the United States, unfinished legislation may be 
 taken up in the following session in the stage in which 
 it was left when the prorogation took place. 1 Yet in 
 none of these countries, with the possible exception of 
 
 1 See Dickinson's Constitution and Procedure of Foreign Par- 
 liaments, 2d ed., p. 9.
 
 CH. nr. POSTPONED LEGISLATION 469 
 
 America, is the pressure of business as great as in the 
 British Parliament. 1 
 
 There are, however, real arguments in favour of the 
 British system. It enables the House of Commons 
 easily to get rid of many proposals which it does not 
 consider ripe or fit for immediate legislation, but which 
 for various reasons it does not wish to meet with a 
 direct negative. There is also another consideration, 
 which I have already indicated, and which, though it 
 is not often openly expressed, is, I believe, widely felt, 
 It is, that the House of Commons, as it is at present 
 constituted, with its practically unlimited powers, may 
 become, under the direction of a rash or unscrupulous 
 minister, so great an evil and danger in the State that 
 whatever seriously clogs the wheels of the machine is 
 rather an advantage than a disadvantage. Great as is 
 the scandal arising from deliberate obstruction or the 
 unbridled license of loquacious vanity ; great as are the 
 evils of the postponement of much necessary legisla- 
 tion, or the hasty and perfunctory discharge of duties 
 which do not lend themselves to party exigencies, 
 these things, in the eyes of many, are not too high a 
 price to pay for an exemption from the calamities that 
 would follow, if a party majority and an ambitious 
 minister could swiftly do their will in tearing to pieces 
 the old institutions and settled social conditions of the 
 country, in order to build up their own power on their 
 ruin. As long as England is governed under its pre- 
 sent system 'the declining efficiency of Parliament 
 
 1 One result of this system is lie Bills introduced by private 
 
 the great obstacle it throws in members in five years, from 
 
 the way of legislation initiated 1884 to 1889 ; 960 were intro- 
 
 by private members. Mr. Dick- duced, 110 only became law 
 
 inson has given some curious (p. 8). 
 tatistics about the fate of pub-
 
 470 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 
 
 will be watched by many patriotic men with no un- 
 mingled regret. The downward progress is at least 
 a slow one. In spite of the destruction of all the 
 balances and restrictions of the Constitution, the men 
 who desire to revolutionise find many obstacles in their 
 way, and the men who, in order to win votes in their 
 constituencies, have pledged themselves to revolution- 
 ise, without wishing to do so, find easy pretexts for 
 evading their promises. 
 
 No serious evil, however, I think, would follow if it 
 were provided that, when a measure had passed through 
 all its stages in the Commons, its consideration in the 
 Lords, and the consideration of the Lords' amendments 
 in the Commons, might be adjourned to, or extended 
 over, the ensuing session. The detailed revision and 
 amendment of elaborate measures, which is one of the 
 most useful and uncontested duties of an Upper House, 
 cannot be properly performed when those measures 
 are only sent up to it at the very end of a session, and 
 have to be hurried through all their stages in a few 
 days. Careful and well-considered legislation is, after 
 all, the great end of a legislative body ; and it would 
 be much more fully attained in England if the con- 
 sideration of laws, which is unduly protracted in one 
 House, were not unduly hurried in the other.
 
 CO, T. THE BALANCE OF POWER 471 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 NATIONALITIES 
 
 THE effects of democracy on the liberty of the world 
 are not only to be traced in the changes that are 
 passing over the Governments and constitutions of the 
 different nations, and in the wide fields of religions, 
 intellectual, social, and industrial life ; they are also 
 powerfully felt in international arrangements, and es- 
 pecially in the growth of a doctrine of nationalities as 
 the basis of a new right of nations, which has been 
 one of the most conspicuous features of nineteenth- 
 century history. It is essentially different from the 
 old doctrine of the divine right of kings, which re- 
 garded great tracts of the world as the rightful domi- 
 nion of particular dynasties ; and also from the doc- 
 trine of the balance of power, which prevailed at the 
 Peace of Westphalia, and governed most of the capital 
 changes in Europe during the two succeeding centu- 
 ries. According to the great politicians and political 
 philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, the maintenance of European stability is the su- 
 preme end of international politics. The first object 
 in every rearrangement of territory should be to make 
 it impossible for one great Power to absorb or dominate 
 over the others ; and, by multiplying what are called 
 buffer States, and by many artificial divisions and appor- 
 tionments of territory, they endeavoured to diminish 
 the danger of collisions, or at least to limit as much as
 
 472 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 possible their number and their scope. Territorial 
 changes, in their view, should be regarded mainly with 
 a view to these objects, and justified or condemned in 
 proportion as they attained them. The more modern 
 doctrine is, that every people, or large section of a 
 nation, has an absolute and indefeasible right to the 
 form of government it pleases, and that every imposi- 
 tion upon it of another rule is essentially illegitimate. 
 
 It is not here necessary to trace in much detail the 
 genesis of this view. It was prominent among the 
 original doctrines of the French Ke volution, but it 
 was not long consistently maintained. Popular votes 
 taken under the pressure of an occupying army, and 
 largely accompanied by banishments, proscriptions, 
 and coups d'etat, had, it is true, some place in the first 
 conquests of the Revolution. The Convention pro- 
 claimed in the loftiest language its determination to 
 respect the inalienable right of every people to choose 
 its own form of government, 1 and the Republic made 
 much use of the doctrine of the rights of nationalities 
 to kindle revolts ; but it also made those revolts pow- 
 erful instruments for effecting its own territorial ag- 
 grandisement, and it was speedily transformed into a 
 military despotism the most formidable, the most ag- 
 gressive, the most insatiably ambitious the modern 
 world has ever seen. The strength and tenacity of the 
 sentiment of nationality were, indeed, seldom more 
 forcibly displayed than in the struggle of Spain and of 
 the Tyrol against the Emperor who professed to be 
 the armed representative of the French Revolution. 
 
 After "Waterloo the rights of nationalities suffered a 
 long eclipse. The Congress of Vienna and the arrange- 
 ments of the peace divided countries and populations 
 
 1 Sorel, IS Europe et la Revolution Fran$aise, iii. 154-55, 169-70.
 
 CH. v. NATIONALITIES, 1830 - 1848 473 
 
 among the victorious Powers, with the most absolute 
 disregard for national antecedents and national wishes. 
 The old republic of Genoa was handed over to Pied- 
 mont, which it detested. The still older republic of 
 Venice became a province of Austria. Saxony was 
 divided, and a great part annexed to Prussia. Poland 
 was again partitioned. Catholic Belgium was united 
 with Protestant Holland, and the Catholic electorates 
 on the Rhine with Protestant Prussia. The doctrine 
 of the divine right of kings, and a formal repudi- 
 ation of the right of nations to choose their forms of 
 government, were the basis of the new ' Holy Alliance/ 
 of the resolutions of the Congress of Laybach, and of 
 the whole policy of Metternich, and in accordance with 
 these principles insurrection was put down by an Au- 
 strian army in Naples, and by a French army in Spain. 
 There were, however, signs that the doctrine of na- 
 tionalities was not extinct, and there were movements 
 in this direction which excited hopes that were not fully 
 justified by the event. The enthusiasm evoked by the 
 emancipation of Greece, by the revolt of the Spanish 
 colonies in America, and by the foreign policy of Can- 
 ning, marks the turn of the stream, and the French Re- 
 volution of 1830 kindled a democratic and a nationalist 
 movement in many countries much like that which ac- 
 companied the Revolution of 1848. There were insur- 
 rections or agitations in many of the States of Italy, in 
 Germany, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and 
 Brazil. Most of them were speedily suppressed. Russia 
 crushed with merciless severity insurrection in Poland. 
 An Austrian army put down revolt in the Pontifical 
 States. In Germany and Austria and Italy politics 
 soon moved along the old grooves, and the spirit of re- 
 action was triumphant ; but the separation of Belgium 
 from Holland marked a great step in the direction of
 
 474 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 the rights of nationalities ; the government of France 
 now rested on a parliamentary basis ; popular institu- 
 tions were introduced into Denmark ; the aristocratic 
 cantons of Switzerland were transformed, and the Ee- 
 form Bill of 1832 placed English politics on a more 
 democratic basis. Neither Louis Philippe nor Lord 
 Palmerston desired to propagate revolution, and their 
 alliance was chequered and broken by many dissen- 
 sions ; but, on the whole, it served the cause of liberty 
 in Europe, and still more the cause of non-interven- 
 tion. 
 
 The French Kevolution of 1848 again changed the 
 aspect of affairs, and in a few months nearly all Europe 
 was convulsed. The revolutions which then took place 
 were essentially revolutions of nationality, and though 
 most of them were for a time suppressed, they nearly 
 all eventually accomplished their designs. I do not 
 propose to relate their well-known history. It is suffi- 
 cient to say that the French Government, in the mani- 
 festo which was issued by Lamartine in the March of 
 1848, while disclaiming any right or intention of in- 
 tervening in the internal affairs of other countries, 
 asserted, perhaps more strongly than had ever been be- 
 fore done in an official document, the legitimacy of all 
 popular efforts for national independence, and clearly 
 intimated that when such risings took place the Kepub- 
 lie would suffer no foreign intervention to suppress 
 them. 
 
 The doctrine of nationalities has been especially for- 
 mulated and defended by Italian writers, who in this 
 field occupy the foremost place. The aspiration towards 
 a common nationality that slowly grew up among the 
 Italian people, in spite of the many and ancient politi- 
 cal divisions that separated them, may be probably 
 traced to the traditions f the old Eoman power. Dante
 
 CH. v. WHAT CONSTITUTES A NATIONALITY ? 475 
 
 and Macchiavelli at once displayed and strengthened it, 
 and it has greatly coloured the Italian political philo- 
 sophy of our century. 
 
 The first question to be asked is, What constitutes a 
 nationality ? Vico had defined it as ' a natural society 
 of men who, by unity of territory, of origin, of cus- 
 toms, and of language, are drawn into a community 
 of life and of social conscience/ More modern Ital- 
 ian writers, among whom Mancini, Mamiani, and Pie- 
 rantoni are conspicuous, have employed themselves 
 in amplifying this definition. They enumerate as the 
 constituent elements of nationality, race, religion, lan- 
 guage, geographical position, manners, history, and 
 laws, and when these or several of them combine they 
 create a nationality. It becomes perfect when a spe- 
 cial type has been formed ; when a great homogeneous 
 body of men acquires, for the first time a consciousness 
 of its separate nationality, and thus becomes * a moral 
 unity with a common thought/ This is the cogito ergo 
 sum of nations, the self-consciousness which establishes 
 in nations as in individuals a true personality. And as 
 the individual man, according to these writers, has an 
 inalienable right to personal freedom, so also has the 
 nationality. Every government of one nationality by 
 another is of the nature of slavery, and is essentially 
 illegitimate, and the true right of nations is the re- 
 cognition of the full right of each nationality to ac- 
 quire and maintain a separate existence, to create or to 
 change its government according to its desires. Civil 
 communities should form, extend, and dissolve them- 
 selves by a spontaneous process, and in accordance with 
 this right and principle of nationality. Every sove- 
 reign who appeals to a foreign Power to suppress move- 
 ments among his own people ; every foreign Power 
 which intervenes as Russia did in Hungary, and as
 
 476 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 Austria did in Italy, for the purpose of suppressing 
 a national movement, is essentially criminal. On the 
 other hand, any war for the emancipation of struggling 
 nationalities, such as that of France with Austria, and 
 Eussia with Turkey, derives its justification from this 
 fact, quite irrespective of the immediate cause or pre- 
 texts that produced it. 1 
 
 Such, pushed to its full extent and definition, is the 
 philosophy which, in vaguer and looser terms, per- 
 vades very widely the political thought of Europe, and 
 has played a great part in the historic development 
 of the nineteenth century. It may be observed that, 
 though the idea of nationality is greatly affected by de- 
 mocracy, it is in itself distinct from it, and is, in fact, 
 very frequently separated from it. The idea and pas- 
 sion of nationality blend quite as easily with loyalty to 
 a dynasty as with attachment to a republican form of 
 government, and nations that value very little internal 
 1,7 constitutional freedom are often passionately devoted 
 to their national individuality and independence. It 
 may be observed also, that the many different elements 
 of nationality which have been mentioned rarely con- 
 cur, and that no one of them is always sufficient to 
 mark out a distinct nationality. As a matter of history, 
 all great nations have been formed, in the first instance, 
 by many successive conquests and aggrandisements, and 
 have gradually become more or less perfectly fused into 
 a single organism. Race, except when it is marked by 
 colour, is usually a most obscure and deceptive guide, 
 and in most European countries different race elements 
 
 1 An excellent review of the valuable essay by Professor 
 
 Italian school of writers on Padeletti, ibid. iii. 464. M. 
 
 nationality, by Professor von Emile Ollivier, in his Empire 
 
 Holtzendorff, will be found in Liberal, has discussed the 
 
 the Revue de Droit Internation- French views on the subject, 
 a/, ii. 92 - 106. See, too, a
 
 CH. v. NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY 477 
 
 are inextricably mixed. Language and religion have 
 had a much greater and deeper power in forming na- 
 tional unities ; but there are examples of different 
 creeds and languages very successfully blended into one 
 nationality, and there are examples of separations of 
 feeling and character, due to historical, political, and 
 industrial causes, existing where race, creed, and lan- 
 guage are all the same. 
 
 In the opinion of some writers, even the will of the 
 people must be disregarded when questions of race, 
 or language, or geography, demand an annexation, 
 and in each country the prevailing theory of na- 
 tionality is very manifestly coloured by national cir- 
 cumstances. Thus German writers, in defending the 
 annexation of Alsace, have ' not contented themselves 
 with arguing that this province was acquired in repel- 
 ling an unjust invasion, and that its retention is essen- 
 tial to the security of Germany. While recognising 
 fully that an overwhelming majority of Alsatian votes 
 would be given in favour of France, they have justified 
 the annexation on the ground of the doctrine of na- 
 tionalities, as restoring to Germany an essentially Ger- 
 man province, which had been torn from her in part 
 by gross fraud, and which is inhabited by a population 
 who, though not German in sentiment, were at least 
 German in origin, in character, and in language. 
 French writers have defended their designs upon the 
 Rhine on the ground that the Ehine boundary is 
 clearly the natural frontier of France, and that she is, 
 therefore, only completing her nationality by annex- 
 ing a territory exclusively inhabited by a loyal German 
 population. Italian writers have demanded the absorp- 
 tion or annexation of Italian-speaking communities in 
 Switzerland and Austria because they are Italian, en- 
 tirely irrespective of all other considerations.
 
 478 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 A more considerable section, however, of the up- 
 holders of the doctrine of nationalities maintain that 
 annexations can only be justified, and can always be 
 justified, by a plebiscite of the whole male population, 
 and it was one of the great objects of Napoleon III. 
 and of Count Cavour to introduce this principle into 
 the public right of Europe. It was adopted when 
 Savoy and Nice were annexed to France, and in the 
 case of the different Italian States which, through 
 their own spontaneous action, were incorporated in 
 the Italian unity. When, after the war of 1866, the 
 Austrian Emperor, in order to avoid the humiliation 
 of treating directly with Italy, placed Venetia in the 
 hands of Napoleon III., it was transferred by that 
 sovereign to Italy subject to the consent of the popula- 
 tion by a plebiscite. So, too, the invasion of Neapoli- 
 tan territory in 1860, and the capture of Rome in 1870 
 by Piedmontese troops, without any declaration of war 
 or any real provocation, and in violation of plain treaty 
 obligations, were held to have been justified by the 
 popular votes which shortly after incorporated Naples 
 and Rome in the Italian Kingdom. In the Treaty of 
 Prague, which was concluded in 1866, and which, 
 among other things, made Prussia the ruler of Schles- 
 wig-Holstein, there was a clause promising that if the 
 inhabitants of the northern parts of Schleswig expressed 
 by a free vote their desire to be reunited to Denmark, 
 their wish should be conceded ; but, in spite of a 
 largely signed petition for such a vote, this promise, to 
 the great dishonour of Germany, has never been ful- 
 filled. 1 The last case, as far as I am aware, of the em- 
 ployment of a plebiscite to sanction an annexation was 
 in 1878, when the little island of St. Barthelemy, in 
 
 1 Revue de Droit International^ ii. 325-26.
 
 CH. v. PLEBISCITES 479 
 
 the Antilles, was ceded by the King of Sweden and 
 Norway to the French Kepublic. 1 
 
 Sometimes, as in Italy, the movement of nationality 
 is a movement of sympathy and agglomeration, draw- 
 ing together men who had long been politically sepa- 
 rated. More frequently it is a disintegrating force, 
 and many of its advocates desire to call into intense life 
 and self-consciousness the different race elements in a 
 great and composite empire, with the hope that they 
 may ultimately assert for themselves the right of dis- 
 tinct national individuality. 
 
 Within certain limits, the doctrine of nationalities 
 undoubtedly represents a real and considerable progress 
 in human affairs. The best, the truest, the most solid 
 basis on which the peace of the civilised world can rest 
 is the free consent of the great masses of its population 
 to the form of government under which they live. 
 The increased recognition of this fact, the increased 
 sensitiveness of the European- conscience to the iniquity 
 of destroying wantonly the independence of a civilised 
 nation, or maintaining one civilised nation under the 
 yoke of another, is a genuine sign of moral progress. 
 At the same time there can, I think, be little question 
 that the doctrine of nationalities has assumed forms 
 and been pushed to extremes which make it a great 
 danger to the peace of the world. It becomes the readi- 
 est weapon in the hands both of a conqueror and of a 
 revolutionist, and, by discrediting the force of all inter- 
 national treaties, deepening lines of division, and in- 
 troducing elements of anarchy and rebellion into most 
 great nations, it threatens the most valuable elements 
 of our civilisation. 
 
 1 See Les Annexions et les Plebiscites dans PHistoire Contempo- 
 raine, par E. R. De Card (1880).
 
 480 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY , CH. v. 
 
 Scarcely anyone would apply it to the dealings of 
 civilised nations with savages, or with the semi-civilised 
 portions of the globe. It is, indeed, most curious to 
 observe the passion with which nations that are accus- 
 tomed to affirm the inalienable right of self-government 
 in the most unqualified terms have thrown themselves 
 into a career of forcible annexation in the barbarous 
 world. Nor is it easy to obtain a true judgment of the 
 opinion even of civilised communities. A plebiscite is 
 very rarely the unforced, spontaneous expression of a 
 genuine national desire. It is usually taken to ratify 
 or indemnify an accomplished fact. It is taken only 
 when there can be no doubt about the result, and a 
 strong centralised Government has, on such occasions, 
 an enormous power of organising and directing. In 
 all countries a great portion, in most countries a large 
 majority, of the people take no real interest in political 
 affairs, and if a great constitutional or dynastic ques- 
 tion is submitted to their vote by a strongly organised 
 Government, this Government will have no difficulty 
 in dictating the response. Tolstoi, in one of his later 
 works, has made some remarks on this subject which, 
 though very little in harmony with prevailing ideas, 
 contain, I believe, a large measure of truth. ' I have 
 always/ he writes, ' noticed that the most serious and 
 the most respectable members of the labouring class 
 show a complete indifference to, and even contempt 
 for, patriotic manifestations of every kind. I have ob- 
 served the same thing among the labouring class in 
 other nations, and my observation has often been con- 
 firmed by cultivated Frenchmen, Germans, and Eng- 
 lishmen, when speaking of their own fellow-citizens. 
 The labouring population is too intensely and too ex- 
 clusively occupied with the care of providing for its 
 own subsistence to take an interest in those political
 
 CH. v. TOLSTOI ON POPULAR OPINION 481 
 
 questions which lie at the root of patriotism. Such 
 questions as Russian influence in the East, the unity of 
 Germany, the restoration to France of her severed pro- 
 vinces, do not really touch the people, not only because 
 they scarcely ever know the first elements of the pro- 
 blem, but also because the interests of their lives lie 
 wholly outside the circle of politics. A man of the 
 people will never really care to know what is the exact 
 line of the national frontier. ... To him his country 
 is his village or his district. He either knows nothing 
 of what lies beyond, or it is a matter of perfect indiffer- 
 ence to him to what government these territories be- 
 long. If a Russian emigrates, he will not care whether 
 his new home is under the dominion of Russia, or Tur- 
 key, or China/ 1 
 
 But even putting this consideration aside, can it 
 seriously be maintained that a great and ancient na- 
 tion is obliged to acquiesce in its own disintegration 
 whenever a portion of its people can be persuaded to de- 
 sire a separate political existence ? If a popular move- 
 ment can at any time destroy the unity of the State, 
 the authority of the sovereign power, and the bind- 
 ing force of international treaties, the whole public 
 order of Europe must give way. Some of the coun- 
 tries which play the most useful and respectable parts 
 in the concert of nations, such as Switzerland, Belgium, 
 and the Austrian Empire, would be threatened with 
 
 1 Tolstoi, L' Esprit Chretien et descend the scale of intellectual 
 le Patriotisme, pp. 88-89, 93. It culture. But there is a degree 
 is curious to contrast this judg- where it altogether disappears 
 ment with the remarks of Goethe where men rise, so to speak, 
 to Eckermann. 'In general, above the lines of nationhood, 
 national hatred has this special and sympathise with the happi- 
 characteristic, that you will al- ness or unhappiness of a neigh- 
 ways find it most intense, most bouring nation as if it consisted 
 violent, in proportion as you of compatriots.' 
 
 VOL. x. 81
 
 482 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 immediate dissolution ; and there is scarcely a great 
 country in Europe which does not contain districts 
 with distinct race and religious elements, which might 
 easily be quickened into separate agitation. As in 
 marriage the conviction that the tie is a life tie, be- 
 ing supported by all the weight of law and opinion, is 
 sufficient in the vast majority of cases to counteract 
 the force of caprice or temporary disagreement, and 
 produce acquiescence and content, so, in the politi- 
 cal world, the belief in the sovereign authority of the 
 State, and in the indissoluble character of national 
 bonds, gives stability and unity to a nation. Divorce 
 in families, and revolution in States, may sometimes 
 be necessary, and even desirable, but only under very 
 grave and exceptional circumstances. 
 
 If the bonds of national unity are lightly severed ; if 
 the policy of disintegration is preached as in itself a de- 
 sirable thing ; if the constituent elements of a king- 
 dom are encouraged or invited to assert their separate 
 individuality, nothing but anarchy can ensue. The 
 door will be at once opened to endless agitation and 
 intrigue, and every ambitious, restless, unscrupu- 
 lous conqueror will find his path abundantly prepared. 
 It is the object of all such men to see surrounding 
 nations divided, weakened, and perhaps deprived of 
 important strategical positions, through internal dis- 
 sensions. One of the great dangers of our age is that 
 wars are likely to be carried on, in the French phrase, 
 ' a coup de revolutions/ that is, by deliberately kin- 
 dling democratic, socialist, or nationalist risings. It 
 has been stated on good authority, that the decision of 
 German statesmen to adopt universal suffrage as the 
 basis of their Constitution was largely due to the de- 
 sire to guard against such dangers. From the French 
 revolutionists, who begin their career of invasion by
 
 CH. V. AMERICAN ANNEXATIONS 483 
 
 promising French assistance to every struggling na- 
 tionality, to the modern Panslavist, who is often preach- 
 ing the right of nationalities in the mere interest of a 
 corrupt and persecuting despotism, this doctrine has 
 been abundantly made use of to cloak the most selfish 
 and the most mischievous designs. Those men are not 
 serving the true interests of humanity who enlarge the 
 pretexts of foreign aggression, and weaken the force 
 of treaties and international obligations, on which the 
 peace and stability of civilisation so largely depend. 
 
 Such considerations sufficiently show the danger of 
 the exaggerated language on the subject of the rights 
 of nationalities which has of late years become com- 
 mon. It will, indeed, be observed that most men use 
 such language mainly in judging other nations and 
 other policies than their own. One of the most re- 
 markable test cases of this kind which have occurred 
 in our generation has been that of the United States. 
 This great nation is one of the least military as well as 
 one of the freest and most democratic in the world, 
 and its representative writers, and sometimes even its 
 legislative bodies, are fond of very absolute assertions 
 of the right of revolution and the inalienable supre- 
 macy of the popular will. Yet in its own acquisitions 
 the American Republic has never adopted the principle 
 of plebiscite. Texas was admitted into the Union by 
 a treaty with a State which was considered indepen- 
 dent ; Upper California was conquered from Mexico ; 
 New Mexico was acquired by purchase ; Louisiana was 
 purchased from Napoleon in 1803 ; Florida was ac- 
 quired by treaty with Spain in 1821 ; but in no one 
 of these cases were the people consulted by a popular 
 vote. 1 
 
 1 See an article by Professor Lieber on Plebiscites, Revue de 
 Droit International, iii. 139-45.
 
 484 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. T. 
 
 But most significant of all was the attitude assumed 
 by the Federal Government in dealing with the seces- 
 sion of the South. Long before that secession some of 
 the best observers had clearly pointed out how the in- 
 fluence of climate, and much more the special type of 
 industry and character which slavery produced, had 
 already created a profound and lasting difference be- 
 tween the North and the South. Both Madison and 
 Story had foreseen that the great danger to the United 
 States was the opposition between the Northern and 
 Southern interests. 1 Calhoun was so sensible of the 
 difference that he proposed the establishment of two 
 presidents, one for the free, and the other for the slave 
 States, each with a veto on all national legislation.* 
 Guizot 3 and Tocqueville 4 had both distinctly recog- 
 nised the same truth. Though language and religion 
 were the same, and though race was not widely differ- 
 ent, two distinct nations had grown up, clearly sepa- 
 rated in their merits and their defects, in character, 
 manners, aspirations, and interests. 
 
 After the election of President Lincoln the long- 
 impending disruption came. The Southern States 
 proclaimed the right of nationalities, demanded their 
 independence, and proved their earnestness and their 
 unanimity by arguments that were far more unequivo- 
 cal than any doubtful plebiscite. For four long years 
 they defended their cause on the battle-field with heroic 
 courage, against overwhelming odds, and at the sacri- 
 
 1 Story's Commentaries on the sagacity of Guizot, when it is 
 the Constitution of the United remembered that these lectures 
 States, ii. 177. were delivered between 1828 
 
 2 Goldwin Smith's The Uni- and 1830) in the Hist, de la Ci- 
 ted States, p. 184. vilisation, XVIII me lecon. 
 
 3 See a very remarkable pas- 4 Democratic en Amerique, 
 sage (exceedingly creditable to torn. ii. ch. x.
 
 CH. V. THE WAR OF SECESSION 485 
 
 fice of everything that men most desire. American 
 and indeed European writers are accustomed to speak 
 of the heroism of the American colonies in repudiating 
 imperial taxation, and asserting and achieving their 
 independence against all the force of Great Britain. 
 But no one who looks carefully into the history of the 
 American revolution, who observes the languor, the 
 profound divisions, the frequent pusillanimity, the ab- 
 sence of all strong and unselfish enthusiasm that were 
 displayed in great portions of the revolted colonies, 
 and their entire dependence for success on foreign as- 
 sistance, will doubt that the Southern States in the 
 "War of Secession exhibited an incomparably higher 
 level of courage, tenacity, and self-sacrifice. No na- 
 tion in the nineteenth century has maintained its na- 
 tionhood with more courage and unanimity. But it 
 was encountered with an equal tenacity, and with far 
 greater resources, and, after a sacrifice of life uri- 
 equalled in any war since the fall of Napoleon, the 
 North succeeded in crushing the revolt and establish- 
 ing its authority over the vanquished South. 
 
 The struggle took place at a time when the recent 
 emancipation of Italy had brought the doctrine of the 
 rights of nationalities into the strongest relief. That 
 doctrine had been accepted with enthusiasm by nearly 
 all that was progressive in Europe, and nowhere more 
 widely and more passionately than in England. It is 
 curious and instructive to observe the attitude of Eng- 
 lish opinion towards the contest that ensued. At the 
 opening of the war the secession of the South was very 
 generally blamed, and throughout the war a majority 
 of the population remained, I believe, steadily on the 
 side of the North. With the great body of the working 
 classes the question was looked on simply as a question 
 of slavery. The North was represented as fighting for
 
 486 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. V. 
 
 the abolition of slavery, which it certainly was not, 
 and as fighting to prevent the extension of slavery to the 
 new territories, which it certainly was ; and the cause 
 of democracy was deemed inseparably connected with 
 the maintenance and the success of the great Republic 
 of the West. But, on the other hand, a majority of 
 the upper, and perhaps of the middle, classes soon 
 came to sympathise decidedly with the South, and 
 they were the classes who were most powerfully repre- 
 sented in the press, in society, and in Parliament. 
 
 Their motives were very various. Some were, no 
 doubt, unworthy, or purely frivolous. There was the 
 contrast, which was then often drawn, between ' the 
 gentlemen of the South ' and ' the shopkeepers of the 
 North.' There was jealousy of the increasing power 
 of the United States, and of the increasing attraction 
 of its form of government. There was resentment ex- 
 cited by many unscrupulous acts and many insulting 
 words of American statesmen and writers ; and the 
 ignorance of American politics was so great that few 
 Englishmen realised that the aggressive side of Ameri- 
 can policy had been mainly due to Southern statesmen 
 acting in Southern interests. The enmity which led 
 the United States to declare war against England in 
 1812, at the time when England was engaged in a des- 
 perate struggle for her existence and for the liberty 
 of Europe against the overwhelming power of Napo- 
 leon, was not wholly forgotten, 1 and the more recent 
 sympathy of America with Russia during the Crimean 
 war had, perhaps, still some slight influence. There 
 were also powerful considerations of present English 
 interests involved in the war. The North was strongly 
 
 1 See some excellent remarks on this war in Goldwin Smith's 
 United States, pp. 166-74.
 
 CH. v. ENGLISH OPINION ON THE WAR 487 
 
 Protectionist, and had begun the war by enacting an 
 ultra-Protectionist tariff, while the South was the fer- 
 vent champion of Free Trade, and it was from the 
 South that the English cotton manufacture obtained 
 its supplies, while the Northern blockade was reducing 
 to extreme distress the population of Lancashire. Nor 
 should we omit that ' sporting spirit ' which, it has 
 been truly said, largely governs English interest in 
 every foreign struggle. A comparatively small Power, 
 encountering with consummate skill, with desperate 
 courage, and for a long time with brilliant success, a 
 gigantic but unwieldy and less skilful adversary, was 
 certain to awake strong popular interest, quite irrespec- 
 tive of the merits of the case. 
 
 But it would be a grave injustice to attribute to such 
 motives the great body of serious and deliberate opinion 
 in England which desired the recognition of Southern 
 independence and the cessation of the war. One large 
 class emphatically condemned the original secession ; 
 but they either believed, with most experienced Euro- 
 pean statesmen, that the final subjugation of the South 
 was impossible, and that the prolongation of the war 
 was, in consequence, a mere useless waste of life, or 
 that, if the South were finally subjugated, it would 
 reproduce in America that most lamentable of all Eu- 
 ropean spectacles, the spectacle of a subjugated Poland. 
 Another large class believed that, on the principle of 
 the American Constitution, the South was acting with- 
 in its constitutional rights. They contended that when 
 the separate States agreed on carefully defined condi- 
 tions to enter into a bond of union, they never meant 
 to surrender the right, which they had so lately vindi- 
 cated against Great Britain, of seceding from it if the 
 main body of their citizens desired it. This was the 
 doctrine of Calhoun, and it was supported by a great
 
 488 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. V. 
 
 weight both of argument and authority. There were 
 some who, like Sir Cornewall Lewis, detested slavery, 
 but who contended that the differences between North 
 and South were so grave that separation was the only 
 solution, and that it would ultimately prove a great 
 blessing to America, as well as to the world, if the 
 Northern States developed as a separate republic, un- 
 tainted by the deteriorating influences of negro slavery 
 and a tropical climate. 1 But the strongest argument 
 on this side was the doctrine of the rights of nationali- 
 ties. I can well remember how the illustrious histo- 
 rian, Mr. Grote, whose political leanings were strongly 
 democratic, and who, at the same time, always formed 
 his opinions with an austere independence and integ- 
 rity, was accustomed to speak on the subject, and how 
 emphatically he dissented from the views of Mill and 
 of a large proportion of those with whom he usually 
 acted. He could not, he said, understand how those 
 who had been so lately preaching in the most unquali- 
 fied terms that all large bodies of men had an absolute, 
 unimpeachable, indefeasible right to choose for them- 
 selves their form of government, and that the growing 
 recognition of this right was one of the first conditions 
 of progress and liberty, could support or applaud the 
 Federal Government in imposing on the Southern 
 States a government which they detested, and in over- 
 riding by force their evident and unquestionable desire. 
 The inconsistency was real and flagrant, and the atti- 
 tude of the North, and of its supporters in Europe, 
 could only be justified on the ground that the right 
 of nationalities was not the absolute, unlimited thing 
 which it had been customary to assert. In the North- 
 
 1 See a letter by Sir Cornewall Lewis prefixed to his Adminis- 
 trations of Great Britain, p. 19.
 
 OH. V. RESULTS OF THE WAR 489 
 
 ern States public opinion never faltered. Before the 
 war began, it is true, there were some men, among 
 whom Horace Greeley was conspicuous, who main- 
 tained that if the Southern States generally desired to 
 secede they ought not to be prevented ; and there were 
 many men who throughout the war tried to persuade 
 themselves that a strong unionist sentiment was latent 
 in the South. But the question of submitting the in- 
 tegrity of the Republic to a popular vote in the several 
 States was never entertained, though there was a pro- 
 posal, which was defeated by the Republican party, of 
 submitting to a direct popular vote a compromise about 
 slavery which might have averted the war. 1 It was at 
 once felt that the question at issue was a question of 
 national preservation, to which all other considerations 
 must be subordinated, and the best men maintained 
 that, by preserving the integrity of the republic, even 
 against the wishes of an immense section of the people, 
 they were most truly serving the interests of humanity. 
 Three fatal consequences would have followed the tri- 
 umph of the South. Slavery would have been ex- 
 tended through vast territories where it did not hitherto 
 prevail. A precedent of secession would have been ad- 
 mitted which, sooner or later, would have broken up the 
 United States into several different Powers. And as 
 these Powers would have many conflicting interests, the 
 European military system, which the New World had 
 happily escaped, would have grown up in America, with 
 all the evils and all the dangers that follow in its train. 
 The judgment of the North was justified by the 
 event, and this great struggle added one more to the 
 many conspicuous instances of the fallibility of politi. 
 
 1 This was the Crittenden 150, 254-67. See, too, on 
 compromise. See Rhodes's His- Greeley's opinion, pp. 140-42. 
 tory of the United States, iii.
 
 490 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 cal predictions. The overwhelming majority of the 
 most sagacious politicians in Europe believed, either 
 that the North would never attempt to restrain by 
 force the Southern States if they desired to secede ; or 
 that an armed revolt of many entire States, guided by 
 their legislatures, could not possibly be suppressed ; 
 or that, if it were suppressed, it could only be through 
 a general rising of the enslaved negroes, which they 
 anticipated as one of the most certain consequences of 
 the prolongation of the^ war. Each one of these pre- 
 dictions was signally and absolutely falsified. The 
 speedy and complete acquiescence of the defeated South 
 in the result of the war was no less surprising to Euro- 
 pean statesmen ; while the fact that the cotton pro- 
 duced in the South by free labour greatly exceeds that 
 which was produced by slavery, 1 shows that the South- 
 ern belief that utter and imminent ruin must fol- 
 low abolition was an absolute delusion. How different 
 might have been the course of American history, how 
 much bloodshed and misery might have been spared, if, 
 even at the last moment, the policy proposed by Presi- 
 dent Lincoln in 1862 had been accepted, and the slave 
 States had agreed to gradual enfranchisement, receiv- 
 ing Government bonds to the full value of their slaves ! * 
 The regeneration of Italy had preceded the contest 
 in America, and, more than any other event, it gave 
 popularity to the doctrine of the rights of nationalities. 
 It was one of the most genuine of national movements, 
 and very few who were young men when it took place, 
 
 1 See some remarkable figures ed that of the last twenty years 
 
 on this subject in Mr. Rhodes's of slavery by no less than 65-3 
 
 History of the United States per cent. 
 
 from the Compromise of 1850 2 Rhodes's History of the Uni- 
 
 i. 314. The annual average ted States from the Compromise 
 
 produce of cotton in the South of 1850, iii. 634-35 ; Annual 
 
 between 1865 and 1886 exceed- Register, 1862, p. 231.
 
 CH. v. THE REGENERATION OF ITALY 491 
 
 still fewer of those who, like the writer of these lines, 
 then lived much in Italy, can have failed to catch the 
 enthusiasm which it inspired. Though some provinces 
 sacrificed much, there was no province in which the 
 Italian cause did not command the support of over- 
 whelming majorities, and though two great wars and 
 an overwhelming debt were the cost, the unity of Italy 
 was at last achieved. The mingled associations of a 
 glorious past and of a noble present, the genuine and 
 disinterested enthusiasm that so visibly pervaded the 
 great mass of the Italian people, the genius of Cavour, 
 the romantic character and career of Garibaldi, and the 
 inexpressible charm and loveliness of the land which 
 was now rising into the dignity of nationhood, all con- 
 tributed to make the Italian movement unlike any 
 other of our time. It was the one moment of nine- 
 teenth-century history when politics assumed some- 
 thing of the character of poetry. 
 
 The glamour has now faded, and, looking back upon 
 the past, we can more calmly judge the dubious ele- 
 ments that mingled with it. One of them was the 
 manner in which the annexation of Naples was accom- 
 plished. The expedition of Garibaldi to Sicily con- 
 sisted of so few men, and could have been so easily 
 crushed if it had encountered any real popular resist- 
 ance, that it scarcely forms an exception to the sponta- 
 neous character of the movement towards unity. But 
 the absolutely unprovoked invasion of Naples by Pied- 
 montese troops, which took place without any declara- 
 tion of war when the Neapolitan forces had rallied at 
 Gaeta, and when the Garibaldian forces were in danger 
 of defeat, was a grave violation of international obliga- 
 tions and of the public law and order of Europe, and 
 it can only be imperfectly palliated by the fact that 
 similar interventions at the invitation of a sovereign
 
 492 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. V. 
 
 and in the interests of despotism had not been uncom- 
 mon. 
 
 Much the same thing may be said of the subsequent 
 invasion of Rome, and in this case another and still 
 graver consideration was involved. A great Catholic 
 interest here confronted the purely national move 
 ment. In the opinion of the head of the Catholic 
 Church, and in the opinion of the great body of de- 
 vout Catholics throughout the world, the independence 
 of the head of the Church could only be maintained 
 if he remained the temporal sovereign of his diocese ; 
 and there was therefore a cosmopolitan interest of the 
 highest order at issue. The possession of Rome and 
 the adjoining territory to the sea would have met the 
 Catholic requirement for the independence of the 
 Pope, and it was urged by men who had a warm gene- 
 ral sympathy with the right of nations to choose their 
 rulers, that in this case the less must yield to the 
 greater, and that, in the interest of the whole Catho- 
 lic population throughout the world, the small popula- 
 tion of Rome and the adjoining territory must be 
 content with a position which was in most respects 
 privileged and honourable, and forego their claim to 
 unite with Italy. 
 
 Gioberti had taught that the true solution of the 
 Roman question was an Italian federation under the 
 presidency of the Pope, and at the Peace of Yillafranca 
 Napoleon III. and the Emperor of Austria agreed to do 
 their utmost to carry out this scheme. It was, how- 
 ever, from the first doomed to failure. One part of it 
 was the restoration of the dispossessed princes, which 
 could only be effected by force. Another was the in- 
 troduction of Austria, as the ruler of Venetia, into the 
 confederation, which excited the strongest Italian an- 
 tipathy. * The large measure of reform ' which the
 
 CH. V. THE ROMAN QUESTION 493 
 
 two Emperors agreed to use their influence to obtain 
 from the Pope proved wholly unacceptable to that 
 potentate, while the honorary presidency of the con- 
 federation, to which he did not object, was equally un- 
 acceptable to Italy. Italian feeling flowed irresistibly 
 towards unity, and the great prestige of Rome, which 
 alone could command an indisputable ascendency among 
 the Italian cities, marked her out as the natural capi- 
 tal. It is, however, not altogether impossible that 
 some compromise with the Catholic interest might 
 have been effected if there had been any real intelli- 
 gence at the Vatican. Unfortunately, in this quarter 
 incapacity and obstinacy reigned supreme. The Pope 
 had, it is true, a cardinal-minister who possessed to an 
 eminent degree the superficial talents that enable a 
 statesman to write clever despatches and to conduct 
 skilfully a diplomatic interview ; but neither he nor 
 his master showed the smallest real power of governing 
 men, of measuring wisely the forces of their time, and 
 of averting revolution by skilful, timely, and searching 
 reform. 
 
 The part which was played by England in these 
 transactions was very remarkable. Though she had not 
 sacrificed a man or a guinea in the cause, she inter- 
 vened actively and powerfully at every stage of its de- 
 velopment ; she had always an alternative policy to 
 propose, and in nearly every case this policy ultimately 
 prevailed. Lord John Russell conducted her foreign 
 policy, and he was warmly supported in the Cabinet by 
 Lord Palmerston. He dissented strongly from the 
 leading articles of the Peace of Villafranca, and clearly 
 pointed out the impossibility of carrying them into 
 effect. He urged persistently that the Italian people 
 should be left to form their own Governments freely, 
 without the intervention of either France or Austria.
 
 494 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 He was the only statesman who officially approved of 
 the Piedmontese invasion of Naples, which he defended 
 by a quotation from Vattel, and by the part played by 
 William III. in the English revolution of 1688. He 
 steadily advocated the withdrawal of French troops 
 from Kome, and the treatment of the Koman question 
 as a purely Italian one. He exasperated foreign states- 
 men not a little by his constant lectures on ( the right 
 which belongs to the people of every independent State 
 to regulate their own internal government/ and on the 
 iniquity of every foreign interference with their clearly 
 expressed will. ' With regard to the general question 
 of interference/ he wrote, ' in the internal affairs of 
 other countries, Her Majesty's Government holds that 
 non-intervention is the principle on which the Govern- 
 ments of Europe should act, only to be departed from 
 when the safety of a foreign State or its permanent 
 interests require it/ ' 
 
 At the same time, in the true spirit of an English 
 Whig, he refused to lay any stress on the verdict of 
 universal suffrage as expressed by a plebiscite, and re- 
 garded the regular vote of duly authorised representa- 
 tive bodies as the only decisive and legitimate expression 
 of the voice of the people. Speaking of the annexation 
 to the Italian State of Naples, Sicily, Umbria and the 
 Marches, he wrote to Sir J. Hudson : ( The votes by 
 universal suffrage which have taken place in those 
 kingdoms and provinces appear to Her Majesty's Go- 
 vernment to have little validity. These votes are noth- 
 ing more than a formality following upon acts of 
 popular insurrection, or successful invasion, or upon 
 treaties, and do not in themselves imply any indepen- 
 
 1 See the despatches on Italy in the second volume of Lord, 
 Russell's Speeches and Despatches*
 
 CH. v. SUCCESS OF ENGLISH POLICY 495 
 
 dent exercise of the will of the nation in whose name 
 they are given. Should, however, the deliberate act 
 of the representatives of the several Italian States . . . 
 constitute those States into one State in the form of a 
 constitutional monarchy, a new question will arise/ l 
 
 It is probable that the emphasis with which Lord 
 John Russell dwelt upon this distinction was largely 
 due to the fact that the annexation of Savoy to France 
 had been sanctioned and justified by a popular vote. 
 The British Government treated this vote and the pre- 
 tended popular wish with complete disdain, as a mere 
 device of the two Governments concerned, for the pur- 
 pose of veiling the character of a secret and dangerous 
 intrigue ; and Lord John Eussell denounced the whole 
 transaction in language which might easily have led to 
 war. 2 
 
 This policy undoubtedly represented the predominant 
 public opinion of Great Britain, and it was eminently 
 successful. In the very critical state of Italian affairs, 
 and amid the strongly expressed disapprobation of the 
 great Continental Powers, the steady countenance and 
 moral support of England gave both force and respecta- 
 bility to the Italian cause, and broke the isolation to 
 which it would have otherwise been condemned. The 
 obligation was fully felt and gratefully acknowledged ; 
 and there is a striking contrast between the extreme 
 popularity of England and the extreme unpopularity of 
 France in Italy within a few months, it may be almost 
 said within a few weeks, after Solferino. The promise 
 that Italy should be freed ' from the Alps to the Adri- 
 atic/ and uncontrolled by any foreign Power, was fal- 
 sified by the Peace of Villafranca, which left Austria 
 
 1 Lord ,T. Russell to Sir J. 2 Walpole's Life of Russell, 
 Hudson, Jan. 21, 1861. ii. 319-21.
 
 496 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. V. 
 
 the mistress of Venetia, and if its provisions had been 
 carried out would have made her the dominant power 
 in the peninsula. Imperious considerations of French 
 interests might be truly alleged to justify this unex- 
 pected peace, but it is not surprising that it should 
 have sent a thrill of exasperation through the Italian 
 people. The claim of the Emperor on the gratitude of 
 the Italians was still further weakened when he de- 
 manded Nice and Savoy as a payment for his services, 
 and his attempt to support two great but essentially 
 incompatible interests by maintaining with French 
 bayonets the dominion of the Pope at Rome, while he 
 acquiesced, though slowly and reluctantly, in the an- 
 nexation of the other portions of Italy to the new 
 kingdom, and in the abandonment of his favourite 
 scheme of an Italian federation, had the very natural 
 effect of exciting anger and distrust on both sides. 
 England, on the other hand, had but one voice, and 
 her simple policy of leaving Italy, without any foreign 
 intervention, to construct her own Government fully 
 met the Italian desires. 
 
 History has certainly not said her last word about 
 Napoleon III., a sovereign who has of late years been 
 as extravagantly depreciated as he was once extrava- 
 gantly extolled. More justice will one day be done to 
 his manifest and earnest attempts, under circumstances 
 of extreme difficulty, to reconcile a great and real 
 Catholic interest, which was very dear to a large sec- 
 tion of his subjects, with his earnest desire to free 
 Italy from foreign control. The obstacles he had to 
 encounter were enormous : the stubborn resistance of 
 the Papal Court to the reforms and compromises he 
 recommended ; the furious indignation of French Ca- 
 tholic opinion at his acquiescence in the annexation of 
 Romagna, Umbria, and the Marches ; the irresistible
 
 CH. v. NAPOLEON IIL 497 
 
 torrent of Italian opinion impelling Italian policy in 
 the direction of unity. The great Continental coun- 
 tries disapproved of his policy as unduly liberal, while, 
 on opposite grounds, English disapprobation greatly 
 increased his difficulties. He desired manifestly and 
 sincerely to withdraw his troops from Rome, if he could 
 do so without destroying the temporal power. At one 
 moment he had almost attained his end, and the evacu- 
 ation was actually ordered, when Garibaldi's invasion 
 of Sicily threw the South of Italy into a flame, and 
 changed the whole aspect of affairs. Projects for estab- 
 lishing a neutral zone under European guarantee ; for 
 garrisoning Rome with Neapolitan troops ; for reor- 
 ganising the Papal army on such a scale that it might 
 be sufficient to secure the independence of Rome, were 
 constantly passing through his mind. At one time he 
 proposed a congress to deal with the question. At 
 another he authorised and inspired a pamphlet main- 
 taining that the city of Rome alone, without any other 
 territory, would be sufficient to secure the independence 
 of the Pope. At another he ordered inquiries to be 
 made into the government of the city of London by the 
 Lord Mayor and Corporation, under the strange notion 
 that this might furnish some clue for a double Govern- 
 ment at Rome. The secret despatches of his minister, 
 which have now been published, furnish a curious and 
 vivid picture of the extreme difficulties of his task, but 
 also, I think, of the sincerity with which, amid many 
 hesitations and perplexities, he endeavoured to accom- 
 plish it. 1 
 
 History will also pronounce upon the policy of Eng- 
 land during this crisis, and, if I am not mistaken, it 
 will be less eulogistic than contemporary English opin- 
 
 > Thouvenel, Le Secret de I'Empereur. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 498 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. V. 
 
 ion. It will scarcely, I think, approve of that strange 
 and famous despatch in which Lord John Eussell jus- 
 tified the Piedmontese invasion of Naples, and it may 
 well pronounce the Koman policy of England to have 
 been an unworthy one, though it was both popular 
 and successful. This question was pre-eminently one 
 on which a great and cosmopolitan Catholic interest 
 had to be weighed against a question of nationality, 
 and in such a dispute the intervention of a Protestant 
 Power seems to me to have been wholly unjustifiable. 
 The bitter resentment it excited among the Irish 
 Catholics was, in my opinion, not without foundation. 
 Whether the unity of Italy has been to the Italian 
 people the blessing that we once believed may also be 
 greatly doubted. The political movements and combi- 
 nations that make most noise in the world, and excite 
 the largest measure of enthusiasm, are often not those 
 which affect most deeply or most beneficially the real 
 happiness of men. The elements of true happiness 
 are to be found in humbler spheres, and are to be esti- 
 mated by other tests. Italy has had many good for- 
 tunes, but the peace which left her with the acquisition 
 of Lombardy, and the certainty before her of another 
 great war for the acquisition of Venetia, was one of the 
 chief disasters in her history. Proposals, it is true, 
 were then circulated, with some authority, for the sale 
 of Venetia by Austria to Italy, and if such a sale had 
 been effected the whole course of recent European 
 history might have been changed. Italy might have 
 been saved from financial ruin, and the financial posi- 
 tion of Austria would have been enormously improved. 
 It would have been possible for Austria to have carried 
 out both more promptly and more efficiently her trans- 
 formation into a really constitutional empire ; and as 
 Italy would have had no motive for joining with her
 
 CH. v. TAXATION IN ITALY 499 
 
 enemies, the War of I860 might either have been 
 averted, or have ended differently. 
 
 But a false point of honour, in which the Austrian 
 Emperor undoubtedly represented the prevalent feeling 
 of his subjects, prevented such a cession, and opened a 
 new chapter of events almost equally disastrous to 
 Austria and to Italy. In the terrible years of prepara- 
 tion for a great war the debt of Italy rose rapidly to 
 unmanageable dimensions, and the dangers, the re- 
 sponsibilities, the gigantic army and navy of a great 
 Power, soon created for her a burden she was wholly 
 unable to bear. Most of the Italian States, before the 
 Avar of independence began, were among the most 
 lightly taxed in Europe, but no other European coun- 
 try, in proportion to its means, is now so heavily taxed 
 as Italy. Those who have observed the crushing 
 weight with which this excessive taxation falls, not 
 only on the upper and middle classes of the Italian peo- 
 ple, but also on the food and industry of the very poor, 
 the grinding poverty it has produced, and the immi- 
 nent danger of national bankruptcy that hangs over 
 Italy, may well doubt whether her unity has not been 
 too dearly purchased, and whether Napoleon's scheme 
 of an Italian federation might not, after all, have 
 proved the wiser. A very competent writer has com- 
 puted that, in the years of perfect peace between 1871 
 and 1893, the taxation of Italy has increased more than 
 30 per cent. ; that the national debt has been increased 
 in twenty-three years of peace by about four milliards 
 of francs, or 160 millions of pounds ; and that the inte- 
 rest of this debt, without counting the communal debts 
 or the floating debt, absorbs one-third of the whole 
 revenue. * 
 
 1 See Geffcken's article on the ' War Chests of Europe,' Nine- 
 teenth Century, August 1894.
 
 500 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 It has been truly claimed, however, for Italy that 
 she represents the triumph of the doctrine of nationali- 
 ties in its best form. Nowhere else do so many ele- 
 ments of nationality concur language, religion, a 
 clearly defined geographical unity, a common litera- 
 ture, and common sentiments. In German unity 
 genuine sympathy bore a great part, but in some por- 
 tions of the Empire force alone carried out the policy. 
 In some quarters race is represented as the most essen- 
 tial element of nationality, and the doctrine of nation- 
 ality has blended closely with a doctrine of races which 
 seems destined to be a great disturbing influence in the 
 affairs of the world. 1 
 
 The unity of the Latin race, to be established partly 
 by absorptions, and partly by alliances in which France 
 should hold the ruling place, was a favourite French 
 doctrine in the time of Napoleon III., though it has 
 now greatly faded, owing to the profound antipathies 
 that divide France and Italy. Michel Chevalier, among 
 others, powerfully advocated it ; it was given as one 
 of the chief reasons for the unfortunate expedition to 
 Mexico ; it gave colour to French aspirations to do- 
 minion both in Belgium and French Switzerland ; and 
 a school of writers arose who represented the establish- 
 ment of an equilibrium between the great races as the 
 true balance of power, the future basis of international 
 politics. The unity of the Teutonic race has had cor- 
 responding adherents in Germany, and their eyes have 
 been greedily cast, not only towards Austria and 
 towards Alsace, but also towards Holland, towards the 
 German provinces of Belgium, and towards the Baltic 
 provinces. The Panslavist movement is the latest, 
 and perhaps the most dangerous, on the stage, and it 
 
 See Revue de Droit International, iii. 458-63.
 
 CH. V. DOCTRINE OF RACES 501 
 
 seeks the disintegration not only of Turkey, but of 
 Austria. It must be observed, too, that in proportion 
 to the new stress given to the claims of nationality 
 comes an increased desire among rulers to extirpate in 
 their dominions all alien national types, whether of 
 race, or language, or creed, which may some day be 
 called into active existence. 
 
 Few things are more curious to observe than the 
 conflicting tendencies which are, in the same period of 
 history, drawing nations in diametrically opposite di- 
 rections. The tendency to great agglomerations and 
 larger political unities has in our day been very evi- 
 dent. Kailroads, and the many other influences produc- 
 ing a more rapid interchange of ideas and commerce, 
 and more cosmopolitan habits and manners, act strong- 
 ly in this direction ; and the military and naval sys- 
 tems of our time throw an overwhelming power into 
 the hands of the great nations. On the other hand, 
 there has been in many forms a marked tendency to 
 accentuate distinct national and local types. 
 
 It has been very clearly shown in national languages. 
 As late as the days of Frederick the Great, French had 
 a complete ascendency, even at the Prussian Court ; 
 and long after that date it seemed in many countries 
 likely to displace all local languages in the common 
 usage of the upper classes. Nearly everywhere this 
 tendency has been checked, and national languages 
 now fully maintain their ascendency. The late Queen 
 Sophie of the Netherlands was accustomed to relate 
 that, at the time of her marriage in 1839, some of her 
 counsellors told her that it was scarcely necessary for 
 her to learn Dutch, as the use of it was so rapidly 
 passing away among the upper classes in Holland ; but 
 she lived to see that usage constant and universal. It 
 was, I believe, only under Nicholas that Eussian super-
 
 502 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 seded French as the Court language at St. Petersburg, 
 and, according to competent judges, the same change 
 has in the present generation extended widely through 
 all Kussian society. In Belgium there has been a 
 marked and most significant movement for maintain- 
 ing the Flemish language and Flemish nationality ; a 
 similar tendency prevails in Bohemia and Hungary, 
 and even at home it may be seen in the greatly in- 
 creased stress laid upon the Welsh language. The war 
 of 1870 strengthened it, and French has lost much of 
 its cosmopolitan character as the language of diplo- 
 macy, while no other single language has taken its 
 place. At no previous period, I suppose, has so large 
 an amount of interest and research been devoted to 
 the study of local customs, literatures, traditions and 
 antiquities. Education, if it widens interests, also con- 
 tributes to kindle political life in small areas, and the 
 extension of the suffrage and of local government, and 
 perhaps still more the growth of a local press, have all 
 their effect in accentuating local divisions and awaken- 
 ing local aspirations. The vast military systems of the 
 Continent may, perhaps, in some degree divert the 
 minds of the great disciplined masses from internal and 
 constitutional politics, and they weaken the lines of 
 provincial differences, but they also bring into stronger 
 and sharper relief national distinctions and national 
 antagonisms. 
 
 Among the problems that weigh heavily on the states- 
 men of our age, few are more serious than those of 
 reconciling local and particularist aspirations with the 
 maintenance of imperial strength and unity, and with 
 the stability of European peace. In all such questions 
 many various, and often conflicting, circumstances 
 must be considered, and no general and inflexible rule 
 can be laid down. England, in 1864, made a remarka-
 
 CH. v. CONCESSIONS TO NATIONALITY 503 
 
 ble concession to the rights of nationalities when, in 
 response to a strongly expressed local wish, she aban- 
 doned her protectorate over the Ionian Isles and per- 
 mitted their annexation to Greece. She certainly would 
 not have acted in the same way if Malta, or Ireland, or 
 some other vital portion of her Empire had demanded 
 to be annexed to a foreign Power. Every great empire 
 is obliged, in the interest of its imperial unity, and in 
 the interest of the public order of the world, to impose 
 an inflexible veto on popular movements in the direc- 
 tion of disintegration, however much it may endeavour 
 to meet local wishes by varying laws and institutions 
 and compromises. Nations, too, differ very widely in 
 the strength of their national types, in their power of 
 self-government, in their power of governing others, in 
 their power of assimilating or reconciling alien types. 
 There are cases where the destruction of an old na- 
 tionality, or even of a nationality which had never 
 fully existed, but had been prematurely arrested in its 
 growth, leaves behind it in large .classes hatreds which 
 rankle for centuries. There are other cases where, in 
 a few years, a complete fusion is effected, where every 
 scar of the old wound is effaced, where all distinctions 
 are obliterated, or where they subsist only in healthy 
 differences of type, tendency, and capacity, which add 
 to the resources without in any degree impairing the 
 strength and harmony of the nation. There are cases 
 where an extension of local representative institutions 
 will amply satisfy local aspirations and appease local 
 discontents, and where such institutions are certain to 
 be justly and moderately used. There are other cases 
 where they would be infallibly turned into instru- 
 ments for revolution, plunder, and oppression, where 
 they would only increase dissension, and perhaps lead 
 to civil war.
 
 504 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. v. 
 
 All these elements of the problem must, in each 
 separate case, be duly estimated. On the whole, the 
 doctrine of the absolute and indefeasible right of na- 
 tionalities to determine their own form of government 
 seems to me now less prominent among the political 
 ideas of the world than it was in 1848, and at the period 
 of the emancipation of Italy. Both England and 
 America have learnt, from their own experience, the 
 dangers that may spring from its too unqualified asser- 
 tion ; Eastern Europe has shown how easily it may be 
 converted into an instrument of aggression and in- 
 trigue ; and the institution of the plebiscite has been 
 much discredited since the fall of the second French 
 Empire. France was once the most ardent champion 
 of this doctrine in its extreme form, partly, perhaps, 
 because her own territory is singularly compact, homo- 
 geneous, and well assimilated ; but since 1870 her as- 
 pirations and alliances have carried her in very different 
 directions. At the same time, the movement towards 
 international Socialism, which has spread widely through 
 the working classes of the Continent, is wholly alien to 
 the idea of nationality, appeals to a different kind of 
 enthusiasm, and seeks to divide the world by other 
 lines. The chief apparent exception has been the 
 greatly increased importance which the Irish Home 
 Eule movement has assumed since the Irish suffrage 
 was so extended as to give an overwhelming power to 
 the lowest orders, since Parnell organised his agitation, 
 and since Mr. Gladstone accepted his demands. But 
 the nation, in 1886 and 1895, condemned this policy 
 with an emphasis that it is impossible to mistake ; nor 
 would the movement in Ireland ever have attained its 
 formidable magnitude if it had not allied itself with 
 motives and interests very different from the pure na- 
 tionalism of Grattan and of Davis.
 
 OH. VI. DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERTY 505 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 
 
 THERE are few subjects upon which mankind in dif- 
 ferent ages and countries have differed more widely 
 than in their conceptions of liberty, and in the kinds 
 of liberty which they principally value and desire. 
 Even in our own day, and among civilised nations, 
 these differences are enormously great. There are vast 
 countries where the forms of liberty to which the Eng- 
 lish race are most passionately attached, and which 
 they have attained by the most heroic and persistent 
 efforts, would appear either worthless or positively evil. 
 There are nations who would recoil with horror from 
 the unlimited liberty of religious discussion and pro- 
 pagandism which has become the very life-breath of 
 modern Englishmen ; who care little or nothing for the 
 unrestricted right of public meeting and political writ- 
 ing ; who deem complete commercial liberty, with its 
 corollary of unrestricted competition, an evil rather 
 than a good ; who regard the modern relaxations of 
 the restrictions of creed or sex in employments and ap- 
 pointments as subversive of the best moral elements 
 in the community, and in whose eyes an Englishman's 
 absolute right to bequeath his property as he wills is 
 the source of enormous injustice. In some Western, 
 and in nearly all Eastern nations, good administration 
 is far more valued than representation, and provided 
 men can obtain a reasonable amount of order, peace,
 
 506 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. vi. 
 
 security, and prosperity at a moderate charge, provided 
 their habits and religions are undisturbed, they care 
 very little by whom or in what way their rulers are ap- 
 pointed, and gladly dismiss the whole subject of poli- 
 tics from their thoughts. 
 
 On the other hand, numerous restraints, prohibitions 
 and punishments exist in England, and are strongly 
 supported by English opinion, which would in other 
 zones of thought be bitterly resented. It would seem, 
 in many countries, a monstrous tyranny that poor 
 parents should be compelled to send their children to 
 school, and should be fined by a magistrate if they kept 
 them at home in times when they most needed their 
 services. The English Sunday wears to many Conti- 
 nental minds at least as repulsive an aspect as the Star 
 Chamber would wear to a modern Englishman. That 
 a man who wished to work on that day should not be 
 allowed to do so ; that a struggling shopkeeper should 
 be forbidden, if he desired it, to open his shop ; that a 
 farmer should be prevented from reaping his own har- 
 vest when every fine day is of vital consequence to his 
 interests ; that poor men should be excluded by law on 
 their one holiday from their place of meeting and re- 
 freshment ; that nearly all forms of amusement, and 
 even most of the public picture galleries, museums, 
 and libraries should be closed on the day on which they 
 could give the widest pleasure, would seem to many 
 quite as serious an infringement of liberty as those acts 
 against which Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights 
 were directed. 
 
 A severity of censorship is maintained in England, 
 with the full sanction of public opinion, over theatres 
 and music-halls, and over most forms of gambling, 
 which in some parts of the Continent would excite 
 at least as much discontent as a censorship of the
 
 CH. vi. RESTRICTIONS AND PROHIBITIONS 507 
 
 Press. To a man of Spanish blood, a legal prohibition 
 of bull-fights would probably appear quite as oppres- 
 sive as a restriction of his electoral rights, and a very 
 similar sentiment has of late years grown up in a great 
 part of the South of France. If this example may be 
 thought an extreme one, it is at least certain that on 
 the whole subject of the treatment of animals English 
 opinion and practice differ enormously from the gene- 
 ral Continental standard in the number and the severity 
 of their restrictions. In no other country are scien- 
 tific experiments on living animals restrained by law, 
 and in most countries public opinion would be wholly 
 against such legislation. A special Act of Parliament 
 makes it in England a criminal offence to yoke a dog 
 to a cart, 1 which in Holland, Belgium, and many other 
 very civilised countries is done every day, without ex- 
 citing the smallest disapprobation. The manufacture 
 of ' pate de foie gras/ which is accomplished by arti- 
 ficially producing a disease, is an important industry in 
 France and Germany ; it would probably be suppressed 
 in England by law, and what in other countries is con- 
 sidered the very ordinary process of dishorning cattle 
 has been pronounced, though with some conflict of 
 judicial opinion, to be illegal. 
 
 Laws against wanton cruelty to animals exist in most 
 countries, but in their scope, their stringency, and above 
 all in their administration, there is an immense differ- 
 ence between England and the Continent. An amount 
 of over-driving, over-working, and other ill-treatment 
 of animals 2 which in most countries certainly in most 
 
 1 17 & 18 Viet. c. 60, s. 2. be arrested and brought before 
 
 2 E.g., England is, I suppose, a magistrate because she has 
 
 the only country in Europe carried her fowls to market 
 
 where a peasant woman may with their heads downwards.
 
 008 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 Southern countries does not excite any reprobation or 
 attention is in England punishable by law. In France 
 there is the well-known Grammont law, which was en- 
 acted in 1850, for the protection of animals. But it is 
 confined to domestic animals which are ' publicly and 
 abusively ' treated : it is clearly laid down by French 
 lawyers that it gives no inquisitorial power of interfer- 
 ing with what is done in a private house, or court, or 
 garden ; it can only be put in force by public func- 
 tionaries, and its penalties range from a fine of 5 to 15 
 francs, or a maximum sentence of five days of prison. 1 
 In England the corresponding penalty is two months' 
 imprisonment, there is no exception of acts done in 
 private houses, and private persons may put the law 
 in force. Few societies are more warmly supported in 
 England than one which annually prosecutes about 
 6,000 persons, chiefly very poor men, for offences 
 against animals, the immense majority of which would 
 be on the Continent unpunished, and probably even 
 unblamed. At the same time, there are few countries 
 in the civilised world in which the killing of ani- 
 mals enters so largely as in England into the amuse- 
 ments of the upper and middle classes of society, and 
 lines of distinction are drawn which, though fully re- 
 cognised by English opinion, would in many countries 
 be resented. The magistrate who sends a poor man to 
 prison for taking part in a cock-fight or a dog-fight, 
 for baiting a badger or worrying a cat, very probably 
 protects his own game by setting steel traps for vermin 
 and strychnine for stray dogs, and takes part without 
 reproach in a coursing match, a stag hunt, or a battue. 
 A similar contrast may be found in other fields. In 
 
 l The questions raised in con- A. Guilbon, Des mauvais traite- 
 nection with the Grammont law merits envers Its animaux do- 
 have been treated in full by N. mestiques.
 
 CH. vi. RESTRICTIONS AND PROHIBITIONS 509 
 
 the English marriage law-there is at least one restric- 
 tion on the contraction of marriages, and there are 
 many restrictions on the dissolution of unhappy mar- 
 riages which nearly all other Protestant countries have 
 abolished. The licensing laws, the factory laws, the 
 laws on sanitation, bristle with restrictions and penal 
 clauses that in many other countries are unknown, and 
 there are great communities in which the law which 
 treats attempted suicide as a crime would be deemed 
 a violation of natural freedom. Political freedom and 
 social freedom do not necessarily go together, and it 
 will often be found that restraints and prohibitions 
 are being multiplied in one department while they are 
 being relaxed or abolished in another. It is probable 
 that the lives of men were more variously and severely 
 restricted under the censorship of the Roman republic 
 than under the tyranny of the Caesars ; under the rule 
 of the Puritans during the Commonwealth, or in Scot- 
 land and New England, than in many of the despotisms 
 of the Continent. 
 
 These few examples may illustrate the variety and 
 the difficulty of the subject, and it may not be a use- 
 less thing to take stock of our present conceptions 
 of liberty, to observe the changes that are passing over 
 them, and to ascertain in what directions modern legis- 
 lation and opinion are realising, enlarging, or abridg- 
 ing them. 
 
 One most important form of liberty, which in our 
 generation has been almost completely achieved, both 
 in England and in most foreign countries, has been 
 religious liberty. In England, at least, complete 
 liberty of worship and of opinion had been practically 
 attained in 1813, when Unitarians at last received the 
 legal recognition which had long been granted to other 
 Dissenters. It is true that, if we looked only on the
 
 510 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VL 
 
 letter of the law, this statement would not be absolute- 
 ly true. A number of wholly obsolete laws directed 
 against Koman Catholics, or against those who ab- 
 stained from the Anglican service, were only repealed 
 in 1844 and 1846. 1 Unrepealed clauses in the Catholic 
 Emancipation Act of 1829 even now make it an offence 
 punishable by banishment for life for Jesuits, or mem- 
 bers of other male religious communities, to come into 
 the kingdom, and for any person in England to join 
 such bodies, or to introduce others into them ; 2 and 
 an Act of William III. is still on the Statute Book, ac- 
 cording to which, in the opinion of very competent 
 lawyers, the gravest and most solid works impugning 
 the Christian religion and the Divine authority of the 
 Old and New Testaments might be made subjects for 
 prosecutions. 3 These laws, however, have become en- 
 tirely obsolete, and it is not too much to say that every 
 form of religious worship which does not directly of- 
 fend morality, and every form of religious opinion 
 which is expressed in serious and decent language, are, 
 in England, perfectly unrestricted. 
 
 The practice of the law is in this respect fully sup- 
 ported by public opinion. No change in English life 
 during the latter half of the nineteenth century is 
 more conspicuous than the great enlargement of the 
 range of permissible opinions on religious subjects. 
 Opinions and arguments which not many years ago 
 were confined to small circles and would have drawn 
 
 1 7 & 8 Viet. c. 102 ; 9 & 10 were only required to register 
 
 Viet. c. 59. themselves. A Secretary of 
 
 2 10 George IV. c. 7, ss. 28- State might also give other 
 34. There was an exception in Jesuits a special license to re- 
 favour of natural-born subjects main in England for not longer 
 who had been Jesuits or mem- than six months, 
 bers of other religious orders 3 Stephen's History of the 
 before the Act passed, and who Criminal Law, ii. 468-76.
 
 CH. VL SIGNED ARTICLES 611 
 
 down grave social penalties, have become the common- 
 places of the drawing-room and of the boudoir. The 
 first very marked change in this respect followed, I 
 think, the publication in 1860 of the ' Essays and Re- 
 views,' and the effect of this book in making the reli- 
 gious questions which it discussed familiar to the great 
 body of educated men was probably by far the most 
 important of its consequences. The power and popu- 
 larity of the works of Buckle and Eenan; the long 
 controversies that followed Bishop Colenso's criticism 
 on the Pentateuch ; the writings of Darwin, and their 
 manifest bearing on the received theologies ; the 
 gradual infiltration into England of the results that 
 had been arrived at by the Biblical critics of Germany 
 and Holland, have all had a powerful influence, and 
 the tendency has been greatly accelerated by the fashion, 
 which sprang up in England in 1865, of publishing 
 magazines consisting of signed articles by men of most 
 various and opposing opinions. The old type of maga- 
 zine represented a single definite school of thought, 
 and it was read chiefly by those who belonged to that 
 school. The new type appeals to a much larger and 
 more varied circle, and its editors soon discovered that 
 few things were more acceptable to their readers than 
 a full discussion by eminent men of the great problems 
 of natural and revealed religion. Opinions the most 
 conservative and the most negative appeared side by side, 
 were read together, and are now habitually found in the 
 drawing-rooms of men of the most different opinions. 
 
 Custom so soon establishes its empire over men that 
 we seldom realise the greatness and the significance of 
 this change. Every Church even the most intolerant 
 one seems to have accepted it in England. On hardly 
 any subject has the Church of Rome been more impe- 
 rative than in her efforts to prevent her members from
 
 512 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VI 
 
 coming in contact with any form of heterodox opinion. 
 Many of my readers will probably remember how, to 
 the very end of the temporal power of the Pope, Eng- 
 lish newspapers and magazines at Eome were subject 
 to a stringent censorship, and continually arrived with 
 whole passages carefully excised, lest anything incon- 
 sistent with the doctrines of the Church should pene- 
 trate into Eome, even in a foreign tongue and to a 
 stranger community. In French Canada, where the 
 old spirit of Catholicism probably retains a stronger 
 hold over the people than in any other country, a 
 stringent censorship of the Press is still maintained. 
 In 1869 there was a case, which excited much atten- 
 tion in England, of a Canadian who was excommuni- 
 cated and denied Christian burial because he had been 
 a member of a Canadian institute which had refused to 
 exclude from its library books and journals disapproved 
 of by the Church. A pamphlet published by a leading 
 member of that institute in defence of its policy was 
 condemned in such terms that every Catholic who, 
 after being properly warned, retained it in his house 
 could only be absolved by the bishop or his vicars- 
 general. As recently as 1892 a sentence was read in all 
 the Canadian Catholic churches forbidding, under pen- 
 alty of refusal of the Sacraments, any Catholic to print, 
 sell, distribute, read, or possess two Catholic journals 
 which had offended the bishop. Their offence appears 
 to have been that they had published and commented 
 on a gross instance of clerical immorality which had 
 been clearly proved, and that one of them had proposed 
 to publish <Les Trois Mousquetaires ' of Alexandre 
 Dumas. 1 In England, there are probably few houses 
 
 1 Goldwin Smith's Canada, There has been a more recent 
 p. 15. See, too, a Canadian case of a Catholic bishop in 
 book, Doutre, Ruines Clericales. Ireland excommunicating the
 
 CH. vi. PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 513 
 
 of the Catholic gentry where periodicals may not be 
 found in which men like Herbert Spencer and Huxley 
 expound their views with perfect frankness. Among 
 the contributors to these magazines there have been at 
 least two cardinals and many other Catholic divines. 
 
 Men will differ much about the good and evil result- 
 ing from this fact ; but it at least indicates a great 
 change of public feeling in the direction of religious 
 liberty, and it is in the highest degree improbable 
 that in England, and in most of the leading countries 
 of the world, theological opinions could be again re- 
 pressed on the ground of their theological error. It is 
 possible, however, for religious expression and worship 
 to be unfettered, but at the same time for its professors 
 to be gravely injured by disqualifications and disabili- 
 ties. In the full concession of political rights to Non- 
 conforming bodies, England has been much behind 
 some other nations. The United States led the way, 
 and one of the articles of its Constitution declared in 
 clear, noble, and comprehensive language, that 'no 
 religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to 
 any office or public trust under the United States/ In 
 the words of Judge Story, ' The Catholic and the Pro- 
 testant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and 
 the infidel, may sit down at the common table of the 
 national councils without any inquisition into their 
 faith or mode of worship/ 1 In France, though gross 
 religious intolerance accompanied and followed the 
 Revolution, the general principle of severing political 
 privileges from theological beliefs was at least clearly 
 laid down. In 1789 the National Assembly threw open 
 all civil and military posts and privileges to Protestants, 
 and in 1791 to Jews ; and, in spite of the many vicis- 
 
 Jeaders of a newspaper of which ' Story On the Constitution^ 
 ne disapproved. iii. 731. 
 
 VOL. i. 83
 
 514 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 situdes which French government afterwards experi- 
 enced, these privileges were never seriously infringed. 
 It was a significant fact that the Jew Cremieux was a 
 member of the Provisional Government of 1848. The 
 Belgian Constitution of 1831 followed the example of 
 the United States, and gave Belgians of all creeds ab- 
 solute religious freedom and full constitutional privi- 
 leges. Prussia was and is a very conservative country, 
 but in the Constitution of 1850 it was expressly pro- 
 vided that civil and political rights were independent 
 of religious beliefs. 
 
 In England, it is somewhat humiliating to observe 
 how slowly this constitutional equality was attained. 
 By an Irish Act of 1793, and by English Acts of 1813 
 and 1817, all ranks of the army and navy were gradu- 
 ally opened to Catholics and Dissenters ; while the abo- 
 lition of Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 placed 
 Protestant Dissenters on an equality with the members 
 of the Established Church in corporate and civil offices. 
 Then followed the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, 
 and in 1833 and 1838 Acts were carried permitting 
 Quakers, Moravians, and some other persons who object- 
 ed to swearing, to substitute in all cases an affirmation 
 for an oath. The conflict about the emancipation of the 
 Jews raged long and fiercely ; but in 1839 they were 
 permitted to take oaths in the form that was binding 
 on their consciences, in 1845 they were admitted into 
 corporate offices, in 1858 they made their way into the 
 House of Commons, and at a much later period a dis- 
 tinguished living Jew has been raised to the peer- 
 age and made Lord Lieutenant of his county. The 
 admission, after a long struggle, to the House of 
 Commons of an avowed atheist, in the person of Mr. 
 Bradlangh, completed the work of abolishing reli- 
 gious disqualifications in England.
 
 CH. VI. PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 515 
 
 I do not include in the struggle for religious li- 
 berty such measures as the abolition of compulsory 
 Church rates, the disestablishment and disendow- 
 ment of the Irish Church, the alterations that have 
 been effected in the law of tithes. These seem to me 
 to belong to a different category, and must be regarded 
 as episodes in the conflict between the supporters and 
 opponents of an established Church. Among the great 
 achievements of religious liberty, however, may un- 
 doubtedly be counted the important measure carried 
 by Lord John Russell in 1836, enabling Dissenters to 
 celebrate their marriages in their own chapels and by 
 their own rites, and establishing a system of civil mar- 
 riage for those who desired it, and also a comprehensive 
 and secular system for the registration of births, deaths, 
 and marriages. To the same class belongs the Act of 
 1870 permitting scrupulous unbelievers, who rejected 
 all forms of oath, to give evidence in the law courts on 
 affirmation, the penalty of perjury being still retained 
 as a protection against false witness. The measure of 
 1880, also, which, following a precedent that had long 
 been established in Ireland, permitted Nonconformist 
 burial services and burials without religious services in 
 parish churchyards, was partly, but not wholly, in- 
 spired by hostility to the Established Church. In 
 many instances a deeper and holier feeling made Non- 
 conformists wish to be laid at rest with parents or an- 
 cestors of the established faith, and in country districts, 
 where no other burial-places existed, it was a real griev- 
 ance that Nonconformist burials could only be effected 
 with an Anglican service. 
 
 The most important, however, of all modern con- 
 quests of religious liberty have been those which placed 
 at the disposal of men of all creeds the best education 
 the nation could afford. The great work of the estab-
 
 516 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 lisliment of undenominational primary education in 
 England will be hereafter considered. Its accomplish- 
 ment had been preceded by that Jong and arduous 
 struggle for the admission of Nonconformists to the 
 studies, degrees, and emoluments of the English uni- 
 versities which forms one of the noblest pages in the 
 history of the Liberal party, when English Liberalism 
 was at its best. The rise of the High Church party in 
 1833 greatly retarded it, and to the last that party 
 strained every effort to close the doors of higher edu- 
 cation against all who refused to accept the Anglican 
 creed. The same spirit that led ecclesiastics in the 
 eighteenth century, in the interests of their monopoly, 
 to defend the law which degraded the sacrament into 
 an office test, still prevailed, and the scandalously pro- 
 fane system of compelling boys fresh from school to 
 purchase their Admission into Oxford by signing the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, which not one in a hundred had 
 seriously studied, was strenuously supported. Dublin 
 University has the honourable distinction of having 
 long preceded the English universities in the path of 
 true Liberalism, for even before 1793 Catholics and 
 Nonconformists were admitted among its students, and 
 after 1793 they were admitted to its degrees, though 
 not to its scholarships and fellowships. In the Scotch 
 Universities, also, there was no religious test against 
 Dissenters. In Cambridge, Nonconformists might 
 become students, but no one could obtain a degree 
 without subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. At 
 Oxford, Nonconformists were repelled on the very 
 threshold, for the subscription was exacted at matricu- 
 lation. English Dissenters were not only excluded 
 from the inestimable ad vantage, of higher education, 
 and from the many great prizes connected with the 
 universities they were also seriously impeded, by the
 
 CH. VL RELIGIOUS TESTS IN UNIVERSITIES 517 
 
 want of a university degree, in their subsequent pro- 
 fessional careers. 
 
 This last grievance was removed by the foundation 
 of the London University in 1836. Being a mere ex- 
 amining body, it could not offer the teaching advan- 
 tages, nor did it possess the splendid prizes, of the 
 older universities ; but it at least conferred degrees 
 which were highly valued, and which were encumbered 
 oy no theological test. Measures for opening Oxford 
 and Cambridge to the Dissenters were again and again 
 introduced by Liberal ministers, again and again car- 
 ried in the Commons, again and again rejected in the 
 Lords. In 1854, Nonconformists were allowed to ob- 
 tain the B.A. degree in the old English universities, 
 but they could not obtain higher degrees, and although 
 they might compete at examinations for the great uni- 
 versity prizes, they could not enjoy them. At last, in 
 1871, a great measure of enfranchisement, which was 
 originally placed in the hands of Mr. Coleridge, and 
 had failed five times in the Lords, became law, opening 
 nearly all offices and degrees in the universities with- 
 out theological restriction. Seven years later the few 
 remaining distinctions, with the very proper exception 
 of degrees and professorships of divinity, were abo- 
 lished by a Conservative Government. In Dublin 
 University, the grievance of the restriction of fellow- 
 ships and scholarships to members of the Established 
 Church was mitigated in 1854 by the institution of 
 non-foundation scholarships open to all creeds, and the 
 whole body of the remaining restrictions was swept 
 away by the Act of 1873. There is still, it is true, 
 a Divinity School in Trinity College for the benefit 
 of candidates for orders in the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. It corresponds to Maynooth, which is exclu- 
 sively devoted to the education of priests, and which
 
 518 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. VI 
 
 was set up and established by a large expenditure 
 of public money. But, with, the exception of the di- 
 vinity professorships connected with this school, every 
 post in the great Irish university, from the highest to 
 the lowest, is now open to the members of all reli- 
 gious creeds. 
 
 The long delay in opening the English universities 
 to Dissenters has been a great misfortune. It shut out 
 whole generations from one of the best boons that a 
 nation could offer to her children. It added some- 
 thing to the acerbity and much to the narrowness of 
 the Nonconformist spirit, and the unworthy and re- 
 actionary attitude of the House of Lords on this and 
 on kindred religious questions contributed perhaps 
 more than any other cause to alienate from that 
 House the Liberal sentiment of England. The evils 
 resulting from that alienation are very great, though 
 there are clear recent signs that it has been diminish- 
 ing. The battle of religious disqualification is now 
 substantially won. The balance of power has shifted. 
 Other questions have arisen, and the dangers to be 
 feared and to be guarded against lie in other directions. 
 But the bias that was formed, the passions that were 
 generated by bygone contests, are not wholly extinct, 
 and they make it more difficult to save the State from 
 the dangers of an unbridled democracy. 
 
 In the universities, the evils that were predicted 
 from the abolition of tests have never taken place. 
 Many and various opinions are openly avowed, and 
 truth has gained much by the avowal ; but the reli- 
 gious sentiment has not decayed, and it is certainly not 
 less genuine because it is no longer fortified by privi- 
 lege, or connected with interested and hypocritical as- 
 sents. While the foundation by private munificence 
 of denominational colleges within an unsectarian uni-
 
 CH. vi. EFFECT OF ABOLITION OF TESTS 619 
 
 versity has preserved the best features of the old system, 
 the juxtaposition of opposing creeds has produced no 
 disorder, and university sentiment speedily accepted 
 the changed situation. It was once my privilege to 
 receive an honorary degree from the University of Ox- 
 ford in company with a great and venerable writer, 
 who had long been the most illustrious figure in Eng- 
 lish Unitarianism, as well as one of the chief defenders 
 of a spiritualist philosophy. I can well remember the 
 touching language in which Dr. Martineau then de- 
 scribed the dark shadow which his exclusion on account 
 of his faith from English university life had thrown 
 over his youth, and the strange feeling with which he 
 found himself entering, at the age of eighty, an ho- 
 noured and invited member, where fifty or sixty years 
 before he and all other Dissenters had been so rigidly 
 proscribed. 
 
 The force and steadiness of the current which has, 
 during the last half-century, been moving in the di- 
 rection of the establishment of religious liberty and of 
 the abolition of religious disqualifications cannot be 
 mistaken. It has been accompanied by a correspond- 
 ing movement in favour of an enlargement of the lines 
 of the Established Church. I do not think that the 
 hold of this Church upon the affections of the English 
 people has, in the present generation, been really 
 weakened, although some of the forces opposed to it 
 have acquired additional strength, and although the 
 growth within its borders of a ritualistic party may 
 very possibly one day lead both to disruption and dis- 
 establishment. But the lines of defence and of attack 
 have been somewhat changed. Both the doctrine that 
 a State establishment of religion is an essentially anti- 
 Christian thing, and the doctrine that every nation is 
 bound in its corporate capacity to profess a religion,
 
 520 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 and that the maintenance of an established Church is 
 therefore the first of national duties have, I think, 
 lost much of their old power. The belief that the 
 Church, as a continuous organisation, has the same 
 indefeasible right to its tithes and glebes as a private 
 individual to the property which he has earned or in- 
 herited, and the belief that the diversion of property 
 from religious to secular purposes is an act of sacrilege, 
 have certainly not passed away, but they are no longer 
 governing forces in English politics. 
 
 The main defence of the Church of England as an 
 establishment now rests upon its utility. It is, it is 
 said, a great corporation, which is indissolubly bound 
 up with the best elements in the national life and his- 
 tory, which has shown itself in these latter days as far 
 as possible from dormant and effete, and which is ex- 
 ercising over a vast area and in multifarious ways a 
 beneficent, moralising, and spiritualising influence. 
 If its revenues in the aggregate seem large, no other 
 revenues are so little abused, are so constantly associ- 
 ated with moral and useful lives, are so largely and so 
 steadily employed for the benefit of the community. 
 Its parochial system places in the poorest and most un- 
 attractive parish an educated and cultivated resident 
 gentleman, who is not dependent on his parishioners, 
 and whose whole life is spent in constant intercourse 
 with the poor, in constant efforts to improve their con- 
 dition, to raise their morals, to console them in their 
 troubles. Like the dew of Heaven, the silent, continu- 
 ous action of this system falls over great tracts of 
 human life and suffering which the remedies of the 
 politician can never reach. There, are no more beau- 
 tiful or more useful lives than those which may be 
 often found in some backward and deserted district, 
 where the parish clergyman and his family are spread-
 
 CH. vi. ESTABLISHED CHURCHES 521 
 
 ing around them a little oasis of cultivation and re- 
 finement, and, by modest, simple, unobtrusive and 
 disinterested work, continually alleviating suffering 
 and raising the moral level of those among whom they 
 labour. What a contrast do they often present to the 
 noisy demagogue, to the epicurean party gambler, who 
 is seeking for votes or power by denouncing them ! I ; 
 is impossible to doubt that the whole of this system 
 would be greatly impaired if the Church were broken 
 into fragments, and if its ministers degenerated into 
 mere narrow sectarians, representing a lower plane of 
 education and refinement, and depending for their 
 subsistence on the good pleasure of their parishioners. 
 And the parochial system is but one of the many 
 benefits that may be traced to the Establishment. The 
 maintenance of a learned clergy, who play a great part 
 in the fields of literature and scholarship ; the cathedral 
 system, which adds so largely to the splendour and 
 beauty of English life ; the existence, both at home 
 and abroad, of an order of men to whom British sub- 
 jects of all creeds and classes have a right in time of 
 trouble to appeal ; the wider latitude of opinion which 
 an established Church seldom fails to give ; the im- 
 portance of a State connection, both in restraining the 
 excesses of sacerdotal tyranny and in diminishing the 
 temptations to clerical demagogism, are all advantages 
 which may be truly alleged and largely amplified. 
 Many of them extend far beyond the limits of con- 
 vinced Anglicans, and affect most beneficially the 
 whole national life. Is it the part of a true statesman 
 to destroy or weaken a machine which is doing so mucL 
 good in so many ways ? Is it probable that its revenue 
 would be more wisely or more usefully employed i\ 
 they were flung into the political arena, to be struggled 
 for by contending parties ?
 
 522 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ca VI. 
 
 But in order to strengthen these lines of defence two 
 things are necessary. The one is, that the disadvan- 
 tages attending the existence of an established Church 
 should be reduced to the smallest possible limits ; the 
 other is, that the benefits of the establishment should 
 be as largely as possible extended. The first object has 
 been attained by the complete abolition of religious dis- 
 qualifications and disabilities. These were once de- 
 fended as inseparable from an establishment, and the 
 oest fortifications for its defence. They are now more 
 justly looked upon as the most serious arguments 
 against it, for they were restrictions and injuries im- 
 posed on different classes of the community in order 
 that it might subsist. As we have seen, it has been 
 one of the great works of the nineteenth century to 
 sweep these disqualifications away. 
 
 The other object is to comprehend the largest pos- 
 sible portion of the English people in the Established 
 Church. In this respect reformers are following faith- 
 fully the root idea of the Church, which was intended 
 to be a national, or, in other words, a representative, 
 Church, representing and including the two great sec- 
 tions of the community that were separated from the 
 See of Rome. One of these sections, though repudiat- 
 ing the pretensions of the Papacy, leant strongly to- 
 wards the theology of Rome ; the other frankly adopted 
 the principles of the Reformation on the Continent. 
 The composite and representative character of the 
 Church is clearly exhibited in the Prayer Book, which, 
 if it does not contain positive contradictions of definite 
 doctrine, at least includes very evident contradictions 
 of tendency. 
 
 The attempt of the Tudor statesmen to include the 
 whole body of the English people in the National 
 Church failed, and the attempt of the statesmen of the
 
 OH. vi. THE CHURCH AND NONCONFORMITY 523 
 
 Revolution to bring back the great Puritan body by an 
 Act of Comprehension was equally unsuccessful. The 
 amalgamation of the different Protestant organisations 
 is now plainly impossible, and if it were possible it 
 would be of very doubtful benefit. It is true, indeed, 
 that the original grounds of dissension have in a great 
 measure disappeared. The rigidities and the distinc- 
 tions of Calvinistic theology, which were once deemed 
 so transcendently important, have lost their old hold 
 on the minds of men, and an amount of ornament and 
 ritual and music has crept into Puritan worship which 
 would have aroused the horror of the early Puritans. 
 The Ritualistic party in the Anglican Church is very 
 widely separated from Protestant Nonconformity, but 
 there is no real difference of principle between the 
 Evangelical section of the Church of England and the 
 great body of the Protestant Dissenters. With many 
 the separation is a mere matter of taste, some persons 
 preferring the written liturgy, and some the extem- 
 poraneous prayers. Others object to the Church of 
 England, not because their own type of theology has 
 not a fully recognised place within its borders, but be- 
 cause it also admits doctrines or practices which they 
 condemn. With others, again, the separation depends 
 wholly on the accident of birth and education. Through 
 habit, or interest, or affection men prefer to remain in 
 the ecclesiastical organisation in which they have been 
 brought up, and with which they are not dissatisfied, 
 rather than go over to another to which they have no, 
 objection. The case of Scotland shows how it is pos- 
 sible for three Churches to exist in separation which 
 are identical in their form of worship, identical in their 
 ecclesiastical organisation, and all but identical in their 
 doctrine. 
 
 The decay of the doctrinal basis of English Noncon-
 
 524 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. n. 
 
 formity, though it is not likely to lead to any amalga- 
 mation of Churches, is having one very mischievous 
 consequence. It is giving Nonconformity a far more 
 political character than in the past, and a political 
 character which is sometimes singularly unworthy and 
 unscrupulous. Envy becomes the guiding motive, a 
 desire to break down and diminish the Established 
 Church the chief ground of political action. A charac- 
 teristic though an extreme example of this spirit was 
 exhibited by certain representatives of Welsh Noncon- 
 formity, who actually opposed a Bill to enable the 
 Bishops more easily to suppress immorality among 
 their clergy, lest it should tend to increase the effi- 
 ciency of the Establishment. 1 In some periods of past 
 history England owed much to the political action of 
 Nonconformists, and they raised very appreciably the 
 moral level of English politics. Those who have 
 studied their conduct and their alliances in the present 
 generation will scarcely attribute to them such an in- 
 fluence. 
 
 But although it is not possible, and probably not 
 desirable, that the Established Church should absorb 
 rival organisations, the steady tendency of the present 
 generation has been to expand the circle of permissible 
 opinions. An Act of 1865 modified materially the 
 form of subscription to the Articles. Instead of being 
 obliged to subscribe to ' all and everything ' in the 
 Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book, the clergy 
 man is now bound only to a belief in the doctrines o"i 
 the Church as a whole. The gross tyranny which, 
 under the name of the indelibility of orders, made it 
 illegal for a clergyman who had found it impossible 
 
 1 See the debates on the Clergy Sir R. Temple on this discus- 
 Discipline (Immorality) Bill of sion. Life in Parliament^ pp. 
 1892. See, too, the remarks of 341-43.
 
 CH. vi. FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS OPINION 525 
 
 conscientiously to continue in the Church to adopt any 
 other profession, was abolished in 1870, in spite of the 
 strenuous opposition of Bishop Wilberforce, and suc- 
 cessive judicial decisions by the Privy Council have 
 established the legal right of each of the three parties 
 in the Church to hold their distinctive doctrines. No 
 feature of the modern Anglican Church is more con- 
 spicuous than the great variety of opinions that have 
 now a fully recognised place within its limits. 
 
 This movement has been much more a lay movement 
 than a clerical one, and it is mainly due to the influ- 
 ence which establishment gives to the lay element in 
 the government of the Church. It forms a remarkable 
 contrast to the growing ascendency of ultramontanism 
 in the Church of Eome, but it is in full accordance 
 with the spirit that is prevailing in the legislation and 
 the public opinion of nearly all countries. The ten- 
 dency to multiply restrictions, which is so clearly seen 
 in many departments of modern legislation, does not 
 appear in the sphere of religion. The belief both in 
 the certainty and in the importance of dogma has de- 
 clined ; nearly everywhere great fields of human action 
 are being withdrawn from the empire of the Churches, 
 and the right of men to believe and profess various 
 religious doctrines without suffering molestation or 
 losing civil privileges is now very generally recognised. 
 In some countries and districts the law is certainly in 
 advance of public opinion. In some cases, where the 
 overwhelming majority of the nation belong to one 
 creed, there are restraints upon proselytism ; and dis- 
 senters from the established creed, or from a limited 
 number of recognised creeds, are forbidden to set up 
 churches, though they may meet in private houses ; 
 but with the single exception of Russia, all the coun- 
 tries which in the first decades of the century were
 
 526 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vt 
 
 most intolerant in their legislation have been touched 
 by the new spirit. 
 
 In Sweden, not many years ago, every administrative 
 and judicial function was strictly limited to the profes- 
 sors of the Lutheran creed. Even the practice of medi- 
 cine and the right of teaching were confined to them. 
 All attempts to induce a Lutheran to change his creed 
 were penal offences, severely punished, and every Swede 
 who abandoned the religion of his country was liable 
 to banishment for life. It was not until 1860 that the 
 existence of dissenting bodies was, under severely spe- 
 cified conditions, recognised ; but in 1862, 1870, and 
 1873 laws were passed permitting Swedish Lutherans to 
 join other religions, and opening nearly all public posts 
 and employments, as well as the seats in the Legisla- 
 ture, to men of all religions. 1 
 
 Austria, again, not long since was a great centre of 
 religious and political reaction, but it is now one of the 
 best-governed countries in Europe, and there are very 
 few modern legislations which will better repay study 
 than that of Austria since 1860. The Concordat of 
 1855, which secured the Catholic Church a monopoly, 
 has been annulled, and the Austrian Constitution makes 
 all civil and political rights independent of creed, and 
 guarantees to all subjects perfect liberty of conscience 
 and worship. A distinction, it is true, is drawn be- 
 tween recognised and unrecognised religions. The for- 
 mer, by the organic law of 1867, comprised, in addition 
 to Catholicism, the Protestant religions of the Confes- 
 sion of Augsburg and of the Helvetic Confession, the 
 Greek Church, and the Jewish Synagogue ; but a law 
 of 1874 greatly enlarged the circle, by providing that 
 
 1 Block, Diet, de la Politique, article ' Suede.' See, too, Da- 
 reste, Les Constitutions Modernes, ii. 41, 42, 48, 51.
 
 CH. vi. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 527 
 
 all other creeds might obtain a full legal recognition if 
 they satisfied the Minister of Public Worship that there 
 was nothing in their teaching, worship, or organisation 
 contrary to law or morals, and that they were sufficiently 
 numerous to support a Church. These recognised reli- 
 gious may constitute themselves as corporations, regu- 
 lating their own affairs, founding establishments, and 
 exercising publicly their religious worship. The ad- 
 herents of religions that are not legally recognised 
 have, however, a full right to celebrate their worship 
 in private houses, provided there is nothing in that 
 worship contrary to law or morals. In the State schools, 
 religious instruction must- be given separately to the 
 scholars of different denominations by their own priests 
 or pastors, or by lay teachers appointed by the different 
 religious bodies. A valuable and most significant por- 
 tion of the law of 1874 provides that the ecclesiastical 
 power must never be used, except against the members 
 of the Church to which it belongs, and that it must 
 never be used with the object of interfering with the 
 observance of the law, or the acts of the civil power, or 
 the free exercise of any civil right. 1 
 
 Spain and Portugal are the last examples that need 
 be given of countries in which, though scepticism and 
 indifference are very rife, the whole population, with 
 infinitesimal exceptions, is of one nominal belief, and 
 in which the steady teaching of the Church and many 
 generations of intolerant legislation have made the 
 establishment of religious liberty peculiarly difficult. 
 According to the judgment of those who are best ac- 
 
 1 See Dareste, Demombrynes. tional et de Legislation compa- 
 
 There is an admirable series of ree. They are scattered through 
 
 papers examining in detail the several volumes. See especially 
 
 Austrian legislation since 1860 torn. viii. pp. 502-5. 
 in the Revue de Droit Inter-no-
 
 528 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VL 
 
 quainted with these countries, there exists in both 
 countries, but especially in Spain, a strong determi- 
 nation to secularise the government, to limit Church 
 property, and to restrain ecclesiastical power, accom- 
 panied by much indisposition to encourage any multi- 
 plication or competition of religions. 1 Few countries 
 have witnessed, in the present century, more confisca- 
 tions of Church property than Spain, and the political 
 influence of its priesthood is very small, though it is 
 not impossible that the establishment of universal suf- 
 frage in 1890 2 may tend to its revival. The Catholic 
 religion is recognised as the religion of the State, but 
 it is provided that no one on Spanish soil may be mo- 
 lested for his religious opinions and for his worship as 
 long as he respects Christian morality, though ' the 
 public manifestations and ceremonies of the State re- 
 ligion ' alone are authorised. Small congregations of 
 Spaniards who dissent from the Established Church 
 worship freely and publicly in the chief towns. 
 
 In Portugal the law is very similar. The Catholic 
 religion is recognised as the religion of the kingdom ; 
 all others are permitted to strangers, and they may 
 have edifices destined for their worship, but they must 
 not have externally the appearance of churches. ' No 
 one may be molested for his religion, provided he re- 
 spects that of the State and does not offend public mo- 
 rality/ At the same time, a Portuguese who publicly 
 apostasises from the Catholic Church is punished by 
 twenty years' suspension of political rights. 3 The priests 
 have also in Portugal a recognised place as registering 
 
 1 An interesting account of ' See Dareste, i. 626. 
 
 religion in Spain will be found 3 Revue de Droit Internet- 
 
 in Garrido, L'Espagne Content- tional, xx. 334. 
 poraine, pp. 123-G2 (1862).
 
 OH. vt TRUE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 529 
 
 agents at elections for the Chamber of Deputies, and 
 these elections conclude with a religious ceremony. 1 
 
 It will be evident, I think, to those who have taken 
 an extended survey of the subject, that the line of re- 
 ligious liberty which ought to be drawn in any country, 
 like most other political lines, is not an inflexible or 
 invariable one, but one which largely depends on many 
 fluctuating considerations. The religious legislation of 
 a country where there are grave differences of opinion 
 will naturally be somewhat different from the legisla- 
 tion of a country where there is a practical unanimi- 
 ty, and where opposing creeds can only be introduced 
 by immigration or by proselytism from without, and 
 considerations of public order may most legitimate- 
 ly modify and limit religious legislation. Eeligious 
 processions, demonstrations, or controversies in the 
 streets, which would probably produce obstruction or 
 riot, or which are intended to injure some class or 
 person, or which would irritate public opinion, may 
 be most properly forbidden, while those which are 
 practically harmless are allowed. 
 
 There is a broad and intelligible distinction between 
 the right of freely expressing religious or political opi- 
 nions in churches or meetings to which no one is obliged 
 to come, in books or papers which no one is obliged to 
 read, and the right of expressing them in the public 
 streets, which all men are forced to use, and which are 
 the common property of all. The first and most essen 
 tial form of liberty is the liberty of performing lawful 
 business without molestation and annoyance, and this 
 liberty is most imperfectly attained when it is impos- 
 sible for men, women, or children to pass through the 
 streets without having attacks upon their religious 
 
 1 Demombrynes, i. 495, 503-5, 610. 
 VOL. i. 34
 
 530 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VL 
 
 belief thrust forcibly upon their attention. In most 
 countries such street controversies are rigidly sup- 
 pressed. Where they are permitted, they ought surely 
 to be deemed a matter of tolerance, and not of right ; 
 to be regulated in each case according to special cir- 
 cumstances. Some years ago it was the habit of a 
 Protestant missionary society to placard the walls 
 throughout the Catholic provinces of Ireland with 
 questions and arguments subversive of the Catholic 
 faith, and missionaries might be seen driving along 
 the roads throwing controversial leaflets to every pea- 
 sant, and into every turf-basket as they passed. In 
 my own judgment, such a method of propagandism 
 ought not to have been permitted, and it is probable 
 that most of those who disagree with me would admit 
 the principle for which I am contending, if the ar- 
 guments that were disseminated had been directed, 
 not against Catholicism, but against Christianity. In 
 France, where a stringent law forbids meetings in the 
 streets, it has been, under the Eepublic, a common 
 thing to see profane and often obscene caricatures of 
 the most sacred persons and incidents in the Evan- 
 gelical narratives publicly exposed. The prohibition 
 of such placards in the streets would surely not be a 
 violation, but a vindication, of liberty. 
 
 In India, questions of religious liberty of great 
 delicacy and difficulty have arisen. For a long period 
 it was the steady policy of the British Government not 
 only itself to maintain an attitude of strict religious 
 neutrality, but also to discourage proselytism as a grave 
 danger to public order. ' The English/ Lord Macart- 
 ney declared, ' never attempt to disturb or dispute the 
 worship or tenets of others ; . . . they have no priests 
 or chaplains with them, as have other European na- 
 tions.' In 1793, when the charter of the East India
 
 CH. vi. RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA 531 
 
 Company was renewed, Wilberforce endeavoured to 
 procure the insertion of clauses to the effect that it was 
 the duty of the English to take measures for the reli- 
 gious and moral improvement of the natives in India, 
 and that the Court of Directors should for that purpose 
 send out and maintain missionaries and schoolmasters, 
 as well as chaplains and ministers for those of their 
 own creed. Owing to the strenuous resistance of the 
 East India directors and proprietors, these clauses were 
 struck out of the Bill at the third reading ; the Com- 
 pany for many years refused to grant licenses to mis- 
 sionaries, and they more than once exercised against 
 missionaries the power they possessed of expelling un- 
 licensed Europeans from India. It was not until 1813 
 that Parliament broke down the barrier, and threw 
 open the doors of India to missionary efforts. It did so 
 in spite of a great preponderance of Anglo-Indian opi- 
 nion, and of the evidence of Warren Hastings, and 
 this measure marks conspicuously the increasing power 
 which the Evangelical party was exercising in British 
 politics. 1 
 
 But although India was from this time thrown open 
 to numerous missionary enterprises, the law forbade 
 and forbids, in terms much stricter than would be em- 
 ployed in British legislation, any word or act which 
 could wound religious feelings, 2 and the State endea- 
 vours to maintain its own religious neutrality, and to 
 abstain as far as possible from any act that could con- 
 flict with the religious feelings, observances, and cus- 
 toms of the subject races. It has not, however, always 
 
 1 Strachey's India ; Wilber- Kaye's Christianity in India, 
 
 force's Life, ii. 24-28, 392-93 ; and Marshman's Lives of Carey, 
 
 iv. 101-26. See, too, on the Marshman, and Ward. 
 
 history of the relations of Bri- * Stephen's History of Crimi- 
 
 tish law to native religions, nal Law, iii. 312-13.
 
 032 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 been able to do so. It seems an easy thing to guaran- 
 tee the free exercise of different forms of worship, but 
 grave difficulties arise when these religions bring with 
 them a code of ethics essentially different from that 
 of the ruling power. Probably the first instance in 
 which the British Government undertook to prohibit a 
 religious observance in India was in 1802, when Lord 
 Wellesley suppressed under severe penalties the sacri- 
 fice of children by drowning, which took place annually 
 at the great religious festival at Saugor. The slaugh- 
 ter of female infants, though it does not appear to have 
 grown out of religious ideas, was fully recognised by 
 Hindu morals, and it was practised on such a scale that 
 within the memory of living men there were great dis- 
 tricts in which not a single girl could be found in many 
 villages. 1 English law has made this act a crime, and 
 some legislation which is as recent as 1870 has done 
 much to suppress it. The human sacrifices that were 
 once constantly performed before the images of Kali, 
 and "were not unfrequent at other shrines, have been 
 abolished, and in 1829 Lord William Bentinck took the 
 bold and most beneficent step of abolishing the suttee, 
 or the practice of immolating Hindu widows on the 
 funeral piles of their husbands. 
 
 The horrible fact that several hundreds of women 
 were annually burnt alive within the British dominions, 
 and in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, had 
 long occupied the thoughts of British governors, but 
 the practice was so essentially a religious rite that for 
 a long time they did not venture to forbid it. Lord 
 Cornwallis directed public servants to withhold their 
 consent from the ceremony, if it was asked for,' but he 
 prohibited them from taking any official step to pre- 
 
 Strachey's India, pp. 290-91.
 
 OH. vr. SUPPRESSION OP THE SUTTEE 533 
 
 vent it. Lord Wellesley consulted the judges about 
 the possibility of suppressing it, but in their opinion 
 such a step would be extremely dangerous. In 1813, 
 Lord Minto, while disclaiming all intention of forbid- 
 ding it, or of interfering with the tenets of the native 
 religions, undertook at least to introduce some limita- 
 tions and regulations with the object of diminishing its 
 barbarity. According to the new regulations, it could 
 only be practised after communication with the magis- 
 trates and principal officers of police, and in the pre- 
 sence of the police, and they were directed to ascertain 
 that the widow's act was purely voluntary, that no stupe- 
 fying or intoxicating drugs were employed, that there 
 was up to the very last no violence or intimidation, that 
 the victim was not under the age of sixteen and not preg- 
 nant. There does not, however, appear to have been 
 much diminution of the practice, and in 1828, the year 
 preceding its suppression, it was officially reported that 
 463 widows had been burnt, 287 of them being in the 
 Calcutta division alone. 1 In the ten previous years the 
 annual number of immolations is said to have averaged 
 not less than 600. 
 
 The measure of Lord William Bentinck excited 
 many fears and much opposition. It was argued that 
 the practice of suttee had existed for countless centu- 
 ries in India ; that it was in the eyes of the Hindus ' a 
 religious act of the highest possible merit/ a ' sacred 
 duty ' and a ' high privilege ; ' that to prohibit it was 
 a direct and grave interference with the religion of the 
 Hindus, a manifest violation of the principle of complete 
 religious liberty which the British Government had 
 hitherto maintained and guaranteed. Great fears were 
 entertained that the sepoy army in Bengal might resent 
 
 1 Mill's History of India, ix. 189.
 
 534 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 the suppression ; and it was remembered that the re- 
 ligious element was believed to have contributed largely 
 to the formidable sepoy mutiny which had taken place 
 in 1806 at Vellore, in Madras. Lord William Bentinck, 
 however, wisely took the officers of the Bengal Army 
 into his confidence, and he was convinced by their an- 
 swers that there was no real danger of revolt. He was 
 encouraged by the fact that the custom chiefly prevailed 
 among the effeminate and timid inhabitants of Bengal ; 
 that it was almost or altogether unknown in great dis- 
 tricts of India ; that the Mohammedans in bygone days 
 had successfully interfered with Hindu rites to a far 
 greater extent than he proposed. The judges were now 
 of opinion that the suttee might be safely abolished, 
 and the determined policy of Lord W. Bentinck com- 
 pletely triumphed. Suttee was forbidden in Bengal in 
 1829, in the Madras and Bombay provinces in the fol- 
 lowing year. There were a few successful and unsuc- 
 cessful attempts to evade the new law. There was one 
 somewhat serious riot. There was a strong remon- 
 strance, drawn up by leading Hindus. There was an 
 appeal to the Privy Council in England ; but when 
 the impotence of all resistance was established, the na- 
 tives speedily, though reluctantly, acquiesced. In a 
 few years suttee became a mere tradition of the past, 
 and under English influence even native princes made 
 laws for its suppression. 1 
 
 At the same time the Government took the utmost 
 pains to impress upon the natives that they entertained 
 
 1 See Boulger's Lord William widows was and is utterly dis- 
 
 Bentinck* pp. 77-111, and Mill's approved by all but a small 
 
 History of British India, ix. minority of Hindus. I do not 
 
 184-92. Sir John Strachey, in believe that the majority, even 
 
 the excellent book which he of the most highly educated 
 
 published in 1888, says : ' The classes, approve it, (India, pp. 
 
 prohibition of the burning of 353-54).
 
 CH. VL PILGRIM TAX 535 
 
 no desire of disturbing their faith. Formal declara- 
 tions had been repeatedly made that the laws of the 
 Shastra and of the Koran would be maintained, and 
 that Hindu and Mohammedan would be as fully pro- 
 tected in the free exercise of their religions as under 
 a Hindu or a Mohammedan Government. The law 
 specially recognised and protected the system of caste, 1 
 and the rites of idolatrous worship were to a large ex- 
 tent endowed. A tax was levied on pilgrimages, and 
 chiefly expended in defraying the expenses of the tem- 
 ple worship. The worship of Juggernaut and many 
 less important shrines was subsidised, and the Govern- 
 ment exercised a superintending care over the manage- 
 ment of the temples and over the vast endowments 
 which had been from time immemorial connected with 
 them; prevented the misappropriation of their reve- 
 nues ; sent soldiers and police to protect or dignify 
 idolatrous processions, and contributed very largely by 
 wise and honest administration to the prosperity of the 
 great religious establishments. 
 
 The Evangelical party in England agitated fiercely 
 against these measures, and their influence gradually 
 prevailed. In 1833 the Home Government was induced 
 to order the abolition of the pilgrim tax and the dis- 
 continuance of all connection between the Government 
 and idolatrous ceremonies. For five years this order 
 seems to have been little more than a dead-letter, but 
 in 1838 more efficacious measures were taken. The 
 management of the whole system of idolatrous worship, 
 and of the revenues connected with it, passed exclu- 
 sively into the hands of the believers, and all superin- 
 tending and supporting connection on the part of the 
 Government was withdrawn. 
 
 37 George III. c. 142, sect. 13.
 
 636 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vt 
 
 Another difficult and dangerous question, in which 
 considerations of humanity and justice were on one 
 side, and old-established religious custom was on the 
 other, was the question of inheritance. By the Mo- 
 hammedan and the Hindu laws of inheritance apostacy 
 was equivalent to civil death, and the convert lost all 
 rights of heritage. This law had, in the eyes of the 
 believers, a religious character ; and the Hindu law of 
 inheritance had an especially close connection with the 
 Hindu religion, as property descended conditionally on 
 the performance of religious rites, which were believed 
 to be of transcendent importance for the benefit of the 
 dead. Lord William Bentinck, who had already im- 
 mortalised himself by the suppression of the suttee, re- 
 solved, if possible, to abolish the penalty which the 
 native laws imposed on conversion, and in 1832 he in- 
 troduced a regulation to that effect into Bengal. After 
 long discussion and much opposition this policy at last 
 triumphed, and an Act was carried in 1850 abolishing 
 through the whole of India every law and usage inflict- 
 ing forfeiture of property on account of apostacy or 
 exclusion from any faith. Another measure conceived 
 in the same spirit, and directed against some peculiar 
 Hindu superstitions, punished with imprisonment any- 
 one who tried to intimidate another by threatening to 
 make him the object of divine displeasure. The mar- 
 riage of Hindu widows also was legalised. Native 
 converts to Christianity were enabled to obtain a di- 
 vorce from husbands or wives who had deserted them 
 on account of their conversion. The rights of succes- 
 sion and the power of bequest of natives who did not 
 belong to any native religious community were fully 
 recognised. 1 
 
 1 Stephen's History of Crimi- tianity in India ; Leslie Ste- 
 nal Law, iii. 321 ; Kaye's Chris- phen'aLifeofSirJamesStephen^
 
 CH. VI. THE EDWARDES MEMORANDUM 537 
 
 These facts show sufficiently that, while the general 
 principle of protecting the worship, revenues, and 
 usages of native religions is fully recognised, there has 
 been an increasing tendency in Indian legislation to 
 allow considerations of humanity, justice, and indivi- 
 dual liberty to override religious considerations. The 
 great sepoy mutiny of 1857, which was mainly due to 
 religious fanaticism, sufficiently disclosed the extreme 
 dangers of the subject. After the suppression of the 
 mutiny, also, there was a moment of great peril. A 
 powerful party, supported by the high authority of 
 Colonel Herbert Ed wardes, one of the most distinguished 
 of Indian soldiers, attributed the mutiny to the British 
 Government having neglected their duty of bringing 
 home Christian truths to the native population, and 
 Colonel Edwardes issued a memorandum urging that 
 the true policy to be pursued was ' the elimination of 
 all unchristian principles from the government of 
 India/ To carry out this policy he desired that the 
 Bible should be compulsorily taught in all Government 
 schools ; that all endowments of native religions from 
 public money, and all legal recognition of caste, should 
 cease ; that the English should cease to administer 
 Hindu and Mohammedan law, and to countenance 
 Hindu and Mohammedan processions. This memo- 
 randum received a considerable amount of partial or 
 unqualified support, but wiser counsels ultimately pre- 
 vailed. In the Queen's proclamation of October 1858 
 there is a remarkable paragraph, which is said to have 
 been due to the direct action of the Queen herself, and 
 which did very much to establish permanent quiet in 
 India. * We do strictly charge and enjoin/ it said, ' on 
 
 pp. 259-60. See, too, an ad- gious Policy in India' in Sir 
 Durable chapter on 'Our Reli- Alfred LyalPs Asiatic Studies-
 
 538 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 all those who may be in authority under us, that they 
 abstain from all interference with the religious beliefs 
 and worship of any of our subjects, on pain of our 
 highest displeasure.' 1 
 
 The policy indicated in these words has been, on the 
 whole, carried out with signal sagacity and success, 
 and the large introduction of natives into high offices 
 under the Crown has had a reassuring influence on the 
 native mind. Before the mutiny there were no natives 
 on the bench of any supreme court of India, or in the 
 Legislative Council, or in the higher branches of the 
 Civil Service. Since the mutiny all these great de- 
 partments have been thrown open to them. British 
 law protects carefully the moral and social types that 
 grow out of the native religions, and especially the 
 Hindu conception of the family, which is widely differ- 
 ent from that of Christian nations ; and it is mainly 
 through respect for native ideas that the Indian penal 
 code treats adultery as a criminal offence, and punishes 
 it with imprisonment that may extend to five years. 2 
 At the same time, the prohibition of the suttee and of 
 infanticide has introduced grave changes even into this 
 sphere. The law already violates Hindu notions by 
 permitting the remarriage of widows and modifying 
 the rules of succession, and it is not likely that many 
 years will pass before the pressure of philanthropic 
 European opinion leads to a prohibition of the horrible 
 custom of child marriage, under which girls of ten or 
 twelve years are assigned as wives to old, worn-out, and 
 perhaps dying men. In the protected native States 
 the British Government has repeatedly intervened for 
 the purpose of putting down infanticide, suttee, sla- 
 
 1 Bosworth Smith's Life of 2 Stephen's Criminal Law, 
 Lawrence, ii 325-26. ill. 318.
 
 CH. VI. ANGLO-INDIAN LAW 539 
 
 very, the punishment of alleged witches, and punish- 
 ment by torture or mutilation. 1 
 
 The educational policy of the Government also 
 which was chiefly adopted at the instigation of Sir 
 Charles Wood in 1854, and which has since then been 
 energetically and successfully pursued, cannot fail to 
 have a real, though indirect and unintended, influence 
 on religious belief. The first principle, it is true, ot 
 that policy is that ' the ruling power is bound to hold 
 itself aloof from all questions of religion.' The uni- 
 versities, in which the educational system culminates, 
 are purely secular examining bodies, modelled after the 
 London University ; and while grants in aid are ac- 
 corded to all private educational establishments which 
 impart a good secular education, are under competent 
 management, and are open to inspection by Govern- 
 ment officers, the State proclaims and steadily acts 
 upon the principle of rigidly abstaining from all inter- 
 ference with the religious teaching of these establish- 
 ments. But many of the schools and colleges that have 
 earned grants in aid are missionary establishments. 
 Pure secular education, which the Government espe- 
 cially encourages, is as repugnant to Mohammedan as to 
 Catholic ideas ; the mixture of classes and creeds, 
 which the new system fosters, breaks down social divi- 
 sions that are closely connected with religious beliefs ; 
 and the mere spread of scientific conceptions of the 
 universe, of European habits of thought and standards 
 of proof, must do much to shatter the fantastic cos- 
 mogonies of the Hindu creeds, and produce a moral 
 and intellectual type profoundly different from that of 
 the old believers. Education as yet touches only a 
 small fraction of the great Indian people ; but in this, 
 
 Lee- Warner's Protected Princes of India, pp. 292-95.
 
 540 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY OH. VI 
 
 as in other ways, contrary to its own wishes, the influ- 
 ence of the Government is opposed to the religion of 
 the natives. It is not probable that it is preparing the 
 way for Christian theology, but it is tending to under- 
 mine or attenuate old beliefs and to introduce Western 
 types of thought and morals. ' Few attentive observers 
 of Indian history/ writes Sir Henry Maine, ' can fail to 
 see that the morality of modern indigenous literature 
 tends to become Christian morality, which has pene- 
 trated further than Christian belief.' ' 
 
 Another case in which the principles of religious 
 liberty have come into collision with principles of mo- 
 rality and public expediency may be found in Mor- 
 monism in America. Polygamy was not an original 
 doctrine of the Mormon faith : it was not until 1843, 
 thirteen years after the publication of the Book of 
 Mormon, that Joseph Smith professed to have a reve- 
 lation authorising it, and it was not until 1852 that it 
 was openly acknowledged to the Gentile world. Long 
 before this period, however, the Mormons had experi- 
 enced a large amount of severe and illegal mob persecu- 
 tion. The rise and rapid progress of a new religion 
 combining to an extraordinary degree the element of 
 fraud with the elements of fanaticism soon aroused a 
 fierce resistance, which was entirely unrestrained by 
 the provisions of the Constitution giving unrestricted 
 right of religious belief and profession. 
 
 In its first form Mormonism Avas simply a society of 
 men believing in the divine mission and revelations of 
 Joseph Smith, baptised for the dead in a Church 
 
 1 Ward's Reign of Queen Vic- Blue Book on ' The Eesults of 
 
 toria, i. 462. There is an ex- Indian Administration during 
 
 cellent chapter on Indian Edu- the past Thirty Years ' (1889), 
 
 cation in Sir John Strachey's pp. 16-18. 
 India. See, too, an interesting
 
 CH. vi. RISE OF MORMONISM 541 
 
 which he founded and ruled, placing their property at 
 his disposal, holding some very materialistic views 
 about the nature of the Divinity, and also a strange 
 notion that Christ had preached in America, after His 
 crucifixion, to Children of Israel who already peopled 
 that continent. 1 However eccentric might be these 
 opinions, Mormonism in its general aspect was a sect 
 not wholly differing from many others, and it could 
 move freely within the wide limits which the American 
 Constitution accorded to religious developments. The 
 Mormons were first concentrated in considerable num- 
 bers in the town of Kirtland, in Ohio, but they soon 
 migrated to the thinly populated district called Jack- 
 son County, in Missouri, where about 1,200 were esta- 
 blished. In obedience to a revelation of Joseph Smith, 
 they purchased a large tract of land, and streams of 
 fanatics poured in, boasting loudly that the land was to 
 be given to them as an inheritance. 
 
 The old settlers, however, resented bitterly the in- 
 trusion of this sinister element, and after a long series 
 of acts of violence and several vicissitudes, the Saints, 
 now numbering about 12,000, were compelled to cross 
 the Mississippi into Illinois, where they built the town 
 of Nauvoo. They soon organised a powerful militia, 
 established a regular government, and displayed to an 
 extraordinary degree those industrial qualities for which 
 they have always been remarkable. For a few years 
 their progress was uninterrupted. A vast temple con- 
 secrated to their worship was erected, and they grew 
 every month in numbers, power, and wealth ; but the 
 same causes that aroused hostility in Missouri made 
 them unpopular in Illinois, and it was strengthened by 
 a well-founded belief that the sect was moving in the 
 
 1 This is stated in the Book of Mormon.
 
 542 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VL 
 
 direction of sexual license. Internal dissension also 
 appeared ; riots broke out, and the State authorities 
 intervened. Joseph Smith and his brother surrendered 
 to stand their trial on the charge of having instigated 
 an attack on the office of a hostile newspaper, and were 
 placed in prison. Then followed one of those tragedies 
 which have always been peculiarly common in America : 
 the prison was stormed and captured by a hostile mob, 
 and Joseph Smith was shot dead. This last event took 
 place in June 1844. 
 
 But the new Church survived its founder, and the 
 election of Brigham Young placed at its head a man of 
 very superior powers, who exercised an almost undis- 
 puted authority till his death in 1877. It was sur- 
 rounded by numerous and bitter enemies, who were 
 utterly unrestrained by any considerations of law, and 
 after many months of trouble and violence, after the 
 loss of many lives and the endurance of terrible suffer- 
 ings, the Mormons who had not already fled from 
 Nauvoo were driven forcibly across the Mississippi. 
 They had, however, before this time taken measures 
 for a migration which is one of the most remarkable 
 incidents in modern history. Inspired by a passionate 
 fanaticism that seems strangely out of place in the 
 nineteenth century and in an intensely industrial soci- 
 ety, they resolved to cross the Eocky Mountains, to 
 traverse a space of no less than 1,000 miles, and to 
 establish their Church far beyond the limits of the 
 United States, in a wild and desert country, inhabited 
 only by roving bands of savage Indians. This daring 
 scheme was executed with extraordinary skill, resolu- 
 tion and perseverance, and in 1847 and 1848 several 
 thousands of fugitives planted the nucleus of a great 
 State on the borders of the Salt Lake. 
 
 There is no other instance in history in which a re-
 
 CH. VL UTAH 543 
 
 ligious fanaticism was so closely blended with an in- 
 tense industrial spirit, and the speed with which the 
 new colonists transformed a barren waste, built and 
 organised a great city, and planted in this far-off land 
 all the elements of civilisation, is one of the wonders 
 of American history. Immigrants poured in by thou- 
 sands, and it seemed as if the new Church would at 
 last be suffered to develop its own type of life and belief 
 undisturbed. But the ill-fortune that had hitherto 
 pursued it continued. The discovery of Californian 
 gold drew the stream of white emigration across the 
 territory of the Salt Lake, the Treaty of 1848 with 
 Mexico placed the Mormon home within the jurisdic- 
 tion of the United States, and Arizona and New Mexico 
 grew up on its southern borders. 
 
 The Mormons desired to form themselves into a 
 separate State under the name of Deseret, or ' The 
 Land of the Honey-Bee,' and if they had been able to 
 do so they would have obtained almost absolute power 
 of self -legislation ; but Congress refused to recognise 
 them, and in 1850 the Mormon district was organised 
 into the Territory of Utah. The position of a Terri- 
 tory is very different from that of a State, for the chief 
 executive officers in it are appointed by the President 
 of the United States, and, although a local legislative 
 body exists, Congress retains great powers of legislation 
 and control. 
 
 Brigham Young was appointed the first governor, 
 though he was, a few years after, removed on account 
 of his resistance to the Federal authorities. For a long 
 time the Mormon priesthood were omnipotent in Utah. 
 As might have been expected, their main object was to 
 baffle all interference on the part of the Federal Go- 
 vernment and to protect themselves from Gentile 
 intrusion ; while their missionaries preached their
 
 544 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VI. 
 
 doctrines far and wide, and many thousands of immi- 
 grants from England and Wales, from the Scandina- 
 vian countries in Europe, and from other portions of 
 the United States, traversed the vast expanse of 
 desert, and brought to the new colony their strong 
 arms, their burning enthusiasm, and their complete 
 surrender of all individual will and judgment to the 
 orders of the Mormon chief. The Federal officers who 
 were sent to Utah found themselves practically power- 
 less in the face of a unanimous public feeling. All the 
 subordinate functionaries and all the jurymen were 
 Mormons. 
 
 The tide, however, of Gentile emigration had set in 
 for the West, and emigrants who were not Mormons 
 began to come to a territory where all the first diffi- 
 culties of settlement had been overcome. They were 
 naturally far from welcome ; in 1857 a large party 
 were massacred at a place called Mountain Meadows, 
 and although Indians were the chief agents in the 
 crime, it was at last clearly traced to a Mormon source. 
 It was not, however, till nearly twenty years after it took 
 place that the chief Mormon culprit was brought to 
 justice. 1 Many minor acts of violence appear to have 
 been committed, and as long as the juries consisted of 
 Mormons it was found impossible to punish them. 
 But the completion of the Union Pacific Eailway, and 
 the discovery of some rich silver and lead mines, 
 strengthened the Gentile immigration, and it was 
 vaguely computed, about 1890, that there were some 
 50,000 Gentiles in Utah and about 110,000 Mormons. 2 
 
 1 Many particulars about this Art. ' Mormonism.' The same 
 
 remarkable case will be found well-informed writer computes 
 
 in an article in the Revue des the whole number of Mormons 
 
 Deux Mondes, October 15, 1895. at at least 250,000. 
 
 5 Encyclopedia Americana,
 
 CH. vi. SHOULD POLYGAMY BE TOLERATED ? 545 
 
 But before this time the existence and the rapid in- 
 crease of a polygamous community in America greatly 
 occupied American opinion, and different religious 
 bodies were urging the duty of suppressing it. There 
 was, however, grave difference of opinion on the sub- 
 ject. Deplorable as was the appearance of a polygamist 
 sect in the midst of a Christian land, there were those 
 who contended that polygamy among the Mormons 
 ought to be tolerated, as Christian Governments had 
 always tolerated it among Hindus and Mohammedans. 
 It was clearly the offshoot of a religious system resting 
 on a religious doctrine, and it was a fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the United States to give all religions the most 
 ample scope for their development. Polygamy, these 
 reasoners observed, prevails over a vast proportion of 
 the human race. It ' is supported by clear and incon- 
 testable Old Testament authority, and it is not very 
 clearly condemned in the New Testament. When it is 
 the acknowledged doctrine of a well-defined Church it 
 is undoubtedly an evil, but it is much less dangerous 
 than when it is irregularly practised in a generally mo- 
 nogamous society. It does not produce the same con- 
 fusion of properties and families, the same deception, 
 or the same social stigma and oppression. Much was 
 said of the duty of the Federal Government to inter- 
 vene on behalf of the oppressed women, who were de- 
 graded by polygamy to an inferior and servile condition. 
 It is impossible, however, to overlook the curious and 
 significant fact that the Mormons were the first, or 
 almost the first, people to give the political suffrage to 
 women ; that female suffrage existed among them for 
 many years ; and that it proved so favourable to poly- 
 gamy that its abolition by the Congress was one of the 
 measures for suppressing that custom. In the words 
 of one of the latest American writers on this subject, 
 VOL. i. 85
 
 546 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 * Woman suffrage existed in Utah for seventeen years, 
 and proved to be one of the strongest bulwarks of poly- 
 gamy/ ' For more than a quarter of a century the 
 Mormon Church fought, with every weapon that it 
 could command, the laws directed against its favourite 
 institution. One by one new and more vigorous pen- 
 alties were enacted by Congress against polygamy. 
 Finding women the most ardent champions of the 
 vicious practice (owing to their stronger religious con- 
 victions), Congress, in 1887, took away their right of 
 suffrage/ 1 
 
 In the face of such facts it was very difficult to con- 
 tend that polygamy was generally unpopular among the 
 Mormon women. It was certain that women bore their 
 full proportion among the Mormon converts and the 
 Mormon devotees, and there was strong evidence to 
 support the conclusion that they were in general con- 
 tented with their lot. Marriage usually took place 
 very early. The wives were persuaded that their state 
 in a future world depended on the happiness they pro- 
 cured their husbands in this ; and it was part of a 
 Mormon's religious duty to live equally with his wives, 
 and abstain from favoritism. If they did not observe 
 this duty, they were publicly reprimanded. 2 The Mor- 
 mons, it was said, only asked to be left alone. They 
 had gone forth, at the cost of terrible hardships, into a 
 distant and lonely wilderness to practise their religion 
 
 1 Mr. Glen Miller in The The Nineteenth Century, Janu- 
 Forum, Dec. 1894. ary 1884. Mr. Barclay quotes 
 
 2 See an interesting descrip- official statistics showing how 
 tion of Mormon life and ideas, immensely greater is the pro- 
 by Comte d'Haussonville, Revue portion of crimes among the 
 des Deux Mondes, November Gentiles than among the Mor- 
 15, 1882 ; and also an article mons at Utah. See, too, Cap- 
 called ' A New View of Mor- tain Burton's City of the Saints. 
 monism,' by 11. W. Barclay, in
 
 CH. vi. CRUSADE AGAINST POLYGAMY 547 
 
 in peace, and whatever civilisation existed in Utah was 
 wholly their work. Nor was that civilisation, even 
 from a moral point of view, a contemptible one. What- 
 ever else might be said of polygamy, it could not be 
 denied that it had extinguished in Utah forms of vice 
 that were the canker of all other American cities. 
 Prostitution, adultery, illegitimate births, abandoned 
 children, were unknown among the Mormons, and the 
 statistics of crime showed that, judged by this test, 
 they were far superior to the Gentiles around them. In 
 intelligent, well-organised and successful industry they 
 had never been surpassed. Work was taught as the 
 first of duties. Large families, which in old countries 
 indicate a low industrial civilisation, had a different 
 character in a new country, where the cost of labour was 
 enormously great. Each member worked in his own 
 department for the whole family, and each family be- 
 came almost wholly self -subsisting. 1 
 
 Had a community of this kind, it was asked, no 
 claim on the forbearance of the Government ? Ought 
 it to be treated as a mere seed-plot of vice ? Was it in 
 accordance with the religious liberty which was so so- 
 lemnly guaranteed by the Constitution of the United 
 States ; was it becoming in a great and free democracy 
 to enter into a persecuting crusade against a Church, 
 however erroneous, against a practice, however deplor- 
 able, which was inseparably connected with a religious 
 doctrine ? And was such a crusade likely to have any 
 other consequence than to make martyrs, and to kindle 
 this strange fanaticism into a fiercer flame ? 
 
 As early as 1862 there had been a law against poly- 
 gamy, and attempts had sometimes been made to en- 
 force it, but they proved almost absolutely abortive. 
 
 Comte d'Haussonville.
 
 548 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 All the juries were Mormons, and in the space of 
 eighteen years there had not been more than two convic- 
 tions for polygamy. After the termination of the great 
 Civil War public opinion was more strongly directed to 
 the subject, and more than one stringent law against 
 polygamy was made. The Mormons asserted that 
 polygamy was a tenet of their faith, and therefore en- 
 titled to the protection which the Constitution accorded 
 to all forms of religious belief ; but the Supreme 
 Court decided that no such article of faith could claim 
 protection under the Constitution. 1 In 1879 the Go- 
 vernment of the United States attempted to enlist the 
 services of other countries in the crusade, and a circu- 
 lar letter was sent to the American ministers in Europe, 
 calling the attention of the European Governments to 
 the American enactments against polygamy, and asking 
 them to prevent the preaching of Mormonism and 
 the emigration of professed Mormons to the United 
 States ; but the Governments of the countries where 
 Mormon missionaries' had been most successful replied 
 that they could not undertake to inquire into the re- 
 ligious belief of emigrants. The laws of 1871 and of 
 1874 proved almost as inoperative as that of 1862. 
 Federal judges were sent down to try cases, but they 
 could try them only with juries that were mainly or 
 exclusively Mormon, and it was almost impossible to 
 induce such a jury to convict in a case of polygamy. 
 
 Eeligious opinion, however, in the United States 
 urged on the Government, and in 1882 they began a 
 life-and-death struggle for the purpose of stamping out 
 polygamy. The Edmunds law, which was carried after 
 long discussion in that year, is a striking illustration of 
 the extreme energy which democratic communities can 
 
 1 Dickinson, New Light on Mormonism^ p. 174.
 
 CH. vi. CRUSADE AGAINST POLYGAMY 549 
 
 throw into repressive legislation. Utah had been 
 steadily denied the privileges of a State constitution, 
 and its internal affairs were therefore under the full 
 control of Congress. The Edmunds law provided that 
 in all the * Territories ' of the United States bigamy 
 and polygamy should be punished with a fine of not 
 more than 500 dollars and imprisonment up to five 
 years. In order to overcome the difficulty of obtain- 
 ing proof of marriage, it provided that anyone cohab- 
 iting with more than one woman shall be punishable 
 by imprisonment up to six months, or by a fine not 
 exceeding 300 dollars, or by both punishments, at the 
 discretion of the court ; and that on trials for bigamy, 
 polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation, any juryman might 
 be challenged who had been living in the practice of 
 any of these acts, or who, without being himself a po- 
 lygamist, ' believes it right for a man to have more 
 than one living and undivorced wife at the same time, 
 or to live in the practice of cohabiting with more than 
 one woman/ Every man as he entered the jury-box 
 might be questioned on oath as to his belief and prac- 
 tice in these matters. Polygamists and their wives 
 were at the same time deprived of all power of voting 
 at elections, and were incapacitated from holding any 
 public place of trust or emolument. All registration 
 and election offices in the Territory of Utah were de- 
 clared vacant, and a commission of five persons, ap- 
 pointed by the President of the Eepublic, was sent 
 down to supersede all Mormon functionaries in matters 
 of election, and to appoint new ones. 1 
 
 Under the influence of this most Draconic law poly- 
 gamy was for the first time severely punished. All 
 
 1 See the text of the Edmunds law in Dickinson, New Light on 
 Mormonism, pp. 150-53.
 
 550 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 who practised and all who sympathised with it being 
 removed from the juries, many convictions were ob- 
 tained. In the year ending in September 1891 there 
 were 110 less than 109 convictions. 1 In general the 
 Mormons appear to have welcomed their long sentences 
 of imprisonment in the spirit of martyrs, declaring 
 that they must obey God rather than men, and women 
 constantly refused to give evidence that_could convict 
 their husbands. Under the disenfranchising clauses of 
 the Edmunds law about 12,000 men and women were 
 deprived of their votes. 2 
 
 As, however, the actual practice of polygamy was by 
 this law required for disfranchisement, power still re- 
 mained with the Mormons, and Mormons who believed 
 in polygamy, though they were not known to be them- 
 selves polygamists, were almost always elected. But-a 
 long series of other measures were taken to break down 
 their political power. By the Federal law which 1 have 
 already mentioned female suffrage in Utah was abol- 
 ished, on the ground that it contributed to strengthen 
 Mormonism. It was decided that, the Mormon Church 
 being 'utterly subversive of good morals and the well- 
 being of society/ no alien who is a Mormon could be 
 naturalised, and the funds of the Mormon society for 
 encouraging immigration were confiscated. A local 
 test oath was imposed as a qualification for the suffrage, 
 obliging every voter to swear that he is not a bigamist 
 or polygamist, or a member of any order which encou- 
 rages and practises plural marriage ; and the Supreme 
 Court, in 1890, determined that this test was not con- 
 trary to the Constitution. The criminal law against 
 
 1 Political Science Quarterly, (The Nineteenth Centiiry, Jan 
 1891, p. 768. uary 1884). 
 
 Mr. Barclay says 16,000
 
 CH. vi. CRUSADE AGAINST POLYGAMY 551 
 
 polygamy Avas steadily enforced, and it was strengthened 
 by new and stringent provisions directed against un- 
 willing witnesses, compelling a full registration of all 
 marriages, depriving illegitimate children of rights of 
 inheritance, and treating, in the spirit of the old Puri- 
 tan legislation, both adultery and simple fornication as 
 criminal offences. 1 These last measures, of course, 
 both were and were intended to be purely partial in 
 their operation. No one would have dreamed of apply- 
 ing them to Chicago or New York. But by such means 
 the Mormon ascendency in Utah was broken, and in 
 the election of 1890 the Gentile element, for the first 
 time, obtained control of its municipal government. 2 
 The Mormon Church was itself pronounced to be an 
 illegal corporation, its property was forfeited or es- 
 cheated ; and the forfeiture appears to have been se- 
 verely enforced. As one of the latest American writers 
 on the subject says, * Officials sent from the Eastern 
 States to official positions in the Territory as a reward 
 for party services, found indiscriminate denunciation of 
 the Mormons an excellent method of perpetuating po- 
 litical power. It is notorious that not a few who came 
 to Utah poor men enriched themselves at the expense 
 of the Mormon Church. The shrinkage of the Church 
 property escheated by the Government would itself 
 unfold a tale of official rapacity/ and there were ' ugly 
 hints of corruption' extending even to the judicial 
 bench. 3 
 
 1 The text of the very severe married man or woman commits 
 
 and comprehensive Act of 1884 fornication, each of them shall 
 
 is given in Dickinson, pp. 153- be punished by imprisonment 
 
 60. It enacts, among other not exceeding six months, or by 
 
 things (ss. 19, 20), ' that who- fine not exceeding 100 dollars.' 
 
 ever commits adultery shall be 2 Political Science Quarterly^ 
 
 punished by imprisonment in 1890, pp. 371-72. 
 
 the penitentiary not exceeding 3 The Forum, December 1894, 
 
 three years,' and 'that if an un- p. 464.
 
 552 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 It would require an amount of local knowledge to 
 which I can make no pretence, and which only an 
 American writer is likely to possess, to estimate with 
 any confidence the present and future effects of this 
 crushing legislation. The accounts are somewhat con- 
 flicting, and for some time after the enactment of the 
 Edmunds law very competent American writers were 
 exceedingly desponding about the results. They com- 
 plained that polygamy had never been more defiantly 
 preached and more fearlessly practised ; that it seemed 
 rather to increase than diminish ; that the whole body 
 of the Mormons acted with a perfect discipline in obe- 
 dience to the commands of their chief, voting together, 
 controlling their schools, and electing their chief offi- 
 cers. Having been refused the right of State indepen- 
 dence for more than twenty years after their population 
 and wealth were sufficient to entitle them to it, they 
 made it an object to secure a predominance in the State 
 of Nevada, and soon acquired there an important influ- 
 ence. They were said to hold the balance of power in 
 Idaho and, Arizona, and to be rapidly increasing in the 
 Territories of Washington, Montana, and Wyoming, as 
 well as in Colorado and New Mexico. Eumours of 
 another distant migration were sometimes heard among 
 them. They were accused of an implacable hatred to 
 the Federal Government, and the opinion was openly 
 expressed by many of their enemies that even if Mor- 
 monism cleared itself from all suspicion of polygamy, 
 it should be exterminated at any cost ; that it was lead- 
 ing rapidly to civil war in Utah ; that if it were not 
 effectually suppressed the Mormon leaders would, in a 
 few years, rule every State to the west of the Missis- 
 sippi. 1 
 
 1 Encyclopedia Americana, New Light on Mormonism, pp. 
 Art. 'Mormonism ; ' Dickinson's 170-86, 197 ; Codman's Solution
 
 CH. vi. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADE 553 
 
 Whether these statements were exaggerated when 
 they were originally made I am not able to say. There 
 is, however, evidently another side to the question, and 
 during the last few years, and especially since 1891, 
 the aspect of the Mormon question in America has con- 
 siderably changed. Many powerful influences have 
 been favouring the policy of the Government. It was 
 noticed that among the more wealthy Mormons there 
 was a growing disposition to secede. Such men na- 
 turally desired to escape the strict exaction of tithes 
 for the benefit of the Mormon Church, and they felt 
 more keenly than poor men both the legal penalties 
 and the social stigma attaching to their creed. Poly- 
 gamy had proved, from an economical point of view, 
 possible, and even successful, as long as the family re- 
 mained fully self-supporting and all its members were 
 engaged in different industries, but it became far too 
 expensive a luxury to subsist long, under the condi- 
 tions of American life, in an idle, leisured class. More 
 frequent and more intimate contact with the Gentile 
 world, and the rise of a new generation who had but 
 little of the fierce fanaticism of the early converts, had 
 their influence, and many of the younger Mormons 
 were manifestly indisposed to an institution which 
 brought with it severe social and legal penalties, and 
 obstructed and hampered them at every step of their 
 career. While such a feeling was growing, a formida- 
 ble schism broke out in the Church. A party called 
 Josephites, or 'Latter-day Saints of the ^Reorganised 
 Church of Jesus Christ/ appeared, and is said soon to 
 
 of the Mormon Problem. There in the English press on the sub- 
 are some striking and, I think, ject of Mormonism in Mill On 
 just remarks on the persecuting Liberty, pp. 163-67 (ed. 1859). 
 spirit which has been displayed
 
 554 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 have enlisted 20,000 followers. It was led by Joseph 
 Smith, a son of the founder of Mormonism, and it de- 
 nounced polygamy as a departure from the original 
 faith. 1 
 
 All these things were preparing a great change in 
 the Mormon Church ; and the laws against polygamy 
 appear to have found considerable, though for the most 
 part silent, support among the Mormons themselves. 
 After some hesitation their leaders recognised the fact. 
 The abstract lawfulness of this institution is still a 
 part of the Mormon creed, but its practice under pre- 
 sent circumstances has not only been suspended, but 
 been forbidden in the Mormon Church. In September 
 1890 the head of that Church publicly announced a 
 revelation warning Latter-day Saints against contract- 
 ing any marriage forbidden by the law of the land. 
 Wheth'er this abandonment is final and quite sincere it 
 is difficult to say, but Mr. Glen Miller, whom I have 
 already quoted as a late authority on the subject, 
 firmly believes in its reality. ' The institution of 
 polygamy/ he says, ' would have gone down eventually 
 of its own weight under the rush of Gentile immigra- 
 tion. The action of the Church only hastened the in- 
 evitable. In the days of its strongest hold less than 10 
 per cent, of the adult males of the Territory lived in 
 polygamy. No " plural " marriages in any form are 
 now taking place in Utah. It is a sin within the Mor- 
 mon Church, as within any other, to live with more 
 than one woman. The young man who should attempt 
 it would find himself and his mistress (for such any 
 " plural " wife would be regarded) subject to the same 
 social ostracism from the Mormons as from society at 
 large/ At the same time, this writer observes, ' there 
 
 1 Dickinson, pp. 215-16.
 
 CH. vi. POLYGAMY ABANDONED 555 
 
 has been a complete cessation of persecution for poly- 
 gamy, and numbers of old-time offenders have resumed 
 relations with their " plural " wives with practical im- 
 munity from punishment. But the prop of polygamy 
 its social respectability and exaltation as a religious 
 virtue has been taken away. These old polygamists 
 visit their younger wives precisely as a married man in 
 an Eastern community might consort with a mistress 
 quietly and stealthily, not openly or boastfully, as 
 formerly/ 
 
 The sharp division between the Mormons and the 
 Gentiles, which a few years ago was general, is fast dis- 
 appearing. Intermarriages are not unfrequent. They 
 mingle largely in the public schools. They are united 
 in all forms and institutions of business ; and what is 
 perhaps even more important, the Mormons have 
 ceased to act politically as a purely isolated body, and 
 have thrown themselves cordially into the great party 
 contests of the United States. 1 They are said to be 
 exhibiting to a full measure that flexibility of adapta- 
 tion which is so remarkable in the American people, 
 and which enables them with a rapidity scarcely known 
 in Europe to accommodate themselves to new condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The authorities in the Federal Government have 
 shown themselves very ready to accept the submission. 
 In the September of 1894, President Cleveland issued 
 a proclamation declaring that he was satisfied that the 
 members of the Mormon Church were now living in 
 obedience to the law, and granting a full amnesty and 
 pardon to those who had been convicted of polygamy 
 and deprived of their civil rights ; " and in the same 
 
 1 The Forum, December 1894. The Times, July 14, Sept. 
 
 29, 1894.
 
 556 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 year Congress passed a measure under which Utah, in 
 the beginning of 1896, attained its long-sought object, 
 and was admitted as a separate State in the American 
 Union. One of the conditions of the enabling Act is 
 that the new Constitution prohibits polygamy. 
 
 The party which was created for the special pur- 
 pose of opposing Mormonism was formally disbanded 
 at the close of 1893, and both of the great parties 
 in the State are now competing for the Mormon vote. 
 The charge which has recently been brought, with 
 most effect, against the Mormons has not been their 
 polygamy, but their susceptibility to Church inter- 
 ference in political life. At the same time the non- 
 Mormon politicians have shown themselves very ready 
 to nominate as candidates officials of the Mormon 
 Church, believing that such candidates are likely to 
 secure the largest number of Mormon votes. A gentle- 
 man holding the high position of ' Apostle' in the 
 Church was put forward by the Democratic party as 
 their nominee for the Senate of the United States. 1 So 
 complete to all appearance is the reconciliation between 
 the American Government and the Mormon Church, 
 that it is said to be a Mormon tenet that the American 
 Constitution is an inspired document. 2 
 
 A future historian must tell the final results of the 
 conflict which I have described between religious fa- 
 naticism and repressive legislation, but it is surely a 
 curious sign of the times that the theatre of the struggle 
 should have been the great democracy of the West. 
 
 1 See an article of Mr. Glen 5 Report of the Commissioners 
 
 Miller's in The Forum, Decem- on the Causes of Immigration 
 
 ber 1895. The senators elected, to the U.S.A. (House of Kepre- 
 
 however, were of the Republi- sentatives, 1892), pp. 185-86. 
 can party.
 
 CH. vi. THE ANTI-SEMITE MOVEMENT 557 
 
 When democratic opinion thoroughly favours repres- 
 sion, that repression is likely, in the conditions of 
 modern society, to be stronger and more uncompro- 
 mising than under a monarchy or an aristocracy. It 
 is difficult to observe without some disquiet the mani- 
 festly increasing tendency of democracies to consider 
 the regulation of life, character, habits, and tastes 
 within the province of Governments. On the whole, 
 however, democracies, at least in the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, seem to me favourable to religious liberty. No 
 doctrines have more manifestly declined during the last 
 half -century than the doctrines of salvation by belief, 
 of exclusive salvation, and of the criminality of error, 
 which lay at the root of the great persecutions under 
 Christian rule. No forms of liberty are more prized 
 by English democracies than the liberty of expression, 
 discussion, and association. The prevailing passion 
 for equality favours the rise of various sects, and - a 
 great indifference to religious dogma in general pre- 
 vails among the working class, who have now risen to 
 power. 
 
 There is, however, another influence connected with, 
 and scarcely less strong than, democracy which has an 
 opposite tendency, and it is probable that if religious 
 persecution ever again plays a great part in human 
 affairs, it will be closely connected with that growing 
 sentiment of nationality which I have examined in 
 the last chapter. No attentive observer can have failed 
 to notice how frequently it displays itself in a desire to 
 unify the national type, and to expel all alien and un- 
 congenial elements. Eeligion more than any other 
 single influence perpetuates within a nation distinct 
 types and consolidates distinct interests. Few facts in 
 the nineteenth century have been so well calculated 
 to disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with
 
 558 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 their creed as the anti-Semite movement, which in a 
 few years has swept like an angry wave over the 
 greater part of Europe. It was scarcely heard of be- 
 fore the latter years of the seventies, but it has already 
 become a great power, not only in semi-civilised coun- 
 tries like Eoumania and Eussia, but also in Austria 
 and in Germany. In France, which had been promi- 
 nent for its early liberality to the Jews, the immense 
 popularity of the works of Drumont shows that the 
 anti-Semite spirit is widely spread. I have already 
 noticed how clearly the extravagant French enthu- 
 siasm for Eussia, at the very time when the Eussian 
 Government was engaged in savage persecution of the 
 Jewish race, shows that a question of national in- 
 terests and national revenge could supersede, in one of 
 the most enlightened nations in Europe, all the old 
 enthusiasm for religious liberty. The recent move- 
 ment for proscribing, under pretence of preventing 
 cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for 
 food, which is enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is cer- 
 tainly at least as much due to dislike to the Jews as 
 to consideration for cattle. It appears to have arisen 
 among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony, 
 and in 1893 a law prohibiting the Jewish mode of 
 slaughtering cattle was carried in Switzerland by a 
 popular vote. 
 
 In these countries the anti-Semite movement has been 
 essentially a popular movement, a fierce race-hatred, 
 pervading great masses of the people, and for the 
 most part neither instigated nor encouraged by their 
 Governments. Eeligious fanaticism has mixed with it, 
 but usually, and especially in Germany, it has played 
 only a very minor part. Many causes have conspired 
 to it. The enormous power which Jews have obtained 
 in the press and the money markets of Europe is very
 
 CH. VL THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION 559 
 
 evident, and great power is never more resented than 
 when it is in the hands of men who suffer from some 
 social inferiority. Jews, in some countries, are spe- 
 cially prominent in unpopular professions, such as 
 tax-gatherers and small money-lenders, agents, mani- 
 pulators and organisers of industry. They have little 
 turn for labouring with their hands, but they have a 
 special skill in directing and appropriating the labour 
 of others. They have come to be looked upon as typi- 
 cal capitalists, and therefore excite the hostility both 
 of Socialists, who would make war on all capitalists, 
 and of the very different class which views with jea- 
 lousy the increasing power of money, as distinguished 
 from land, in the government of the world ; while, on 
 the other hand, they have themselves contributed 
 largely to the socialistic and revolutionary elements in 
 Europe. Among their many great gifts, they have 
 never, as a race, possessed the charm of manner which 
 softens, conciliates, and attracts, and the disintegra- 
 tion of politics, which is such a marked feature of our 
 time, brings every separate group into a clearer and 
 stronger relief. It is as a distinct and alien element 
 in the national life that they have been especially as- 
 sailed. 
 
 The Eussian persecution stands in some degree apart 
 from the other forms of the anti-Semite movement, 
 both on account of its unparalleled magnitude and fe- 
 rocity, and also because it is the direct act of a Govern- 
 ment deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking 
 to reduce to utter misery about four and a half millions 
 of its own subjects. The laws of General Ignatieff in 
 May 1882, and the later and still more atrocious mea- 
 sures that were taken at the instigation of M. Pobedo- 
 nostseff, form a code of persecution which well deserves 
 to rank with those that followed the religions wars of
 
 560 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 the sixteenth century. 1 The Eussian legislator does 
 not, it is true, altogether proscribe the Jewish worship, 
 though no synagogue is permitted in any place where 
 there are less than eighty, and no public prayer in any 
 place where there are less than thirty, Jewish houses. 
 Nor does he absolutely and by a formal measure expel 
 the Jews from Russian soil. Such a step has, indeed, 
 been adopted on a large scale in 1891 and 1892, in the 
 case of the poorer Jews of foreign nationality. It is 
 estimated that these number about 150,000, and many 
 of them, though of foreign parentage, had been born 
 in Eussia, had lived there all their lives, spoke no 
 language except Eussian, depended absolutely on Eus- 
 sian industries for their livelihood, and desired nothing 
 more than the naturalisation which was refused them. 
 The small number who consented to abjure their faith 
 were suffered to remain. Multitudes of the others 
 were expelled from their houses, and driven like cattle 
 by bands of Cossacks across the frontier, where thou- 
 sands have perished by misery and cold. 2 
 
 For the native Jews a different treatment was pro- 
 vided. The legislator contented himself with driving 
 the great body of these Jews, including several hun- 
 dreds of thousands of persons, out of an immense pro- 
 portion of the territory and out of the great cities, in 
 which they had long lived unmolested ; confining 
 them, in the territory in which they were allowed to 
 dwell, to the overcrowded towns ; banishing them by 
 countless restrictions, disabilities and disqualifications 
 
 1 An excellent summary of which incite Immigration to the 
 
 these laws will be found in the United States (1892), pp. 149- 
 
 report of Messrs. Weber and 165. 
 
 Kempster to the House of Re- " See Errera, Les Juifs Rus- 
 
 presentatives of the U.S.A. : ses (1893), pp. 40-43. Com- 
 
 Report of Commissioners of pare the remarks of Weber and 
 
 Immigration upon the Causes Kempster, p. 165.
 
 CH. n. THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION 661 
 
 from all honourable and lucrative posts, and from a 
 multitude of the trades and occupations in which they 
 were accustomed to earn their livelihood, and thus 
 deliberately reducing them to such a depth of misery 
 that in some provinces large numbers perished by 
 literal starvation. 1 
 
 The Jews are at the same time subject to a number 
 of taxes which do not fall upon the Christians. Their 
 offences are punished by special laws and harsher 
 penalties. Their military service is more severe than 
 that of Christians, and they are excluded from all 
 the higher ranks of promotion. They are pronounced 
 aliens. by the law, their condition is regulated by spe- 
 cial ordinances, and they are left unprotected to the 
 mercies of the police. 
 
 Bribes as well as penalties are employed for their 
 conversion. Every adult convert is rewarded with a 
 gift of from fifteen to twenty roubles from the State, 
 and every child convert with half that sum. If one 
 partner in a Jewish marriage adopts the orthodox 
 faith, that partner is at once freed from the marriage 
 tie, and permitted to marry a Christian. All the 
 children under seven of the sex of the convert are 
 compulsorily baptized. If the couple elect to live to- 
 gether the convert must sign a declaration that he or 
 she will endeavour to convert the other ; and if such 
 conversion is not effected, both are prohibited from 
 residing outside the Jewish pale. Though no one, ac- 
 cording to Russian law, can perform a legal act under 
 the age of twenty-one, Jewish children at the age of 
 fourteen may be received into the Orthodox Church 
 without the permission of their parents or guardians. 
 
 There are, it is true, a variety of exemptions, some 
 
 1 Errera, Les Juifs Russes, pp. 103-9. 
 VOL. i. 36
 
 562 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 of them resting upon regular decrees, but a large part 
 purely arbitrary and precarious. Wealthy Jews are 
 able, after a certain number of years, to become mem- 
 bers of what is called the First Guild, and are per- 
 mitted by the payment of a large sum to purchase the 
 right of living in any part of Eussia ; and some classes 
 are exempted from portions of the code on account of 
 their university degrees, or of the practice of certain 
 learned professions. Their number, however, has been 
 carefully limited by a crowd of recent enactments re- 
 stricting to very small proportions the Jews who are 
 admitted to the universities and the professional train- 
 ing schools, and in many other ways impeding their 
 education. 
 
 A more important exception is that of skilled arti- 
 sans, who, under the system of passports, annually re- 
 newed, are permitted to reside temporarily outside the 
 pale. Their position, however, is utterly precarious. 
 The passports may be at any time withdrawn. The 
 permitted trades have never been authoritatively de- 
 fined, and the limits of exemption have been frequently 
 and arbitrarily contracted. 1 By a recent enactment the 
 artisans are only allowed in a small proportion of towns, 
 where their industry can be under constant supervision. 2 
 If through age or infirmity they are unable to work, 
 they are at once banished to the pale, and any intermis- 
 sion of work makes them liable to the same expulsion. 
 It has been a common practice, write the American 
 Commissioners, ' to visit the workshops in which these 
 artisans were employed when they were out delivering 
 work, or perhaps on a holiday, and because they were 
 not found actually engaged in such artisan's work at 
 
 1 Frederic, The New Exodus, Errera, p. 69. 
 pp. 166-6a
 
 CH. vi. THE JEWISH ARTISANS 563 
 
 the time of the visit, they were reported as being fraudu- 
 lently enrolled in the Artisans' Guild, and thereupon 
 expelled to the pale.' 1 In many cases they have been 
 expelled simply because they were not found working 
 on their own Sabbath. 2 
 
 The Jewish artisan outside the pale may bring with 
 him his wife and children, but he must receive no other 
 relatives, not even his father or mother, in his hut. He 
 must sell nothing outside the pale, except what he has 
 himself made, and under this rule tailors have been 
 expelled because the buttons on the coats, and watch- 
 makers because the keys of the watches they sold, were 
 not of their own manufacture. 3 Their wives also are 
 under the severest restrictions. In 1891, ten wives of 
 Jewish artisans were expelled from Kieff because they 
 had been found guilty of selling bread and milk. 4 
 Among the exempted trades is that of midwife, and 
 Jewish midwives are permitted in all parts of the Em- 
 pire, but they are specially forbidden to keep their 
 children with them when outside the pale. 5 A cha- 
 racteristic provision permits the Jewish prostitute to 
 ply her trade in any part of the Empire. Leroy-Beau- 
 \ie\\ mentions a well -authenticated case of a poor Jew- 
 ish girl who, in order to purchase permission to learn 
 shorthand at Moscow, actually took out the yellow pass- 
 port of a prostitute, but was shortly afterwards expelled 
 by the police, as it was found that she was not practis- 
 ing the permitted trade. 6 
 
 1 Weber and Kempster, p. 39. mentions ' two perfectly authen- 
 
 5 Frederic, The New Exodus, ticated cases of "young Jewish 
 . 248. girls of respectable families and 
 
 3 Weber and Kempster, p. 39. unblemished characters who 
 
 4 Errera, p. 73. adopted the desperate device of 
 Ibid. pp. 72-73. registering themselves as pros- 
 
 6 Errera, p. 31. Mr. Frederic titutes in order to be allowed to
 
 564 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 In spite of the shackles that are imposed on the Kus- 
 sian press, and the misrepresentations of official writers, 
 the facts of this persecution have been largely, though 
 no doubt very imperfectly, disclosed. The Government 
 of the United States rendered a great service to history 
 by sending two singularly competent and judicial com- 
 missioners to study on the spot the nature and the cause 
 of a persecution which drives tens of thousands of Jew- 
 ish emigrants to America. Their admirably full and 
 temperate report ; the excellent work in which Profes- 
 sor Errera has collected and sifted the best evidence 
 relating to the persecution ; the writings of M. Leroy- 
 Beaulieu, who is a capital authority both on Kussian 
 and on Jewish questions, and a few well-informed ar- 
 ticles which appeared in the foreign press, have brought 
 together a vast mass of well-authenticated evidence, and 
 Mr. Harold Frederic has related the story in a book 
 which is founded on close personal investigation, and 
 which is one of the most powerful and most terrible of 
 our time. 
 
 To these writers I must refer the reader for the de- 
 tails of a persecution which far exceeds in atrocity any 
 other that has taken place in Europe in the nineteenth 
 century. It cannot be measured by the mere letter of 
 the law, though few persons who have examined the 
 new code will doubt that it was deliberately and 
 methodically constructed with the object of driving 
 the great bulk of the Jewish population to the alter- 
 native of conversion, starvation, or exile. Still more 
 horrible have been the sanguinary outbursts of popular 
 fury, often connived at, if not instigated, by authority, 
 
 remain with their aged parents 216). See, too, p. 247, and 
 in the city where they were Weber and Kempster, p. 42. 
 born' {The New Exodus, p.
 
 CH. VI. VIOLENCE OF THE PERSECUTION 565 
 
 the brutal acts of arbitrary violence by which the per- 
 secution at every stage has been continually accom- 
 panied. 
 
 If the. reader suspects this language of exaggeration, 
 he should study the accounts in the writers I have 
 cited of the police raid on the Jewish quarter of Mos- 
 cow, which began the expulsion of the Jews from that 
 city in 1891 and 1892, when more than 700 men, 
 women, and children, who had committed no shadow 
 of offence, were dragged from their homes in the dead 
 ' hour of the night, and, in the extreme cold of a Rus- 
 sian winter, first taken to the prison, and then marched 
 in chains out of the city and summarily exiled to the 
 pale. 1 He should read the account of the Jewish 
 settlement of Marina Rostscha, which was surrounded 
 during the night by a band of Cossacks with torches 
 and drawn swords, who dragged at least 300 unsuspect- 
 ing Jewish families from their beds, and, scarcely giving 
 them time to dress, drove them from their homes, 
 through the woods and over the snow-covered ground, 
 beyond the limits of the province. Utter ruin natu- 
 rally accompanied the persecution. The Jews were 
 cut off from their only means of livelihood. There 
 was a wholesale repudiation of debts ; and this was, no 
 doubt, a leading motive in the tragedy. Those who 
 possessed realised property were prevented from re- 
 moving it, and forced to sell it at the shortest notice 
 to a hostile population, usually for a minute fraction 
 of its real value. 2 Multitudes of the fugitives perished 
 
 1 The official paper at St. 289-92 ; Weber and Kempster, 
 
 Petersburg denied the em- pp. 47-51. 
 
 ployment of chains, but it is * Some striking instances of 
 
 established by overwhelming this at Moscow are given in The 
 
 evidence. See Frederic, pp. New Exodus, pp. 222-28.
 
 566 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 
 
 on the road by cold, or starvation, or fatigue. Some, 
 in the agony of their distress, found a refuge in suicide. 
 Sick Jews in the extreme of suffering were repelled 
 from the Christian hospitals, 1 and tens of thousands, 
 in the utmost destitution to which human beings can 
 sink, have been driven from their country to seek a 
 refuge among strangers. According to the careful 
 estimate of Mr. Frederic, in the single year which 
 ended in October, 1892, at least a quarter of a million 
 of Eussian Jews have in this way been forced into 
 exile. 2 
 
 Nowhere, indeed, in modern Europe have such pic- 
 tures of human suffering and human cruelty been wit- 
 nessed as in that gloomy Northern Empire, where the 
 silence of an iron despotism is seldom broken except 
 by the wailings of the famine-stricken, the plague- 
 stricken, and the persecuted. 
 
 La, sotto giorni brevi e nebulosi, 
 
 Nasce una gente a cui il morir non duole. 
 
 Nearly half of the Jewish race is said to have dwelt 
 there, and their persecution is no modern thing, though 
 in the multitude of its victims the persecution under 
 Alexander III. has transcended all that preceded it. 
 The causes which produced the anti-Semite movement 
 in other lands existed in Eussia in peculiar intensity, 
 as there was no other country where the Jews were so 
 numerous, and scarcely any where the Christians were 
 at once so ignorant and so poor. The charge of 
 Nihilism was made much use of, though in truth but 
 very few Jews have been proved guilty of conspiracy. 3 
 
 1 Weber and Kempster, p. 41. 3 Frederic (pp. 118-19) and 
 
 4 The New Exodus, pp. 283- Errera (pp. 144-45), have shown 
 
 84. the very small number of Jews
 
 CH. VL CAUSES OP THE PERSECUTION 567 
 
 An evil chance had placed upon the throne an absolute 
 ruler who combined with much private virtue and very 
 limited faculties all the genuine fanaticism of the great 
 persecutors of the past, and who found a new Tor- 
 quemada at his side. He reigned over an Administra- 
 tion which is among the most despotic, and probably, 
 without exception, the most corrupt and the most 
 cruel in Europe ; over a people with many amiable and 
 noble qualities, but ignorant and credulous, sunk in 
 poverty far exceeding that of Western Europe, de- 
 tached by a great economical revolution from their 
 old grooves and guiding influences, and peculiarly sub- 
 ject to fierce gusts of fanatical passion. Among the 
 causes of the great Eussian persecutions of Polish 
 Catholics, of Lutherans, of Eussian dissenters, and, 
 above all, of Jews, much has been ascribed by the best 
 observers to the mere greed of corrupt officials seeking 
 for blackmail and for confiscations. Much has been 
 due to social collisions ; to the hatred aroused by the 
 competition of a more industrious, more intelligent, 
 and more sober race ; to the hatred which debtors bear 
 to their creditors ; to the natural tendency of op- 
 pressed, ignorant, and poverty-stricken men to throw 
 the blame of their very real sufferings upon some 
 isolated and alien race. Eeligious fanaticism also, 
 which has a deep hold over the Eussian nature, and 
 which has shown itself in many strange explosions, has 
 borne a considerable part. But probably not less 
 powerful than any of these motives has been the desire 
 to make Eussia purely Eussian, expelling every foreign 
 element from the Slavonic soil. It is a feeling which 
 has long smouldered in great strata of Eussian society, 
 
 among the convicted Nihilists, various charges brought against 
 Errera examines very fully the the Russian Jews.
 
 568 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VL 
 
 and to which the Panslavist movement of our own day 
 has given a vastly augmented power and scope. Some 
 of the most disgraceful apologies for the savage perse- 
 cutions in Kussia have come from writers who profess 
 to be champions of nationalities, ardent supporters of 
 liberty and progress. 
 
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