THE COMMON WEAL
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Dr. Gordon Watkins 
 
 International 
 
 University 
 
 Booksellers Ltd. 
 
 94 Gower Street 
 London 
 W.C. i
 
 (Sarfcm S>. Watkhus
 
 THE COMMON WEAL
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 
 
 LONDON 
 FETTER LANE, E.G. 4 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 100 PRINCES STREET 
 
 NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, MADRAS: MACMILLAN AND CO.. LTD, 
 
 TORONTO : J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. 
 TOKYO: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 THE COMMON WEAL 
 
 SIX LECTURES 
 ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHT 
 
 * BY 
 
 W.' CUNNINGHAM, D.D., F.B.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF ELY 
 
 FORMERLY LECTURER ON ECONOMIC HISTORY 
 IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
 
 JC507 
 CS5
 
 TO 
 F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc. 
 
 FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR OF 
 
 CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 
 
 OXFORD
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 T.V* i 
 
 HESE lectures, which were written at the 
 
 request of Mr Victor Fisher of the British 
 Workers' League, and have been published al- 
 ready, week by week, in the British Citizen, are 
 now collected together in a volume. I was much 
 disappointed that the proposal to give these 
 lectures in London had to be abandoned, and 
 that I was unable to deliver them myself, in 
 Cambridge. I am very grateful to Mr G. G. 
 Coulton, who was kind enough to read them on 
 my behalf, as well as to the numerous friends 
 whom I consulted on special points. 
 
 W. C. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE 
 i November 1917
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 1. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAG 
 
 1. The Peasants' Revolt aimed at promoting the 
 
 Common Weal i 
 
 2. Progress in the Art of Government ... 2 
 
 (a) Increase of individual liberty and free- 
 dom from external coercion ... 3 
 
 () Extension of the sphere of the activities 
 
 of the State 3 
 
 (c) More fruitful conception of Sovereignty 
 as the power to interpret and promote 
 the Common Weal 3 
 
 3. Measures that are expedient for promoting the 
 
 Common Weal 4 
 
 4. The consciousness of nationality ... 6 
 
 II. NATIONALITY 
 
 5. "A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm 
 
 of England." National aspirations in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, after (a) Defence, (i) In- 
 dependent religious life, (c) Independent 
 Economic life 7 
 
 6. Personal loyalty 9 
 
 III. SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 7. Sovereignty as essential to a well-ordered com- 
 
 munity ii 
 
 8. Revolutions in government . . . .13
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY AND PAR- 
 LIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT 
 
 I. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 . Two nations under one government . . -15 
 
 2. The Scottish nationality was distinct from the 
 
 English nationality (a) Ecclesiastically, 
 (&) Economically, and (c) Constitutionally. 
 Each had distinct conceptions of the Com- 
 mon Weal 16 
 
 3. The Union of the Crowns and Parliamentary 
 
 Union 17 
 
 4. At the Union, parliamentary government be- 
 
 came almost entirely secularised . . 19 
 
 5. Provision for education, and for the poor, was 
 
 deputed to the National Church in Scot- 
 land, and left to the Parish in England . 19 
 
 II. STRAINED RELATIONS 
 
 6. The co-operation of King and People . . 22 
 
 (a) James I 22 
 
 (i) Sir Edward Phelips .... 25 
 
 7. The definition of the respective rights of Crown 
 
 and Parliament 26 
 
 (a) Impositions ...... 27 
 
 (b) The Great Contract .... 27 
 
 III. THE FAILURE OF PERSONAL MONARCHY 
 
 8. No longer trusted to interpret the Common 
 
 Weal aright 28 
 
 9. No longer trusted to control the resources of 
 
 the State 29
 
 CONTENTS XI 
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 
 
 I. CHANGES IN THE AIM OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Political Apologetics 32 
 
 2. Locke's Civil Government .... 33 
 
 (a) The principle of individual consent . 35 
 
 (b) Rights in a State of Nature ... 36 
 
 3. Locke does not face the question as to the origin 
 
 of Sovereignty 37 
 
 (a) The coercive power of the State . . 37 
 
 (A) The continuance of civil society . . 38 
 
 (c) The Common Weal as negative . . 39 
 
 II. PERSONAL LIBERTY 
 
 4. The Plausibility of the doctrine of Locke . . 40 
 
 5. Unrestrained Liberty 41 
 
 6. The aggregate of individual interests . . 42 
 
 III. THE CONTROL OF THE MECHANISM 
 
 7. In internal affairs 45 
 
 8. In foreign relations 47 
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 
 
 I. CRITERIA OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 1 . Utilitarianism fails to discriminate ... 49 
 
 2. Maxims for private conduct are inapplicable . 51 
 
 II. THE STATE AS A MORAL PERSONALITY 
 
 3. Rousseau and the General Will . . 52 
 
 4. The Sovereign State 54 
 
 (a) may be mistaken 54 
 
 (b) and may learn from its mistakes . . 55
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. Parliamentary government on its trial . . 56 
 
 (a) The decadence of parliamentary govern- 
 ment 56 
 
 (b) The Revolution of 1916 . . . . 57 
 
 III. THE CAUSE OF DEFECT IN GOVERNMENT 
 
 6. Indifference to the Common Weal ... 58 
 
 7. Partisanship 60 
 
 8. Class legislation 61 
 
 9. The punishment of political offences . . 62 
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 I. CONFLICTING VIEWS OF PUBLIC GOOD 
 
 1 . Impersonal political action .... 64 
 
 2. Cosmopolitan aims 66 
 
 3. Censorious criticism 68 
 
 II. CLAIMS ON THE CITIZEN 
 
 4. The power and efficiency of the State . . 69 
 
 5. Assistance in administration .... 71 
 
 6. The range of legislative activity ... 72 
 
 III. THE COMMON WEAL AS A POSITIVE AIM 
 
 7. The life of the citizen as socialised ... 75 
 
 8. The National Life 77 
 
 (a) The State as a good neighbour . . 77 
 () The State as a good parent ... 78 
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 
 
 I. THE LIFE OF THE STATE AND OF THE 
 CITIZEN PERSONALLY 
 
 1 . Conditions favourable to vigour in the life of the 
 
 State and to a full personal life . . 80 
 
 2. Improvement in the Community . . .81
 
 (*) 
 (*) 
 
 CONTENTS xill 
 
 II. THE INFLUENCE OF THE STATE ON PERSONAL 
 
 CHARACTER PAGE 
 
 3. Providing opportunities 81 
 
 4. Practicable schemes 82 
 
 5. Educational aims 84 
 
 (a) The service of the State ... 84 
 
 (b) Patriotic examples .... 85 
 
 III. POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PERSONAL CHARACTER 
 
 6. Half truths 86 
 
 7. The development of the individual personally . 87 
 
 The Common Weal as negative . . 87 
 
 The self-pleasing life .... 87 
 
 IV. THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 8. Personal Ideals 88 
 
 9. A foundation for the sense of duty ... 93 
 10. A sound judgment 94 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS 
 
 1. Enthusiasm for free competition ... 97 
 
 2. Mental discipline and the investigation of actual 
 
 affairs 100 
 
 3. Economics as severed from Politics . . 102 
 
 4. Economic conditions that favour German am- 
 
 bitions 103 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 IDEALS FOR SOCIETY AND PERSONAL CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 1. Pacifism as a method of securing Peace . . 107 
 
 2. Pacifist Religion and the teaching of Christ . 109 
 
 3. Pacifism as common ground for Christians . no 
 
 4. Pacifism and Spiritual Progress . . .in 
 
 INDEX . 115
 
 \
 
 THE COMMON WEAL 
 
 I 
 NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 j The term Common Weal may sound a little 
 archaic, but it is not an inappropriate descrip- 
 tion of the subject of lectures which aim at showing 
 how we may bring the concentrated experience of 
 past ages to bear on the political difficulties of the 
 present day. The term takes us far back, for it has 
 been associated with the projects of the Kentish 
 Peasants who agitated, once and again, for better 
 government 1 . The insurrection of which we know 
 most was that under Wat Tyler in 1381, and it was 
 the striking outcome of widespread discontent with 
 the existing order in Church and State ; there is real 
 difficulty in getting at the root of these troubles. 
 We are fortunate, however, in being able to discern, 
 at least dimly, something of the positive aims of the 
 insurgents. They were aiming not merely at the 
 redress of their own particular grievances, whatever 
 they may have been, but at the Common Weal of 
 
 1 " Gregory's Chronicle " in Historical Collections of a 
 Citizen of London, edited by J. Gairdner for the Camden 
 Society, p. 191.
 
 2 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 the nation as a whole, of all localities and of all 
 classes; and so they were ready to follow the king 
 when he adroitly took the place of their dead leader 
 at Mile End and shouted "I will be your leader." 
 The particularism of mediaeval England was the 
 root of every sort of evil. The malcontents had had 
 enough of the jealousies of different towns, of the 
 quarrels of different guilds and the ambitions of pri- 
 vileged classes, of the disputed customs of different 
 estates, the disabilities of the serfs and the claims 
 of the free labourers, and they were ready to look 
 to the king, as one who, by his position, was raised 
 above these rival forces and might be expected to 
 have regard for the Common Weal of the nation as 
 a whole. 
 
 2 That they were disappointed in their expecta- 
 tion, we know; but the failure need not be 
 dismissed as a forgotten futility, for we may have 
 the keenest sympathy with the object they had in 
 view. During the last few years many of us have 
 been dissatisfied with Party Government and the 
 subordination of the good of the country as a whole 
 to the interests of particular groups or classes; we 
 desire a change in our system of rule, so that greater 
 prominence may be given to the good of the nation, 
 present and future; and we have much clearer light 
 than the Peasants in 1381, as to the means by which 
 this may be accomplished. During the five cen- 
 turies and more, that have elapsed, since Wat 
 Tyler's Rebellion, there has been an extraordinary
 
 I. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 3 
 
 development of the art of government, a very 
 much better understanding of what it is worth while 
 to aim at, and a vastly improved machinery for 
 attaining these aims. All would agree that remark- 
 able progress has occurred in the country during 
 the last three centuries, and it is worth while to 
 enumerate the main changes which have taken 
 place. 
 
 (A) There has been a great increase of personal 
 liberty, of freedom from external coercion, and 
 therefore of opportunities to the individual for self- 
 discipline. So long as external control was con- 
 stantly enforced by authority, the basis for the 
 formation of habits of self-control was absent, and 
 there could be no real reliance on self-discipline by 
 the citizens themselves. 
 
 (B) It is also noticeable that the activities of the 
 State have been called into operation in new direc- 
 tions; such elements of the Common Weal as health 
 and education are taken account of by the State 
 now-a-days, in a way to which our forefathers were 
 quite unaccustomed. The whole of the humanitarian 
 legislation, which was the product of the philan- 
 thropy of the nineteenth century, would have been 
 regarded as impracticable and unnecessary at an 
 earlier time. 
 
 (c) There has also been a change in the conception 
 of sovereignty as the power which interprets and 
 enforces the Common Weal. Modern thought is 
 clearer and more definite, and modern ideas are 
 
 i 2
 
 4 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 more fruitful ; we are able to set the problems, with 
 which we have to deal, in a clearer light, so as to 
 have the best hope of solving them practically, and 
 making still further advances in promoting and 
 fostering the Common Weal. 
 2 A retrospect of progress in the past, helps to 
 give us the right point of view for discussing 
 the possibilities of the future. We are apt to be mis- 
 taken if we allow ourselves to be guided solely by 
 our own preferences and temperaments in regard 
 to political movements long ago, for they have been 
 judged by the logic of events. Certain institutions 
 have justified themselves by their success, while 
 others have proved to be failures, and are to be con- 
 demned as failures. The personal sympathies and 
 interests of the historian will of course differ accord- 
 ing to his temperament. The vulgar will find satis- 
 faction in praising those who were successful, and 
 the chivalrous will show sympathy with failure; 
 but, apart from these matters of temperament, the 
 fact of success or failure is clear. Personal monarchy 
 was proved a failure in England when Charles I was 
 executed; to try to understand, as fully as we can, 
 the precise causes of failure is an education in being 
 fair to those with whom we may have little sym- 
 pathy. Similarly in regard to the future we need 
 not rely entirely on our own conceptions of what is 
 right and just, but should look chiefly at what is 
 practicable, as a step towards realising our ideal for 
 the Common Weal. Our conception of abstract
 
 I. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 5 
 
 justice gives us little help in facing the complex 
 difficulties of society, and we are more likely to get 
 on if we are content to consider what, under existing 
 circumstances, is expedient for the good of the 
 country as we see it. 
 
 There have of course been attempts to carry out 
 what is "absolutely just" in the founding and govern- 
 ing of the State 1 . But individuals differ greatly as 
 to their conception of what is just as between man 
 and man. Is it just that goods should be distributed 
 among people according to their needs ? or according 
 to their efficiency ? Are we to take the idea of justice 
 
 1 Penn claimed to be carrying out the dictates of abso- 
 lute justice in the organisation of Pennsylvania (H. Hodg- 
 kin, Westminster Review, June, 1901, CLV, p. 616), but it is 
 to his credit that he did not adhere pedantically to his 
 Quaker principles. He was obliged to compromise, for he 
 had established a democracy though he was himself a 
 feudal Sovereign (Bancroft, United States, n, p. 395). He 
 was not a thorough-going opponent of slavery. "He en- 
 deavoured to secure to the African mental and moral 
 culture, the rights and happiness of domestic life. His 
 efforts were not successful, and he himself died a slave 
 holder " (Ib. n, p. 403). The Welsh settlers did not regard 
 him as punctilious in carrying out the agreement into 
 which he had entered (C. H. Browning, Welsh Settlement 
 'of Pennsylvania, p. 330). The peace with the Indians did 
 not depend entirely on the treaty with Penn, but was 
 partly due to the fact that the tribe had been already dis- 
 armed by the Five Nations (Dictionary of National Bio- 
 graphy s.v. Penn, xv, p. 758); before his death Penn felt 
 obliged to organise a system of defence. It is impossible to 
 regard the success of Pennsylvania, as a proof that his 
 principles were sound, as he did not really rely on them in 
 practice.
 
 6 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 to the individual, which was on the whole mediaeval, 
 or that which has superseded it in modern times ? * 
 We may avoid confusion by leaving this question of 
 absolute right on one side, and fixing our attention 
 instead on the practical progress which has been 
 made ; we may thus consider what we have learned 
 as a nation from experience, what maxims have 
 been accepted because they seemed to work well for 
 a time, and what have been discarded because they 
 had come to work badly. In this way we can 
 account for the extraordinary progress which has 
 been made in forming definite ideals of the Common 
 Weal, while we have also learned by experience to 
 find better means of realising these ideals. 
 A The experience has, of course, been in an area 
 where there were similar institutions and simi- 
 lar powers of control, in fact, where there was 
 a consciousness of nationality. Since Edwardian 
 times, at all events, England has been a true nation- 
 ality ; and this involves the recognition of a Common 
 Weal throughout a given territorial area. There are 
 many peoples who have not attained to this con- 
 sciousness of nationality. In England, from various 
 causes, it awoke much earlier than in Scotland 2 ; 
 on the Continent, the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is spoken of as the time of the rise of nation- 
 
 1 Christianity and Economic Science, p. 2g. 
 
 8 Under Wallace and Bruce there was an assertion of 
 independence from England, but there was little develop- 
 ment of national institutions till the sixteenth century.
 
 I. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 7 
 
 alities, with a resuscitated Greece, a united Italy, 
 and a united Germany. There are peoples who 
 flourish under other political forms, who are or- 
 ganised according to a blood tie, like the clans of 
 Scotland, or who are content with the civic pa- 
 triotism which was developed in the ancient world 
 and maintained in the Middle Ages. Tribes or 
 groups, which are satisfied with these groupings 
 and find that they are the basis of a congenial 
 society, are not desirous of a really national life and 
 are unfitted for national institutions. The main- 
 tenance or revival of racial feeling is a hindrance to 
 the growth of enthusiasm for a Common Weal in 
 the Balkan States, and therefore to the organisa- 
 tion of true nationalities. During the last century 
 there has been in America a struggle between State 
 patriotism and State rights, and the conception of 
 a Common Weal and true nationality for the whole 
 of the United States. But in England there have 
 been national life and national experience which have 
 been growing steadily for centuries and of which we 
 should be wise to avail ourselves. 
 
 II. NATIONALITY 
 
 C How far we have moved in this matter can 
 perhaps best be seen by taking the Reforma- 
 tion Period as a starting-point. The reign of Ed- 
 ward VI was a time of widespread disorder, but the 
 various grievances of the rural and urban popula- 
 tion were very different from those of the present
 
 8 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 day. Agriculture was awakening to new life under 
 the stimulus of improved opportunities for sale of 
 produce, and capitalist organisation of wage earners 
 was beginning to take the place which had been 
 traditionally occupied by independent domestic 
 workers. The capitalist system, which has triumphed 
 both in town and country, was coming clearly into 
 light, and the conflict between the old order and 
 the new was very bitter 1 . The grievances of the 
 day were quite different from the social disabilities 
 of the Peasants of 1381, or from the labour unrest 
 of our own time, and the aims of social reformers 
 were indefinite and vague. The situation is clearly 
 described in the very interesting book, in the form 
 of a dialogue, which was written in 1549, D Y J onn 
 Hales, and entitled A Discourse of the Common 
 Weal of this Realm of England*. The 'knight' in 
 this dialogue was eager to organise the religious life 
 of the nation in independence of Rome, and to 
 develop the economic life of the country as a whole, 
 both as regards rural and urban industry, and by 
 the increase of commerce, so far as it reacted on the 
 employment of the population at home. At that 
 time the reigning dynasty had abandoned the am- 
 
 1 Progress of Capitalism in England, p. 52. 
 
 a Edited for the Camb. Univ. Press by E. Lamond. It 
 was first printed by an unknown W. S. in 1581; he had 
 brought it down to date and introduced an interesting 
 discussion on the effect of the precious metals from the 
 New World. In this form it is easily accessible in the 
 Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix (1808).
 
 1^ NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 9 
 
 bition for foreign conquests, and there was little 
 fear of foreign invasion. England seemed able to 
 hold aloof from international complications, as 
 Henry VH had done; but soon after, during the 
 reign of Elizabeth, there was a change which gave 
 greater defmiteness to the conception of the Com- 
 mon Weal. Defence of our shores by a navy came 
 to be recognised as an essential element, in a way 
 that it had never been since the time of the Danish 
 invasions. The independence of the religious life of 
 the nation was threatened by the Pope, the inde- 
 pendence of the economic life of the country was 
 threatened by the peaceful penetration of aliens, 
 and by the Hanse league. It was in the reign of 
 Elizabeth that Englishmen attained to full con- 
 sciousness of nationality as involving these elements 
 of independence in opposition to aggression from 
 without. Freedom from foreign monarchy was pas- 
 sionately desired, especially from the sovereignty 
 of Spain, and there was a consciousness that inde- 
 pendent monarchy would prove a bulwark which 
 ensured freedom for the development of national 
 life. 
 
 ./ What had been implicit in the very idea of 
 nationality and the Common Weal of the 
 nation, came clearly into view in the time of Eliza- 
 beth; and it was generally felt that in order that 
 the nation might be well governed and well organ- 
 ised there must be sovereignty, that a governing 
 power to act for the Common Weal must be recog-
 
 10 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 nised and obeyed, and that the monarchy should 
 be accepted as having a real regard for the Common 
 Weal and the power of protecting the Common 
 Weal. The altered political conditions were re- 
 flected by the change which may be recognised in 
 Political Philosophy. There had of course been 
 much discussion during the Middle Ages of the 
 Theory of Sovereignty; the treatise of Suarez 1 had 
 become a recognised authority on sovereignty in 
 general; but the claim to independent sovereignty 
 over particular nations was comparatively new in 
 Christendom. The views of post-reformation writers, 
 even where general in form, are greatly affected by 
 the particular experiences they had had themselves, 
 and the political conditions in which they lived. 
 
 What strikes us most in looking back on the 
 Elizabethan age, is the passionate loyalty, of states- 
 men and churchmen and the people at large, to the 
 Queen ; she was extraordinarily popular in spite of 
 her vanities and vacillation, and of the meanness 
 which characterised her, because she was recog- 
 nised as being, at that time, the embodiment of the 
 sovereignty which was essential for organising the 
 Common Weal of the realm. In her day there was 
 no occasion, in the ordinary mind, to separate the 
 idea of sovereignty, as necessary to the existence 
 of a well ordered society, from the personality by 
 whom that sovereignty was exercised. It could be 
 held that while some other form of government 
 1 Tractatus de legibus, 1619.
 
 I. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY II 
 
 was possible for a City State, a personal monarchy 
 was needed to give unity to rule over wide terri- 
 tories. 
 
 III. SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 fj Gradually, however, with increased recogni- 
 tion of the solidarity of a nation, with better 
 possibilities of intercommunication between all parts 
 and the existence of an organ by which the policy 
 of the Common Weal could be discussed and de- 
 bated, the conception of sovereignty in a nation- 
 ality, apart altogether from monarchy, began to be 
 recognised as practicable. The Marquis of Mont- 
 rose, who put on record the principles which in- 
 spired him in his marvellous career, writes quite 
 clearly on the distinction between Sovereignty and 
 Government, though he did not believe that any 
 other form of government than personal monarchy 
 came within the range of practical politics in Scot- 
 land in I644 1 . He seems to think of Sovereignty 
 as a quality which is essential to any efficient 
 government, but it is so impalpable that he can 
 hardly find terms to describe it. "Sovereignty is a 
 " power over the people ; above which power there is 
 "none upon earth; whose acts cannot be rescinded 
 "by any other; instituted by God, for His glory 
 "and the temporal and eternal happiness of men. 
 " This is it that is recorded so oft, by the wisdom of 
 "antient times, to be sacred and inviolable; the 
 1 "The Political Philosophy of the Marquis of Montrose " 
 in the Scottish Historical Review (July, 1917), xiv, p .362.
 
 12 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 "truest image and representation of the power of 
 "Almighty God upon earth; not to be bounded, 
 "disputed, meddled with at all by subjects; who 
 "can never handle it, though never so warily, but 
 "it is thereby wounded, and the public peace dis- 
 turbed. Yet it is limited by the laws of God and 
 "nature; and some laws of nations; and by the 
 "fundamental laws of the country; which are those 
 "upon which sovereign power itself resteth, in pre- 
 judice of which a King can do nothing; and those 
 "also which secure to the good subject his honour, 
 "his life, and the property of his goods. This 
 "power not speaking of those who are Kings in 
 "name only, and in effect but Principes Nobilitatis 
 "or Duces Belli, nor of the arbitrary and despotic 
 "power, where one is head and all the rest slaves, 
 "but of that which is sovereign over free subjects 
 "is still one and the same, in points essential, wher- 
 "ever it be, whether in the person of a monarch, or 
 "in a few principal men, or in the Estates of the 
 "people. The essential points of sovereignty are 
 " these : To make laws ; to create principal officers ; 
 "to make peace and war; to give grace to men con- 
 demned by law; and to be the last to whom ap- 
 pellation is made. There be others, too, which are 
 "comprehended in those set down; but because 
 "majesty doeth not so clearly shine in them they 
 "are here omitted. These set down are inalienable, 
 "indivisible, incommunicable, and belong to the 
 "sovereign power primitively in all sorts of govern-
 
 I. NATIONALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 13 
 
 "ments. They cannot subsist in a body composed 
 "of individuities 1 ." 
 
 In describing the functions of a sovereign State, 
 and attributing to it will and reason, Montrose 
 comes very near to regarding it as a personality, 
 but he is at least clear in distinguishing sovereignty 
 from government. There are various forms of 
 government through which sovereignty is exercised ; 
 the forms of government may be changed from time 
 to time, but sovereignty, which is essential to the 
 existence of an ordered community, must remain 
 through all these changes. There always must be 
 somewhere an interpreter of the Common Weal, 
 and a power to administer affairs so as to give the 
 Common Weal effect, if any community is to flour- 
 ish; the government is the organ, and always an 
 imperfect organ, by which sovereignty is exercised. 
 The community cannot flourish if the government 
 does its work badly, and misinterprets the Common 
 Weal or fails to put it into effect. The prosperity of 
 the country depends on a recognition by the people 
 of the success of the government in exercising 
 sovereignty; and there will be revolution if the 
 -government is generally and utterly condemned for 
 its want of success in exercising its authority aright. 
 r> The distinction which was thus drawn between 
 sovereignty and government is at least illus- 
 trated by the extraordinary changes which have 
 taken place recently in Russia. The sovereignty in 
 1 Napier, Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose, i, p. 281.
 
 14 THE COMMON WEAL CH. I. 
 
 that country was exercised by a personal monarch, 
 the Czar, and his government was overthrown by 
 the revolution which roused so much sympathy in 
 democratic countries. At first it appeared that the 
 democracy had succeeded in obtaining recognition 
 as being able to interpret and enforce the Common 
 Weal; and the Russian success in Galicia was 
 claimed as a proof that the democratic government 
 was firmly established ; but the Extremists asserted 
 themselves; they were apparently enthusiasts for 
 personal liberty, who resented not only the govern- 
 ment of the Czar, but the existence of sovereignty 
 of any kind. In the army there was an entire col- 
 lapse of discipline, which seems to have been directly 
 due to a disregard of the Common Weal and a 
 determination on the part of many of the soldiers 
 to lose no chance of indulging their land hunger. 
 Whether it may be possible to induce these 'indi- 
 viduities ' to act for the Common Weal remains to 
 be seen ; but it is certain that, for the present, there 
 has been a terrible set back for national indepen- 
 dence and the opportunities of national develop- 
 ment, while at the same time numbers of men are 
 likely to be disillusioned as to the benefit which 
 comes to individuals from the diffusion of anarchy. 
 The men, whether in German pay or not, who 
 turned the revolution in government into an attack 
 on national sovereignty, have much to answer for, 
 both as regards the welfare of their country and the 
 benefit of the individuals who followed them.
 
 II 
 
 PERSONAL MONARCHY AND 
 PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT 
 
 I. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 j We are all familiar with the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, as the period when attempts to establish 
 Absolutism in England were foiled and a great step 
 was taken in the direction of democracy by the 
 establishment of constitutional monarchy at the 
 Revolution of 1689; but less attention has been 
 paid to the fact that during this period the activi- 
 ties of civil government were almost completely 
 secularised. From some points of view, it might 
 seem enough to follow the pioneers in the progress 
 towards secularised democracy and to indicate the 
 obstacles with which they had to contend; but for 
 our purpose it is necessary to look at the other side 
 as well, and try to see the reasons for the failure 
 .of personal monarchy. At the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, the personal monarchy, as it 
 had been exercised by Queen Elizabeth, was not 
 only acceptable, but popular in England; under a 
 personal monarchy the State may attain a very 
 high degree of efficiency, so that personal monarchy 
 is generally accepted in Germany, in the present
 
 l6 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 day, as the best form of government. In order to 
 see how the revolution came about in England, and 
 to understand why personal monarchy was no 
 longer acceptable here as a form of government, we 
 must look at the causes of failure. 
 2 It is to be noticed that the task which the 
 various governments of Great Britain were 
 called on to face during the seventeenth century 
 was really an impossible one. They wished to rule 
 England and Scotland as one nation; Laud en- 
 deavoured to assimilate Scottish ecclesiastical in- 
 stitutions to those of England, and failed ; the West- 
 minster Assembly endeavoured to assimilate English 
 ecclesiastical institutions to those of Scotland, and 
 failed. It was impossible to treat the two nations 
 as one, or to bring the people of both countries 
 under similar institutions. And this was not merely 
 owing to ecclesiastical differences, but to economic 
 habits and interests, as well as to differences of con- 
 stitution. After the Union of the Crowns, Scottish 
 commercial interests were subordinated to the poli- 
 tical aims which governed English policy 1 , and 
 Scottish commercial practice, which had been di- 
 rected by the Convention of Royal Boroughs, was 
 different in many ways from the organisation of 
 merchant adventurers in trading companies, which 
 was the ordinary condition in London and other 
 English towns. There does not seem to have been 
 
 1 T. Keith, Commercial Relations of England and Scotland, 
 pp. 16, 48.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 17 
 
 any movement in Scotland analogous to the enclos- 
 ing of common waste and common fields, with the 
 break up of the custom of a common tillage, which 
 was causing so much unrest in rural England. 
 
 Constitutionally too, the countries were extra- 
 ordinarily different ; the Scottish Parliament was of 
 very slight importance and could not aspire to be 
 an effective check upon the Crown; while on the 
 other hand, the English Parliament was thoroughly 
 aware of its long traditions, and of its influence in 
 the affairs of the realm, and was eager to preserve 
 its privileges. In Scotland, it was the great families 
 and General Assemblies of the Church, rather than 
 the House of Commons, who could be in any sense 
 a check on the proceedings of the Crown. 
 o James, as we can see from his speech to the 
 House of Commons 1 , was aware of the differ- 
 ences of the two countries and of the difficulty of 
 treating them as one. He knew Scotland well, and 
 was possibly led into difficulties with English mer- 
 chants and English Parliaments because he relied 
 too much on his Scottish experience, and did not 
 enter easily into the feelings of his new subjects. 
 But no greater success attended the efforts of Crom- 
 well, who introduced one system of government 
 both north and south of the Tweed. The two coun- 
 tries could not be ruled as one nation because the 
 peoples had no sense of a Common Weal. Eccle- 
 siastically, economically, and constitutionally they 
 1 Commons Journal (3ist March, 1607), i, p. 362. 
 
 C. 2
 
 l8 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 were different. There was a. long standing sense of 
 Common Weal in England; but Scotland was so 
 much broken up by different attachments and in- 
 terests, that there was very little sense of a common 
 life throughout the whole country, and none of a 
 welfare that was common to England and Scotland 
 alike. They were not at one, and could not be 
 treated as one. The personal monarchy of the 
 Stuarts was face to face with an impossible 
 task. 
 
 The Union of the Crowns had, however, forced 
 the two countries into contact, and the reaction of 
 one upon the other brought about changes which 
 rendered it possible to bring the two nations under 
 one parliamentary government by the act of union 
 under Queen Anne. English influence had triumphed 
 constitutionally; the English Parliament, with its 
 traditions and privileges, was accepted as the chief 
 organ of government throughout Great Britain. In 
 commerce on the other hand, the Scottish influence 
 prevailed: the exclusive Companies, like the Mer- 
 chant Adventurers or the Turkey Company, fell 
 into the background. The interlopers made serious 
 inroads on the monopoly of the East India Com- 
 pany 1 , and the greater freedom for the employment 
 of private capital within the realm 2 , which was 
 characteristic of Scotland, came to be adopted for 
 the whole of Great Britain. 
 
 1 Growth of English Industry and Commerce, II, p. 416. 
 * Christianity and Politics, pp. 71-86.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 19 
 
 A The religious differences between the two 
 countries could not be compromised, indeed 
 they became more accentuated, and left the govern- 
 ment of Great Britain to assume a more decidedly 
 secular character than had been possible in the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth and John Knox. North of the 
 Tweed, the State handed over the care of the poor 
 and the education of the children to a national 
 Church 1 , on which it conferred authority to exer- 
 cise discipline in matters of morality which were not 
 provided for by the law of the land. In England, 
 provision for the poor had long been made by pa- 
 rochial authorities; and there was no interference 
 by the State with the instruction of the young and 
 the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline in each parish 
 by the traditional authority of the parish priest. 
 The Common Weal of Great Britain, as a matter of 
 parliamentary care, was almost wholly secular. 
 
 r In Scotland, the government had delegated 
 to a national Church its responsibilities in re- 
 gard to Christian care of the poor and the education 
 of the young, while in England it had already pro- 
 vided parochially for the relief of the poor, and the 
 State took no national cognisance of the education 
 of the young till the nineteenth century. Hence it 
 came about that in both countries it was possible 
 for the State to confine its activities almost entirely 
 to secular functions, and that the religious life of 
 the nation, which had had so much prominence in 
 1 Scots Acts 1690, c. 5.
 
 20 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 the sixteenth century, dropped altogether out of 
 the conception of the Common Weal which govern- 
 ment could endeavour to promote. 
 
 It may not be out of place to remark, that the 
 delegation of all spiritual matters to a national 
 Church, in Scotland, had a great effect on the growth 
 of the sense of a Common Weal, and of nationality, 
 throughout the northern kingdom. On the other 
 hand, the acceptance of a secularised government 
 in England, was largely due to the influence of 
 Puritanism, which had protested against the eccle- 
 siastical institutions of the realm, especially the 
 parochial system, since it desired to substitute con- 
 gregations formed by the association of devout in- 
 dividuals. The Puritans distinguished strongly be- 
 tween religion as a personal thing, and the institu- 
 tions of society; since they had failed to make the 
 institutions of society really religious, according to 
 their standard, they were prepared to accept a secu- 
 larised national government. On the other hand, 
 those who were actively interested in promoting and 
 furthering the religious life of the English Church, 
 believed that they could do so most effectively by 
 founding voluntary institutions rather than by re- 
 lying on government aid. Dr Boyle and Dr Bray 
 were energetic in founding the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel and the Society for Pro- 
 moting Christian Knowledge; and the failure of 
 Bishop Berkeley to secure practical encouragement 
 from the government for his proposed college in the
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 21 
 
 Bermudas, marks the fact that it had become 
 impossible to rely on the English government to 
 promote religious enterprise throughout the Em- 
 pire. 
 
 These were the main steps by which the public 
 in Great Britain, without obviously becoming less 
 religious, acquiesced in the new conception of the 
 Common Weal ; they were prepared to recognise a 
 Christian State as primarily concerned with secular 
 affairs, and as having little part in the enforcement 
 of religious duty or the promotion of religious en- 
 terprise. The secularisation of civil government, at 
 the time of the Union of England and Scotland, is 
 sometimes spoken of as a triumph of the principles 
 of Liberty of Conscience and of Toleration : but this 
 is not quite accurate. Toleration is a habit of mind 
 which must be cultivated personally; its counter- 
 feit is indifference to things we do not regard as im- 
 portant, and this is not a virtue at all. The power 
 of tolerating opinions and practices which they re- 
 gard as mistaken, and even mischievous, can be 
 most easily acquired by those who are conscious of 
 the limits of their own intelligence, and are therefore 
 prepared to feel that there may be a seed of good 
 in things they regard as evil, and that it is wisest 
 to let them alone 1 . This habit of mind is much 
 more alien to the intellectuals, who are unconscious 
 of mistakes of their own, and believe they are en- 
 tirely guided by reason. They have much more 
 1 S. Matt. xiii. 29.
 
 22 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 difficulty in excusing those who appear to discard 
 the guidance of reason, and differ from them in 
 opinion. And what is a virtue in the individual 
 need not be essential to the good of the State. The 
 parliament of the United Kingdom ceased to exer- 
 cise coercive power in regard to ecclesiastical insti- 
 tutions, but it was not indifferent to religion. Re- 
 ligious ordinances north of the Tweed had been 
 already provided for by creating a national Church, 
 and in England the parochial organisation, which 
 had existed time out of mind, was maintained. 
 Parliament at the time of the Union gave no en- 
 couragement to the view that the maintenance and 
 dissemination of any and every private opinion was 
 desirable for the Common Weal. 
 
 II. STRAINED RELATIONS 
 
 ^ (A) It may be doubted whether any prince or 
 potentate could have succeeded in the attempt 
 to unite under one government two nations which 
 had such different conceptions of the Common Weal, 
 but it is interesting to follow the steps in King James' 
 failure. He had a high ideal of what a king should 
 be, and he was not conscious of cherishing any aims 
 which allowed his personal ambitions to interfere 
 with the welfare of his subjects. As he said, in his 
 first speech to Parliament which Locke 1 quotes with 
 approval : " When I have done all that I can for you, 
 
 1 Civil Government, 199.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 23 
 
 "I do nothing but that which I am bound to do, 
 "and am accountable to God for the contrary: for 
 "I do acknowledge that the special and greatest 
 "point of difference that is betwixt a rightful king 
 " and an usurping tyrant is in this; that whereas the 
 "proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his king- 
 "dom and people are only ordained for the satis- 
 faction of his desires and unreasonable appetites; 
 "the righteous and just king doth, by the contrary, 
 "acknowledge himself to be ordained for the pro- 
 " curing of the wealth and prosperity of his people, 
 " and that his greatest and principal worldly felicity 
 "must consist in their prosperity. If you be rich 
 "I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but 
 " be fortunate ; and I protest that your welfare shall 
 "ever be my greatest care and contentment.... 
 "As the head is ordained for the body and not the 
 "body for the head; so must a righteous king know 
 "himself to be ordained for his people, and not his 
 "people for him: for although a king and people be 
 "related, yet can he be no king if he want people 
 "and subjects. But there be many people in the 
 "world that lack a head, wherefore I will never be 
 "ashamed to confess it my principal honour, to be 
 "the great servant of the commonwealth, and ever 
 "think the prosperity thereof to be my greatest 
 "felicity 1 ." The stress which James laid on the 
 responsibility of a monarch to God distinguished 
 his position from that of any royalists who attri- 
 1 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, i, p. 986.
 
 24 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 buted to the monarch inherent rights of his own 1 . 
 The king made no attempt to intervene when the 
 House of Commons took offence at expressions in 
 Cowell's Interpreter. 
 
 King James was also conscious that it was through 
 himself personally that great benefits had come to 
 Great Britain. He refers to the "Blessings which 
 "God hath, in my person, bestowed upon you all, 
 "wherein I protest, I do more glory at the same for 
 "your weal, than for any particular respect to my 
 "own reputation or advantage therein. The first 
 "then of the blessings which God hath jointly with 
 "my person sent unto you, is outward peace; that 
 "is peace abroad with all foreign neighbours. . . . 
 "The second great blessing that God hath, with my 
 "person, sent unto you, is peace within, and that 
 "in a double form; first, by my descent lineally 
 "out of the loins of Henry VII is reunited and 
 "confirmed in me the union of the two princely 
 " roses of the two Houses of Lancaster and York. . . . 
 "But the union of these two princely houses is 
 "nothing comparable to the union of two ancient 
 "and famous kingdoms, which is the other inward 
 "peace annexed to my person 2 ." There is at least 
 an element of the absolutism of Louis XIV who 
 claimed " L'etat c'est moi " ; for James identifies the 
 Common Weal with wise personal conduct on his 
 own part. 
 
 1 Locke (Government, 9) appears to attribute this doc- 
 trine to Filmer. a Cobbett, op. cit. i, pp. 978, 979.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 25 
 
 (B) There is no reason to believe that this ideal 
 of monarchy, as put forward by King James, was 
 unacceptable to the English public at the time of 
 his accession. Doubtless there was little enthusiasm 
 for his Scottish mannerisms and his Scottish friends ; 
 but the possibilities which he sketched, of co-opera- 
 tion between the subjects and the king for the 
 Common Weal, seem to have been generally accept- 
 able ; and certainly the speech of Sir Edward Phelips, 
 the newly chosen Speaker of the House of Commons, 
 indicates accordance with the views which the King 
 had expressed; "As the supreme and all powerful 
 "king of heaven hath created man to govern His 
 "works, so He but deputes terrestrial kings, in 
 "whom His image was, to govern men; but yet so, 
 " as still to think, that they themselves are but men ; 
 "and to that end adorned with three imperial en- 
 " signs of honour; a crown, a sceptre, and a sword; 
 " commanding to the crown reverence, to the sceptre 
 "obedience, and to the sword fear: wherewith, in 
 "His divine distribution of Kings and kingdoms, 
 "He hath magnified and invested your sacred per- 
 "son, in the imperial throne of this most victorious 
 "and happy nation, wherein you now do, and 
 "Nestor like, long may, sit; not as a conqueror, by 
 "the sword, but as an undoubted inheritor by the 
 "sceptre; not as a step-father, by match or alliance, 
 "but as a true tender father, by descent of nature, 
 "to whom we your children are truly naturalised 
 "in our subjection, and from whom in our loyalty
 
 26 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 "we expect unto us a paternal protection: the ark 
 " of government of which kingdom hath ever been 
 "steered by the laws of the same; and these dis- 
 "tributed to the jurisdiction of several courts of 
 "justice; the commanding and imperial court 
 "whereof is this your Majesty's great and high 
 "court of parliament; by whose power only new 
 "laws are to be instituted, imperfect laws reformed, 
 "and inconvenient laws abrogated; whose justice 
 "therein is such, and so absolute, that no such laws 
 "can either be instituted, reformed, or abrogated 
 "but by the unity of the commons agreement, the 
 "Lords accord, and your majesty's royal and regal 
 "assent; only to your highness's prerogative nul- 
 " lity, by your own disassent to their conclusions, 
 "belongeth; for that this court standeth com- 
 " pounded of two powers; the one ordinary, the 
 "other absolute: ordinary, in the lords and com- 
 "mons proceedings: but in your highness, absolute, 
 "either negatively to frustrate, or affirmatively to 
 "confirm but not to institute 1 ." When there was 
 so much accordance of view between the king and 
 his people, there seemed to be every prospect that 
 they might each play their parts harmoniously for 
 the good of the realm. 
 
 >j The hopes that had been cherished at the be- 
 ginning of the reign were, however, soon 
 dashed to the ground. The spirit of compromise, to 
 which the English readily adjust themselves, was 
 1 Ibid. p. 989.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 27 
 
 alien to the mind of King James. He was, to a great 
 extent, a pedant and wished to have the rights of 
 the Crown clearly denned. So too, in the House of 
 Commons there were a large number of lawyers and 
 they were eager to have the privileges of parliament 
 clearly denned and acknowledged; it was through 
 disputes, which arose in regard to the claims on 
 each side, that the severance between the monarch 
 and the representatives of the people began. The 
 first great difficulty arose in regard to the claim of 
 the Crown made in 1614 by Salisbury, Lord of the 
 Treasury, to levy impositions on imported goods; 
 this raised the whole question as to whether the 
 king had a right by his prerogative to impose such 
 duties without the sanction of parliament 1 . It 
 seems to have been Bacon's endeavour to avoid 
 raising the issue ; he had no wish to see the king in 
 a position in which he did not need his subjects' 
 help, still less to have the kingly office stripped of 
 grace and dignity by the people; and he thought 
 an accommodation might be come to by which the 
 government of the realm could be carried on in a 
 spirit of compromise. A further step was, however, 
 taken in the direction of treating the king and his 
 subjects as two parties whose rights against each 
 other could be defined, when the Great Contract 
 was mooted 2 in regard to the royal rights of ward- 
 ship and other feudal obligations. It was thus that 
 
 1 Spedding, Evenings with a Reviewer, i, p. 353. 
 
 2 Spedding, op. cit. n, 169.
 
 28 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 during the reign of James I, the king and the re- 
 presentatives of the people fell apart, with distinct 
 rights and claims, and that the first step was taken 
 in the course towards disorganisation and anarchy 
 which Montrose regarded as hopeless 1 . 
 
 III. THE FAILURE OF PERSONAL MONARCHY 
 
 Q The failure of personal monarchy, under 
 James I and Charles I, was chiefly due to in- 
 ability on the part of the Crown to interpret the 
 Common Weal aright. This was most noticeable in 
 regard to economic matters. The kings were indeed 
 far-seeing in the promotion of great public works 
 of colonization and improvement, and they showed 
 an intelligent desire to develop the resources of the 
 country. They were keen to promote commerce 
 and to increase the navy; but in their attempts to 
 foster and promote industry their failures were 
 conspicuous, for they were brought into conflict 
 with the rising class of capitalists, and especially 
 with the City of London. They made so many 
 errors of judgment that the wisdom of the king and 
 his council was completely discredited; parliament 
 ceased to be content to deal as a High Court 2 with 
 particular cases of grievance, and came, after the 
 Restoration, to devote itself more and more to 
 directing the commercial and industrial policy of 
 the country as a whole, by legislation. 
 
 1 Napier, Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose, I, p. 287. 
 
 2 M c llwain, The High Court of Parliament, p. no.
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 2Q 
 
 Q James I and Charles I also failed to retain the 
 power of independent action in emergencies. 
 As King of Scotland, James I had never been ham- 
 pered in carrying out his policy for the realm by 
 parliament, and the control which the House of 
 Commons began to exercise in England seemed to 
 him inconsistent with his dignity as king. But it 
 was in the reign of his son that parliament obtained 
 the power, not merely of criticising expenditure, 
 but of completely controlling the funds at the dis- 
 posal of government. In Tudor times the Crown had 
 become more and more dependent on taxation, and 
 we also see the increasing importance of the exis- 
 tence of credit and the power of borrowing. The 
 destinies of Europe were already greatly affected 
 by the decisions of financiers 1 ; in the time of 
 Charles I borrowing had become a regular practice 
 in carrying on the affairs of the State. When, how- 
 ever, in 1642, Charles I desired to borrow a large 
 sum of money, he found that he was unable to pro- 
 cure it on his own credit, and he was forced to 
 borrow on the joint credit of King, Lords and Com- 
 mons. The King no longer stood personally alone 
 in the power of borrowing and had therefore no 
 freedom to deal with emergencies. The importance 
 of this step in the process by which sovereign power 
 passed from the King to the people, was manifest 
 
 1 Compare the well-known anecdote about Sir Thomas 
 Gresham and the Armada, Growth of English Industry and 
 Commerce, n, p. 146 n.
 
 30 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 at that time, as 1 Charles was forced to divest him- 
 self of his regal power of dissolving parliament in 
 order to obtain the additional security which was 
 necessary before he could borrow the money. These 
 may at all events be taken as illustrations of the 
 reasons why personal monarchy was condemned as 
 a failure. It was unable to justify itself as inter- 
 preting the Common Weal aright, and it was unable 
 to retain the power of controlling the public purse 
 either on ordinary or extraordinary occasions. But 
 though personal monarchy was a failure in Great 
 Britain, sovereignty survived. "Levellers" appear 
 to have resented this persistence 2 , but sovereignty 
 
 1 16 Charles I, cap. 17. And in the Record Edition of 
 the Statutes of the Realm, p. 103. 
 
 2 The struggles of the Levellers are of great interest, as 
 they illustrate the difficulty of putting into practice the 
 principles which were subsequently promulgated by Locke 
 (Pease, Leveller Movement, iv, p. 120). They denied the 
 authority of any existing government and claimed that 
 England had returned into a state of nature (Ibid. p. 193); 
 but it was hardly the primitive state of nature, as the 
 army were anxious to secure the arrears of payment which 
 had been promised them by the parliament whose authority 
 they now disowned. The Levellers were anxious to form 
 a civil society by adopting a written constitution which 
 should be a permanent safeguard against either royalist 
 or parliamentary encroachments upon personal liberty. 
 As the Levellers were, in many ways, opportunists, and 
 their position varied from time to time they may easily be 
 convicted of inconsistencies, especially in regard to the 
 position of those who were not 'well affected ' (Ibid. p. 270), 
 or who did not agree to their proposals (Ibid. p. 213). At 
 all events their notion of the Common Weal was very vague,
 
 II. PERSONAL MONARCHY 31 
 
 was exercised for a time by Cromwell and eventually 
 passed to parliamentary government. 
 
 and it is not clear whether they desired one government for 
 the whole nation, or whether they preferred that England 
 should be broken up into a number of county or city 
 states (Ibid. pp. 134, 360).
 
 I. CHANGES IN THE AIM OF POLITICAL 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 T Two distinct aims can be traced in the writings 
 on political subjects in Great Britain and in- 
 deed in Europe during the seventeenth century; 
 many of them were mainly concerned with justi- 
 fying the political action of some particular party 
 or power 1 . But the study of political philosophy 
 came to be pursued with another purpose, as a 
 guide to future action and not merely with refer- 
 ence to the past. The governments of all European 
 countries were being recast as a consequence of the 
 break up of Christendom which had occurred at the 
 Reformation, and there was room for much dis- 
 cussion as to the principles on which they should 
 be recast, but there was a general agreement that 
 the sovereign State ought to be regarded as instituted 
 in accordance with Divine law or with the law of 
 
 1 Hotmann and Languet adduced principles in support 
 of Huguenot resistance to the French Crown. P. Janet, 
 Histoire de la science politique, II, p. 155. These were 
 adopted and utilised by Boucher in defence of the League, 
 and as an apology for regicide. Ibid, n, p 207.
 
 CH. III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 33 
 
 nature. An instance is furnished by George Bucha- 
 nan, who was steeped in the new learning, and who 
 was entrusted with the training of James VI; in 
 his De jure regni he 1 has left a record of the prin- 
 ciples, in accordance with Calvin's doctrine, which 
 he laid down for his pupil. But when the Leviathan 
 of Hobbes was published principles which had 
 been generally accepted were discarded ; it created 
 almost as much consternation among political 
 thinkers as had been done by the Prince of Machia- 
 velli. The Prince had appeared to be a justification 
 of tyranny on the part of a personal monarch ; the 
 doctrine of Hobbes was a justification of absolutism, 
 as it had borne sway in the Latin monarchies, and 
 especially as it was being organised in France. 
 Hobbes shocked the moral sense of the day by 
 representing the sovereign State, not as an insti- 
 tution which originated with Divine approval or 
 according to natural order, but as artificial and 
 accepted by men who submitted themselves and 
 their children to the rule of a conqueror. It treated 
 all government as if it were based on the right of 
 the conqueror and could not be questioned. 
 2 The doctrine of Locke on Civil Government, 
 which has been of enormous importance to 
 the Anglo-Saxon peoples, was to some extent a de- 
 velopment of Hobbes, and to some extent a reaction 
 from his principles. Locke followed Hobbes in re- 
 garding civil society as artificial, but differed from 
 
 1 Cambridge History of English Literature, iv, p. 303. 
 c. 3
 
 34 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 him in tracing its origin not to individual fear, but 
 to the effort of the individual to pursue his own 
 interest. Locke was also at pains to preserve the 
 conception of natural law as presiding over the 
 formation of the community at first, and as para- 
 mount as regards the exercise of its powers. Just 
 as Hobbes's system resulted in a justification of the 
 absolutism of the State, so Locke's system involved 
 the assertion of the absolutism of the individual 
 citizen. Its attractiveness lay in the fact that it 
 seemed to offer a complete barrier against arbitrary 
 rule, since it attributed the formation of the State 
 to the interest of the individual, while it states a 
 principle which seems to give a safeguard to personal 
 liberty ; but when we examine it closely we see that 
 it is superficial and does not afford any real solution 
 of the problems. That everyone has a right to do as 
 he likes, in so far as this does not conflict with the 
 equal liberty of other people 1 , sounds very fair, but 
 it does not carry us far, since it does not mark the 
 limits of the liberty that is common to all, and 
 each man is judge in his own cause as to the limits 
 of the rights he may enjoy; rather than submit to 
 encroachments on personal liberty he would be jus- 
 tified in reasserting the rights alleged in a primitive 
 condition with its natural liberties. Even if Locke's 
 doctrine afforded a guarantee for personal liberty, 
 
 1 " The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited, 
 "he must not make himself a nuisance to other people." 
 J. S. Mill, Liberty (1864), p. 101.
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 35 
 
 it takes no account of growth, and is insufficient as 
 a basis for the formation or maintenance of organ- 
 ised society. 
 
 In looking back, we can see that Locke's atten- 
 tion was concentrated on issues which were much 
 before him in his own days, the formation of 
 governments. Popular governments were being au- 
 thorised in the American colonies, and Locke had 
 himself drawn up a constitution for South Carolina ; 
 his treatise might suffice for an explanation of the 
 creation of popular governments which were sub- 
 ordinate to another authority, such as the freedom 
 for self-government which cities or colonies enjoyed 
 under a charter. But though the power of the 
 Mother Country lay in the background, the element 
 of authority cannot be rightly ignored in any at- 
 tempt to explain the genesis of society. 
 
 (A) There have, as a matter of fact, been many 
 principles- at work in the growth of nationalities 
 and in the sovereign power of each nationality. In 
 England the element of conquest was important, 
 and we look back to William the Conqueror as 
 having done much to combine the separate tribal 
 kingdoms into one country. The ambitions of the 
 monarchs, and the desire to control the arbitrariness 
 of monarchs, have combined to evoke a sense of 
 Common Weal throughout the country ; and the evils 
 of disputed succession to the Crown told in favour 
 of heredity rather than elective monarchy. It was 
 under a monarchy that the sense of nationality, 
 
 32
 
 36 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 and the willingness to accept a national sovereign 
 as a personal organ, through which the Common 
 Weal might be interpreted, were formed; and in 
 the seventeenth century this tradition was being 
 transferred to popular government. The really im- 
 portant problem was to account for the authority 
 of the popular sovereignty, which was being substi- 
 tuted for personal sovereignty; and this could not 
 be adequately explained by referring to the single 
 principle of individual consent, or going back to a 
 supposed state of nature and a social contract by 
 which individuals consented to form a civil society. 
 (B) Locke is not very successful in showing that 
 a political society could ever be formed by the mere 
 action of ' individuities ' each pursuing his own in- 
 terest. The personal sacrifices which may be re- 
 quired of men in civil societies are very real, and the 
 citizen has to submit to powers which he cannot 
 confer a state of affairs which Locke dismisses 
 as inconceivable 1 . But public duties and public 
 responsibilities cannot be logically derived from 
 private rights and duties 2 . The rights and duties 
 of any individual depend on the society in which 
 he lives. In one society certain rights are recognised 
 and duties enforced, and in another society the 
 recognised rights and duties of the citizens are 
 different ; but there is no ground for regarding the 
 unrelated and isolated individual as under any social 
 
 1 Civil Government, 23. 
 
 * T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation, p. 44.
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 37 
 
 obligations which can be enforced, or as possessing 
 any political rights which can be sustained. 
 o Locke does not after all face the fundamental 
 problem as to the origin of sovereignty. The 
 civil society formed in accordance with his prin- 
 ciples, would not be what men have understood by 
 a sovereign State, and would differ from it in im- 
 portant particulars. 
 
 (A) It would have no effective coercive power: 
 and Locke himself admits that this is essential to 
 a political society 1 . There would be no means of 
 enforcing the performance of duties towards the 
 public, or of awakening in the private person a 
 sense of obligation to promote the Common Weal. 
 Thus civil society, as Locke describes it, is merely, 
 when once constituted, a self-acting machine in 
 which the private aims and interests of individuals 
 are free to work. "For where any number of men 
 "have, by the consent of every individual, made a 
 "community, they have thereby made that com- 
 " munity one body, with a power to act as one body, 
 "which is only by the will and determination of the 
 "majority. For that which acts (sic) any com- 
 " munity, being only the consent of the individuals 
 "of it, and it being one body must move one way; 
 "it is necessary the body should move that way 
 "whither the greater force carries it, which is the 
 "consent of the majority 2 ." For Locke the Com- 
 mon Weal is only a restraining force, or at best is 
 1 Civil Government, 3. 2 Ibid. 96.
 
 38 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 attained incidentally through the operation of pri- 
 vate interests. 
 
 (B) Civil Society, as Locke conceives it, has not a 
 continuous life of its own which may extend through- 
 out many generations. He does indeed hold that 
 no individual can secede from a civil society when 
 once formed 1 , but subsequent generations do not 
 carry it on as a matter of course. All persons, who 
 arrive at years of discretion, have a right to "choose 
 "what society they will join themselves to, what 
 "common wealth they will put themselves under 2 ." 
 The English born may prefer to be "a Russian, or 
 "French, or Turk or Prussian or perhaps Italian," 
 though there will always be a temptation to any one 
 who is the heir to real property in England to 
 remain an Englishman 3 . 
 
 It is at this point that Burke joins issue with the 
 doctrine of Locke. He says: "Society is indeed a 
 "contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of 
 "mere occasional interest may be dissolved at plea- 
 "sure but the State ought not to be considered 
 "nothing better than a partnership agreement in 
 "a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco or 
 "some other such low concern, to be taken up for a 
 "little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by 
 "the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked upon 
 "with other reverence; because it is not a partner- 
 " ship in things subservient only to the gross animal 
 
 1 Civil Government, 121, 243. a Ibid. 73. 
 
 3 Ibid. 191.
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 39 
 
 "existence of a temporary and perishable nature. 
 "It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in 
 "all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all 
 "perfection. As the ends of such a partnership 
 "cannot be obtained in many generations, it be- 
 " comes a partnership not only between those who 
 "are living, but between those who are living, 
 "those who are dead, and those who are to be 
 "born 1 ." The desire to enjoy his private property 
 without the inconveniences of not having an um- 
 pire to whom he can appeal in case of disputes and 
 of being obliged to act in self-defence in punishing 
 crime, is according to Locke the main motive for 
 entering civil society at all 2 , and the State con- 
 tinues to exist as a sort of fiduciary trustee, which 
 guarantees the safety of property, but plays no 
 active part in managing it 3 . 
 
 (c) The narrow r61e which Locke assigns to go- 
 vernment is very different from the activities which 
 sovereign States have constantly claimed to exer- 
 cise. They have regarded the Common Weal, or 
 the public good, as something which they ought to 
 foster positively, by enforcing "the penalty of death 
 " and consequently all less penalties for the regulat- 
 "ing and preserving of property, and by employing 
 "the force of the community in the execution of 
 "such laws, and in the defence of the common 
 
 1 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Works, 
 I, p. 417. 
 
 1 Civil Government, 124. * Ibid. 94.
 
 40 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 "wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for 
 "the public good 1 ." But in spite of Locke's verbal 
 admissions of the need of active measures on the 
 part of the State, the subject of the Common Weal 
 is hardly discussed by him, and is only mentioned 
 as a negative principle by which encroachments on 
 individual liberties are to be detected and con- 
 demned, as breaches of the trust placed in princes 2 , 
 or as laying down the limits of individual liberty 3 . 
 
 II. PERSONAL LIBERTY 
 
 A Locke's philosophy has been and is extremely 
 popular; it is very plausible and takes us a 
 long way, but it is defective as an account of the 
 relation between the individual personally and the 
 State, and it is unreliable as a practical guide. 
 Those who are satisfied with it as an explanation 
 of the mechanism of popular governments, tend to 
 regard sovereignty as a thing which is so impalpable 
 that it may be ignored, and to take for granted 
 moral obligations, such as obedience on the part 
 of the subjects and responsibilities on the part of 
 the magistrates, so far as they are of practical im- 
 portance. Locke's principles appeared to find ex- 
 pression in the parliamentary government which 
 followed the Revolution of 1689, and to lie behind 
 the principles of constitutional monarchy which were 
 adopted with enthusiasm by the Whigs. The doc- 
 
 1 Civil Government, 3. 2 Ibid. 161, 221. 
 
 3 Ibid. 8.
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 41 
 
 trines of Locke also put on record the assumptions 
 on which the American Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence rested, and they have been generally accepted 
 among Anglo-Saxon peoples as almost axiomatic. 
 They are prized because they appear to safeguard 
 individual liberty; and the fundamental reason for 
 criticising them lies in this, that they did not suffi- 
 ciently distinguish the sort of liberty which it is 
 worth while to safeguard, or which is compatible 
 with organised society. 
 
 ^ Locke again 'and again disclaims unrestrained 
 liberty as inconsistent with civil society. He 
 repudiates Filmer's suggestion that the critics of 
 monarchy advocate "a liberty for every one to do 
 "what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be 
 "tied by any laws," and insists that the freedom of 
 men under government, which he deems so impor- 
 tant, is " to have a standing rule to live by, common 
 "to every one of that society, and made by the 
 "legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow 
 "my own will in all things, where the rule pre- 
 " scribes not; and not to be subjected to the in- 
 " constant, uncertain, unknown arbitrary will of 
 "another man; as freedom of nature is to be under 
 "no other restraint than the law of nature 1 ." Un- 
 fortunately Locke gives no clear indication of the 
 standing rule to live by or of the liberty which is 
 permissible under natural law. The Common Weal 
 for him is a mere negative rule, and does not afford 
 1 Civil Government, 22.
 
 42 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 any positive guidance. The problem between per- 
 sonal liberty and the legitimate demands of the 
 State can only be solved by recognising that self- 
 restraint is compatible with personal freedom. Per- 
 sonal liberty is to be prized not as if it were an end 
 in itself, but as a condition which gives opportunities 
 for training individuals in self -discipline. The popu- 
 lar mind is apt to confuse freedom for the individual 
 to do as he likes, with the freedom from external 
 authority which gives the individual the opportunity 
 of exercising self-discipline. It is in the latter sense 
 that personal freedom is to be prized, and that its 
 privileges cannot be over-rated. The important 
 question is whether the individual of his own accord, 
 uses his liberty so as to promote the Common Weal 
 of the society in which he lives, or whether he uses 
 it solely in his own interest. In conscious efforts 
 after the Common Weal made by the individual of 
 his own accord, liberty and obligation are com- 
 pletely reconciled, and in no other way is complete 
 reconciliation possible. 
 
 /- While it is generally admitted in the present 
 ' day that Locke's account of the emergence of 
 civil society from the state of nature is fanciful and 
 unreal, there are many who hold to his philosophy 
 as a fair account of the working of civil society when 
 once it is formed, and think that this may be conve- 
 niently regarded as a self-acting mechanism consist- 
 ing of individuals each of whom is free to pursue his 
 private aims. This view of society was very current
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 43 
 
 in England in the early nineteenth century, and 
 there was a tendency in many quarters to think 
 that all would be well if vested interests and selfish 
 monopolists were got rid of, and each individual 
 were free to manage his own affairs in his own way. 
 It was especially in the economic sphere that this 
 opinion had the greatest hold, since the advocates 
 of laissez faire contended that if each individual 
 were free to manage his own wealth as best he 
 could, the aggregate of wealth would be increased 
 more rapidly than in any other way. But laissez 
 faire is now discredited; even in the economic sphere 
 it has become clear that there may be danger of a 
 one-sided development of national life, to the neglect 
 of other equally important elements of national 
 economy. The growth of commerce may take place 
 in such a fashion as to fail to react on national in- 
 dustry, and to bring about waste in regard to the 
 possibilities of production which exist in the land 
 of the country. Still more, the free play of indivi- 
 duals may result in the sacrifice of the future to 
 the present; in private life the selfish parent may 
 disregard the claims of his family altogether. The 
 individual life is shorter than the life of the com- 
 munity; and there is constant danger that indi- 
 viduals, concentrating their attention on immediate 
 gain, should be comparatively indifferent to the de- 
 velopment of national resources in the long run. 
 This has been abundantly clear in the history of 
 the clearing of some American States, and there
 
 44 THE COMMON WEAL CH- 
 
 has been need of protective legislation to prevent 
 the waste of national resources; but it is also true 
 in old countries, and particularly in connection with 
 proposals for afforestation. The economic mecha- 
 nism is wonderfully complex and effective, it pro- 
 vides in an extraordinary way for the varied needs 
 of the population, but it is not wise to trust to it as 
 self-acting and to regard all attempts to control it 
 as unnecessary. 
 
 While this is becoming obvious with regard to 
 economic affairs, it is also noticeable that the 
 government of the country in other respects cannot 
 be satisfactorily carried on if it is left to private 
 persons to pursue their private aims so far as they 
 can. This is true, even in regard to the ' police-state ' 
 and the protection of person and property; such 
 protection is important for all individuals, but not 
 equally important for all. The differences between 
 the rich and the poor show themselves in the differ- 
 ences of legislation which each would desire. The 
 poor might approve of legislation for the distribu- 
 tion of property which the rich would regard as 
 spoliation. Unless each is aiming at the Common 
 Weal apart from private interest, there can be no 
 hope of a reasonable compromise. The self-acting of 
 private individuals, as we know them, is not likely 
 to bring about legislative measures which favour the 
 development of the community as a whole, but is 
 more likely to express itself in class legislation. 
 
 When we go further and ask how far the ' Kultur-
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 45 
 
 staat ' is possible, as the outcome of self-acting in- 
 dividualism, it becomes clear that where questions 
 of health and education and cultivation are con- 
 sidered, the differences of temperament among in- 
 dividuals come to be of paramount importance. 
 Though there may be some agreement as to what 
 the State should put down, there is very little, at 
 present, as to the things which it should foster; 
 there would even be a difference of opinion as to the 
 importance of cultivating patriotism 1 . So far from 
 the mechanism of society consisting in the uncon 
 trolled free-play of individuals as we find them, 
 there is need to form the individual character so 
 that he may be able to take his place as a part of 
 the social machine. This was a truth which Mill 
 recognised, for he felt that his ideal stationary State 
 could only prosper among individuals who had a 
 higher degree of intelligence and self-discipline than 
 he observed in his own generation 2 . 
 
 III. THE CONTROL OF THE MECHANISM 
 
 >-, The conception of society as a mechanism is 
 useful and instructive ; for many purposes we 
 do not need to go outside it; it is most important 
 that the mechanism should work smoothly, not 
 only the economic mechanism, but the legislative 
 mechanism and the administrative mechanism as 
 well ; but it is a mistake to suppose that the State is 
 
 1 Inge, in Quarterly Review, CCCCXLIV, July, 1915. 
 
 2 Mill, Political Economy, iv, vi, i.
 
 46 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 only a mechanism, or that we can, from this point 
 of view, get a complete account of all the elements 
 that have to be considered in the government ; civil 
 society is not, and cannot be treated with advan- 
 tage as, a mere self-acting mechanism. A crew in 
 an eight-oared boat is a mechanism ; it is the part 
 of the coach to render the mechanism as perfect as 
 possible; but there are elements that are not me- 
 chanical, which are essential to success in the race. 
 There must be judgment, and there must be grit, 
 and staying power, or the machine will go to pieces ; 
 and, however perfect the mechanism of a State may 
 be, there are moral elements which must be brought 
 into play ; Humanitarianism and Philanthropy were 
 needed to check the worst abuses of laissez faire. 
 No State can prosper unless there is public spirit and 
 a willingness to undergo sacrifice for the Common 
 Weal. No State can prosper, unless there is a sense 
 of obligation, along with the possession of the 
 powers and privileges that have come down as a 
 heritage from the past; and no State can prosper 
 unless there is a sense of responsibility to posterity 
 for the manner in which these powers are exercised. 
 The recognition that these characteristics are essen- 
 tial, implies a belief that the life of the State is not 
 merely mechanical but moral 1 as well. To regard 
 
 1 Great stress was laid on these moral elements by 
 Burke, and his Reflections on the Revolution in France were 
 criticised by Sir James Mackintosh in Vindiciae Gallicae in 
 which he strongly insists on the theory of the State as a 
 self-acting mechanism, p. 113.
 
 III. THE MECHANISM OF SOCIETY 47 
 
 the individual as absolute, and as that for which 
 the State exists 1 , is to have a very inadequate con- 
 ception of the State either in its formation or in its 
 working. 
 
 r> Moral questions always lie in the background 
 in political matters, though it may be only 
 occasionally that they come into great prominence; 
 but the present war is a crisis in which the issues 
 turn wholly on what is moral, and the ordinary 
 mechanism of a State has become relatively unim- 
 portant. There is one great obstacle to the declara- 
 tion of peace at this moment, and it lies in the 
 moral character which the Allies, and many of the 
 neutral nations, attribute rightly or wrongly to the 
 German government and those who support it. The 
 promises of the German government are regarded 
 as worthless, and none of the Allies is ready to trust 
 to any pledge which they may give. Pacifists who 
 regard a treaty as a treaty, and a promise as a 
 promise, seem to be merely foolish to those who 
 insist that it depends on the character of an indi- 
 vidual and of a government whether their promises 
 are worth anything or not. From the experience 
 which Belgium has had of the worth of solemn pro- 
 mises made by Germany it has come to be a widely 
 diffused opinion that the promises of the German 
 government are worth nothing at all. 
 
 This question of moral character is involved in 
 all discussions as to the continuance of the war and 
 1 Woodrow Wilson, The State, p. 582.
 
 48 THE COMMON WEAL CH. III. 
 
 there is much to be said for the view that questions 
 of character had to do with the outbreak of the war. 
 It was easily possible for Mr Norman Angell and 
 others, to demonstrate that war must seriously in- 
 terfere with the mechanism of society, and that it 
 was never desirable in the interests of the me- 
 chanism of society that any nation should engage in 
 war. But he ignored the moral factors. There was, 
 on the one hand, the German ambition to give a 
 greatly increased scope to German industry and 
 commerce, and to place herself in a position in 
 which she could exploit other nations for her ad- 
 vantage, irrespective of the means employed. But 
 this ambition would hardly, in itself, have sufficed 
 to bring about the attempt, unless it had been offered 
 a great opportunity. It is difficult to see how those 
 who had habitually afforded the Germans the de- 
 sired opportunities can disclaim the responsibility 
 of having contributed to the outbreak of the war ; 
 they were guilty of an error of judgment by putting 
 temptation in the way of an ambitious State. In all 
 cases of the indulgence of passion, the tempter may 
 be guilty as well as the tempted, and Germany 
 was greatly tempted. Bethmann-Hollweg appears 
 to have been deceived by British Pacifists into 
 thinking that Great Britain would remain neutral, 
 and that she had neither the will nor the power to 
 make effective resistance ; and there is little wonder 
 that the Germans are embittered by having been 
 led into such disastrous miscalculation.
 
 IV 
 
 GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 
 I. CRITERIA OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 If the State is regarded as only a mechanism we 
 cannot distinguish its action qualitatively as good 
 or bad; these moral terms are not applicable to a 
 mere machine, but if it is regarded as a mechanism 
 which is controlled and directed for a definite pur- 
 pose, its action falls within the moral sphere and is 
 to be judged like other departments of human con- 
 duct ; but it is difficult to find a criterion by which 
 the action of the State can be properly judged. 
 j It seems obvious at first sight that we can fall 
 back on Utilitarianism, and say that that is 
 good which has results which are favourable to the 
 greatest number and appreciated by them. This is 
 apparently, at all events, a method of gauging good 
 and bad government which seems appropriate to 
 democracy ; but after all, society is so complex that 
 this mode of judging governments can hardly be 
 applied. The welfare of Humanity in an unknown 
 future is a matter of expectation that varies with 
 temperament. In order to discuss with any pre- 
 cision the elements and proportions that will com- 
 pose it, we must have in view a mass of individual 
 c. 4
 
 50 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 feeling in a definite time. The results of govern- 
 mental action, which appear beneficial at first, may 
 prove to be deleterious in the long run, as was the 
 case with the allowances which were made in addi- 
 tion to wages in 1793; these doubtless effected ex- 
 traordinary relief at first, at the cost of great de- 
 moralisation in the long run. It is still more difficult 
 to treat the whole community as a body which is 
 capable of feeling or giving expression to the sense 
 of pleasure or pain; there was indeed a thrill of 
 satisfaction that went through the whole country 
 when it was announced that Crippen had been ar- 
 rested, and that the sovereignty of the law had been 
 able to establish itself. But for the most part there 
 is dumb unconscious suffering or satisfaction, which 
 cannot be traced directly to any governmental 
 action. It appears that Utilitarianism can hardly 
 take account of the country as a whole, but has to 
 be satisfied with attempting to estimate the aggre- 
 gate of the welfare of individuals. It endeavours to 
 reckon up the utilities and disutilities which fall to 
 the lot of particular citizens, and to estimate the 
 good or evil to the country as a whole by giving the 
 algebraical sum of these personal utilities and dis- 
 utilities. Professor Pigou 1 attempts to give a means 
 of measuring the relative good and evil of certain 
 changes to particular citizens, as a help to the magis- 
 trate to estimate what is beneficial to the community 
 
 1 Wealth and Welfare, pp. 24, 401, See also Cunningham, 
 Christianity and Economic Science, p. 91.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 51 
 
 as a whole. We cannot reach a solution of the 
 problem as to good or evil in the community, so 
 long as we are content with a merely quantitative 
 estimate ; we need to have a qualitative distinction 
 between the kinds of satisfaction, or we may be 
 forced to consider that, in spite of the results of 
 material progress in giving increased command over 
 nature, the noble savage of the primitive tribe leads 
 a life which is as desirable as that of the man in the 
 civilised State, since each of them receives a quan- 
 tity of the satisfaction he appreciates. 
 2 There is a further difficulty in judging of the 
 conduct of the State, since the criteria which 
 we apply to the conduct of individuals are inapplic- 
 able to the conduct of States. Public duties are 
 often distinct from private duties, and they involve 
 action that in private individuals would be wrong. 
 All tax collecting is a compulsory demand from the 
 private individual for part of his property to be 
 spent in ways on which he has often not directly 
 been consulted, and of which very likely he may not 
 wholly approve. The private individual who at- 
 tempted to deprive his neighbour of goods in this 
 fashion would be a mere robber. It is the fact that 
 a public purpose is involved, and that he is a public 
 official, which justifies the tax-gatherer in his per- 
 sistence. Similarly the judge who condemns a cri- 
 minal, and for example exacts a life for a life, would 
 not be justified as a private individual in taking 
 vindictive measures on his own account. Just be- 
 
 42
 
 52 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 cause he is a public authority he is right in doing 
 what would be wrong in a private individual. It is 
 a token of the success of public authority that it 
 does away with the private vengeance of the ven- 
 detta or of lynch law. In a similar way, the duties 
 of the soldier in war may involve all sorts of actions 
 that would be wrong for the individual, under any 
 provocation whatever, and yet under public au- 
 thority it is his duty not to flinch from them. There 
 has been a tendency from Anabaptist times on- 
 wards to treat the principles which are enjoined on 
 the Christian personally, in order that he may fit 
 himself better for citizenship in a spiritual kingdom, 
 as if they were a code of political maxims 1 for 
 earthly and secular realms, by which the public 
 action of communities and public officials should be 
 judged. But it is from the very nature of the case 
 impossible to apply or carry out this principle. 
 
 II. THE STATE AS A MORAL PERSONALITY 
 
 2 The difficulty of finding a criterion, apart from 
 the State, by which to judge of the good or 
 bad of its conduct, is avoided by Rousseau, who re- 
 gards the State, as "Nothing but a moral person, 
 "the life of which consists in the union of its 
 "members 2 ." The State is a sort of super-man 
 
 1 On popular misinterpretation of the Sermon on the 
 Mount see Appendix II below, also Cunningham, Christi- 
 anity and Social Questions, p. 208. 
 
 8 Social Contract, p. 125.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 53 
 
 formed by the social contract, in which each indi- 
 vidual "puts in common his person and his whole 
 "power under the supreme direction of the general 
 "will 1 ." The act of association "produces a moral 
 " and collective body, which is composed of as many 
 "members as the assembly has voices, and which 
 "receives from this same act its unity, its common 
 "self, its life and its will 2 ." The State, according 
 to Hobbes, was a Leviathan which stood over 
 against the pigmies combined in it; according to 
 Locke, it is a condition which guarantees freedom 
 of personal action to the people whose property it 
 protects ; but against such views Rousseau protests. 
 Our publicists, he says, "make the sovereign a fan- 
 tastic being formed of connected parts; it is as if 
 "they composed a man of several bodies, one with 
 "eyes, another with arms, another with feet and 
 "nothing else. The Japanese conjurers, it is said, 
 "cut up a child before the eyes of the spectators; 
 " then throwing all its limbs into the air, they make 
 " the child come down again, alive and whole. Such 
 "almost are the jugglers' tricks of our publicists; 
 " after dismembering the social body by a deception 
 "worthy of the fair, they recombine its parts no- 
 " body knows how 3 ." According to Rousseau the 
 State comes into being by a social contract, and 
 continues to act as the general will of those who have 
 formed themselves into a State. The general will, 
 
 1 Social Contract, p. no. 2 Ibid. p. no. 
 8 Ibid. p. 121.
 
 54 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 as he conceives it, is a perfectly disinterested reason 
 dealing with the affairs of the community. And it 
 has coercive power; " As nature gives every man an 
 "absolute power over all his limbs, the social pact 
 "gives the body an absolute power over all its 
 "members, and it is the same power which when 
 "directed by the general will bears the name of 
 "sovereignty 1 ." 
 
 A Rousseau commits himself to the opinion 
 "that the general will is always right and 
 "always tends to the public advantage 2 " ; but it is 
 not clear whether he is referring to ideal conditions 
 or to actual life. He probably means little more 
 than the old maxim that "the king can do no 
 "wrong"; and that in following the general will, 
 every possible effort is made to escape the known 
 causes of corruption in private interest, and that 
 there is no principle to which appeal can be made 
 to criticise the general will or to guard it from 
 error. According to Kant's principle there is no 
 external criticism to which we can appeal. The 
 good will is the very ideal of the good. But it need 
 not be supposed that the general will of the people 
 is ever absolutely good; it is subject to human limi- 
 tations ; it is relative to the circumstances and con- 
 ditions of the people ; there is no absolute good but 
 God. 
 
 (A) Rousseau, by recognising on the one hand 
 the great difficulty of obtaining the undoubted de- 
 1 Social Contract, p. 125. 2 Ibid. p. 123.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 55 
 
 cision of the general will 1 and on the other the 
 possibility of the public being deceived, gives no 
 excuse for regarding any actual State as absolute, 
 and possessing an immunity from error. The power 
 and prestige of the Roman Empire were so extra- 
 ordinary, that there need be no surprise at the 
 worship of the Emperor; but there is little excuse 
 for the pretension of any modern State to be su- 
 preme over all human affairs. 
 
 (B) Though there is no definite criterion in words 
 by which its excellences or its foibles can be 
 gauged, the sovereign State is by no means irre- 
 sponsible, and is susceptible of improvement. Sover- 
 eignty must always be exercised through a govern- 
 ment, and this is certainly liable to err. The most 
 important indication of its success or failure is 
 found in the character of the citizens who grow up 
 under its protection, and in the fulness of the per- 
 sonal life which they enjoy. There is room for com- 
 parison with other States, and for learning from 
 them as to the various elements of Common Weal, 
 for which provision should be made, and as to the 
 best means of promoting them; and there can be 
 
 1 Rousseau apparently condemned any system of repre- 
 sentation and considered that the ideal method of attaining 
 a knowledge of the general will could only be put into 
 effect in city States when the whole body of the people 
 could gather together in one assembly, and that an unani- 
 mous vote of the people thus assembled gave clear expres- 
 sion to the general will (Social Contract, p. 186). He greatly 
 admired the institutions of Geneva.
 
 56 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 no more hopeful sign of any State than that it is 
 willing and able to learn from its own failures. It 
 was the final condemnation of the Stuart monarchy 
 that the kings showed so little ability to profit by 
 their mistakes. 
 
 r The parliamentary government which suc- 
 ceeded it, has also been on its trial. At the 
 Revolution of 1689 Parliament was accepted as the 
 organ through which sovereignty should be exer- 
 cised, and the system of representative government 
 appeared to offer great advantages for detecting 
 the general will and for promoting it. But as time 
 passed, this parliamentary government came itself 
 to be questioned; it failed to maintain its hold in 
 ordering the affairs of the American colonies in the 
 eighteenth century, and it came to be more and 
 more discredited in Great Britain itself in the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 (A) Parliament which had claimed, at the Revo- 
 lution of 1689, to be an adequate expression of the 
 general will of the community, had little pretension 
 to retain this character in the nineteenth century 1 . 
 There were large classes who were unrepresented in 
 the House of Commons; and who, since they had 
 no part of their own in the government, were not 
 in any sense self -governed, but lived under coercion. 
 They came more and more, especially with the 
 spread of education, to demand that they should 
 have opportunities of self-government. It was of 
 1 G. L. Dickinson, Development of Parliament, p. 132.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 57 
 
 course possible to represent one class or another as 
 supremely important, the interests of that class as 
 practically typical of the Common Weal, and its 
 decisions as representative of the general will. In 
 the early eighteenth century the main taxation of 
 the country fell on the landed classes, and it could 
 be rightly contended that the existence of resources 
 for promoting national power were bound up with 
 the prosperity of the landed interest. At a later 
 time, when the Common Weal was transferred from 
 the solid basis of land to the shifting basis of trade 1 , 
 it was possible to contend that the interests of the 
 capitalist classes were so bound up with the pro- 
 gress of the Common Weal that they ought to be 
 dominant in the government of the realm. But to- 
 wards the end of the nineteenth century, it became 
 obvious that neither the representation of the 
 landed interest, nor of the monied classes, gave ade- 
 quate expression to the general will. Parliamentary 
 institutions were disparaged; and there was an oc- 
 casional demand for a decision by the people them- 
 selves, apart from representation altogether; and 
 the referendum was occasionally spoken of as likely 
 to give a better expression than Parliament could 
 do of the general will. 
 
 (B) Mr Asquith is a thorough believer in parlia- 
 mentary government 2 , and he was opposed to any 
 
 1 Massie, Plan quoted in Growth of English Industry in 
 Modern Times, p. 578. 
 
 8 Just as James II had been in personal sovereignty.
 
 58 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 movement which tended to go beyond it or set it 
 aside. The crisis came with the conduct of the war, 
 and the power of expressing popular opinion which 
 was afforded by the press. The change, by which 
 Mr Asquith was obliged to relinquish office, was 
 accomplished without parliamentary intervention. 
 The people demanded a more vigorous prosecution 
 of the war, and had confidence in Mr Lloyd George 
 to do his best to conduct it on these lines. They 
 were ready to supply large sums of money in a war 
 loan ; and thus a revolution, from parliamentary to 
 popular government, was almost insensibly carried 
 through. 
 
 III. CAUSES OF DEFECT IN GOVERNMENT 
 
 / Those who pin their faith to parliamentary 
 government are naturally very suspicious of 
 this new departure; it certainly seems most im- 
 portant that there should be some clear idea of the 
 meaning of good government, so that we may be 
 clearly aware of the aims which are put before us, 
 and of the extent to which we fall short of these 
 aims as well as of the best means of correcting 
 these errors. The carrying out the Common Weal is 
 good government, the giving effect to the general 
 will; this might seem to be a mere truism, but it 
 may be a practical safeguard in so far as it helps us 
 to detect bad government. Bad government arises 
 from carelessness about the Common Weal; or from 
 readiness to put secondary and private interests
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 59 
 
 before the Common Weal; or worst of all, from 
 readiness to divert the power of the State away from 
 fostering the Common Weal to the promotion of 
 private interest instead; this is a special temptation 
 when these interests are widespread and powerful. 
 We are accustomed in England to be proud of 
 the high tone of our public men, to think that the 
 men who govern the country are devoted to the 
 good of the community, and give their energy and 
 their time unstintedly to promote it ; it seems to me 
 to be to a very large extent true, that there are in 
 public life of every kind, municipal, county, and 
 parliamentary, men who are really public spirited, 
 and are doing their best for the community without 
 desire to make personal gain out of their position. 
 But it must be admitted that this quality of English 
 public life is not so universal as could be wished, 
 and that our neighbours do not recognise that 
 public spirit is dominant among our public men. 
 There is a political club in London, where foreign 
 publicists are very welcome ; the impressions which 
 they form are by no means so favourable as we 
 could desire. An Austrian, who had been in London 
 for a couple of years, and whose impressions of 
 England were chiefly formed at that political club, 
 tells of the friends who had entertained him there, 
 that " all they care for is to find positions for them- 
 " selves and their relations, easy jobs. You may be 
 "sure that not many of them are to be found in 
 "the trenches, they are worse than the Jews, and
 
 60 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 "they have no more patriotism than the Gypsies 1 ." 
 Such a lack of public spirit among public men is a 
 real danger to the good government of the country. 
 This disparagement of our public men is not con- 
 fined to foreigners. It is at least an element in the 
 contempt for politics and politicians which is so 
 often openly expressed by soldiers and practical 
 men; they seem to regard members of parliament 
 as mere talkers who are playing for their own hand, 
 and not really doing their best for the country as 
 a whole. Nor can this be treated as entirely a recent 
 development. Walpole said of his opponents; 
 "Every one of them has his price"; and it might 
 probably have been said with equal truth of his 
 friends. 
 
 >j Partisanship is a similar mischief which en- 
 dangers the political life of the United States ; 
 the enthusiasm which should be directed to the 
 Common Weal is apt to be dissipated in mere 
 party spirit. The parties consist, at their core, of 
 men who hope to obtain office or the rewards of 
 office, and who are successful in rallying round 
 them a body of supporters ; but this partisanship is 
 in danger of eating into the national concern for 
 the Common Weal 2 . The sovereign State is a strong 
 and efficient instrument for carrying out the general 
 will, when it has come to a decision ; but every as- 
 sertion of self-interest, in disregard of the general 
 
 1 Morning Post, 13 Feb. 1915, p. 6. 
 1 Ostrogorson, Democracy, p. 76.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 6l 
 
 will, weakens the State and may possibly paralyse 
 its action. 
 
 Q Worse still is any deliberate attempt to make 
 the State subservient to private ends; it is 
 the very definition of the bad citizen that he con- 
 sciously aims at so doing, and at exploiting the 
 State in his own interest; when combined, bad 
 citizens may have a great power of pursuing this 
 course, and they are sometimes encouraged to pur- 
 sue it by those who ought to know better. The 
 working classes are a large majority of the country 
 and it is natural for them to suppose that the in- 
 creased comfort of the working classes must always 
 be for the good of the community as a whole ; but 
 at all events even if it is for the good of the com- 
 munity in the present, it is not necessarily for the 
 good of the community in the long run. It is possible 
 to sacrifice posterity to the present generation 1 . 
 Important as it is that the masses of the people 
 should enjoy a far larger share than they do of the 
 comforts and conveniences of life, it is also impor- 
 tant that the future of the country should not be 
 sacrificed to the welfare of the present generation. 
 
 1 Professor Pigou has apparently approved this one- 
 sided view from the standpoint of an economic expert, and 
 writes as if the increased consumption of the working 
 classes necessarily gave increased demand for labour, and 
 opportunities of employment : at all events he has been at 
 no pains to guard against this interpretation of his opinion 
 when it was definitely put to him. Times, May 13, 1914, 9 e, 
 and May 16, 9 e; see also May 18, 9 e.
 
 62 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 The criterion of good and bad government, which 
 was generally recognised under a monarchy, holds 
 good still. The king was worthy of his position if 
 he was mainly concerned with the Common Weal, 
 and was willing to sacrifice his own private gain for 
 it, and to find his success as monarch in the pros- 
 perity of his people. The democratic citizen has 
 no right to judge himself by a different standard, 
 and unless he is endeavouring, in discharging his 
 political responsibilities whatever they may be, to 
 think first and foremost of the public good and to 
 leave his private interests in the background, he is 
 unfit to be trusted with the responsibilities of a 
 citizen in a self-governing nation 1 . 
 Q A grave difference of opinion appears in the 
 views that are commonly taken as to the pun- 
 ishment which ought to be inflicted on political 
 offenders, but there is a general feeling that so long 
 as the safety of society is secured this should be 
 comparatively light. The exercise of mercy is one 
 of the powers of sovereignty, and a prudent govern- 
 ment will desire to avoid any appearance of vindic- 
 tiveness in their treatment of political offenders; 
 there are many good reasons for clemency so long as 
 it is not interpreted as a sign of weakness. But a 
 distinction must be drawn. There are many politi- 
 cal offenders who can be credited with a genuine 
 desire to promote the Common Weal in some partic- 
 ulars or, even if they fail in their designs, they may 
 1 See above, p. 22, and below, p. 75.
 
 IV. GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT 63 
 
 claim to be regarded as men who engaged in mis- 
 taken efforts to promote the Common Weal, and 
 plead this excuse in mitigation of their punishment. 
 But this excuse cannot be urged by offenders who 
 not only attack government but show themselves 
 indifferent to the Common Weal. If Miss Sylvia 
 Pankhurst is rightly reported she professes to be 
 ready to go to any lengths in the war against 
 society until woman's suffrage shall be obtained. 
 Still more striking is the case of the Sinn Feiners. 
 They do not appear to have any conception of a 
 Common Weal at all ; they have refused to take part 
 in a convention which is to consider the possibilities 
 of subordinating racial antagonisms to the promo- 
 tion of a Common Weal for all parts of Ireland ; and 
 they frankly disavow any regard for the Common 
 Weal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
 Ireland. They appear to be merely influenced by 
 racial aspiration, and to be as ready now, as Celts 
 were at the time of the Revolution, to intrigue with 
 the enemies of Great Britain, during a time of war. 
 When there is no thought of a Common Weal, but 
 only a desire to use every opportunity to extort con- 
 cessions to racial sentiment, there is no real claim to 
 clemency. Whatever may be said of offences 
 against government, disregard of the Common Weal 
 and attacks on sovereignty may rightly be treated 
 as high treason.
 
 V 
 
 THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 
 
 I. CONFLICTING VIEWS OF PUBLIC GOOD 
 
 j It is comparatively easy to distinguish be- 
 tween the general will for the Common Weal 
 and the pressure of particular interests, when we 
 are considering organised parties; for such parties 
 state their programme and the arguments on which 
 they depend for urging that it shall be adopted. 
 The persistent advocates of neutrality at the out- 
 break of the war showed clearly that they had little 
 regard for what Mr Asquith described as the honour 
 of the country, or for the maintenance of good faith 
 between nations ; and that they concentrated atten- 
 tion on sordid considerations and the possibilities of 
 profiteering while other nations were at war 1 . But 
 there is very much greater difficulty in drawing a 
 line in regard to individual citizens, and there is no 
 evidence to enable us to pronounce upon their con- 
 duct with any certainty. The citizen participates in 
 the life of the nation, and is concerned for the Com- 
 mon Weal ; but he has also a personal life of his own. 
 His own personal aims and interests may accord 
 with the Common Weal as he conceives it, or they 
 
 1 Daily News, 3rd August, 1914.
 
 CH. V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 65 
 
 may be consciously divergent from the course which 
 is best for the country as a whole, and from the 
 general will. It is his duty, as a citizen, to bring his 
 own conduct into accord with the Common Weal, 
 as considered impersonally, whatever his private 
 interests may be. As far as the honesty of indivi- 
 duals goes we always ought to give them the benefit 
 of the doubt, and to try to believe that, even when 
 they advocate a policy which favours their own 
 personal interests, they are not conscious of any 
 antagonism between their private interests and the 
 good of the community as they conceive it. There 
 doubtless are many men in England who are really 
 convinced that it is for the good of the community 
 in the long run to obtain large supplies of food from 
 abroad, and that to rely on stimulating food produc- 
 tion at home even temporarily would be a mistake. 
 This opinion as to the good of the country is quite 
 likely to harmonize with the interest of some one 
 who is a ship owner; he may honestly regard it as 
 desirable that this policy should be steadily main- 
 tained and that there should be every encourage- 
 ment for shippers to bring food to this country, and 
 that not even a temporary breach in our reliance on 
 foreign supplies should be permitted. The public 
 spirited man has no reason to refrain from support- 
 ing a course which he believes is right on public 
 grounds, even though it is also a course which is 
 favourable to the interests of his class. The states- 
 man can afford to disregard illnatured criticism, but 
 
 c. . 5
 
 66 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 there is a constant tendency among the rank and 
 file of political parties to indulge in it. 
 2 There are at the present time two conflicting 
 views as to the good of the country, on which 
 public opinion is much divided. However strongly 
 we may hold to the cosmopolitan or to the national 
 doctrine, we cannot but recognise that much may 
 be said for either view, and that many people have 
 gradually come to change their opinions, or found it 
 very difficult to decide between the two policies. 
 We may distinguish the cosmopolitan view, as that 
 of those who think that the country would attain its 
 greatest good by sinking much of its national con- 
 sciousness in a larger whole, and by aiming directly 
 at promoting the welfare of humanity at large : on 
 its economic side, this leads to the advocacy of Free 
 Trade, as a policy in which the interest of this 
 country is believed to coincide with that of the 
 world as a whole. In an island realm which has 
 devoted itself to commerce, this cosmopolitan 
 view is likely to find favour, but there are other 
 sides of economic life as well; we may not be 
 wise to devote ourselves to commerce exclusively; 
 we should consider what is unseen by the superficial 
 observer the possibilities of waste of the resources 
 of the country in derelict farms, and of waste 
 in the unemployment of our people. A national 1 
 
 1 Wordsworth was enthusiastic for nationalism. Dicey, 
 Statesmanship of Wordsworth, p. 80. See also Appendix I 
 below.
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 67 
 
 rather than a cosmopolitan economic policy has 
 much to say for itself; but cosmopolitanism and 
 neglect of their own country appeal to many who 
 are keenly alive to humanitarian sentiment, and are 
 readily accepted by any who regard the national 
 Common Weal as a merely negative influence. 
 
 Those who are enthusiastic for the constant con- 
 sideration of the Common Weal of the nation will 
 not admit that they take less thought than others 
 for the good of humanity or concentrate attention 
 on material resources; their difference with cosmo- 
 politans is not as to the ultimate aim, but only as to 
 the best methods of pursuing it ; they will contend 
 that cosmopolitanism and internationalism are dif- 
 ferent methods of working towards the same ultimate 
 end and that they recommend the more practical 
 course, since the good of mankind will certainly be 
 attained by the conscious pursuit of the Common 
 Weal, moral as well as material, in each nation. The 
 love of humanity is apt to be a vague aspiration 
 which does not call forth vigorous action; it is too 
 far away for the ordinary man, who is ready to try 
 to "do the duty that lies nearest him," to take it 
 seriously into account ; the means by which the good 
 of the world ma} 7 be directly attained are ineffective, 
 like the "concert of Europe," for want of coercive 
 powers. The practical man is apt to condemn the 
 cosmopolitan as a mere sentimentalist, and to lay 
 stress on the source of the progress that has already 
 been made in the world. It is when any single nation 
 
 52
 
 68 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 has set an example of rising to a better ideal of 
 public duty, and has brought its influence to bear 
 on other races and nations that a step in improve- 
 ment has been made. The advocacy of freedom for 
 the slave made little progress so long as it was 
 argued on humanitarian grounds by Fox and other 
 Quakers ; but when it was at last brought within the 
 range of practical politics by one nation, and taken 
 up as a national concern, an example was provided 
 which other peoples have gradually followed. 
 -2 In view of these conflicting opinions, as to the 
 nature of the public good for the country at 
 this time, there is special need to be careful in the 
 personal judgments we allow ourselves to make. 
 Thirteen years ago many Free Traders seemed ready 
 to assume, that those who were dissatisfied with the 
 cosmopolitan ideal were entirely devoid of any care 
 for the public good, and were thinking only of their 
 private interests 1 . As a matter of fact, tariff re- 
 formers were then advocating a course which they 
 believed to be directly for the Common Weal of the 
 nation and the Empire, and incidentally for that of 
 the world at large. To ignore this claim and assert 
 that they were insensible to public good altogether, 
 and only thinking of their private interests, was not 
 very generous. During the stress of the great emerg- 
 ency caused by the war, the practical importance of 
 attention to the Common Weal of the nation has 
 been increasingly realised, and public opinion has 
 1 Guardian, 23rd November, 1904, p. 1966.
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 69 
 
 veered to the national, and against the cosmopolitan 
 policy. But it is to be hoped that in this matter at 
 least there will be no reprisals, and that political 
 discussion may not be degraded by accusations of 
 self-interested conduct on the part of statesmen. 
 Such charges are entirely gratuitous, since no one 
 can tell for certain what the motives of another are ; 
 he may guess, but he can never know whether a 
 man's political action is impersonal or interested. 
 To bring accusations which cannot be proved is 
 always irritating, but never persuasive. The Hon. 
 Bertrand Russell may insist that those who believed 
 in August, 1914, that there was an obligation to go 
 to war, were carried away by vindictive feeling and 
 evil passions; but men, who are conscious of their 
 own righteous indignation over the wrongs of 
 Belgium, will not readily believe that he knows best 
 as to their motives. They will only think that even 
 a great mathematician may be deficient in insight 
 as to character, and may be unscrupulous in spread- 
 ing injurious statements of the truth of which he is 
 uncertain. 
 
 II. CLAIMS ON THE CITIZEN 
 
 A It is abundantly clear that the sovereign 
 State will be strong and effective when the 
 citizens are ready to subordinate their private in- 
 terests and to fall in with the general will for the 
 common good. The State is a vigorous personality 
 when it is prompt in coming to a decision, and able
 
 70 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 to put it into immediate effect. Germany has given 
 an illustration of these qualities during the present 
 war; she has shown herself much better equipped 
 for any undertaking than the nations to which she 
 is opposed; her organisation was habitual, and the 
 citizens were ready to sacrifice their private con- 
 venience at once, and respond to the claims made 
 upon them by the State. Her initial successes were 
 due to this promptitude in decision and action, and 
 to the long preparation which had been made for 
 striking the blow determined upon. But this promp- 
 titude in expressing and following the general will, 
 though exhibited so clearly in war, is equally im- 
 portant for a nation at peace. All the elements of 
 human welfare of which the modern State is accus- 
 tomed to take account, whether it be the putting 
 down of insanitary conditions, the protecting of 
 the country economically from being exploited, or 
 anything else which affects the good of the citizen, 
 will be better dealt with by the general will, when 
 citizens conform readily to the general will, and are 
 keenly alive to the importance of giving effect to its 
 decisions in regard to the Common Weal, promptly 
 and efficiently, through appropriate organs. 
 
 The power and efficiency of the sovereign State 
 are elements in the Common Weal of all the citizens, 
 and the State may rightly claim that there is an 
 obligation on the part of the individual citizens to 
 promote it. This was strongly urged by Hegel, 
 whose doctrine was greatly affected by the condi-
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 71 
 
 tion of Germany 1 and especially of Wurtemberg 2 in 
 his time. The State, as self-conscious reason and 
 will, exists for its own sake; and in the State, free- 
 dom asserts itself most truly. He was in earnest 
 with the thought of the State as a moral personality 
 through which God's will is realised 3 , and which has 
 the strongest claims on individuals, so 4 that "it is 
 "their highest duty to participate in the life of 
 "the State." In the case of any State this would 
 include the obligation to pay taxes, and to assist in 
 the defence of the nation, but in the case of a demo- 
 cratic country the State can rightly claim far more 
 from the individual citizen. Through the existence 
 of the State, citizens attain to a true personality 
 themselves 5 , they have the privilege of voting and 
 of taking a part in the direction of public affairs, 
 and it is incumbent on them that they should exer- 
 cise these privileges and fit themselves to discharge 
 them rightly. 
 
 r Those who are conscious of these obligations, 
 and are anxious as good citizens to fulfil them, 
 may find that the demands made upon them per- 
 sonally are onerous. The duty to assist the police, 
 
 1 C. E. Merriam, History of the Theory of Sovereignty 
 since Rousseau, pp. 90 and 91. 
 
 2 Bluntschli, Geschichte des allgem. Staatsrechts, I, p. 548. 
 On his sympathetic attitude towards Prussian officialism, 
 see Ibid, i, p. 552. 
 
 * " Es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt das der Staat ist," 
 Hegel, Phil. d. Rechts, 258, p. 313. 
 
 * Hegel, op. cit. 258, p. 306. 6 Hegel, op. cit. 71.
 
 72 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 by being ready to give evidence which will help 
 them in the arrest of evil-doers and the punishment 
 of crime, may involve risk and danger ; any one may 
 be called on to take a subordinate part in the admin- 
 istration of the law ; while in this country there have 
 always been men of leisure who have been willing to 
 devote much of their time to public affairs. The 
 mass of the citizens form the ultimate authority in 
 all matters of legislation : in regard to some of these 
 the citizen may feel that he has personal knowledge 
 and a genuine opinion of his own ; in regard to many 
 questions, on the other hand, it is impossible that he 
 should have more than secondhand knowledge ; but 
 it is incumbent upon him to do his best for the 
 Common Weal on the issues that come before him, 
 and not to give his vote carelessly and blindly. 
 x- There is an enormous number of topics on 
 which the citizen may be appealed to and on 
 which he may be called to make up his mind. The 
 range has been enlarged, partly by the progress of 
 science which has rendered it possible to prevent 
 the spread of diseases and to give favourable con- 
 ditions for health, but far more through the action 
 of public-spirited individuals. In many directions 
 the experiments which were made by philanthropic 
 individuals, have been taken up and incorporated 
 among the activities of the State. The hospitals, 
 which were promoted throughout the country in the 
 reign of George II, have called attention to the 
 amount which can be publicly done for the health
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 73 
 
 of the people. The example set by Dr William 
 Hawes and the founders of the Royal Humane 
 Society has brought about additional care for the 
 preservation of human life. The example of mill- 
 owners, like Sir Robert Peel and Robert Owen, has 
 led to the first Factory Acts and the organisation of 
 factory inspectors ; and the work of Florence Night- 
 ingale was remarkable, not only for what she did 
 personally, but for the impulse she gave to the care 
 of the sick. Besides new public undertakings there 
 has been much accomplished on the lines suggested 
 by the work of reformers, like John Howard, in 
 prison discipline and in the treatment of the insane. 
 England has not been altogether unmindful of 
 her responsibilities for the welfare of the planters 
 in overseas dominions during the first era of coloni- 
 sation. Much trouble was taken in regard to the 
 religious conditions of the settlers in the West 
 Indies and in Virginia, and the story of Pocahontas 
 serves at least to show that there was, in high 
 quarters, an interest in exercising a beneficial in- 
 fluence on the native population. Such attempts 
 were less welcome in the New England colonies, and 
 were not forced by the Mother Country on the 
 settlers there ; and after the Restoration and Revo- 
 lution, the government ceased to show any great 
 sense of responsibility for the welfare of the colonists, 
 but officially left them to themselves. There were 
 many men, however, who felt that the responsi- 
 bility of the Mother Country, though officially dis-
 
 74 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 carded, still remained as a duty to be done; volun- 
 tary institutions were organised by individuals, 
 which attempted to occupy the ground abandoned 
 by the State. The names of Dr Bray and Bishop 
 Berkeley are specially noticeable in this connection, 
 and at a later era there was an immense develop- 
 ment of philanthropic feeling in regard to the slave 
 trade, and to slavery; as well as a new sense of our 
 responsibilities for the Indian Empire; this was 
 partly religious in character and partly due to the 
 feeling which was roused by Burke's impeachment 
 of Warren Hastings. Since that time, the duty of 
 the British Empire to the native races, and to the 
 colonists, has been much more definitely felt; and 
 there has been the conscious aim to provide an aegis 
 in British rule, under which self-government might 
 be developed in colonies, or districts, or munici- 
 palities. Self-denying examples have had an extra- 
 ordinary force in increasing the scope of public 
 activity at home; and there has been a similar 
 effort to consider the duty of a civilised race to- 
 wards non-civilised and half-civilised peoples, on 
 the part of individuals abroad; this has been em- 
 bodied in the tradition of the Indian Civil Service 
 and overseas administration. The more the scope 
 and the success of this general will for the Common 
 Weal is kept in view, the more the exercise of the 
 power and influence of the realm at home and 
 abroad is likely to improve. The effort to exploit 
 the overseas dominions economically, in the in-
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 75 
 
 terests of the Mother Country, has absolutely 
 ceased; and there has been an honest attempt to 
 promote self-government, wherever it seemed that 
 the necessary conditions existed, and that there 
 was any real sense of a Common Weal. 
 
 III. THE COMMON WEAL AS A POSITIVE AIM 
 
 H Rousseau's conception of the State, as having 
 a real life and a real personality expressed by 
 a general will, may at least help us to set political 
 problems in the terms in which they can be dealt 
 with most clearly. The sovereign State has a 
 national life, and is a personality in which indivi- 
 duals participate, in so far as they throw themselves 
 heartily and personally into the Common Weal. 
 The democratic citizen ought not to be satisfied 
 with a standard of his duty in public affairs that is 
 lower than that laid down for themselves by Stuart 
 Kings 1 ; but there is a serious danger lest when the 
 responsibility of rule is divided among so many 
 citizens none of them should take his share of it 
 very seriously. As Burke says, " All persons possess- 
 ing any portion of power ought to be strongly 
 "and awfully impressed with an idea that they act 
 "in trust; and that they are to account for their 
 "conduct in that trust to the one great Master, 
 "Author and Founder of society 2 . This principle 
 
 1 See above, p. 22, and p. 62. 
 
 2 This principle is more fully insisted upon, Cunning- 
 ham, British Citizens and their responsibility to God, p. 23.
 
 76 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 "ought even to be more strongly impressed upon 
 "the minds of those who compose the collective 
 "sovereignty, than upon those of single princes 1 ." It 
 is by keeping this ideal for themselves personally be- 
 fore them and trying to live up to it that the citizens 
 can help to keep the life of the State at its best and 
 to do something to improve it in character. The 
 citizen has not only the opportunity of taking his 
 part in legislating for the whole, but of personally 
 endeavouring to bring his own energies and activi- 
 ties into accordance with the Common Weal and so 
 to serve the State. It is thus that his life may be- 
 come socialised, and that, as Hegel teaches, he may 
 find in the institutions of society a safeguard for his 
 own personal freedom. "No one can have a right 
 "but as a member of a society and of a society in 
 " which some common good is recognised by mem- 
 "bers as their own ideal good...." Personality "is 
 "the capacity of being determined by the concep- 
 tion of his own ideal good 2 ." There may often 
 be a struggle in the mind of the citizen as to the 
 course he shall take or the extent to which he shall 
 control his personal self-seeking, and if he is to play 
 his part rightly, there must be the recognition of 
 a "will with which one's everyday self may be at 
 "odds as nevertheless one's truer and fuller self 3 ." 
 
 1 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France in Works, 
 i, p. 416. 
 
 2 T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation, p. 44. 
 8 Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 101.
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 77 
 
 When once the State is conceived as a moral person 
 it is comparatively easy to indicate the line which 
 should be pursued in order that the character of the 
 State may be wisely developed. 
 Q (A) The State, as a person, should aim at 
 being a good neighbour to other States, and 
 those who control its activities should see that this 
 is carefully kept in view. A man is not a good neigh- 
 bour who is constantly interfering in the affairs of 
 other people, and thinks he can manage their dress- 
 ing, their feeding, and the upbringing of their chil- 
 dren better than they can themselves ; even if he is 
 right there is a danger that he may be offensive, and 
 do more harm than good. On the other hand the 
 doctrine of non-intervention may be carried too 
 far; there are cases where the violence of the hus- 
 band, or the cruelty of parents, calls for the inter- 
 ference of neighbours to protect the weak ; and it is 
 to the discredit of neighbours if they are indifferent 
 to these things altogether. In a similar fashion it 
 is discreditable to a great nation, which has the 
 power to prevent the continuance of anarchy and 
 disorder in another territory, if it scrupulously holds 
 its hand and leaves the neighbouring country to 
 work out its own salvation. In neither case can a 
 definite rule be laid down ; but the general will of 
 a nation may decide that it is a duty to use its in- 
 fluence to promote the triumph of law and order. 
 The general will of the United States came to the 
 decision that there was a call for their country to
 
 78 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 interfere in the case of Cuba and the Philippines, 
 though it has come to no similar decision in regard 
 to Mexico. 
 
 (B) It is also the part of the State, as a moral per- 
 son, to be a good parent, and to see that its activities 
 are so carried on, that posterity thrives better in body 
 and mind. The general will has difficulty in coming 
 to a decision as to the promoting of good. There is 
 at times a fear that the conferring of a benefit by 
 the State ma}' weaken the individual character, as 
 in the case of old age pensions ; but there is a much 
 more definite opinion and ready expression of the 
 general will, in regard to the putting down of in- 
 jurious conditions. The pains that are taken, in 
 regard to the conditions of work in factories and 
 mines, to the water supply and the conditions of 
 housing, are abundant evidence as to the readiness 
 of the general will to put down evils, when they are 
 clearly recognised as evils which it is practicable to 
 meet. 
 
 There is, however, a serious difficulty where the 
 public mind is not made up. There is a general 
 consensus of opinion that over-indulgence in alcohol 
 is very prevalent and that this is the cause of much 
 suffering and crime; but there is no general agree- 
 ment that alcohol is in itself an evil, and that all 
 indulgence in it should be put down, nor even as to 
 the best means of permitting its use while guarding 
 against its abuse. So long as there is such difference 
 of opinion on the subject, and while there is no
 
 V. THE SENSE OF CITIZENSHIP 79 
 
 general will, legislation must be experimental; or 
 there is a danger that it may become futile through 
 the impossibility ol enforcing it. On this account 
 the State can much more easily use its coercive 
 power to put down evils, than to promote what 
 many regard as good. 
 
 In the general will we may recognise an instru- 
 ment which gives the greatest efficiency and influ- 
 ence to the State as a whole, and it also affords the 
 opportunity for the fullest development of the indi- 
 vidual personally. It is by coming into conscious 
 accord with the general will that the citizen attains 
 the greatest measure of freedom from coercion. In 
 so far as he is self-disciplined, there is no occasion 
 to coerce him from without. The more he respects 
 the law, which is the expression of the general will, 
 the less occasion there is for the exercise of coercion 
 in the interests of the Common Weal. The more 
 ready he is to consider the Common Weal primarily, 
 and to lay aside his own interests in so far as they 
 conflict with the Common Weal, the less occasion 
 does he give for legislation or compulsion. Liberty 
 is to be prized because it gives a man personal free- 
 dom from external compulsion, and it is a necessary 
 condition for the full development of the exercise of 
 self -discipline.
 
 VI 
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTER 
 
 I. THE LIFE OF THE STATE AND OF THE 
 CITIZEN PERSONALLY 
 
 j It may be worth while to indicate the point 
 we have reached. We have seen that readi- 
 ness on the part of the citizens to promote the Com- 
 mon Weal, is the chief condition of vigour and 
 efficiency in the life of the State ; while, on the other 
 hand, it is also the condition under which the indi- 
 vidual may enjoy the full personal life of the good 
 citizen. It reconciles the two elements of Common 
 Weal, the efficiency of the State as a whole, and 
 the fulness of personal life, and it shows how they 
 may both be promoted and cultivated together in 
 actual life. 
 
 But it must be remembered that political life 
 may improve or may deteriorate ; there has been the 
 rise or the fall of States; there have been citizens 
 with an honest pride in their privileges, and there 
 have been citizens who were indifferent to the 
 claims of their country. How are we to try to see 
 that the trend of the movement in our day shall be 
 in the right direction, and to promote and cultivate 
 it, so as to secure the progress of the community ?
 
 CH. VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 8l 
 
 2 The life of the State, and the life of the per- 
 sons who compose it, influence one another; 
 there is, as one might say, action and re-action. The 
 State can do much to form the individual life, to 
 provide ideals, and to waken responsibilities; and 
 on the other hand a corrupt State encourages the 
 citizen to be careless and indifferent in regard to 
 public affairs. But though they influence one an- 
 other, the initiative lies with the individual: we 
 have already seen how the action of philanthropic 
 individuals has led to the extension of the activities 
 of State. And hence we may note that, as Mr Roose- 
 velt has so often insisted, personal character is of 
 supreme importance as the chief factor in the re- 
 generation of the community. It is important that 
 we should to-day consider the influences which may 
 be brought to bear, for the improvement of the 
 character of the citizens, and for the cultivation of 
 good citizenship. 
 
 II. THE INFLUENCE OF THE STATE ON 
 PERSONAL CHARACTER 
 
 -2 The State cannot of course actually promote 
 the personal moral life: the initiative must lie 
 with the individual, and it is impossible to make 
 men moral by act of parliament 1 . But the State 
 can afford opportunities which facilitate the duteous 
 action of the individual and render it easier 
 
 1 T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation, p. 37. 
 c. 6
 
 82 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 for him to take account of the Common Weal, 
 and to fall in personally with the general will. 
 Personal interests, which are detrimental to the 
 life of the State, are always near and pressing; 
 it is important that the citizen should be aided to 
 take account of the Common Weal, by having a 
 conception put before him of some step that is 
 practicable and within reach, and therefore worth 
 struggling for. 
 
 A The idealist who paints a fancy picture of a 
 social Utopia may not be useful practically; 
 to some temperaments his picture will merely be 
 an incitement to censorious criticism of all exist- 
 ing institutions and powers, while other people may 
 be depressed at the impracticability of realising this 
 ideal, and be inclined to despair of the possibility 
 of any improvement. Here the work of the states- 
 man comes in, to shape a relative improvement that 
 is practicable, and that is, therefore, worth aiming 
 at. Better provision for old age, better housing, 
 better conditions of employment, are all spheres 
 in which a relative improvement is possible. They 
 are all matters in which steps may be taken by 
 public spirited individuals 1 towards improving the 
 Common Weal ; and it is the business of the states- 
 man to mark out these successive steps towards the 
 Common Weal, and to show how best they can be 
 taken. Unless the ordinary citizen feels that there 
 is some experiment that is worth trying, he is not 
 1 See above, p. 72.
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 83 
 
 likely to be aroused from his absorption in the pri- 
 vate interests that press on him nearly, and to be 
 awakened to the duty of doing something towards 
 the Common Weal. All may feel a sentimental desire 
 that things should be improved, and all may be ready 
 to join in forcing their neighbours to behave differ- 
 ently, so as to promote the Common Weal at the 
 expense of other people ; but it is the statesman who, 
 by formulating a practicable step and showing that 
 it is possible to take it, renders the citizens respon- 
 sible for each doing what he can personally to bring 
 about this particular improvement. Each citizen 
 may then feel his responsibility in the decision, 
 and it is here that the legitimate function of parties 
 and of political associations comes in, since they can 
 persuade him as to what can be done for the com- 
 munity as a whole; but unless the statesman puts 
 forward a step towards the Common Weal clearly 
 and definitely, the ordinary citizen is only too 
 likely to disregard it altogether as no concern of his. 
 It is when he realises the practicability of some im- 
 provement, that the sense of responsibility for pro- 
 moting it is really roused ; it is the same with regard 
 to the influence on other peoples. There is a great 
 deal of evil in the world, and most private persons 
 feel that they can do little or nothing to prevent it, 
 and that they are not responsible for it. But if the 
 statesman can show that there is a practicable 
 means by which the State can use its power to put 
 down the exploiting of native races, or to check the 
 
 62
 
 84 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 growth of anarchy in any country, the citizen may 
 realise that he has a duty and a personal responsi- 
 bility in seeing that that influence shall be exercised 
 aright. 
 
 r The State can also exercise a great influence 
 on the personal character of the citizens 
 through its power of controlling elementary educa- 
 tion. This is not so much a matter of determining 
 what subjects shall be taught, or what methods 
 shall be used, as of laying down clearly the aims and 
 objects of education, so that they may be appre- 
 hended by managers, inspectors, teachers and 
 children alike. 
 
 (A) During the nineteenth century the aim of 
 education was to a great extent individualistic, to 
 enable a boy to rise in the world, and do better for 
 himself because of his schooling. We have heard 
 much of the educational ladder by which boys 
 might climb into another sphere of life : and undue 
 attention is often given in the scholastic world to 
 the rungs of this ladder the scholarships and bur- 
 saries which are awarded to successful competitors. 
 In England too much regard has been given to the 
 development of the individual, and too much en- 
 couragement given for him to specialise according 
 to his tastes and temperament, as if they were the 
 supreme secular subject for consideration. The 
 State ought to insist that the service of the com- 
 munity is held up as the supreme object for which 
 the individual is to be trained: that the child must
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 85 
 
 learn to submit himself to discipline in order that 
 he may be better able to take his place in the life 
 of the community, and that his faculties are de- 
 veloped, not for his selfish interests, but in order 
 that he may be able to give national service in the 
 manner in which he can do it best. 
 
 (B) It will be a help in this direction if time is 
 given in school to the holding up of patriotic ex- 
 amples ; the past of the world is full of the stories of 
 men who have devoted themselves to the Common 
 Weal, and children are ready to appreciate romance 
 and heroism. This is not merely a matter of book 
 learning, but of such a use of local association, as 
 may bring one or other of the great citizens of the 
 past within the range of the child's personal interest. 
 It is strange to pass from a country like ours, 
 which is crowded with memorials of the past, and 
 of the steps in progress, to a colony or to the United 
 States in which historical associations are compara- 
 tively lacking. The State should take care that no 
 chance should be lost of developing that sense of 
 patriotism which is such an important aid to doing 
 the duties of a citizen 1 . 
 
 1 J. G. Fichte by his Reden an die deutsche Nation had 
 extraordinary success in awakening the national conscious- 
 ness of Germany by academic discourses, pp. 12, 368.
 
 86 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 III. POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PERSONAL 
 
 CHARACTER 
 
 fa The current political science which lays so 
 much stress on personal liberty has been 
 readily accepted; it can be traced back from the 
 Levellers through the new departure that was taken 
 by Locke ; it has had great influence on democratic 
 communities, and has been put forward with all the 
 attractive charm which such a writer as Mr Lowes 
 Dickinson can exercise. But after all, Mr Oscar 
 Browning and his pupils do not really go to the root 
 of the matter; Political Science, as they treat it, is 
 merely a collection of half truths, and gives but 
 little help as a guide in practical affairs. We have 
 already seen that it does not supply an adequate 
 account of the origin of civil society. Where the 
 liberty of each individual is taken for granted as an 
 axiom, there can be no solution of any of the pro- 
 blems which arise from time to time, as to the 
 grounds of coercion by the State, or the limits of 
 toleration, or the nature of personal obligations to 
 the community. Political Science has little or no- 
 thing to say about these questions, and they are all 
 left to the opportunist to decide according to per- 
 sonal temperament. It appears too that current 
 Political Science is somewhat of an anachronism ; it 
 remains on the eighteenth century plane of thought, 
 and is satisfied to look at the State as a mechanism ; 
 it has not been influenced by Rousseau's conception
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 87 
 
 of the State as a moral personality, nor by Hegel's 
 doctrine as to political obligation and the socialising 
 of the individual life. It does however lay such stress 
 on the individual life, and personal liberty, that we 
 might expect it would have something to say upon 
 the development of the individual personally, so 
 that he may enjoy the fullest life of his own. 
 i-j But here too we are disappointed. 
 
 (A) The ' individuity ' is treated as absolute, 
 a thing on which there is to be no coercion from 
 without, while he is to be free to live his own life. 
 Government action is to be reduced to a minimum, 
 and we find little guidance as to the means for the 
 training and education of individuals, nor is any ideal 
 set forward in accordance with which they might 
 try to train themselves. The Common Weal is 
 never accentuated by Political Science as the ob- 
 ject towards which personal life should be directed, 
 but it is merely a negative principle which can be 
 appealed to in order to condemn encroachments on 
 personal action. 
 
 (B) We have seen that Locke and others were 
 indignant at being represented as the advocates of 
 unrestrained liberty. But current Political Science 
 seems to have made no advance in stating what 
 the limits of personal liberty ought to be in civil 
 society; it appears still to argue that everyone 
 should be free to do as he likes. Since it does not 
 specify any useful criterion of self-restraint, current 
 Political Science appears to provide excuses for the
 
 88 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 indulgence of every passion; it can be appealed to 
 by the advocates of conduct which is generally re- 
 garded as immoral. 
 
 IV. THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Q There has been a tendency during the last two 
 centuries to regard religion as something 
 which may be neglected in politics. The cleavage 
 has become very deep ; the State no longer coerces 
 individuals in regard to religious opinion, and in 
 some countries, it avowedly treats the whole subject 
 with indifference. From a political standpoint, the 
 pretensions of the Church to give official guidance 
 to the State have been discredited ; it is, besides, a 
 matter of common complaint that religion has done 
 much in the past to foment causes of quarrel, and to 
 divert the energies of mankind into warlike enter- 
 prises like the Crusades; while it is also said that the 
 Church has failed to lay down principles of universal 
 application in regard to the organisation of Society 
 in time of peace 1 . On the other hand, it is to be 
 noticed from the religious side that a number of 
 
 1 From primitive times till the eighteenth century the 
 Church condemned usury, that is the taking of interest on 
 capital which was fully secured, as immoral ; and this view 
 is maintained in the rogth Canon of 1604. When monetary 
 conditions were greatly changed by the influx of silver 
 from the New World, the ordinary conscience failed to be 
 guided by the old ecclesiastical rules, as to the form of the 
 bargain, and took advantage of the liberty given by the 
 Statute of 1624. See Cunningham, The Moral Witness of 
 the Church on the Investment of Money, p. 6.
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 89 
 
 those who are much occupied with religious observ- 
 ances, disclaim any interest in politics, and even 
 profess to regard secular ambitions and activities of 
 every kind as mere vanities. Philanthropists, who 
 are in earnest about the miseries of our own day, 
 feel little sympathy for men and women who seem 
 to be given up to introspection and to be absorbed 
 in anxiety about the saving of their own souls. 
 
 But a distinction, which is often forgotten, must 
 be recalled. It is true that the student of human 
 life must certainly break it up into sections, and 
 analyse its different aspects, social and personal, 
 artistic and scientific, so as to study each one apart. 
 And in detail he must concentrate on one thing at a 
 time so as to apprehend it thoroughly; still he 
 should never forget in such enquiries that he is only 
 dealing with a particular aspect after all, with the 
 view of understanding it better. But on the other 
 hand, when action comes into play, and especially 
 when we are seeking to make the most of our own 
 lives personally, we must try to treat human life, 
 in all its complexity, as a whole, and not to ignore 
 any of its sides. A man misses much of life who, in 
 pursuing his ideal, whatever it may be, disregards 
 health or social ties, or the material welfare that con- 
 duces to them, or his inheritance in the past. Man's 
 nature is very complex, whether he is conscious of it 
 or not ; this ' individuity ' has relations to the mate- 
 rial world, and to his fellow men and to God; and he 
 cannot make the most of his life personally unless
 
 90 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 he tries to keep all these ties consciously in mind, so 
 that none is left completely out of account. To make 
 the most of life, he must have a personal ideal of the 
 best he can hope to attain, and he must strive after it. 
 
 Whoever sets himself to realise his ideal of 
 manhood, and to cultivate what he regards as the 
 noblest human powers, must concentrate his ener- 
 gies on a definite aim, and will be eager to discard 
 the vicious and the frivolous and the vulgar; he will 
 try to assimilate the best of which he deems himself 
 capable. If he wishes to keep himself constantly fit 
 in body, he will at least avoid injurious excesses; 
 and the man, who desires to form his tastes after the 
 best models, will habituate himself to the thoughts 
 and aspirations of the greatest writers the world has 
 known. There must be self-discipline if there is to 
 be any success in realising a personal ideal ; and 
 the nature of that discipline will be relative to the 
 ideal we cherish. 
 
 It is of course possible for anyone to frame, and 
 to frame deliberately, an ideal that is very one- 
 sided, and is drawn entirely from some one aspect of 
 human life. Such is the exaggerated care of the 
 miser for the means of procuring worldly goods ; an 
 over-developed love of society easily passes into 
 dissipation ; and the fanatic or devotee may seek for 
 union with God so eagerly, as to discard all earthly 
 activities. Striving after personal self-development 
 is always in danger of degenerating into self-seeking 
 egoism. The best corrective to mistaken ideals, lies
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 91 
 
 in the conscious effort to frame an ideal for oneself 
 personally, that shall take account of human life, in all 
 its aspects and as a whole. In the Christian ideal this is 
 aimed at ; it is the ideal of the Christian man to form 
 himself on a divine model 1 . In the life of the Son of 
 Man there was no conscious discarding of any aspect 
 of human life. The ideal of manhood which Christi- 
 anity sets before us has the closest affinities with 
 every side of human nature ; the aspirations of the 
 Christian man are not limited by the tastes and inter- 
 ests that appeal to his own temperament ; this ideal 
 can never become so self-centred as to be anti-social. 
 Anyone who claims to give his efforts exclusively to 
 the cultivation of personal holiness, has not learned 
 the character of the Son of Man aright. Citizenship 
 in the kingdom of Heaven is the very essence of the 
 Christian life; the social element is inherent, since 
 the aspiration of the Christian has a bearing on all the 
 activities of life ; it is the ambition of the Christian 
 man to form his own character after a divine person- 
 ality, and to discard what is inconsistent with it. 
 
 The growth of human character involves, on the 
 one side, the framing of a personal ideal, and on the 
 other a singleness of purpose in pursuing it ; here we 
 may see the practical value of a personal ideal. An 
 ideal for Society is vague and indefinite; we may 
 paint fancy pictures of a new earth, but we can 
 hardly take a step by ourselves in realising them, 
 or in providing the peasant with a fowl in the pot ; 
 1 See below, Appendix II, 4.
 
 Q2 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 this lies beyond the scope of our action. But a per- 
 sonal ideal is a practical force. We are free to frame 
 it for ourselves, in accordance with our own tempera- 
 ment and circumstances; and it lies with us each 
 to do our best to bring our ideal to bear, on every 
 occasion and at every opportunity, in our social and 
 public as well as in our devout life. When the 
 Christian man is privileged to be the citizen in a 
 democratic State, it is incumbent on him to be a 
 good citizen, and not merely to be guided by his 
 own interests. Self-discipline has always been re- 
 cognised as a Christian duty, and as essential for 
 the training of a Christian soldier; the personal 
 character at which the Christian is taught to aim, is 
 also the personal character which is favourable to the 
 maintenance and furtherance of the Common Weal. 
 It may be recognised that the Spiritual and 
 Eternal exercise very little direct influence on the 
 conduct of secular affairs in our day. In carrying on 
 the government, in all its ramifications, public men 
 have to give full attention to the precise conditions 
 of time and place, and to analyse the differences 
 between one community and another, so as to 
 learn by secular experience. There is need for 
 Empirical Science, to examine and adjust the me- 
 chanism of State in all its forms. But none the less 
 a community that discards religion altogether does 
 so at its peril. Indirectly, by exercising an influence 
 on personal character, religion may be a powerful 
 means of cultivating zeal for the Common Weal
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 93 
 
 among the citizens generally. By strengthening the 
 sense of duty and responsibility in regard to the 
 Common Weal, Christianity tends to develop the 
 character of the citizen in a right direction; and it 
 may be contended that any religion which fails to 
 foster the citizen's sense of duty towards the Common 
 Weal falls short of true Christianity, and does not 
 produce the fruits which might have been looked for. 
 Q There has been, during the last few years, an 
 extraordinary awakening of a sense of duty to 
 the community. It was observable at the very 
 beginning of the war among young men who were 
 apparently leading lives of mere pleasure-seeking 
 and seemed to have no other object in life than their 
 own amusement ; but they showed in the first weeks 
 of the war that they had awakened to a sense of 
 duty for doing their best in the national cause, and 
 they have been ready to sacrifice their prospects 
 and their lives at this crisis of their country's fate. 
 They roused themselves nobly in the cause of patriot- 
 ism; and gradually that call has been heard and 
 responded to eagerly by the men and women of all 
 classes of society and of the most various vocations. 
 But there is a danger that the sense of duty, which 
 has thus been awakened in a great crisis, should not 
 be maintained when that crisis is over; that the 
 return of peace should be regarded as a time to 
 relax the strain, and to allow the careless self-seek- 
 ing habit of life to reassert itself, and indifference 
 to the Common Weal to be accepted as normal and
 
 94 THE COMMON WEAL CH. 
 
 allowable. Religion claims that it can supply a 
 foundation which will underpin and strengthen the 
 newly awakened sense of duty. The religious man 
 has been taught to think of the world as governed 
 by God, of the ebb and flow of earthly empires and 
 secular things as the sphere in which God is realising 
 his purpose for mankind. The effort to realise the 
 Common Weal may cease to be occasional, and be- 
 come habitual to the man who is inspired, not 
 merely by patriotism, but by the consciousness that 
 he is in his little sphere a fellow-worker with God. 
 Just as personality is rendered fuller and nobler 
 when it is consciously merged in the desire to pro- 
 mote the Common Weal, so patriotism may be 
 deepened and strengthened when it is consciously 
 merged in the effort to realise the purpose of God. 
 j Q The citizen cannot but be much perplexed 
 because of the number and complexity of the 
 problems on which he is called to make up his mind. 
 He may be appealed to in regard to 'Chinese 
 Slavery/ the advisability of permitting contracts 
 for imported labour which extend over several 
 years, or in regard to 'reprisals,' the advisability 
 of creating panic in the civil population of Germany, 
 as a means of preventing similar attacks on our own 
 people. And those questions, which might be diffi- 
 cult enough in themselves, are rendered more 
 obscure, because we must view them not only with 
 regard to the present, but still more in their pro- 
 bable bearing on the future. The decisions are im-
 
 VI. PERSONAL CHARACTER 95 
 
 mensely responsible, for so much is involved in 
 them the development of South Africa and the 
 prospective relations of European nations with each 
 other. It is not possible to rely on the intelligence 
 of the ordinary man to apply natural reason 1 to 
 such problems; and we cannot work them out on 
 paper conclusively from any principle which we 
 assume as absolute. There is always the double pro- 
 blem of improving conditions, and of improving 
 men personally so that they may realise the most 
 of these improved conditions. Human progress has 
 not advanced by steady stages in the regular 
 courses of a piece of masonry : time after time good 
 has been brought out of evil, and men have risen 
 " on their dead selves to higher things." The citizen 
 must endeavour to face each problem as it comes, 
 and to realise the responsibility it involves, in 
 order to avoid being led away by any unworthy 
 considerations ; he can then set himself to deal with 
 it, dispassionately, in the right manner. The re- 
 ligious man may hope to do this, consciously and 
 habitually, because he believes that, through the 
 
 1 Calvin's doctrine that human reason, unlike the human 
 will, was "partly weakened and partly corrupted" at the 
 Fall leads him to regard the reason as a sufficient guide in 
 regard to civil society. " Every individual understands how 
 "human societies must be regulated by laws, and is also 
 "able to comprehend the principles of those laws." Insti- 
 tutes, n, ii, 13. On the influence of this doctrine on political 
 writers in the seventeenth century see Pease, Leveller Move- 
 ment, p. 320.
 
 96 THE COMMON WEAL CH. VI. 
 
 maze of human affairs, "the will of God rides on in 
 majesty" ; and that there is a divine purpose which 
 is slowly and surely working itself out, and in the 
 realisation of which human beings can aid. He does 
 not set himself to imagine the ultimate future of the 
 race; for it is not clear that such knowledge, if he 
 had it, would be a help to him to make up his mind 
 as to the steps that will lead towards it ; it is enough 
 "to do the next thing" as best he can. "The 
 "distant scene I do not ask to see; one step enough 
 "for me." His habitual scheme of life is consonant 
 with the right frame of mind for doing his political 
 duties in the best way. 
 
 The really devout man may feel a confidence in 
 the decision which is taken in this spirit. He be- 
 lieves that the Will which rules the world is not 
 arbitrary and unintelligible, but that it is possible 
 for the human mind to appreciate its working in 
 part, and that by seeking after the friendship of 
 God, and conscious companionship with God, he 
 may so far enter into the mind of God, as in some 
 degree to see things in the right proportion and 
 estimate them at their true values, as God does. 
 He cannot hope to see with God's eyes, but he may 
 try, as it were, to see more nearly from God's point 
 of view. It is thus that he may hope to be guided to 
 a sound judgment in the practical issues which come 
 before him, and to be saved from the disastrous 
 mistakes and the errors of judgment from which 
 even the most astute politicians are not free.
 
 APPENDIX I 
 FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS 1 
 
 T The recommendations of the Paris Conference 
 of the Allies, in June, 1916, took a large part 
 of the British public completely by surprise; they 
 had been brought up to regard free intercourse in 
 trade as an axiomatic principle, which it was foolish 
 and almost wicked to call in question ; and the pro- 
 posal to set it aside seemed to be so outvi as hardly 
 to deserve consideration. Yet a few months of re- 
 flection and a little fresh experience have helped to 
 set the matter in another light. 
 
 There are at any rate a number of people now, 
 who are inclined to think that the alleged benefit of 
 free commercial intercourse, as a necessary step to 
 the increased recognition of the brotherhood of man, 
 is illusory. There is no self-acting mechanism for 
 the diffusion of the sense of human brotherhood; 
 this must be a matter of conscious effort. That we 
 can, by regulating conditions of trade, create the 
 feelings we desire to foster, is a curious supersti- 
 tion ; the mercantilists believed that by forcing the 
 Colonies into a position of economic dependence on 
 this country they would foster a sense of loyalty, 
 
 1 Some of the following paragraphs appeared in the 
 British Citizen, March 17, 1917.
 
 98 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 and they succeeded instead in diffusing a desire for 
 American independence. Races, which differ in 
 tradition and temperament, are not reconciled to 
 one another by being brought into close relations, 
 either in India or Ireland ; the willingness of the Jew 
 to lend money to the Gentile, and enter into trade 
 relations, does not disarm anti-Semitism ; and there 
 is no ground for assuming that free intercourse be- 
 tween all nations would make for humanitarian 
 sentiment. When closely looked at we see that this 
 expectation is a mere superstition. 
 
 Equally illusory is the belief that free intercourse 
 will mechanically bring about the economic good of 
 the world as a whole, and of every part of it. The 
 Paris recommendations are not necessarily mistaken, 
 though they are inconsistent with the principle of 
 free intercourse, which maintains that any inter- 
 ference must certainly be mischievous and bring 
 about indirect evils which would more than counter- 
 balance any gain that might be anticipated. 
 
 It was held by Cobdenites that in all cases of ex- 
 change both countries gain, though both may not 
 gain equally, and that the more intercourse was 
 promoted between nations, the better. This doc- 
 trine favoured the more advanced at the expense of 
 the less advanced countries and has been rejected 
 by undeveloped countries on economic grounds 1 . 
 Further, when we consider what has happened 
 where free intercourse and free competition have 
 
 1 Cunningham, The Rise and Decline of Free Trade, p. 87.
 
 I. FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS 99 
 
 been tried, on a small scale, we shall feel that it is 
 quite illusory to count on any certainty of benefit 
 accruing from the general adoption of this system. 
 A hundred years ago there were enthusiasts for free 
 competition within the country ; they held that free 
 competition would give the enterprising man his 
 chance, that it would be best for the nation as a 
 whole, and that whatever temporary mischief might 
 arise to particular classes or interests during the 
 period of transition, every part of the community 
 would gain in the long run. This was the opinion 
 not only of the capitalists who were making profits, 
 but of philanthropists like Dr Chalmers 1 ; they were 
 enthusiastic believers in the beneficent action of 
 free competition and the shortsightedness of those 
 who interfered with it. But this thorough-going 
 enthusiasm for free competition within the realm 
 no longer prevails ; there is a general agreement that 
 it is for the welfare of the realm to maintain a 
 " standard of life," and there is an insistent demand 
 for an " equality of opportunity " ; free competition 
 and laissez faire do not satisfy these requirements. 
 We no longer believe that the welfare of the nation 
 as a whole can be mechanically brought about by 
 free competition. When Free Traders assure us 
 that the welfare of the world as a whole will come 
 about mechanically by allowing free intercourse, 
 there is a temptation to remind them that we have 
 
 1 T. Chalmers, Christian and Civic Economy of Large 
 Towns, in, p. 37. 
 
 72
 
 100 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 heard that sort of thing before, and that though it 
 may be plausible it is not true. 
 2 The public, who are convinced that the reason- 
 ing on which they have relied hitherto, is mis- 
 leading, are inclined to say that Economic Science 
 is " true in theory but does not hold good in prac- 
 "tice"; but this is at least a very crude way of stating 
 the case. Political Economy has a double function ; 
 on the one hand it is a mental discipline 1 which 
 trains the mind for discriminating and dealing with 
 business problems, on the other it investigates econo- 
 mic phenomena, as they have actually occurred and 
 are occurring. It might be pointed out that we 
 group economic phenomena by themselves for our 
 own convenience in studying them, and that there 
 is no line which marks them out in actual life ; but 
 without pursuing this train of thought we may look 
 at the matter as practical men, and try to distin- 
 guish the limits within which Economic Science is 
 useful to us in our investigations from those in 
 which it is not applicable, and where it becomes 
 misleading if we try to rely on it. 
 
 Economic Science offers the best means at our 
 disposal for investigating particular problems, or 
 studying any group of economic phenomena so as 
 to understand it better; but it is not applicable if 
 we wish to describe the economic life of a com- 
 munity as a whole or to forecast its course. Such 
 
 1 Cunningham, "A Plea for Pure Science" in Economic 
 Review, u, p. 25 (January, 1892).
 
 I. FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS IOI 
 
 attempts lie beyond its true sphere, it has no pre- 
 tension to be able to deal with them. 
 
 Human Society is so complex that in order to 
 study particular phenomena in any detail, we need 
 to isolate them: it is necessary for us to try to 
 simplify the problems so that we may grasp them 
 and deal with them. We need tools to work with in 
 order to think clearly, and to measure accurately, 
 and terms in which to state our conclusions. Unless 
 we have some such means at our disposal we cannot 
 set the problems of railway rates, or the incidence of 
 taxation, or the advantages and disadvantages of 
 trusts in a form in which they can be discussed 
 clearly. Economic Science is necessary for us to use 
 if we wish to pursue such studies. 
 
 But while it is necessary for us to group pheno- 
 mena that we may study them better, we should 
 never forget that the grouping is made for our own 
 convenience, and that we cannot really break life up 
 into sections. Economic phenomena do not actually 
 exist apart and by themselves, though we may find 
 it convenient to think of them by themselves. As 
 they actually occur in our experience, economic 
 phenomena are one side of the life of a community: 
 if we are discussing what the community should do, 
 or forecasting what course it is likely to take, we 
 must endeavour to view it as a whole, and dare 
 not leave on one side the elements which are ir- 
 relevant to the study of particular problems and 
 may be neglected in a narrow sphere. The method
 
 102 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 of investigation which is best suited for the in- 
 vestigation of particular problems is admittedly 
 one-sided : it consciously concentrates attention on 
 the material interests, which are common to man 
 everywhere as an animal; and it consciously dis- 
 regards the differences of temperament which are 
 found in different races, or the changes of sentiment 
 which may be found in the same community in 
 different ages. In order to deal with the life of a 
 community as a whole, we must attempt so far as 
 we can to take these matters into account, and to 
 rely on experience of what has actually happened in 
 the past, for guidance as to what it is expedient 
 for us to do in the present day, and to aim at for the 
 future. 
 
 The economic expert is right to isolate economic 
 from other phenomena for the purpose of investi- 
 gating special problems, but he is wrong if he 
 thinks that this method can be applied directly to 
 questions in regard to the economic life of the 
 community as a whole. The expert, who insists on 
 applying the method of Economic Science beyond 
 the sphere where it is useful and necessary, is in 
 danger of becoming an economic charlatan. 
 2 The habit of thinking of life as permanently 
 split into sections is mistaken, and it has led 
 to mischievous results. Since the time of Adam 
 Smith, there has been a school who exaggerated 
 one side of his teaching and insisted that it was 
 almost criminal for the nation to interfere to regu-
 
 I. FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS 103 
 
 late economic conditions. According to their prin- 
 ciples, economic affairs lay outside the sphere of 
 legislation altogether; they were confident that 
 laissez faire would justify itself in the long run, and 
 that there was no need to give conscious thought to 
 the Common Weal since it was sure to take care 
 of itself. But these principles have been generally 
 abandoned: it is now recognised that there is no 
 sphere of social activity that lies outside the Com- 
 mon Weal, or where it may not be advisable to 
 bring the Common Weal to bear. It is the part of 
 the economist, not to protest against all attempts to 
 regulate industrial affairs, but to apply his know- 
 ledge so that legislation may discriminate, and 
 really promote the Common Weal in the long run 
 at a minimum of injury to private interests in the 
 present. 
 
 A This mistaken habit of thought is also respon- 
 sible for serious misunderstanding in regard to 
 international relations. Economic affairs are in- 
 extricably intermingled with political ambitions in 
 national life. We cannot assume that any country 
 is guided in its commercial agreements by econo- 
 mic considerations alone : there always has been and 
 there still is an inclination to pursue economic suc- 
 cess so as to use it as a foundation for political 
 greatness. This was the basis of the Mercantile 
 System which arose after the Age of Discovery. 
 Each European country endeavoured to direct the 
 development of her colonies, so as to build up the
 
 104 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 power of the Mother Country, and to enable her to 
 hold her own against or to dominate other European 
 polities. That system broke down ; one of the over- 
 seas dominions after another asserted its economic 
 independence, and refused to be subordinated to 
 the ambitions of a distant country. The most ele- 
 mentary right of any political community, which 
 claims independence, is to develop its own economic 
 life as it sees best and to guard against the sapping 
 of the sources of that life by hostile neighbours. 
 
 The world at large has only gradually realised 
 that this national economic independence is every- 
 where exposed to a subtle danger. The Hohenzol- 
 lerns have cherished an ambition for world-empire ; 
 the Germans as a nation have never repudiated it, 
 and have thrown their energies heartily into the 
 means on which their rulers have relied for attaining 
 their political aim ; they have believed that political 
 world-empire could be secured by means of indus- 
 trial development, and the exploiting of the resources 
 of other countries. There have been many who only 
 saw in this the eager competition of the Germans 
 for commercial greatness, and did not understand 
 that the political ambition of the Kaiser could not 
 be realised unless the independent political life of 
 other countries was undermined. In an era when 
 there is so much free intercourse, a country which 
 is powerful economically can control the economic 
 life of other countries and render them subservient 
 to her own economic development; and thus use
 
 I. FREE TRADE ILLUSIONS IO5 
 
 them to minister to her political ambition. The 
 Free Trade policy of the British Empire has given 
 the Germans opportunity for pursuing their policy 
 of peaceful penetration, and thus laying the eco- 
 nomic foundations for Teutonic dominance. No 
 serious effort has been made in the United Kingdom 
 or in the Overseas Dominions to guard against this 
 economic invasion, and we have been content to 
 allow the Germans to determine the directions in 
 which our activities should be expended. Our 
 habit of regarding the economic sphere as quite 
 distinct from the political has prevented us from 
 recognising the political aims which have been kept 
 in the background. 
 
 We can think of economic matters by themselves, 
 but we cannot separate the economic and political 
 into two spheres: we should try to remember how 
 close and intimate are the relations in actual life. 
 Economic means can be directed to secure political 
 ends, and it is by economic means that political am- 
 bitions can be most effectively foiled. Lord Robert 
 Cecil has insisted that the present war is maintained 
 in Southern Europe and the East, "by Kaiserism, 
 "by the military caste, backed by the classes who 
 " get rich on war, the vultures of commerce and in- 
 dustry. The military caste we must convince by 
 "arms, but the industrial and commercial vultures 
 "we must attack in their pockets. We must show 
 " them that war is not a paying business. Blockade 
 " by itself will not do that. We must go farther and
 
 106 THE COMMON WEAL APP. I. 
 
 " cut off their sources of wealth as far as we can. We 
 "must cut off their overseas branches in the Far 
 "East, in parts of South America, and elsewhere. 
 "We welcome the United States Trading with the 
 "Enemy Act, which is admirably designed to 
 " carry on economic pressure. People cannot carry 
 "on operations without financial assistance from 
 "outside. Without finance they lose credit, and 
 "without credit they are done 1 ." The weapon on 
 which Lord Robert would rely in time of war should 
 not be wholly forgotten even in times of peace, for 
 it is the best means of enabling the national life to 
 develop freely. 
 
 1 Times, I3th Oct. 1917, p. 6 a.
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 IDEALS FOR SOCIETY AND PERSONAL 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 T The horrible suffering and widespread misery 
 caused by the present war have immensely 
 strengthened the feeling that such bloodshed is a 
 disgrace to civilisation ; and that the organisation of 
 Society, in such a fashion that outbreaks of war 
 shall be impossible and that we can count on per- 
 petual peace throughout the world, is a prime 
 necessity for the progress of mankind. This is an 
 ideal which has been generally accepted by the Allies 
 and in neutral countries as something to be aimed 
 at 1 in the future; but there is some difference of 
 opinion as to the steps which it is best to take in 
 present circumstances, with the hope of moving 
 towards the realisation of this ideal. 
 
 To the great majority of British subjects it 
 appears that nothing can do more to discredit such 
 
 1 The manner in which the Kaiser has stirred up discord 
 and rebellion in distant parts of the world, and the pre- 
 parations which are made for the next war, make it difficult 
 to believe that the German people, so long as they acquiesce 
 in such action, accept this ideal.
 
 108 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 bloodshed, than to make it clear that war, even in 
 its most highly organised form, does not pay, and 
 that no country gains either politically or economi- 
 cally by having recourse to it. It seems a plain 
 national duty to try to prevent a military tyranny 
 from profiting by its crimes, and to resist the Ger- 
 mans by force of arms ; so that they shall not secure 
 domination, political and economic, over all the 
 peoples of mankind, and thus be in a position to 
 extinguish national liberties. 
 
 On the other hand there are Pacifists, who 
 appear to believe that militarism will not be en- 
 couraged by success, and who urge that if we only 
 give in and allow the Germans to attain the world- 
 empire at which they have been aiming for so long, 
 the inherent inability of evil to maintain itself per- 
 manently will be manifested; and that the liberties 
 and progress of mankind will be better ensured 
 than can ever be done by resisting the aggressors. 
 There does not seem to be much reason, either in 
 history or common sense, for anticipating that this 
 result will follow; but Pacifists in Great Britain are 
 none the less active in maintaining and diffusing 
 their views. Some of them refuse to comply with 
 the General Will of the democracy; and prefer to 
 incur the stigma of being bad citizens; they seem 
 anxious to enjoy all the advantages of life in a com- 
 munity, while at the same time they claim a right 
 to act on their own judgment, and to defy the 
 General Will.
 
 II. IDEALS FOR SOCIETY 109 
 
 2 There is however a small proportion of Paci- 
 fists who profess that their disregard of the 
 duties of citizenship is based on religious grounds. 
 They hold that the pacifist ideal of Society, for 
 which they contend, is Christian and they claim to 
 be really in earnest about following the Prince of 
 Peace, and in desiring to promote the coming of 
 His Kingdom. But this claim is hardly justified; 
 for while Pacifism lays great stress on the hopes of 
 Christianity for Society, it shows no appreciation of 
 Christianity as a spiritual power in the lives of men 
 personally. 
 
 There is a curious contrast between modern Paci- 
 fism, and the doctrine of Christ Himself, as set 
 before us in the Gospels. He took the Mosaic in- 
 junction against killing, and interpreted it, not as 
 a maxim condemning wars between nations, but as 
 a personal warning against hatred and vindictive- 
 ness. He holds out hopes of a new Earth, which will 
 be brought about by loyal acceptance of Him as 
 Master ; but His parables about the growth of that 
 kingdom always represent its progress as gradual, 
 and give no encouragement to the pacifist conten- 
 tion that this ideal for Society will prove so gener- 
 ally attractive as to realise itself in the world. It is 
 not clear in the Gospels that our Lord ever laid 
 down maxims for the government of the kingdoms 
 of this world, or promulgated any regulations for 
 secular societies; He set forth an example of per- 
 sonal life to those that received Him.
 
 110 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 o There are, however, many men who, while ad- 
 mitting that this is true of Christ Himself, would 
 yet urge the acceptance of Pacifism as an interpre- 
 tation of Christianity for our own day; they hold 
 that it presents Christianity as denouncing the most 
 apparent evil of our time; and, since it shows a 
 common object towards which all may unite in 
 directing their activities, it meets the needs of our 
 generation. There are many men who are much 
 impressed by the likeness between the aims of 
 Pacifism and the Christian hope of a regenerated 
 world; and they are inclined to regard this ideal 
 for Society as a common ground, on which all 
 bodies of Christians, at least, may be willing to 
 take their stand together, in disregard of minor 
 differences. 
 
 This anticipation of bringing about a union 
 among Christians by promulgating an ideal for 
 Society, is not however justified by past experience; 
 in so far as religious men have aimed at creating a 
 Christian Society, governed entirely on Christian 
 principles, religion has been closely combined with 
 politics and has been affected by divisions of politi- 
 cal opinion. In the great religious movements of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the causes of 
 cleavage and of permanent organisation in separate 
 bodies were mainly connected with ideals for 
 Society, rather than with efforts after the pursuit 
 of personal religion ; this is true of Presbyterians, 
 as well as of Independents, Anabaptists and the
 
 II. IDEALS FOR SOCIETY III 
 
 Society of Friends 1 . In the present day the effort 
 to found a pacifist organisation for the whole world 
 would give rise to many political objections. It is 
 not likely to furnish rallying-ground for all who call 
 themselves Christians; indeed it has the character- 
 istics of a dividing force. Although it is not dis- 
 tinctively Christian, since it has not the direct 
 authority of Christ himself, and has close affinity 
 with the teaching of Buddha, its adherents insist 
 that it is the only true Christianity; and they are 
 ready to condemn all Christian men of past ages as 
 untrue to their principles, because they did not hold 
 it. This is not the spirit which is most likely to 
 promote the re-union of Christians in the present 
 day. 
 
 . This humanitarian ideal for Society and the 
 world, even though it be expressed in Chris- 
 tian phraseology, can never satisfy those who are 
 mainly concerned about fostering personal religion 
 in themselves and in others. Humanitarians ac- 
 cept part of Christ's teaching and use it to bolster 
 up their systems; but they miss the stimulus which 
 comes from taking Christ as their Master, and from 
 finding a constant inspiration in His life. His dis- 
 ciples believe that Christ has opened up a way by 
 which men may enter personally into communion 
 with God and share His thoughts, so as to con- 
 sciously guide themselves by His Will; His dis- 
 ciples feel that it should be the aim of every human 
 1 Cunningham, Christianity and Politics, pp. 4, 5.
 
 112 THE COMMON WEAL APP. 
 
 being to strive more and more after realising this 
 privilege and advancing in the knowledge of God 
 and in personal likeness to Him. That human 
 beings, with all their limitations, can never attain 
 this character completely, is true enough ; but it is 
 also true that Christ holds out to us the method and 
 the power of making constant progress towards en- 
 trance into this fuller life. He has not laid down any 
 definite formula of belief or rules of conduct ; but He 
 has set forth in His own person a Life that stimu- 
 lates man to a continual progress towards the 
 Divine. He calls on His people to use every oppor- 
 tunity to realise that Life, by abiding in Him to 
 discard what is alien to Him and what He would 
 reject; and to be actively concerned in doing them- 
 selves what He would do so as to have Him abiding 
 in them. This personal religion was manifested 
 anew as a spiritual force in the days of Wesley, and 
 it has shown its present power in the appreciation of 
 the leadership of Christ which has been seen in the 
 Student Christian Movement. 
 
 It would be a disaster if the influence of this per- 
 sonal religion should be diverted from its work of 
 gradually regenerating mankind, by insistence on 
 visionary ideals for Society. The religious ideals for 
 Society which denounce war as an evil in itself 1 , and 
 aim at the realisation of universal brotherhood, are 
 never likely to be universally accepted or to be a 
 
 1 Compare my " Memorandum on the Attitude of the 
 Church towards War " in Christianity and Politics, p. 249.
 
 II. IDEALS FOR SOCIETY 113 
 
 basis for union, because the methods on which they 
 rely are not really Christian. They aim at introduc- 
 ing better opportunities for the masses, and at pro- 
 ducing a better feeling among men, by improving 
 external conditions; whereas Christianity is spiri- 
 tual, and holds that permanent regeneration can 
 only be from within outwards, and that "life de- 
 " velops from within." Those who cherish a religious 
 ideal for Society have a code which they would fain 
 compel men to adopt; whilp Christianity appeals 
 to the individual to rule himself by the perfect law 
 of liberty. Religious philanthropy does not neces- 
 sarily look beyond secular well-being, while Chris- 
 tianity seeks first the Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness, and regards all other things as sub- 
 ordinate and incidental. 
 
 The possibility of out-living the rivalry of differ- 
 ent religious denominations does not depend on 
 occasional drawing together, but on the deepening 
 of the personal life, the recognition by each indi- 
 vidual that he has not attained neither is already 
 perfect, but that there are depths and heights in the 
 Christian life in which he has not personally shared, 
 and which he may set himself to make his own. In 
 the personal life of our Lord there are many differ- 
 ent elements, and much apparent paradox: He 
 fulfilled all righteousness and yet He was critical 
 about the meticulous observance of pious ordin- 
 ances. It is for each of His followers to aim at 
 cultivating the Christian life as a whole, and not 
 c. 8
 
 114 THE COMMON WEAL APP. II. 
 
 merely to pay exclusive attention to any one par- 
 ticular doctrine or practice, however important he 
 may feel it to be. Different men will always be apt 
 to fix on one truth or another which appeals to their 
 temperaments, and to insist that it is the essence 
 of Christianity, as men insist on Pacifism to-day. 
 Until we are each trying to appreciate the whole 
 body of Christian belief and conduct, as it is mani- 
 fested in the life of Christ personally with all its 
 apparent paradoxes, we cannot hope to keep in 
 complete sympathy with our fellow-Christians and 
 to be in conscious communion with them.
 
 INDEX 
 
 America, United States of 
 7, 8 n., 43, 56, 60, 77, 
 85, 98; Declaration of In- 
 dependence 41; South 
 1 06 
 
 Anabaptists 52, no 
 
 Angell, Norman 48 
 
 Anne, Queen 18 
 
 Armada, the 29 n. 
 
 Asquith, Rt Hon. H. H. 57 f., 
 64 
 
 Bacon, Lord 27 
 Balkan States 7 
 Belgium 47, 69 
 Berkeley, Bishop 20, 74 
 Bermudas 21 
 Bethmann-Hollweg, Dr von 
 
 48 
 
 Boucher, L. 32 n. 
 Boyle, Dr 20 
 Bray, Dr 20, 74 
 Browning, Oscar 86 
 Bruce, Robert 6 n. 
 Buchanan, George 33 
 Buddha in 
 Burke, Edmund 38, 46 n., 
 
 74 f. 
 
 Calvin, John 33, 95 n. 
 
 Cecil, Lord Robert 105 f. 
 
 Celts, the 63 
 
 Chalmers, Dr 99 
 
 Charles I 4, 28 ff. 
 
 Church of England 20, 22, 
 88; of Scotland 19 f., 22 
 
 Convention of Royal Bor- 
 oughs 1 6 
 
 Cowell's Interpreter 24 
 
 Crippen 50 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver 17, 31 
 Crusades, the 88 
 Cuba 78 
 
 Danish invasions 9 
 Dickinson, G. Lowes 86 
 Discourse of the Common 
 Weal, A 8 
 
 East India Company 18 
 Edward VI 7 
 Elizabeth, Queen 9, 15, 19 
 Europe 6, 32, 37, 105 
 
 Far East, the 105 f. 
 Fichte, J. G. 85 n. 
 Filmer, Sir Robert 24 n., 41 
 Five Nations, the 5 
 Fox, Charles James 68 
 France 33 
 Free Traders 68, 98 ff. 
 
 Galicia 14 
 
 Geneva 55 n. 
 
 George II 72 
 
 Germany 7, 15, 47 f., 70 f , 
 
 85n.; Kaiser of 104, io7n.; 
 
 people of 94, 104 f., 107 
 
 n., 108 
 Great Britain 16, 18 f., 30, 
 
 32, 48, 56, 63, 105 
 Great Contract, the 27 
 Greece 7 
 
 Gresham, Sir Thomas 29 n. 
 Gypsies 60 
 
 Hales, John 8 
 Hanse league 9 
 Hastings, Warren 74 
 Hawes, Dr William 73
 
 n6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hegel, G. W. F. 70 f., 76, 87 
 Henry VII 9, 24 
 Hobbes, Thomas 33 f., 53 
 Hohenzollerns, the 104 
 Hotmann, F. 32 n. 
 Howard, John 73 
 Huguenots, the 32 n. 
 
 Independents no 
 
 India 98; Civil Service of 
 
 74 
 
 Indians 5 
 Ireland 63, 98 
 Italy 7 
 
 James I 17, 22 ff., 27 ff., 33 
 James II 57 n. 2 
 Japanese, the 53 
 Jews, the 59, 98 
 
 Kant, Immanuel 54 
 Knox, John 19 
 
 Languet, H. 32 n. 
 Laud, Archbishop 16 
 Levellers, the 30, 81 
 Lloyd George, Rt Hon. D. 
 
 58 
 Locke, John 22, 24 n., 30 n., 
 
 33 ff., 53, 86 f. 
 London 16, 28, 59 
 Louis XIV 24 
 
 Machiavelli, N. 33 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James 46 n. 
 
 Merchant Adventurers 18 
 
 Mexico 78 
 
 Mile End 2 
 
 Mill, John Stuart 34 n., 45 
 
 Montrose, Marquis of n ff. 
 
 Nestor 25 
 
 New England 73 
 
 Nightingale, Florence 73 
 
 Owen, Robert 73 
 
 Pacifists 47 f., 108 ff. 
 Pankhurst, Miss Sylvia 63 
 Paris Conference of the 
 
 Allies 97 f. 
 Parliament 17,22,241,27, 
 
 29, 56; Scottish 17 
 Peasants, Kentish i 1, 8 
 Peel, Sir Robert 73 
 Penn, William 5 
 Pennsylvania 5 n. 
 Phelips, Sir Edward 25 
 Philippines, the 78 
 Pigou, Prof. 50, 61 n. 
 Pocahontas 73 
 Presbyterians no 
 Puritanism 20 
 
 Quakers 5 n., 68, in 
 
 Reformation, the 7 ff., 32 
 Revolution of 1689, the 15, 
 
 56, 63, 73 
 Roman Empire 55 
 Rome 8 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore 81 
 Rousseau, J. J. 52 ff., 5-5 n., 
 
 75,86 
 
 Royal Humane Society 73 
 Russell, Hon. Bertrand 69 
 Russia 13 f.; Czar of 14 
 
 Salisbury, Lord 27 
 
 Scotland 6, 17 6., 20 
 
 Sinn Feiners 63 
 
 Smith, Adam 102 
 
 Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel 20; for Pro- 
 moting Christian Know- 
 ledge 20 
 
 South Africa 95 
 
 South Carolina 35 
 
 Spain 9 
 
 Stuarts, the 18, 56, 75 
 
 Student Christian Move- 
 ment 112 
 
 Suarez, F. 10
 
 INDEX Iiy 
 
 Turkey Company 18 Walpole, Sir Robert 60 
 
 Tyler, Wat i f. Welsh settlers in Pennsyl- 
 
 vania 5 n. 
 Union of England and Scot- Wesley, John 112 
 
 land 16, 18, 21 f. West Indies 73 
 
 Utopia 82 Westminster Assembly 16 
 
 Whigs, the 40 
 Virginia 73 William the Conqueror 35 
 
 Wordsworth, William 66 n. 
 Wallace, Sir William 6 n. Wiirtemberg 71 
 
 CAMBRIDGE I PRINTED BV J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 f(ECENT WORKS BY 
 JRCHDEJCON CUNNINGHAM 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALISM 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 Crown 8vo. pp. xi, 144. 35 net. 
 
 A pithy sketch of economic development, and the rise of 
 the capitalistic system in these islands. Justice. 
 
 This is an attempt, and a very successful attempt, by one 
 of the most tireless investigators of our time to sum up the 
 experience of the past in the matter of State interference or 
 control of economic development. Financial News. 
 
 We are glad that Dr Cunningham has discarded the 
 chronological arrangements and ' ' political divisions ' ' which 
 "supply the framework" of his earlier book, and treats eco- 
 nomic history as an independent subject of study, un- 
 trammelled by the limitations and conventions of political 
 history. The gain is enormous, both in raising the dignity 
 of the subject to its proper level, and in affording scope for 
 a just and adequate presentation of the material. Nation. 
 
 Applying his historical method he here insists upon the 
 importance of taking note of past experience, particularly 
 in the relations of capital and labour, as a help towards 
 sound principles of reconstruction after the war. . ..Arch- 
 deacon Cunningham, as usual, makes some pointed thrusts 
 at the doctrinaire economists who disdain or eschew the 
 historical method. ... It illustrates his method of treating 
 economic history, not as a mere accessory to political his- 
 tory, but as itself the main theme. The book is thus worthy 
 of study on account of its method as well as for its contents. 
 
 Aberdeen Free Press.
 
 ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 Crown 8vo. pp. xii, 168. 43 6d net. 
 
 A book of curious and interesting information concerning 
 the influence in many minute particulars of English habits 
 and institutions on American habits and institutions in 
 colonial times ; a book also of excellent good sense in its very 
 brief treatment of the relations between England and 
 America at the present time. Outlook (New York). 
 
 The book draws on new sources of evidence, suggests 
 fruitful lines of inquiry, and contains an original contri- 
 bution to some of the more neglected aspects of the subject. 
 
 Geographical Journal. 
 
 Somehow or other, this book riles us. "Us common 
 Americans" think we're pretty good people, after all, and 
 whether the Archdeacon thinks so or not, we think we're 
 a peculiar people, and we think we're better fitted to arbi- 
 trate world differences than anybody else even Great 
 Britain or the Pope. Philadelphia Press. 
 
 Very able studies begun by the rank of various addresses 
 which the author delivered late in 1914 in leading American 
 cities, are so developed as to help Englishmen and Ameri- 
 cans to understand each other more completely. . . . This 
 book is one with which to test your own ripeness of intellect. 
 If you can read it straight ahead, question, comment, and 
 enjoy, your mind is in training. Try it out. 
 
 Republican (Fresno, Cal.).
 
 THE INCREASE OF TRUE 
 RELIGION 
 
 ADDRESSES TO THE CLERGY AND CHURCH 
 WORKERS OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF &LY 
 
 Small Crown 8vo. pp. viii, 50. 2s net. 
 
 Archdeacon Cunningham has been well advised to publish 
 this admirable volume of addresses. . . . They are the fruit of 
 life study of religious problems, and are in harmony with 
 the characteristic note of the Church of England at its best. 
 In a short compass he has managed to pack thoughts that 
 sink into the heart and a spiritual glow that warms the 
 understanding. . . . There is nothing academic in his sermons. 
 
 Church Family Newspaper. 
 
 The four lectures must have called upon every ounce of 
 their hearers' mind to follow them. For they carry an 
 argument right through from the beginning of the first 
 lecture to the end of the last; and the sentences are some- 
 times long and difficult. But they are good to read. The 
 thought is clear, the language is lofty, the subject is of sur- 
 passing consequence. Expository Times. 
 
 Published by the Cambridge University Press 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND ECONOMIC 
 SCIENCE 
 
 Crown 8vo. pp. viii, in. 2s 6d net. 
 
 He treats, with the moderation and caution which to 
 some minds he seems to carry to excess, the ideals and 
 spiritual forces which, in mediaeval and modern times re- 
 spectively, have been or are at work beneath the surface of 
 social and institutional phenomena in Europe. 
 
 Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 Those who wish to know what Christianity has wrought 
 economically in the past, that they may understand the 
 present and influence the future, will be well advised if they 
 study this suggestive and highly interesting book. 
 
 Guardian. 
 
 Published by John Murray 
 3
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS 
 LOWELL LECTURES 
 
 Delivered in Boston in 1914, with an Appendix 
 on Christianity and War 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s net. 
 
 The work as a whole is a most successful review of the 
 part which the Christian Churches have played in the his- 
 tory of this country, and incidentally of course in the history 
 of the American Colonies, and Dr Cunningham's acute 
 analysis of the various points of view from which the con- 
 trolling Churches have at different periods considered their 
 relations to social and political problems makes the work of 
 quite exceptional interest to the student of history. But 
 the real value of the book lies in its vindication of Chris- 
 tianity not as a code of rules to be forced upon society, but 
 as a " spiritual power which might transform the kingdoms 
 of the world " ; which, it might be added, in spite of appear- 
 ances to the contrary, has transformed the kingdoms of the 
 world. Outlook, London. 
 
 Dr Cunningham writes on these matters in a judicial 
 temper which is wholly commendable; and his conception 
 of the right attitude of organised Christianity to political 
 movements seems to us wise and true. The Times. 
 
 Dr Cunningham shows, we think, soundness of judgment, 
 and every desire for fairness in his examination of the causes 
 of failure in the various experiments he reviews. And he is 
 not less sound and convincing when he points out that we 
 cannot expect that humanitarian sentiment and the ap- 
 peal to rally round various class and national interests will 
 in themselves create a new earth. What, he thinks, we 
 have to trust to is the sense of personal and of national 
 duty. What the Christian man has to do is first to under- 
 stand the enormous range of personal influence; and then, 
 as he recognises the immense power of the State for repres- 
 sing evils, to regard such power as an instrument which 
 God has designed to be used by men with a strong sense 
 of duty. . . . Even those who consider that Dr Cunningham's 
 conclusion presents a too restricted view of the social obli- 
 gations of the Church may well feel very grateful to him 
 for his clear exhibition of what certainly does lie within the 
 possibilities and duties of all Christian men. 
 
 Saturday Westminster Gazette. 
 
 A remarkably detached and balanced appendix has been 
 added to the original lectures. The Nation. 
 
 Published by John Murray
 
 BRITISH CITIZENS AND THEIR 
 RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD 
 
 6d 
 
 An attempt to bring these ideals home to the individual 
 citizen in their practical application to his daily life. He 
 deals trenchantly with such points as our tendency to sub- 
 stitute humanitarianism for religion, and our intellectual 
 shallo wness . Challenge . 
 
 Published by the Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge
 
 Date Due 
 
 JUN 1 7 1969 
 
 : w t 
 
 j i\> i vj 
 
 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL 
 
 A 001 011 300 9