Wr&m DM EVHKw SSEga ■IKnoll KHflGuS ■USE TMfSxlSjmualL-BIDiSmBsm sssass BPIHHBg* 7VI w D -"-" yur. / 4 'HW \ o* J^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES POLITICAL LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF GEORGE, XI lira EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY hJLu o£ h °^ 4, t U^" y ' i POLITICAL Xetters anb Speeches OF GEORGE, XIIIth EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY WITH PORT R A IT LONDON RICHARD BENTLE Y AND SON publisher* . in (Dxbinafj) to 3ijcr 1896 #b tjestu [All rights reserved] ■ » > . > j ■ ■ > 1 . (4 OCT. 1920 ■ T36A2- - ■< i , *v\ TO THOSE RELATIONS, FRIENDS, AND NEIGHBOURS WHO REVERE AND LOVE HIS MEMORY, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY GERTRUDE, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. \ PREFACE. en a> O a CD The Speeches contained in this volume were chiefly addressed to political friends and neighbours in Wilt- shire during the course of the twenty years from 1875 to 1895. They are now collected for the first time, and to them are added some which were reprinted as separate Essays and various Letters addressed from time to time to the public Press on contemporaneous events. It was meant at first to revise them consider- ably, and to leave out what seemed to be of merely temporary interest, and some repetitions ; but, on con- sideration, it was found difficult to touch or curtail them without marring their freshness or losing their individual character, and without giving incomplete- ness to the trains of thought. Doubtless, if the author had ever contemplated the task himself of re-issuing these public utterances, it would have been possible to have given a more com- plete and perfect expression of his matured thoughts ; but, on the whole, it has seemed best to leave the collection as it stands, with the rough marks of the chisel upon the work. These expressions of opinion, however unprepared for 398148 viii PREFACE reproduction as they have been left, were both the occa- sion and the result of much earnest endeavour and of hard work, for Lord Pembroke gave deep thought to all subjects which he touched upon even lightly, and put his might into all that his hand found to do. He says himself, alluding to the very serious character of his Speeches addressed to general audiences, ' that, though he sometimes wished to make them more agreeable or amusing, when it came to the point, he found himself speaking gravely and seriously about politics, and going to the bottom of even - question he talked about, as well as he knew how to do so ; and he thought he was justified in so doing. It was for the voters to decide what policv should be carried out, and what statesmen should rule the country ; and how should they decide these questions rightly and wiselv if they, whose business it was to talk to them on politics, never attempted to give any real information about them ? Next to the highest duty of all, came a man's duty to his State, and it seemed a monstrous doctrine, that those in whose hands power lay, should never be expected to devote any study or serious attention to the political affairs of that great Empire which had been handed down to them, and whose destiny was in their hands. He thought that every man should say what he had to say as plainly as he could, but to make things simple and easy which were not really so, meant to tell a very small portion of the truth about them, and that he could not consent to do.' Even if some of the interest must necessarily have passed away, with regard to events, to those who knew Lord Pembroke and recognized his powers of PREFACE IX insight, his lofty aims, and his clearness of expression, it is trusted that these reprints will be of value. They will, however, seem only like dry bones to those who will recollect the spirit and earnestness, and the noble and radiant living presence, when thev were delivered. Some of the addresses were given under great and increasing difficulty, entailed by failing health. The first letter on the navy was written from his bed. He had been greatly moved by a letter from the Times correspondent at Toulon, which corroborated the judgment he had formed when studying the position of our own and foreign Navies in the Mediterranean, while in his yacht in 1893, and fearing that it might not attract popular notice, wished to emphasize the opinions contained in it. Some of the papers in the Miscellaneous Section are here given, for though technical, they are a testimony to the energy and exactness which he threw into details of work, and it seems of interest to show the different sides of a mind so much absorbed in a large and philosophical view of politics. I have been asked to help my sister to arrange this book for printing, and for convenience of reading have roughly grouped subjects together, irrespective of chronologv. We are indebted to Mr. D'Arcy Collyer for the explanatory footnotes on the passing events, the details of which may be in some measure forgotten. To these words must be added some of Lord Pem- broke's own, which in some measure describe the objects which he had in view, especially in setting himself to the serious work of informing the newly- made voters. He appealed to their reason and to their patriotism rather than to their impulses or to their x PREFACE private interests, and the way in which the fairness and reasonableness of his views were recognized, even by those who did not altogether share his views, has been a deep gratification to those belonging to him. ' We must look,' he said, ' for an improvement in the tone of public spirit upon the great subjects I have touched upon. With increased knowledge men do tend to take a wider and loftier view of their political duty*. It has been said that it is of no use to appeal to the patriotic spirit of the mass ; but patriotism and public spirit are not the property of any class. The British ploughboy goes to certain death for his country as heroically as the officer by his side. The difference, such as it is, in views and feelings about politics, is due to education and knowledge. How can you expect a man to feel the full grandeur of the empire to which he belongs, and to realize his deep political responsibilities towards it. when he has hardlv an idea of what it is ? But with education and increased knowledge come a profound sense of this many-sided greatness of his country, and pride in its glory, and a devoted interest in its destiny : and with these, a spirit of patriotism and public duty, without the existence of which, in those who exercise political power, no nation can hope to prosper long.' These reprints were in the first instance arranged for private circulation only, but as the book has been received with great interest and appreciation by those who have seen it, and the subjects of which it treats being mostly still of current interest, it has been thought well to give it a wider circulaton, by publishing this volume. C. H. M. L. CONTENTS. DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS. PAGE Our Naval Strength in the Mediterranean 3 Letter to the 'Times,' November 10, 1893. The Navy ... 8 Letter to the ' Times,' November 14, 1893. The Battle of Lissa - - - 12 Letter to the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' October i, 1893. The Battle of Beachy Head 12 Letter to the ' Times,' September 27, 1894. The 'Fleet in Being' - - 15 Letter to the ' Times,' October 16, 1894. Lord Pembroke on the Volunteer Force- 19 Speech, December 12, 1891. GENERAL POLITICS. Party Politics in 1879 - 29 Letter to the ' Times,' October 10, 1879. What is to Become of Moderate Liberals? 32 Letter to the * Pall Mall Gazette,' October 12, 1879. Conservative Meeting at Salisbury 35 Speech, 1882. xii CONTENTS l'AGE Conservative Meeting - - 40 Speech, April 30, 1885. On Party Politics - - 49 Speech at Dinton to the South Wilts Constitutional Association, 1887. Constitutional Dinner at Wilton - 59 Speech, February 17, 1888. Speech at Salisbury Conservative Working Men's Club, 1888 - - 74 Speech at Bishopstone - - - 84 December 20, 1888. Conservative Dinner at Wylye - - 96 Speech, February 22, 1889. The Septennial Act - - 109 Speech at Stapleforij, July 6, 1889. The Political Situation - - 114 Speech at Wilton, March 4, 1890. The Political Situation - -129 Speech at Wilton, March 7, 1891. Conservative Dinner at Wylye - 147 Speech, March 5, 1892. Conservative Meeting at Bishopstone - 152 Speech, March 12, 1892. SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. On Friendly Societies - - - 161 Speech, 1882. Provident Societies - - - - 164 Speech, Wilton, Junk, 1885. CONTENTS xiii PAGE Address to Members of the Liberty and Property Defence League - 169 Speech at Westminster Palace Hotel, Junk, 1885. Liberty and Socialism - - - -185 Article published by the Central Office of the Liberty and Property Defence League ; also in the ' National Review,' 1886. Extract from 'Jus.' — Examination Paper - - 228 Quoted in Full ; January, 1888. Letter to the Editor of ' Jus ' - 230 Other 'Lessons from the Book of Life' - - 234 Letter to the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' March 30, 1886. Liberty and Property Defence League - 239 Address at Freemasons' Tavern, London, July 12, 1888. Answer to an Article by the Rev. Canon Barnett 244 LAND QUESTIONS. Agricultural Distress Speech at Warminster, October ii, 1881. 2 55 Agriculture - . - - - - - 267 Speech at the Chamber of Agriculture, Salisbury, 1882. Farming with Borrowed Money - - 273 Letter to the ' Wiltshire County Mirror,' October 20, 1882. Land Tenure : the Old System and the New Pro- posals - - - - - " 2 77 Speech at Farmers' Club, Warminster, October 16, 1885. Moderate Liberalism - - 284 Address at Wilton, October, 1885. xiv CONTENTS PAGE Lord Pembroke on the Land Question - 290 Speech at Bishopstone, November 7, 1885. Peasant Proprietors ----- 296 Speech at Barford St. Martin, November 5, 1888. The Land System - 302 Speech at Dinton, November 13, 1885. Large Farms and Small Farms - - 311 Letter to the ' Salisbury and Winchester Journal,' November 18, 1885. Speech at Wilton on the Depopulation of Rural Districts - - - - 312 Reprinted in a Pamphlet, March i, 1892. Are Small Holdings desirable? Will the Act facilitate their acquirement? - - 334 Letter to the 'Salisbury Times,' October 6, 1892. Lord Pembroke on the Agricultural Depression 336 Address to Tenants at Wilton, January, 1893. Agricultural Depression and its Remedies - 341 December 30, 1892. Lord Pembroke, the ' Speaker,' and the Agricul- tural Question .... 349 Letter to the ' Times' in Answer to a Letter from Lord Chetwynd, January 9, 1893. The National Agricultural Union - 355 Letter to the 'Times,' January 19, 1893. The True Agricultural Union - - - 357 Letter to the 'Salisbury and Winchester Journal,' February 6, 1893. The Condition of Agriculture - - 358 Letter to the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' February i, 1895. CONTENTS xv THE HOUSE OF LORDS. PAGE Reform of the House of Lords - 363 February, 1885. Speech at Tisbury Constitutional Association - 383 March 23, 1888. Speech in the House of Lords - 394 April 26, 1888. MISCELLANEOUS. Not Proven - 4°9 Letter to the ' Times,' October 20, 1877. The Eastern Question — The Position of England in 1878 - - - 411 Letter to the 'Times,' February 18, 1878. Zulu War— Sir Bartle Frere's Policy - 416 Letters to the 'Times,' April 6 and April ii, 1879. Death of General Gordon - - - 4 2 ^ March 2, 1885. The Gordon Hall Proposal - 43 6 1885. Unveiling Memorial to Henry Fawcett at Salis- bury - - 44° June, 1887. Entertainments for the Working Classes at Salis- bury - - - 446 1888. Foresters' Dinner at Wilton - - - 448 October 20, 1888. Jubilee Memorial - - - 45 1 1888. xvi CONTENTS Speech at Salisbury on Bi-metallism - - 452 March 23, 1889. Foundation Stone laid by Lord Pembroke - 454 Pembroke Technical Fishery Schools, Ringsend, Ireland, June 21, 1892. A Fundamental Question - - 458 Letters to the ' Times,' November 28, December 2, and December 12, 1892. Ckipps v. Free Trade- - - - 463 *- SPEECHES AND LETTERS ON Political and Social Questions DEFENCE: NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS. Of ^ DEFENCE : NAVY AXD VOLUNTEERS. OUR NAVAL STREXGTH IN THE M EDIT ERR A NEAN* To the Editor of the ' Times.' JVt - -- 10, 1893. Sir, I see that some faint misgiving as to our strength Con-e^pon- in the Mediterranean {due almost entirely to the excel- Toulon, lent letter of your correspondent at Toulon) is at last * This letter, if judged only from the hostile criticisms it at first evoked, must at once have been felt to be significant, and from the happy occasion of its appearance it seems to mark an epoch in the emancipation of the national conscic d the matter of naval defence from the thraldom of ; apologists — a movement which has gained force until, according : the nplaint of one of the most typical of destruc: . Labouchere . there are no longer two the The visit of the Russian Squadron to Toulon in October of this year was re- markable, not only from the evidence of accord between Russia and France which it supplied, but from the incidental prominence into which it brought the naval resources of France within the ranean. Sir Samuel Baker, in a letter to the Times in cordial support of the view given in this letter, endorse:. - state- ment as to the importance of the Mediterranean question. A few days after, Lord Charles Beresford produced a memorandum embodying a definite scheme for supplementing the naval c_ :h included the : rarthe . :ar The London Chamber of Commerce next followed suit, and at an ;:::.::: meet ng on December \z. at the Cannon St eel Hotel, 4 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS finding utterance in the English Press. It is most important that the matter should not now be allowed to drop and be forgotten. Will you allow me, who have been recently cruising in the Mediterranean, to say that I am quite sure that the English public has no proper conception of the extent to which the balance of power has altered to the disadvantage of England since we last fought the French in that sea ? Strong posi- I n the first place, nearly the whole of the southern tion of the . French in the littoral of the western basin of the Mediterranean, nean! * ~ which used to belong to the neutral rulers of Algeria and Tunis, is now in the hands of the French. It con- tains many excellent harbours, several of which the French have spent large sums in improving. One glance at the map will show the importance of this change, which few people in England seem ever to have taken into account at all. And there is nothing to set off against it. The possession of the Egyptian ports, out of reach of any effective support, is, as I shall show, under present naval conditions a source of anxiety rather than strength. Port Mahon, in Minorca, which Nelson used to say set its seal to the practical character of the agitation. Lord George Hamilton (First Lord of the Admiralty in the previous Administra- tion) gave notice of a resolution calling for a considerable addition to the navy, and asking the Government for a statement of their intentions before the recess. Mr. Gladstone (December 19), treat- ing the motion as one of want of confidence, was able to defeat it ; but it was felt that the demand was only temporarily delayed, when Sir William Harcourt, after vouching the advice of the pro- fessional advisers of the Admiralty to the effect that the existing state of things was satisfactory, was obliged two days later to announce that that statement must be restricted in its application to ' the present moment in respect of first-class battleships com- pleted within the financial year.' THE NAVY 5 belonged to England whenever England wanted it, is now so strongly fortified that it will never again be entered by an English fleet except with the consent of Spain. We have given up Corfu. Cyprus, our one acquisition, is, in its present state, almost useless for naval purposes. The Bay of Gibraltar, owing to im- provements in modern artillery, is now commanded by the Spanish hills all round it, and in the event of Spain being hostile, as she has so often been in times when we have been at war with France, neither men-of-war nor storeships could lie there in safety unless a proper harbour should be built to protect them. But the naval disproportion between the English and Disproportion between the French forces in the Mediterranean is the most serious English and matter of all. Their ironclad fleet is about double the ^heMeS- strength of ours. And they have, further, at Toulon, as ranean. your correspondent pointed out, not only a fleet of torpedo-boats more numerous, I think, than that pos- sessed by the English navy altogether, but a consider- able reserve of ships of war that could speedily be equipped, manned, and sent to sea. We have, or had till lately, a reserve of one ship at Malta. I should like very much to see the secret instructions to the English Admiral in the Mediterranean as to what he is to do in the event of war breaking out with France, supposing such instructions to exist. I know pretty well what he would have to do. He would either (if it was felt that the importance of Egypt necessitated such a risk) anchor his ships under the guns of Alex- andria, and try to hold his ground there till he was reinforced, though how naval reinforcements could reach him it is not easy to see, and our fleet being ' in laager ' at Alexandria would not prevent the French 6 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS from seizing the mouth of the Suez Canal ; or else (as is much more probable) he would have to steam with all possible speed for Gibraltar, and supposing him to reach the shelter of its guns without being cut off by a French fleet of overwhelming superiority, he would have to remain there until reinforced, leaving the French free to land an army corps in Egypt, make prisoners of our few regiments there, unless they escaped by way of the Red Sea, and take possession of the Suez Canal. Current belief The fact that, as things are at this moment, we should bilityofthe ^ e a ^ once driven out of the Mediterranean, or locked British Navy a U p helpless in some corner of it, is really quite indis- putable, and it is high time that the country should realize it and all that it signifies. But you cannot get the average Englishman to believe it, because he has got such a complete general belief in the invincibility of the British Navy, and such a curious ignorance of the real facts of naval history. If he would study these, he would learn that we never, even at the time of our greatest naval superiority, attempted to fight French fleets with odds of two to one, or anything like it, in numbers of ships against us. Surely he might re- member that in 1796, when Spain joined France against us, even Jervis and Nelson had to evacuate the Mediter- ranean, giving up all our hardly- won footholds in Corsica and at Elba. It is of no use to say vaguely that the Mediterranean fleet would be reinforced in time of war. It would be a question of days, if not of weeks ; and how are re- inforcements to be improvised, and where are they to come from ? Is it likely that at such a moment ships could be spared from the fleets that were watching Cherbourg and Brest and guarding the Channel ? THE NAVY 7 It may be objected that we should not have to fight France single-handed, and that we should be sure of the alliance of the Italian fleet. But in the ever- shifting changes of European politics, how can we be certain of this ? How can we be sure that Italy will go to war with France in some quarrel in which she is not directly interested, and at the very moment that we do ? A single week might be enough to drive us out of the Mediterranean, perhaps with the loss of part of our fleet. It may be, though I should be very loath to accept such a conclusion, that we should give up all idea of holding our own in the Mediterranean, and maintaining our hold on Egypt and the Suez Canal route to India in the event of a war with France. It may be that France, with her vast resources at Toulon and Marseilles, and her control of the African littoral, is now too strong for us to hope to compete with her successfully single- handed in the Mediterranean, except at a cost that would not be worth our while, and that we had better give up the idea. Certainly the least that would be required to put us on anything like an equality would be the doubling of our Mediterranean fleet and the building of a proper harbour at Gibraltar and docks besides. But a policy fraught with such momentous con- sequences ought to be adopted consciously, deliberately, and after full consideration by the Government and the country. It ought not to be drifted into, because we are all too stupid, or too careless, or too much absorbed in domestic legislation, to look the fact in the face until it is forced upon us by circumstances that it is too late for us to attempt to control. What are the views of the Government upon this great question of national policy ? Does anyone know ? 8 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS Have they got any ? Is it impossible for the House of Commons, in the midst of the more thrilling interest of Parish Councils and Employers' Liability Bills, to ascertain ? I may be wrong, but I confess to a strong misgiving as to whether the illustrious statesman who now guides our destinies has ever given an hour's con- sideration to the subject. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE NAVY. To the Editor of the ' Times.' November 14, 1893. Sir, Your attribution to me of ' strategical eccen- tricities,' and some remarks in an article in the Saturday Review, which discovers nothing but ' excited rhetoric ' in what I fondly hoped was a temperate statement of certain facts, and some of their almost certain conse- quences, lead me to believe that my letter was open to some misconstruction, which I should like to set right. Perhaps it was unnecessary to deal with the hypothesis of a British Admiral in the Mediterranean trying to hold on to Egypt with an inferior fleet, as Napoleon and Brueys did in 1798 (a course of which I did not make myself the advocate) ; but I was anxious to cover before- hand the whole ground that might be taken by those who doubt whether we should be obliged, as things are, to evacuate the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the war. The Saturday Review says that any Admiral who did such a thing would be an incapable fool. Yet, after all, it is exactly what the French did in 1798, under Napoleon's directions, in very similar circumstances — THE NAVY 9 that is to say, when they were in occupation of Egypt and had the weaker fleet ; and Napoleon, even in ques- tions of naval strategy, was not exactly a fool. And if the disposition of the French ships in Aboukir Bay, by Admiral Brueys, had not bee.n so needlessly faulty and imperfect, and if the British Admiral had chanced not to be Nelson (but one of the second-class men, like Hotham or Hyde Parker, under whom he had some- times to serve), it seems quite possible that the plan might have proved sound. But the point I wish to insist upon and to bring home to the British public — and I feel sorry if I have said anything to distract attention from it — is that with the present balance of forces, our fleet (if it did not seek the shelter of forts) would undoubtedly be compelled, and probably at great risk, to evacuate the Mediterranean at the commencement of a war with France, and that this temporary evacuation, with our interests in Egypt, would be in itself a most serious disaster. Not a fact or an argument has been adduced by my critics. (Whether our fleet waited at Gibraltar for reinforce- ments, or whether it fell back upon the Channel, as supposed by the Saturday Review, and effected a junc- ture with our fleets that would be watching Cherbourg and Brest, does not matter a pin to my argument.) The Saturday Review says that I quote Jervis's evacua- tion of the Mediterranean in '96, ' and quote it wrong,' because I do not mention that it was caused by Mann's defection with seven ships. My point was simply that when the odds against them became too great, even Jervis and Nelson had to go, and that, under a similar disparity of force, our Mediterranean fleet will have to go too. io DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS The command Something in my letter, I cannot guess what, has ot the ^fn cannot exist in persuaded the same critic that I have lost sight of the one locality t b v j ous truth that the command of the Mediterranean and not in another. would be decided by the general course of a war.' Of course it would ; but the mischief that I deprecate would in the meanwhile be done. So, also, I am quite at one with you, sir, when you insist that the command of the sea cannot (except temporarily) ' exist in one locality and not in another,' that ' it is either absolute or does not exist,' and that, ' if it exists, it covers the Mediterranean.' It is on this point that I fancy you have misunderstood my letter. The policy of recog- nizing our inferiority to France in the Mediterranean, and basing our strategy upon that recognition, which I referred to as possible, but which I strongly deprecated, meant simply, that policy of temporarily evacuating the Mediterranean, and falling back on the Channel at the outbreak of a war, which people like the Saturday Reviewer seem to contemplate with such complacency. No doubt, if our fleet proved able in the course of the war to obtain complete command of the sea, it would at once regain the command of the Mediterranean. But what is at the root of the danger to which I am trying to call attention, is the very grave doubt, to say the least, whether our fleet in Europe, as a whole, is large enough to fulfil in time of war all the duties that would be necessary in the Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, in order to give us, in any real sense, the command of the sea from the beginning, before we had the opportunity of gaining it beyond dispute by naval victories. If sufficient reinforcements could be despatched to the Mediterranean at the outbreak of war to enable it to face the Toulon Fleet without unwisely THE NAVY 11 depleting our Channel Fleet, there is not much cause for alarm. It all turns upon this : It is part of my case that so long as the French squadrons in Brest and Cherbourg are undestroyed (and they would come out at their own convenience, not at ours), we, either unable or unwilling, should not dare detach from the fleet which would be guarding the Channel and watch- ing those ports any sufficient reinforcement to enable the Mediterranean Fleet to hold its own. Anyone who wishes to show that mv alarm is needless must show that I am wrong in this. I am not preparing to strengthen the Mediterranean at the cost of the Channel Fleet. What I venture to urge is, that our fleet requires to be increased as a whole to make it adequate to the duties that will be required of it in war ; and that when this has been done, a suffi- cient addition should be made to our Mediterranean Fleet to enable it to hold its ground there, without danger of destruction, and save us from the very serious consequences that would ensue from a temporary aban- donment of the Mediterranean at the commencement of a war. One would like to ask those who think this un- necessary (if it is worth while to say anything more) why, except for the purpose of teaching naval officers the geography of those seas, they think it worth while to keep a fleet in the Mediterranean at all. It is not required there in time of peace, and in time of war would be, in these days of steam, in imminent danger of being cut off and brought to action by a superior force. Why not keep it in the Channel, upon which it is to retreat from the begfinnincf ? Yours faithfully, Pembroke. 12 DEFENCE: NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS THE BATTLE OF LISSA. To the Editor of the ' Pall Mall Gazette.' October I, 1893. Sir, Apropos of your remarks on the Battle of Lissa, when, as you truly say, it was ' men, not ships, that conquered,' I do not think it is generally known in England that the blue-jackets of both fleets were Italians. So at least I was informed by an Austrian naval officer, when I was near the scene of the famous sea-fight some years ago. At the time of the Battle of Lissa, he told me, the Austrian Navy was manned almost entirely by Italians, among whom he included, I suppose, the Italian-speaking people on the north and east coast of the Adriatic. The fact only shows for the hundredth time the difference that is made by training, discipline, and good leading. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE BATTLE OF BE ACHY HEAD* To the Editor of the 'Times.' Bad-Nauheim, September 27, 1894. Sir, I read with much interest, and, except on one point, with cordial agreement, your reviewer's criticism on Lord Wolseley's views on the insufficiency of a * The Battle of Beachy Head had been only fought three days, when news of William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne was received, and the dread of a Jacobite rising relieved. Engaged in fighting the Coalition on the Continent, Louis XIV. probably could THE NAVY 13 purely naval defence, as expounded in his ' Life of Marl- borough.' But I think your reviewer goes much too far in his defence of Lord Torrington, who possesses the unique distinction of being the only British Admiral who was ever beaten by the French in a great fleet action, and in minimizing the danger of invasion to which we were exposed by the defeat at Beachy Head. The facts are really very simple. The French were at sea in the Channel with a fleet superior in numbers, and perhaps in equipment, to that of the English and the Dutch. Lord Torrington thought it unwise to risk an action under such circumstances, and probably from the naval point of view he was quite right. But Queen Mary and her advisers thought that an unmolested French fleet in command of the Channel would provoke a Jacobite rising, and possibly they were right too. So they ordered Torrington to attack it. Torrington acted as men so often act when they are commanded to do something that they think unwise. He did it half- heartedly and badly. Two courses were open to him. He might have fallen tooth and nail on the French, and so hammered them as to render them powerless for much mischief, even at the cost of the loss of a great part of his fleet. Or he might have fought one of those cautious defensive actions such as the French so often resorted to against us, taking good care not to get any portion of his fleet too seriously involved. He did neither. He allowed the Dutch ships and some of the English to become seriously engaged, and then failed not, or would not, detach a force sufficient to land in England, his object at the outset being rather to neutralize England by foment- ing the civil war than to prosecute an invasion. i 4 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS to support them with the rest of his fleet. The ships engaged were exposed to the onset of the greater part of the French fleet, with the inevitable result that some were taken and others driven ashore in the pursuit, while Lord Torrington fled to the Downs with the remainder of his fleet. It is hard to conceive of any circumstances under which such tactics could be right. Lord Torrington pleaded at the court-martial the superior numbers of the French. This might be a good excuse for not fighting at all, but surely not for expos- ing a portion of his inferior fleet to meet the superior numbers of the French. Your reviewer supports his case with the fact that the court-martial acquitted him. But the findings of im- portant naval courts-martial in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries are the puzzles of history. They seem usually to have depended much upon political or per- sonal interest. Looking only at the facts, the verdict of the public opinion of the time seems juster than that of the court-martial. The view that Lord Torrington, by saving the greater portion of his fleet by flight, in some way made an invasion impossible, always seems to me the most daring of sophisms. The French fleet was left in complete command of the Channel ; the Anglo-Dutch fleet, beaten and ren- dered still more unequal to the French by its losses at Beachy Head, was less than ever capable of taking the offensive. For some weeks, at least, there was nothing to prevent an invading force from landing on our shores. That no invasion was attempted, that no attempt was made even to sever the communications between Eng- land and Ireland (at that moment most important to THE NAVY '5 William's cause), that the French Admiral contented himself with ravaging Teignmouth and creating an undignified panic amongst the inhabitants of the South Coast, we owe solely to the ineptitude of Louis XIV. and his naval and military advisers. No one seems to have realized the greatness and rarity of the opportunity. How little Louis himself understood it is shown by the fact that, instead of trying to preserve the naval superiority that he had gained, he shortly proceeded to dismantle his fleet ; and that, not long after, when the French fleet was in a decided inferiority, he forced La Tourville to fight a suicidal and useless action at La Hogue, much as Napoleon provoked Villeneuve to commit a similar folly a century later at Trafalgar. It seems to me that those who believe that our only safety lies in an adequate naval defence have nothing to gain by minimizing the greatness of the danger to which we were exposed after our defeat at Beachy Head, an event that should be a lesson to us for all time never to let our naval force sink below that of our possible enemies. It only gives an opportunity to those who disbelieve in the adequacy of naval defence to score a dialectical victory. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE 'FLEET IN BEING: To the Editor of the 'Times.' Englischer Hof, Frankfurt-a.-M., October 16, 1894. Sir, Admiral Colomb, in his letter to the Times of October 15, says : ' Mr. Wilkinson confuses himself a little by quoting 1 6 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS what Torrington said after the battle. Torrington did not vary his thought before and after ; he varied his words, and has allowed Mr. Wilkinson to suppose that the "fleet in being" he was thinking of was the fleet he commanded after the battle, whereas he was alluding to the fleet he commanded before the battle. He does not say, as Mr. Wilkinson supposes, that the fleet he commanded after the battle was a " fleet in being." ' With all due deference, this statement is hardly re- concilable with Torrington's words as quoted by Admiral Colomb in the sixth chapter of his ' Naval Warfare.' Torrington says : ' It is true the French made no great advantage of their victory, though they put us to a great charge in keeping up the militia, but had I fought otherwise ' [I have referred in a former letter to the way he did fight] ' our fleet had been totally lost, and the kingdom had lain open to an invasion. What, then, would have become of us in the absence of his Majesty and most of the land forces ? As it was, most men were in fear that the French would invade ; but I was always of another opinion ; for I always said that whilst we had a " fleet in being " they would not dare to make an attempt.' Obviously this refers to the fleet after the battle as well as before, otherwise it would not be relevant to the first part of the passage. But even if Torrington him- self does not make the claim that his defeated ' fleet in being ' prevented the invasion, Admiral Colomb does it for him. For immediately after the above quotation he writes : ' So that, even though the beaten Allied fleet had come " to an anchor at the Nore in great confusion ' : . . . yet the strategy of the conditions was such as to THE NAVY 17 leave and keep the great French fleet powerless. ... A " fleet in being," even though it was discredited, inferior, and shut up behind unbuoyed sandbanks, was such a power in observation as to paralyze the action of an apparently victorious fleet either against sea or shore.' But where is the proof of this most startling state- ment ? None is given ; none, I believe, can be given. No one will blame Lord Torrington for making in his defence the most of the fact that no invasion in force was after all attempted, but there is nothing whatever to show that the existence of his beaten and inferior fleet in the Thames prevented it. It is difficult to resist the conviction that if the French Admiral had alleged such a cause for not carrying out an invasion he would have deserved to be broke for cowardice. What is there to show that the landing of a sufficient invading force, had one been prepared, in Torbay, would have been any more molested than the landing of a very insuffi- cient one actually was, still less that it could have been effectually prevented ? The presumption that because there was no invasion Torrington's fleet prevented it is really of the very smallest validity. The French fleet equally failed to deal with the English ships in the Irish Channel. Will it be urged that the fleet lying in the Thames prevented this also ? The reason the French did not attempt invasion was most probably that they had no sufficient force ready. But whatever the cause may have been, there is nothing whatever, so far as I am aware, to prove that it was Torrington's badly beaten and inferior fleet which had sought refuge behind the sandbanks of the Thames, and which certainly did not correspond with the definition of a ' fleet in being ' as laid down by Admiral Colomb in his 2 i8 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS letter of yesterday in being either ' in a position to strike or ready to strike at an invading flotilla.' Passing to the general question, I understand Admiral Colomb to maintain that an inferior ' fleet in being,' as above defined, is able to prevent an invasion in force, and that so much is this the case that no reasonable Admiral would ever attempt it. This may be true, but it is ' cutting it rather fine.' Everything depends on the exact degree of inferiority. If the proposition is a little exaggerated it amounts to saying that a superior fleet cannot defend a convoy against an inferior one, which would certainly be a new and startling doctrine, which, if accepted and acted on, would be likely to bring us severe trouble at the hands of some unreason- able foreign Admiral who declined to be afraid of an inferior fleet, or to believe that he could not cover a landing in spite of it. Admiral Colomb gives the Battle of Lissa as a leading instance of an inferior ' fleet in being ' upsetting the operations of a superior fleet. It might be argued, I think, that Admiral Tegetthoff's action was rather an instance of that daring and successful attack of a supe- rior by an inferior fleet that Torrington was so loath, perhaps rightly, to attempt, and which he carried out so badly. But looking at it from Admiral Colomb's point of view, I think most people will be less inclined to call Admiral Persano unreasonable for trying to carry out his schemes while the Austrian fleet was still in being than to blame him for not knowing how to beat an inferior fleet when he fell in with it. But surely a naval action, the issue of which was so particularly due to human capacity and incapacity, is a dangerous one to choose as an example of the result of any strategic theory. THE NAVY 19 I fully appreciate the value of the doctrine of the ' fleet in being ' to a nation always from its circum- stances liable to panic about invasion ; and we are all of us grateful to Admiral Colomb for his elucidation and insistence on it. But, in order that it may not lead us into a fools' paradise on the one hand, or become discredited on the other, it requires to be denned in such a way as to command general assent. Admiral Colomb has already told us that to be ' an absolute bar to hostile expeditions on a great scale, and requiring time for execution, the " fleet in being " must be ob- serving and ready to strike,' or, in other words, in touch with the enemy, a most difficult and dangerous position, be it remembered, for an inferior fleet to long maintain. As an instance of the difficult}' of an inferior fleet ' observing ' a superior one, the Austrians would never have appeared in the nick of time, as they did, if it had not been for the enterprise of an individual who got hold of the severed end of a telegraph-wire and gave them information of the movement of the Italian fleet. I venture to hold with Mr.. Wilkinson that at least one further qualification should be made — that, to be ' an absolute bar,' the ' fleet in being ' should be practically equal to the fleet that is to cover the invasion. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. LORD PEMBROKE ON THE VOLUNTEER FORCE. December 12, 1891. Colonel Lord Pembroke, in response, said the some- what onerous task had fallen to his lot of returning 20 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS thanks for the army, navy, and volunteers. He should not say much about the army. He had been trying hard for the last week or two to make out something definite about it. There had been any amount of letters respecting the army, in the papers ; and some of the writers stated that it was in an absolutely perfect con- dition, and others that it was altogether worthless. It had puzzled him entirely to make out which were right. He thought one point seemed clear — that the army was either the one thing or the other, and nothing between. If the old axiom was true, that in a multitude of counsellors there was wisdom — a maxim hardly in accord with modern experience — the army ought certainly to be in the way of being very wisely and well managed. With regard to the navy, he thought they could safely say that it was in a very flourishing condition, and that the uneasiness felt a few years ago, by naval officers and people who watched those things, had been to a great extent removed. The addition to the navy had been very considerable during the last few years, and it was altogether, he thought, in a most efficient state. He asked those present to let no one ever per- suade them that they had a ship too many, for he assured them it was not true. He received a letter the other day from a naval officer in the Mediterranean — a very able one indeed — in which he remarked that he had seen the French fleet, and in which he drew a capital comparison between that naval force and the English fleet. The English had ten battle ships in the Mediterranean, and one ship in reserve. The French had got eleven battle ships in the Mediter- ranean, and eleven more in reserve at Toulon, which THE VOLUNTEERS 21 they stated they could send to sea in forty-eight hours ; and as eleven ships could not fight twenty-two, if there were a sudden war with France, and the whole of the two fleets were brought into line, the English ships would have to bolt into the Atlantic, abandoning all the English commerce in the Mediterranean, and leaving the French to land whatever force they chose in Egypt to drive away our regiments there. He was not saying this was a wrong state of things. Probably we should send out reinforcements, or should have an alliance with Italy, which would give us the aid of the Italian fleet. He merely mentioned the state of things in the Mediter- ranean to show that our fleet was not too strong, and, indeed, was not strong enough to look after our interests all over the world. Referring to the volunteers, with whom he was more specially concerned than with the other services, Lord Pembroke said that, speaking for their own battalion, they had had a very satisfactory year, on the whole ; and speaking for the volunteer force generally, he thought it was in a flourishing and efficient condition. The conduct of their battalion in every way had been most exemplary in camp. There was one matter that he wanted to say a word or two about, and that was with regard to the attendance in camp. What he was going to say did not apply to their detachment, because their attendance was always very good ; but the attendance of some of the detachments was not so good, and that fact had caused him some anxiety as to the future. He was most anxious to impress upon volunteers, and upon employers who had volunteers in their employ, that the requirements of the Government with regard to the force were far more and greater now than they were a 22 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS Higher standard of efficiency required by the Govern- ment for the volunteers. few years ago. In old times, if a man put in an occa- sional appearance at the target, and did the minimum amount of drills necessary to make himself efficient, he was well satisfied, and everybody else was satisfied. But that time had gone by. Now the Government required that men should do their class-firing every year, and should attend a brigade camp, and practically look upon their drills at home as nothing more than a preparation for the regular camp, in which they learnt a great many of a soldier's duties that they could not possibly learn at home. The Government had done this, and he thought it was a very good thing that the Government should try to make the volunteers really soldiers, who would form an army which could under- take the home defence of the country, because if volunteers were not good for that, they were not good for anything, and might as well be disbanded at once ; but he could not disguise from himself, that it was to some extent a critical moment in the history of the volunteer force. The Government were making this demand upon the volunteers, and the question was, whether the force and the civilian public from which the force sprang were going to respond properly. It was all a question whether men would give up time and whether employers would spare them enough. It was to some extent, no doubt, a fact that there was not now the enthusiasm about the volunteers that existed some years ago. They could not expect enthusiasm of a very keen sort to last over a great number of years, and it was a weak point which always would be connected with the volunteer force that it must depend upon popular enthusiasm and upon popularity. The essence of volunteering was, that they did what they undertook THE VOLUNTEERS 23 to do of their own free will. Nobody could make volunteers do more than they wanted to do, or compel employers to allow them to attend camp. It all de- pended upon whether they were willing to do what was needed out of good and patriotic feeling. He had spoken at some length upon that question, because he wished his words to go forth to the public. He thought it was most important that that subject should be thoroughly understood. First of all, the Government or military authorities should be careful not to put too much strain on the volunteers out of undue zeal, and ask them to do more than they could do ; and another desirable thing was that the public should realize — which he was sure they did not — how thoroughly deserving of support the present volunteer force was. He saw amongst those who guided the opinion of the people in the press that there was some inclination to go wrong on that subject. He did not think it was thoroughly understood except by a few people in the army, or those who, like himself, had been for twenty years in the volunteers. For instance, the St. James's Gazette, very rightly and properly, had been writing a series of articles calling attention to some of the defects of the volunteer service. It was pointed out, that the numbers were slowly diminishing, that there was a good deal of difficulty in getting officers, and that they did not succeed in getting men of all classes in the ranks as they did in what were called the palmy days of the volunteer movement. That was all true, and it was right to point it out ; but when writers went on to ignore altogether the increase of efficiency that had taken place in the volunteers, and to talk as if the force was running down-hill in regard to efficiency, and was 24 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS Reason of difficulty in finding officers. inferior to what it used to be, he thought they lost the whole root of the matter because they ignored that increase of efficiency which was not only the true foun- dation of their hopes as volunteers, but also the cause of the very defects the writers pointed out. It was the increased tax upon men's time which the improved efficiency had brought about that had reduced the number of the volunteer force, and caused, to a great extent, the difficulty of getting officers. Anyone who, like himself, was always going about hunting for officers, knew what the invariable answer was, ' I shall not have time ;' or, if a man thought of leaving, ' I shall not have time to go on with it.' They must all know, too, dozens of volunteers who had given up the service simply because they could not meet the demands on their time, or because employers would not allow them to do so. But he was certain that the volunteer force at that moment was more efficient, more soldierly, than it ever was at any time in its history. He was also sure that if the writer of the articles in the Greater St. James's Gazette would only go round next summer to "fficiencv than some °f the brigade camps, he would see very plainly formerly. that, whatever else the volunteers were decaying in, it was not in military efficiency. One man, he recollected, wrote a most lugubrious letter to the St. James's Gazette, in which he talked of lots of volunteers who only put on uniform once a year, and battalions 700 or 800 strong that never turned out more than 300 on parade. He had known such things, certainly, but that was in the ' palmy days ' of the volunteer force. They would not find them now— at least, he did not know where such battalions were to be found. The truth was that an enormous amount of work THE VOLUNTEERS 25 was exacted from volunteers, with the consequence that the average volunteer of to-day was a better shot, a better drill, and a more knowledgeable soldier in every way than the average volunteer of five-and-twenty years ago. If that was true of the individual volunteer, as he was sure it was, it was much more true of the battalions, which year after year had gone on improving in organi- zation and discipline. That organization and discipline had crystallized and been added to, bit by bit, in one way and another, until at last even a provincial volunteer battalion like their own was, he did not hesitate to say, a far superior fighting body to the crack battalions of five-and-twenty years ago. If they could make the public really realize that, he thought they should have no difficulty in persuading them to give the volunteers the support they wanted. It was not money support, let him remind them, that he was asking for at all, but the support of men who were ready to make small sacrifices — if in the force, to go into camp and do their work, or, in the case of an employer, that he should make a small sacrifice in order to let his man attend to his volunteer duties. If the British public realized how good those battalions were, he thought it would not hesi- tate to do so, but he believed the public did not know it. The Government at last had taken up the volun- teers seriously, and turned them into a good home army. If they could only get the public to take up the matter seriously, too, they would have got what they wanted, because, surely, if the public were ready years ago to make sacrifices in order to have a volunteer force of men who were really little better than men with muskets, they ought not to be less willing to make sacrifices for efficient battalions now, who, so far as they 26 DEFENCE : NAVY AND VOLUNTEERS themselves and their equipment went, were perfectly ready to march wherever wanted at twenty-four hours' notice. He did think that the claims of the volunteer force on every private citizen in England were ex- tremely strong, and that every man ought to make some sacrifice to support them. The volunteer In the first place, the force saved them from conscrip- force renders conscription tion. Some people said Englishmen would never have unnecessary. conscr iption, but it was undeniable that by the existence of the volunteer force, every English citizen was saved the enormous expense of having a large home army of regular soldiers to keep up. He thought on those grounds they ought to appeal to their friends who did not join them, to give them every facility and help. He believed the force to be more efficient than it ever was before, and hoped to see it by some means made more soldierly still. GENERAL POLITICS. GENERAL POLITICS. PARTY POLITICS IN 1879.* To the Editor of the 'Times.' October 10, 1879. Sir, I do not think that at the present moment Sir William Vernon Harcourt's contemptuous attack upon moderate or independent politicians should be allowed to pass without a protest. Party organization is grow- ing rapidly, and threatens to modify the whole spirit of our political life, and its growth is inevitable. But it is not inevitable, and it is extremely undesirable, that our leading politicians should add to its danger by extra- * Lord Beaconsfield's last Administration was now drawing to a close. The Treaty of Berlin was still of recent date. The Zulu War was just over, and, still later, Cabul had been occupied by General Roberts (after the murder of the British Resident). Sir William Harcourt, rallying the forces of the Opposition, had spoken at Southport (October 2) and Liverpool (October 6). The levity of his first speech (seeming to foreshadow a reversal of all foreign policy) attracted notice abroad. Perhaps meant to cover this in- discretion, the second speech was congested with broad and humorous generalities of party invective, and abuse of ' armchair politicians.' Such phrases as • We are party men first and last on all questions ' demanded such comment as the two following letters supply. 30 GENERAL POLITICS vagant laudations of the party spirit it tends to engender, and sneering misrepresentations of all who are fair- minded, honest, and courageous enough to withstand its influence. Sir William Harcourt's sneers at men whose alle- giance to party is only half-hearted are founded on a total misrepresentation of the nature of politics. He seems to assume the existence of some unnamed political principles so definite, that anyone must be stupid to doubt the extent of his belief in them, and so true, that the simplest mind has only to accept and apply them to be always in the right, or to neglect them and be always in the wrong. Are there any such principles ? Is there any prin- ciple, Liberal or Conservative, which does not lead to disaster and absurdity, if consistently carried out un- qualified by an opposing and contradictory principle ? I never heard of one. The sacred principle of liberty has to be qualified by the principle of order, and order kept in check by the principle of liberty. Extreme patriotism leads to national injustice; extreme want of it, not to mention smaller evils, tends to keep a virtuous Liberal Government out of place. And so on, not to multiply instances, through the whole catalogue of party principles. It seems that in politics, as in so much else in nature, wisdom and success are to be found only in a balance between opposing and contradictory forces. If this is true — and all history declares it a truism — it is evident that no principle or principles can supply us with a short-cut to political infallibility ; that almost every political institution or measure has genuine con- siderations both for and against it ; that these considera- tions will occasionally be very evenly balanced ; that it PARTY POLITICS IN 1879 31 is every man's duty to weigh them against each other as fairly as he can ; and that the intellectual justifica- tion of the moderate or non-party man is complete. Such a theory is no condemnation whatever of a National party allegiance. Education, temperament, the attractions of logic, or a hundred slight mental accidents, incline the majority of mankind to one party or the other. They acknowledge the reality of the con- siderations on both sides, they recognise the necessity for fair judgments between them, but they habitually estimate certain considerations as being of greater value than the opposing ones, and this in practice makes them fairly steady supporters of the Liberal or the Con- servative cause. But it does emphatically condemn those, who can or will only see one set of considerations and regard them with superstitious worship. Such men do great harm to the political body in many ways, and would do more were not their influence partly annulled by their doubles in the opposite party. That distinguished politicians should habitually praise them for ' being in earnest ' and ' knowing their own minds ' is deeply to be regretted. There is a vague idea current, that though impartiality Impartiality . anc > lndepen- and independence in politics may be defensible in dence in theory, they are of no use in practice. A more shallow delusion never entered the human brain. They are factors essential to the health of any democratic com- munity. They are the conscience of the country, that rewards or punishes its public men, and their extinction means the debasing of political morality and the substi- tution in the long-run of violence for argument. What is to become, I wonder, of 'government by discussion,' of ' the voice of the people,' of the whole spirit and 32 GENERAL POLITICS virtue of representative government, if there is no one to convince or persuade — if the whole country is to be divided into two parties both impervious to argument, and both bent on subordinating everything to the object of returning their representatives to power ? If ever there was a time in our history when inde- pendent men, Liberal Conservatives and Conservative Liberals, should make their existence felt — if ever there was a time when responsible statesmen should en- courage their existence — it is now. Not merely because that huge parasite, party organization, is threatening to choke the political honesty out of every voter, but because the mischievous effects of disbelief in their existence have already begun to show themselves. The party in power have already behaved once or twice as if they felt that there was no support to win or retain but that of their thoroughgoing partisans ; the Opposi- tion think so little of their importance, that a prominent member actually goes out of his way to insult them with a silly misrepresentation. Yours, etc., P. M. WHAT IS TO BECOME OF MODERATE LIBERALS? To the Editor of the ' Pall Mall Gazette.' October 12, 1879. Sir, You have lately called attention, in a series of able articles, to the total disregard shown by the Liberal leaders to the opinions on foreign politics of the moderate section of their party. I wish to point out MODERATE LIBERALS 33 that this contemptuous neglect is not confined to foreign politics alone ; and that the moderate Liberal politician, once so common and so peculiar a product of English political life, seems to be following in the footsteps of the dodo. By the term moderate Liberals I mean those who, loving rational freedom, and having a sincere desire for the improvement of their kind, have, either by instinct or observation, arrived at the profound truth that the best means of retaining the one and attaining the other, lies in judicious compromises between conflicting principles — compromises shifting continually with the political and social progress of the nation. The chief outward signs of such a faith are a cheerful readiness for practical reforms and a serene indifference to ' the thin ends of wedges ' that to men of Conservative or Radical principles seems simply fatuous. The steady growth of party organization and the no less steady transformation of the Liberal into a Radical Party, have left them out in the cold. There is no true place for them in either of the two highly disciplined armies into which the whole political strength of the country is now divided. They cannot join the Radical host, for they are quite out of sympathy with its superstitious worship of certain principles and its blindness to others — not to mention its pugnacity and malice. Their love of sensible reform and improvement forbids them to join the Conservatives. They might do so if the mass of the party were of the same stamp as most of its leaders ; but, unfortunately, the tail is composed of the stupid, the indolent, and the men who hold the same distorted views of political principles as their Radical 3 34 GENERAL POLITICS opponents, and are as hard to move as the latter are to hold. The consequence is, that a Conservative Govern- ment can only preserve its majority by doing very little. If it introduces a serious measure of reform, the tail is pretty sure to insist on its being emasculated. At the first difficulty the timid, the stupid, and the ' principle ' men are in revolt ; our old friend ' the thin end of the wedge ' is dragged from the armoury, and there is a general murmur of ' Why can't you let it alone ?' For all the causes that have led to their extinction as an element in the Liberal Party, they are certainly not to blame. It is not only very difficult to be enthusiastic about the principle of moderation and compromise — it is very difficult to preach it at all in a form which will be both understood and accepted. It is true that Englishmen used to boast of their wise moderation and sneer at the French for not possessing it ; but it seems very clear now that logical deficiency had more to do with this than any intelligent mastery over the problem. In point of fact, there is no truth harder to believe in — no truth more difficult to impress on men who have not had it brought home to them by observation and re- flection. That of two principles, apparently flatly opposed to each other, neither should be absolutely right and neither absolutely wrong, is not the sort of thing that a rational mind feels it has a right to expect. But in the main they have themselves to thank for their present position. In order to retain power by keeping the Liberal Party united, they truckled con- tinually to the Radicals, adopting their cries whenever it was possible, and disguising the gulf that really existed between them by habitual reservations. They made use for party purposes of rant and cant which MODERATE LIBERALS 35 they knew they did not believe in, and they are re- warded now by the Radicals becoming their masters, and contemptuously offering them the choice of conver- sion or death. If they had chosen a different course, if they had boldly and distinctly avowed their real creed and had done their best on all- occasions to persuade the country of its truth, they would not improbably have been at this moment the most powerful party in the nation. The rest of the Liberal Party could hardly have afforded to break with them. If it had done so, they would have formed a partially independent centre party of incalculable value to the State, at a time when party politics threaten to swallow up national ones altogether. As things are, they seem to be condemned to silent abstention or a discontented and half-hearted service in the Conservative ranks. I am, sir, Your obedient servant, P. M. CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT SALISBURY* 1882. Lord Pembroke said : I so seldom get an opportunity of addressing any of my Salisbury friends, that I hope you will forgive me if I touch for a moment upon one * The bye-election at Salisbury in i8Sj, resulting in the gain of a seat to the Conservatives, seemed to point to a reaction against the halting policy of the Government in office, which had led this year to the imprisonment and release from Kilmainham of Mr. Parnell and the resignation of Mr. Forster, the Chief Secretary for Ireland. 36 GENERAL POLITICS Want of strength and character of the Govern- ment of 1882. Ireland. reason, and one only, why I think that Conservative meetings of this kind, which may be said to be hostile to the present Government, are a duty, and why I think that we ought all of us to do all we can to turn out the present Government and replace them by a better set of men. It has struck me, and I think it must have struck many of you too, that though the present Government have been men of very great power, of very great experience, they have shown in their government of the country, during the time that they have been in office, a very considerable want of what vou may call character. They have shown a behaviour which is unlike what a country like England has a right to expect of men who assume the position of Ministers. There has been too great a dread of re- sponsibility, there has been too great a dread of un- popularity, and I think we see this inability to conceive the true standard of conduct that every Englishman ought to have, in the very excuse they make for their behaviour. I ask you for one moment to look at the case of Ireland. When the)' came into power everyone who was acquainted with the state of Ireland told them again and again, that the only chance they had of pre- serving peaceable rule in that country was by showing an attitude of the greatest possible firmness. They neglected all such advice ; they were in such fear of incurring unpopularity by hasty action, that they hesi- tated to do anything, and they were months after months without doing anything at all, until the agita- tion got to be what you know it is, and we were led into the consequences we have been looking at for several years. CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT SALISBURY 37 And what excuse do they make for this ? Well, the only excuse they make for it is, that if they had hurried and acted sooner they would probably have made some mistake. I ask you whether a more con- temptible excuse could be put forward. What would you think of a General who marched and counter- marched and hesitated, and allowed his enemy to take up a superior position and give him a good licking, and then turned round to the country and said, ' I am very sorry, but if I had taken action sooner I might have made a mistake'? I think the country would tell him that indecision of that sort was the worst mistake one could make, and I think and hope they will say the same thing of the Government of this country. It has been exactly the same story in the Trans- The Trans- vaal. Again they have met with unpleasant duties and great difficulties, and they have shirked them and run away from the difficulties, with the usual con- sequences, and we are just beginning to find out what those consequences are. What was their excuse ? It was that those difficulties had been left them by the preceding Government. No doubt it was true, and I tell you this, that if the preceding Government had never taken the Transvaal at all, if they had allowed the Zulus to overrun the Transvaal, they would equally have left the present Government some difficulties to meet. I hope the time is very far distant when one English Government does not leave to another some difficulties to face, because you may be certain that when that time comes the British Government will be at an end. Here I think we touch upon one of the great o 8 GENERAL POLITICS causes why they have shown such miserable weak- ness and vacillation. I believe that this Government, taking them as a whole, are a Government who do not believe in the necessity of the British Empire. I believe that they are more or less permeated with those ideas of which Mr. Bright is the well-known mouth- piece, that all our foreign possessions and Colonial Empire are nothing in the world more than a lot of very troublesome responsibilities, that are always turn- ing up at inconvenient moments, to get in the way of Radical beneficial measures the Government want to introduce. That, I believe, is the view they have. I am not, I think, what is called a 'Jingo.' I dislike unjust wars and improper aggression as much as anybody can pos- sibly do, but I repudiate most emphatically the view I have just spoken of, with regard to our foreign posses- sions ; and I repudiate it not only because I think that the calculations which are made about the profits and losses of those possessions are thoroughly inaccurate, but I repudiate it also because I think that such a view of the English Empire leaves out of sight what is far the more important side of the question, and that is the effect that foreign possessions have upon the national character. Foreign pos- I think that nations and men are very much alike, much more alike than people often suppose, and we all of us know what a very bad thing it is for a man to be always thinking about himself and his own affairs, and to have nothing to take him out of them. We know it would make a man morbid, and inclined to be quarrelsome, and everything else unpleasant. I think that it is exactly the same with sessions. CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT SALISBURY 39 nations, and that the only thing that keeps nations from civil war is the feeling that their external interests depend upon them. It is a good thing for every man in the country, rich or poor, to feel that there are some interests which all have in common, and interests which occasionally force them to turn their minds from all our internal troubles, difficulties, jealousies, and squabbles. It is because I believe the Government does not thoroughly appreciate the truth of what I have just said, that I think thev are a Government which we ought not to tolerate one moment longer than we can help. We never know at any moment that some opportunity may not arise for sins of omission or com- mission — but most likely the former — which will give the Government an opportunity of getting rid of some of those troublesome responsibilities they are always so anxious to run away from. I am not sure that those opportunities may not be said to have come already. They took a step two years ago in the Transvaal which I say, without hesitation, was the rashest step they ever took — they turned their back upon a victorious enemy and deserted allies. Lately we have had news that Lord Ripon has commenced a series of measures, which bear to my mind only this one impression — that it is a preparation for relinquishing the Indian Empire. That may come some day, but I think that we ought not to put it into people's heads that it must come at once. It is because I think the Government have such a wrong idea about the English people and the English Empire that I think the people should not keep them in power. 4 o GENERAL POLITICS CONSERVATIVE MEETING* April 30, 1885. The Earl of Pembroke, who presided, said they were met that night with a triple object. In the first place they were met to hear his friend, Mr. Gibson, t who had been kind enough to come down to speak to them. Secondly, they were met to institute a Conservative Association ; and thirdly, to express their opinion upon the policy of the present Government. Mr. Gibson, he was sure, needed no introduction from him. They all knew the work Mr. Gibson had done for the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. The party ought to be very grateful to the right hon. gentleman, for he was one of the first of their leaders to recognize the fact that the good old times when a statesman only had to regard his duties in Parliament and in his constituency had gone by, and that if he wished his party to succeed he must help in forming public opinion in the provinces. Mr. Gibson had worked in that way as hard as, if not harder than, any of the Conservative leaders. His name was a house- hold word in the North of England, and he hoped that after that night it would not soon be forgotten in South Wilts. * The extension of the franchise to rural householders at the end of 1884 had protected the 'too late' Government against the necessity for an appeal to its electors on its conduct of matters in the Transvaal, at Khartoum, and elsewhere. The immediate pro- blem for politicians was, therefore, that of extending political educa- tion to the new voters. t Afterwards Lord Ashbourne. CONSERVATIVE MEETING 41 Having taken some part in forming the Wilton Con- ™"^V m e a e ns stitutional Association, he thought he ought to say a of informing . . c . the electorate, few words about the objects that association was tormed to carry out, and the reasons for instituting it at the present moment. One of the things they wished to do was to circulate a good moderate newspaper in the division. He did not know how it was, but it certainly was the case that the Conservative press was a long way behind the Liberal press in the provinces. Nearly every labouring man's paper was a Radical paper, so that the working classes took in Radical opinions almost without knowing it. There were a great many people who believed everything was true that they saw in print, and therefore it was very desirable that such people should read a Conservative paper. Another object would be to get lecturers and speakers to attend meetings in the small towns and large villages of the division and instruct the people in politics. Everyone who understood the facts would feel that this was not merely desirable, but necessary. With these millions of new voters, one of the greatest of all necessities was a course of political instruction. Ol course the association would look for a good deal of instruction from the lecturers sent from headquarters, but they would not depend entirely on them. They hoped to find a good many local speakers. Another object was to look after the registration and to see that all Conservatives were put upon the register, and that Liberals who ought not to be there were not there. This was a thing about which it was not easy to feel very enthusiastic, but which was very important to their cause. The last, and to his mind the most important, 42 GENERAL POLITICS object — the object which had led him to devote what energy he possessed to instituting the asso- ciation — was to form some sort of machinery by which Conservatives of all classes in the division could learn each other's ideas. This was absolutely neces- sary. All the labourers present that evening were ad- mitted to the franchise, but he imagined they did not know what people in the upper strata of society thought and felt about political affairs, and he was sure the upper classes did not know what the labourers thought and felt with regard to politics. If both the upper and the lower classes were to pull together at elections, some machinery of the sort he had indicated was necessary. The working classes wanted to know what the upper classes thought about the questions of the day, and the upper classes wanted to know what the opinions and wishes of the working classes were. This was brought strongly home to him the other day, when he read in a local paper a sort of manifesto that had been put out by a gentleman named Saunders. There was a good deal in that manifesto he did not understand, and a good deal more he did not approve of. One thing in it was very significant. Mr. Saunders said a landlord in Wilts had told him that one reason why they would not let their land out in small lots was because they were afraid it would raise the rate of wages. He thought it was very significant that a man should put out a statement of that kind and think he would find anybody fool enough to believe it. That made him think how necessary it was that the Conser- vatives of the district should establish some sort of organzation by which they could communicate their CONSERVATIVE MEETING 43 ideas to the labourers. He ventured to think thu labourers would find those ideas far more sympathetic, and far less selfish than the)- were represented to be by Mr. Saunders. It was no less necessary that the leaders of the party should find out what the labourers thought of political affairs. He was anxious they should not misunderstand him about this. He was not what was called a Tory Socialist. He did not believe in stealing as many measures as possible out of the Radical programme, and putting them in the Con- servative bill of fare with the devout hope that they would not do as much harm as those who put them there believed they would do. In his opinion that would be neither wise nor necessary. It was not wise, because the Radicals would always be sure to outbid them, and the Radical working man would see through the hypocrisy, and say, ' We will vote for men who really believe in Radical measures and will carry them out, and not for men who simply advocate them for the sake of putting their party into power,' and he did not believe there was any necessity for it. He denied that Conservatism was a class creed. Conservatism not 3. fluss There was nothing in their creed so repugnant to the creed, working man that it required to be wrapped up for him in Socialism, just as the nurse disguises the powder for the child by putting it in jam. What was the creed of Conservatism ? It was this, that the grandeur and greatness of this country had not been brought about without cause, but were due to the institutions and laws and habits of its people, and that those institutions and laws and habits were worthy, not of a superstitious worship, but of a careful and reverent handling. How 44 GENERAL POLITICS could this be a class creed ? It was a creed that ap- pealed as much to the tradesman and the working man as to the peer. It was the scientific and common-sense view of politics and history, and it appealed to every man, peer or peasant, who had a sober brain and a warm heart for his country in his bosom. Reforms But there must be changes, there must be reforms. necessary. . . . I hey who took the scientific view of politics and history were not likely to forget that one of the strongest characteristics of Englishmen had been the readiness with which they instituted reforms, combated abuses, and adapted themselves to the progress of the age. And though he denied that there was any gulf Importance of between the political opinions of the classes, there could thorough understanding be no doubt that men whose circumstances in life were eachdasT* ° different, looked at political matters from different points of view, and consequently saw them in different lights. Therefore, he thought it was most important that there should be some organization, by which the local leaders could find out what Conservative working men thought on the questions of the day — on the land laws, for instance ; on the licensing laws, on county government, and on a hundred other subjects he need not mention. This association seemed to be admirably framed for that purpose. In the first place, there would be the local association such as they were starting that night, in which he hoped everybody who had anything to say would make his voice heard. These associations would send a number of representatives to the polling district committees, and the latter would send representatives to the central council, so that it would be impossible for the association not to know what the opinions of the voters reallv were. CONSERVATIVE MEETING 45 One reason more why Conservatives should be up and doing. We were now on the eve of a General Election — an election which, to his mind, for good or for evil, would be of crucial importance ; would be, in fact, a turning-point in the history of the country. At the next election a most momentous question would have to be decided. The voters would have to decide whether the men appointed to ad- minister the affairs of the country were to be governed by the country, or whether the country was to be governed by the Ministers ; whether the Government were to lead public opinion, or whether they were to be led by it. He knew that his Liberal friends — if they would allow him to call them so — would say that this was all nonsense, and that every Government in a free country was led by popular opinion ; but he hoped those he was now addressing would not take any such A Ministry generalization as that for an answer. All Governments ^^j]" 1 in free countries must, of course, regard public opinion, led by public opinion ; it but no Ministry that he knew of had ever attempted to should lead govern by public opinion to such an extent as the pre- entirely 1 }^ 6 ' sent one. Such policy as they had, they had dropped popular ■ . opinion it and resumed again with every change in the popular can have no voice. Anyone could tell what they would do to-day, ^policy/" but none could tell what they would do to-morrow. The only principle that one could detect in their policy was a steady determination always to be behind public opinion instead of before it, never to take action till public opinion has pronounced action indispensable, and by that means to escape the responsibility. Now, there were two fatal objections to such a system of government. In the first place, its policy could have 46 GENERAL POLITICS Terrible con- sequences of the uncer- tainty of policy of the Ministry. no consistency. Public opinion varied from day to day, not only because men changed their minds, but because events favoured first one opinion and then another, and gave the exponents of each alternately the louder voice ; and there could be nothing more disastrous for a country than a vacillating policy. Such a country could have no allies, because no one could trust a nation whose intentions changed with the moon ; and it must have many enemies, not only because its feebleness provoked aggression, but because no one could tell how far it was safe to provoke it. We had read the truth of all this in Egypt and the Soudan in letters of blood. But this uncertainty, bad as it was, was not the only evil of such a system of government. A Government that waited to be guided by public opinion must be always too late. Public opinion could not be sufficiently in- structed or quickly enough roused to take difficulties in time. By the time public opinion had decided that action was necessary the moment for profitable action had gone by. He wanted to tell them that the British Empire could not be conducted on such a principle, if only for that reason. All over its vast extent the germs of difficulties were constantly arising, and they required to be nipped in the bud. It was the business of the Government to forestall them in time. If Governments were to wait and let them grow until the public was interested in them and decided what to do with them, he could foresee nothing but the greatest disasters for the country. This lesson again was written for us in letters of blood through the history of the last four or five years. He believed there was hardly a difficulty CONSERVATIVE MEETING 47 that the Government had got into, whether in Ireland, Egypt, South Africa, or Central Asia, that might not have been forestalled if they had only acted in time. It was the tardiness, no less than the uncertainty, that sprang from the system of governing by popular opinion that had been the cause of all the blunders that had led to such a deplorable waste of blood, and, in spite of the gallantry of our troops, had lowered our prestige until every Power in Europe thought it could flout us as it pleased. There were people, he knew, who could not bear the sound of the word ' pres- tige,' but it was nonsense to talk about dispensing with prestige in political affairs. No doubt it was a dangerous thing to think too much about. If a nation thought only of its own prestige, and failed in consideration for that of other countries, it was likely to plunge into wicked and causeless wars. But prestige in politics The import- was like credit in commerce, and like character in indi- prestige, vidual life. It enabled us to hold our own without fighting ; it protected us against aggressions and diffi- culties that would infallibly arise in its absence. It was the loss of prestige, consequent on our foolish and incapable policy, that had induced half the Powers of Europe to snub us in turn, and had tempted Russia to venture on an aggression the most outrageous, the most audacious, that was ever perpetrated by one civilized Power on another in time of peace. The next election would decide whether this system was to go on. He hoped and trusted that the people of England would condemn it with no uncertain voice, and order that it should cease ; that they would insist that whoever their Ministers might be they should be leaders of men instead of followers of the public voice ; 48 GENERAL POLITICS that they should keep watch and ward over the Empire with vigilance and foresight, and that in pursuit of the policy they believed to be for the interests of the nation they should have courage to face not only their country's enemies, but also the temporary dis- approval of sections of their countrymen. That those who were Conservatives would do their best to secure such a verdict he had no doubt ; but it was not only to them, but to Liberals, that patriots must appeal. He declared that if he was a Liberal — not a malcontent Whig, but an orthodox Liberal — he would abstain from the poll or vote for a Conservative and return a Con- servative Government to power for a time rather than risk such a dire misfortune as that the country should set the seal of its approval upon so fatal a principle of administration, upon a policy so fraught with disaster to the country. He had heard with some regret that his Liberal friends in that division intended to fight it at the next election. He could not say that he envied them their task. He could not imagine anything more depressing or humiliating — if he might use the word — than to have to fight a contested election in defence of the policy of the present Government. But that was their business, not his. He could not, however, refrain from appealing to them to pause before it was too late, and reflect on the responsibility they were incurring in attempting to set the seal of national approval on the disastrous methods of policy with which the Govern- ment had identified themselves. There were times when the claims of party allegiance must give way to a higher duty. He firmly believed that the present time was one of them, and that it was the duty of every ON PARTY POLITICS 49 patriotic Englishman, whether he called himself a Tory, a Liberal, or a Radical, to work with all his might to ensure the national condemnation of principles that could only bring disaster and humiliation and ridicule upon his country. ON PARTY POLITICS.* (Speech at Dixton to the South Wilts Constitutional Associatiox.) 18S7. The Earl of Pembroke said : In returning thanks for this toast, I do not propose to say as much as I usually do upon the political situation, because there is very little to say. All the work of Parliament has up to now been hung up by the difficulty of passing the first rule in the reform of procedure — that rule by which the Government hope to be able to control the flood of talk. Their attempt has been sedulously obstructed by the Irishmen and Gladstonian Liberals, and con- sequently nothing very much has been done in the political world lately. Almost the only event I have to speak to you about is the resignation of Sir Michael Hicks -Beach, an * Parliament had met early this year to discuss the proposed amendments of the procedure in the House of Commons, made urgent by the calculated obstruction of the Irish Party during several years, threatening to wreck the Parliamentary machine. The initiation of these innovations, which are still in progress, and of which the ultimate results cannot be at present foreseen, occupied a large part of the session. The appeal of the Radicals to the newly-enfranchised to give their vote to that party which had given them the franchise had been largely successful in the rural districts when repeated in 18S6. 4 5o GENERAL POLITICS upright and capable statesman, whose temporary loss — for I hope it is only a temporary loss— everybody in the Conservative Party deeply deplores. He has been replaced by a great friend of mine — Mr. Arthur Balfour, a very bold and singularly clear-headed man ; and I feel great confidence that, as Irish Secretary, he will prove to be the right man in the right place. There is only one other event that I can call to mind at this moment, which is that Mr. Gladstone has made a new invention, and that is to make public speeches at private dinners. I cannot say I think it is a good one. Looking at all the opportunities there are for making speeches in our time, I think it is not in the least bit called for. I have said that current politics are at this moment in a state of suspension. Most of you know pretty well what the political situation is at the present time, and therefore I should like to take this opportunity to talk to you rather about those more general and deeper reasons why men should join one party or another. I should like to give you some general reasons why I think we all — and more especially the working man — ought to enlist in the ranks of the Con- servative Party in the present year. Now, I sometimes think that Conservative speakers talk too much about the mere politics of the day, and not about those general and deeper ideas upon which man's political beliefs are really founded. They do not go deep enough, and they do not go far enough back. It is of very little use to prove to a man that Mr. Gladstone has made a mess of his Irish policy, or that Lord Salisbury is right about something else, if you do not touch the ideas and feel- ings that really make him a Radical. ON PARTY POLITICS 51 I remember a story which I heard about a year ago that amused me very much at the time. A gentleman was delivering a lecture on Gordon ; but hardly had he begun, when a man got up amongst the audience, and said, ' I don't want to hear nothing about Gordon — I'm yaller ' ; and with that he turned and walked out of the room. The first idea that strikes one about that is that it was very absurd, and a disgusting exhibition of political narrow-mindedness ; but I think there was more in it than that. No doubt the man thought that it was very unlikely the lecturer would say anything at all that bore upon the convictions that made him a Radical, and that to hear how shamefully Gordon had been treated by a Radical Government would only irritate him for nothing. That was the reason why he went out of the room. Now, I think there are many in this division like that man ; at any rate, I know there were many such at the last election. They did not care whether Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone were right about this or that ; it was no use to talk to them about politics — they were 'yaller,' or, rather, 'red,' for that is the Liberal colour here. Until you can show and prove to such men that perhaps they may be wrong in being ' yaller ' or ' red,' as the case may be, it is very little use to try to discuss with them the merely superficial questions of practical politics, and that is why I want to say a few words to you to-night upon the more general reasons why I think we ought to be Conservatives at the present time. In the first place, I wish to point out to you that there is no reason whatever why any working man should regard the Conservative Party with the smallest 52 GENERAL POLITICS dislike or distrust. But I wish to say that, on this subject, a great change has taken place of late times. For the last fifty years, ever since the year 1832, the question of the extension of the franchise and the ex- tension of popular government has always been in the air. I do not want to say anything disputable ; but I think, on the whole, that it is fair to say that through- out that time the Liberal Partv were in favour of ex- tending the franchise, and the Conservative Party, on the whole, rather distrusted it, so that, very naturally indeed, a great many working men came to look upon the Conservative Party as being chiefly the party of the upper classes, while they looked upon the Liberal tive Party is a Partv as being the party of the labourers and the people. party which \yh a t I want to impress upon vou, what I want vou to represents the . people as take in, is that that state of things has entirely passed much as does . . , , , , the Radical away. It may be said to have come to an end when Party. t ^ e Conservative Party passed their Reform Bill in 1867. At anv rate, the question of the franchise is practicallv settled now, popular government has been established upon the widest possible footing, and the political power is now in the hands of the masses. What I want to particularly impress upon you, and upon other working men, is the fact that it is impos- sible now for the Conservative Part}- to be the party of the classes as against the people, for this reason : They depend entirely for support upon the people, just as much as the Liberal Party do. The Conservative Partv can never be in a majority in the country unless it has the support of the working classes, and therefore there is not the slightest danger it will ever be the partv of the classes. So that in this — unless the Socialists are right, and the whole of our social system ON PARTY POLITICS oo is to be destroyed and replaced by a brand-new one which has never been tried in the world before — there is no reason whatever why there should not be the most full and most complete sympathy between the Conservative Party and the working classes. Thousands of working men have already recognized this, and more especially in the great cities and towns. They have made the Conservative cause their own, and have supported it with enthusiasm. Many ot the poorest districts of London and of Liverpool — especially working-men districts — return Conservative members ; but in other places, more especially in the out-of-the-way country districts, the old tradition lingers on to a great extent, and there are many people who still believe that the Conservative Party is the party of the squire and the parson, and that the Liberal Party is the party of the labourers. I want you to show these people what I have tried to show you to-night — that this, if it ever was true, is not true now. I have told you that the Conservative Party can never be the party of the classes, and I think that one of the strongest claims that the modern Conservative Party has upon us is that it necessarily tends to draw all classes together, whereas the tendency of the modern Radical Partv is to set them all by the ears. I im- plore you not to make light of this evil. I know some people think very little of it ; they think that a certain amount of class antagonism is a very good thing, because it prevents stagnation and promotes reform ; but I believe it is a most deadly enemy to all reform. I believe it makes the reforming classes mischievous and destructive in their proposals, and that it makes the Conservative class obstructive and timid. 54 GENERAL POLITICS I have some American friend?, and they are often very much puzzled to make out how it is that w\. English people are so tardy and so incapable of settling our political difficulties — such, for instance, as our diffi- culties in Ireland, and the reform of the House of Lords. They say they would do it very quickly, and perhaps they would. I know the reason why we cannot do it. Class jealousy It is class jealousv, with which the Americans are not an enemy to 1111 1 • • -i i r T • reform. ' yet troubled, that makes it impossible tor us. It is class jealousy that makes it impossible for us to put down disorder in Ireland as it ought to be put down. It is class jealousy that forbids a just and thorough reform of the Irish land system. It is the fear of the class jealousies that would be aroused if the question were mooted that prevents a rational reform such as I would like to see in the House of Lords. Now, there is another thing: I would warn you, in thinking about Liberalism and Conservatism, to be careful not to be deceived by names. Look to the facts : look to what people reallv say and really do. You cannot trust to the old traditions about parti 1 5, because in many most important points the} - have changed places. The Liberal Party. I may say. has carried this love of change so far as to change most of its own principles. I sometimes think that the very spirit and tone of the two parties have changed about. Change of be- When I first began to take an interest in political Tories and life, it was the Radicals who were all for hard reason Radicals. . m j soun j principle in legislation, and it was the Tories who were accused of being timid, stupid, and senti- mental. Now it is all the other way. It is the Tories who stand up for sound reason, and it is the Radicals who are ready to put reason and principle aside at the ON PARTY POLITICS 55 bidding of every sentimental cry. It used to be the Tories who were supposed to have rather a superstitious belief in the privileges and rights of kings and aristo- cracies, but now that has all come to an end. It is the Radicals who have a superstitious belief in the divine right of the majority, and who believe that there is some sort of mysterious law by which the majority is always right. Somebody has wittily called this the doctrine of ' the infallibility of the odd man ' — a super- stition which I may say is only kept within decent bounds by the striking fact, which they cannot explain away, that those wicked Tories sometimes obtain a majority. But it is not merely the spirit and tone ; it is the principles themselves that have changed. I remem- ber that with the Liberals of the old school, it used to be one of their strongest articles of faith that the two great causes of the great prosperity of Eng- land lay in the lightness of our taxation and the per- Taxation. sonal and commercial liberty of the people. They used to say that it was that which gave us our great advantage over the foreigner. But now those whole- some old beliefs seemed to have been entirely dropped by the modern Radical Part}-. As for liberty of person, the}' are always making proposals to interfere with our liberty by Acts of Parliament, to prevent us from doing this, to compel us to do that, to protect us against something else, until sometimes I begin to fancy we might become like the wicked baronet in the play of ' Ruddigore, 1 which I saw the other night, who was never allowed to pass a day without committing some crime. As for taxation, with the exception of the expendi- 56 GENERAL POLITICS Radical pro- gramme penalize riches. Taxation a check upon enterprise. Example of class jealousy in Greece. ture upon the defences of the country, the tendency of the modern Radical Party is continually towards constant increase in rates and taxes. Our superi- ority in lightness of taxation over the foreigner, of which I have spoken, is fast disappearing, and that in itself is a very serious evil in this country. But it is their attitude towards the commercial enterprise in connection with this question of taxation that I look upon as the most grave and serious thing of all. I do not know whether you have seen them ; but the other day I read some articles that were published with a great flourish of trumpets, called ' The Radical Programme.' The Radical programme is, in short, to make war upon the rich, to penalize riches by means of progressive taxation, and thus to discourage men or companies from trying to become very rich or to make large fortunes. The Radical programme regards those people as robbers and enemies rather than benefactors to the general public. This is not the place nor the time for discussing great questions on political economy ; but I wish to state one fact, which is this : That the man who, in order to make his own fortune, invests his money in a fleet of steamships, or in a large factory, puts more money into the pockets of the working class, and more bread and meat into their mouths, than if he gave away all he possessed in charity, and went to the workhouse. If this is so, is it not madness to try, by means of taxation, to check people from enterprise by which they can become rich ? I have seen a country where such principles obtain. In Greece everybody is so jealous of everyone who is the least bit better off than himself that every company or individual who ON PARTY POLITICS 57 has ever tried to develop works on a large scale has been persecuted and robbed, by Act of Parliament or otherwise, until he has been ruined or obliged to give it up in despair. The natural consequence is that the country is poor, that the people remain poor, there is no enterprise in the country, and hardly a decent road from one end to the other. In Greece the only result of this is that the Greeks remain poor ; but what would be the result of adopting such principles in a country like England ? We have in England an enormous and still increas- ing population, which subsists entirely upon commer- cial enterprise ; their daily bread depends upon that spirit of enterprise which induces men who have got money to try and make more in a hundred different ways. If you did anything that would seriously check that spirit, thousands of people — of English working men — would at once begin to starve. It is really mad- ness to talk about doing such a thing. You who read the newspapers know very well there is not a year that passes now in which there are not constant complaints of want of employment, and I ask you if it would not be madness to adopt any line of policy which must inevitably diminish employment still more ? This is so serious a matter that any working man would be per- fectly justified on this ground alone in refusing to give any support to the Radical Party until the members of that party have utterly repudiated this mischievous nonsense. I have mentioned that one direction in which the Radicals seem to be inclined to diminish taxation is by cutting down the expenditure upon the defences of the country. I think the tendency of the Radical 53 GENERAL POLITICS Party in this direction is most utterly and fatally wrong. In the first place, you must remember we are greatly dependent upon foreign countries for our The navy. supplies of food. If our navy was not strong enough in a war to protect our food supplies, we should be starved into submission within six months. And another thing is that our navy must be strong enough to protect our colonies. This is a matter of great importance to working men, because experience has proved that trade follows the flag — that is, that men will always trade by preference with their own countrymen. There is this natural tendency that trade nearly always follows the flag, and that tendency is increased by the fact that foreign countries nearly always try to keep out our merchandise by hostile tariffs, and therefore it is of vital importance to the trade of this country that our fleet should be strong enough to prevent our colonies falling into their hands. The Radicals say, in answer to this, that if our Government only adopts a sufficiently pacific policy of non-intervention, we never get into war with any foreign Power. But this is a most ignorant delu- sion. England has interests all over the world, and however pacific our Government may be, there is never a year passes without our having some dispute with some great Power which might possibly end in war, and which if it were thought that we w r ere too weak to protect our interests certainly would end in war. Here is another point, then, of tremendous im- portance on which my opinion is that the Radical Party is so wrong that in that alone the working men would be right in refusing to support a Radical candidate. I have tried to give you some weighty and general ON PARTY POLITICS 59 reasons why you should support the Conservative Party and not the Radical Party. I have reminded you that parties have, to a great extent, exchanged characters, and it is now the Conservative Party that most relies upon broad facts and sober arguments. I have tried to show you that upon several great questions of the first importance to the English working men — such as lightness of taxation, personal and commercial freedom, and on such questions as the defence of our country — the views of the Conservative Party are much sounder than those of their Radical opponents. I have pointed out to you as well that the Conservative Party is not, and— with the extended franchise — cannot be, in any sense the party of the upper class against the people, and therefore there is not the slightest reason why any working man should regard it with the slightest distrust. I want you— if you agree with me — to press these points upon your fellow working men in the division, so that when the next election comes the name of South Wilts may be added to those working-class constituencies which have found out upon second thoughts that the Conservative Party is the right one to support. CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON* February 17, 1888. The Chairman said that of course they had already heard from Lord Balfour that the session had begun with a wonderful calm — a calm so extraordinary that * The session which began so calmly on February 9, 1888, con- tinued until August 13, and an autumn session was resumed in November. The Government's Irish policy was twice challenged, first by Mr. Parnell, on the Address, and afterwards by Mr. J. Morley, who divided in a minority of ninety-three. The clear 60 GENERAL POLITICS he must say he thought there was more in it than met the eye. The debate in the House of Lords had collapsed so entirely that the Lord-Lieutenant, who had come over from Ireland to make a speech, had had to go back with all his facts and figures still inside him, for which he was doubtless most sincerely to be pitied, as everyone who had ever been at pains to get up a speech knew very well. Mr. Gladstone had roared as gently as any sucking dove, and he (the Chairman) was not exaggerating when he said the House of Commons was simply lost in amazement at the tone the ex-Prime Minister had adopted. It was the more remarkable, because a few days before Mr. Gladstone had made a vigorous and most impassioned speech at Folkestone in quite another tone. That speech at Folkestone had been very short, but it had contained more very astonish- ing statements than one usually found in speeches of the same length. Mr. Gladstone had stated that the Italians were very enthusiastic on the subject of Home Rule. Well, considering that not very many years had passed since the Italians had put down Home Rule all over their country with blood and iron, he must say it astonished him very much to read what Mr. Gladstone had said, and he could only account for it by supposing that the Italians had one sort of rule for themselves, and another sort for other people. Comparison He reallv thought Mr. Gladstone, who knew nearly between Italy . . and England everything, might have known that the Italians at that nomeT^ule t0 momen t were holding down Sicily quite as much by statement of the case for Free Trade in the following speech seems to have been evoked by the resolution in favour of Protection passed by the National Union of Conservative Associations at their annual congress at Oxford. CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 61 force as England was holding down Ireland ; that the Sicilians hated the Northern Italians as bitterly as any section of the Irish hated the English, and to make the parallel more curious the Italians had been carrying on for years a war and struggle against a secret society in Sicily, which was called the Mafia, with not much more success, perhaps not so much, as had attended our own struggle against the National League. They knew that in that speech Mr. Gladstone had talked about the state of Ireland in most extraordinarily strong language, as if it were a most serious state of things, as if England was almost alone among nations holding down another. He (the speaker) wished to say that this was a most absurd idea, and Mr. Gladstone must suppose the English were the most ignorant people on the face of the earth if he thought they were going to believe that the sort of Government which was being carried on in Ireland now had the smallest resemblance to the auto- cratic and oppressive government which had existed in other countries in other times, which existed in some countries now, and which he grieved to say had existed in other days in Ireland. Our government of Ireland was nothing like the way in which Russia had held down Poland, or Austria the Venetian provinces. There was almost nothing a man could not do in Ireland at the present day. They might advocate Home Rule as much as they Liberty of r • i-i speech in liked on the platform, by means of meetings and in the Ireland. press ; they might abuse Mr. Balfour and the Govern- ment in any conceivable terms ; there was no political action for which they would be interfered with in the slightest degree by Mr. Balfour or his myrmidons, and there was only one thing they must not do, and 62 GENERAL POLITICS that was, incite the people to break the law. But the Gladstonians said that was the pith of the whole question, because the Irish land system was so bad, and the laws so hard, that it was monstrous the Government should think of enforcing them, that the Irish tenants were quite right in resisting them, and that Irish orators were also right in inciting them to do so. Present posi- This was a most monstrous theory, and he hoped lion of Irish . " r tenants. those present that evening would allow him to tell them the real position of the Irish tenant, so that they would be able to see the absurdity of these statements. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone passed his Land x\ct, which gave the tenant fixity of tenure, a Land Court to fix a fair rent, and the right to sell his tenure to whomsoever he liked. It also gave him extraordinary facilities for buying his holding if he wished. As soon as the Act was passed it was represented to Parliament and the Government that a great many tenants were unable to take advantage of it because they were in arrears with their rent, and in 1882 a compulsory Arrears Act was passed which enabled every tenant who was at all solvent to force his landlord to compound with him for his arrears. Again, in 1885, when the Conservative Party were in office, Lord Ashbourne passed another Act still further facilitating the purchase by the tenant of his holding. About this time a great fall in prices took place, affecting England as well as Ireland, and it was again represented to Parliament that the judicial rents had become too severe, and last year the Con- servative Government passed another Land Act for Ireland, in which they empowered the Land Com- missioners to reduce the judicial rents according to the fall that had taken place in prices of produce, and also CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 63 empowered County Court judges to stay proceedings in cases of evictions, to allow a man to remain in his holding, and to decide what instalments of his arrears he should pay. The Government also admitted the leaseholders of Ireland to the privileges of the Act of 1881. When the Irish tenant was protected and helped, and put in a position more favourable than any other tenant in Europe, was it not monstrous for Gladstonian orators to say that it was wicked and wrong for the Government to enforce the few remaining rights of the landlord ? In his opinion it was the most monstrous thing that was ever attempted to be palmed off upon intelligent people, and the delusion was only kept up by maintaining con- stant disturbances in some of the poorest districts in Ireland. He wanted to say a few words about the Queen's Speech, but he was not going into the merits of the measures proposed in it that evening. He was very glad to see that those measures belonged to the category of useful rather than sensational legislation. He thought it was rather the fault of our system of party government that purely useful legislation was apt to go to the wall. It was nearly as easy and much more tempting to pass a great measure that appealed to some popular idea — like the extension of the franchise, or the abolition of the Church — than to pass some modest measure which aimed at the reform and improvement of some existing law or institution. But there was the Local Government Bill, which he supposed he must except from this category. It was introduced rather as a concession to the demo- cratic spirit of the times than as a matter of urgent 64 GENERAL POLITICS practical necessity. It was not supposed that our present system of local government was inefficient ; on the contrary, it was quite free from any suspicion of corruption, and was extremely economical ; but what was felt was that it was desirable very much to increase the powers and functions of the local authorities, and it was felt it would not be possible to do that unless those authorities were made more representative than they were now. He did not complain of that view at all. It seemed to him very reasonable, but what would not be reasonable would be that after the country had made up its mind that a Bill should be passed if, when they came face to face with the difficulties, the country turned round and said, ' Why could you not let it alone?' He was rather afraid of something of that kind happening, and he appealed to them all as Con- servatives, now that they had made up their minds that the Bill should be carried out, to give their Government a staunch and patient support in dealing with the great difficulties of the question. There had been nothing in the Queen's Speech about Protection or Fair Trade, and he did not believe there ever would be. For his own part, he had never been able to thoroughly understand the theory of Pro- tection ; he had never been able to understand how they could make the country richer by the total or par- tial exclusion of foreign goods. He wished the Fair Traders would put forward clearly what their theory of Protection was upon that point, that it might receive the proper criticism from people who were experts in political economy. He always felt the Fair Traders rather avoided fundamental propositions of that kind, and that they addressed themselves rather to secondary CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 65 arguments and theories, which, from the vastness and extreme complexity of the subject, and the extreme difficulty of arriving at perfect accuracy about all the facts connected with it, were very difficult to follow and refute satisfactorily. His belief was that although they might have cer- impossibility tain alterations in the tariff — it was not infallible — returning 1 to a return to Protection was not so much undesirable Protectlon - as perfectly impossible. He knew he would be met with the old argument, ' If it is possible for a foreign country, why not for us ?' Well, he would just ex- plain why. They would note that some of the chief arguments why foreign countries clung to Pro- tection were not economical arguments at all, but political ; it was not because the people thought pro- tective duties would make their country richer, but because they thought those duties gave them political and social advantages, that they made their country more self-sufficing, and created or preserved a greater variety of interest and occupation. They noticed this particularly in new countries. If they were to talk to an acute Australian from Victoria on the subject, and were to tell him that his country would be much richer if the whole of it were devoted to the production of wool, and that wool exchanged for cheap manufactured goods freely admitted into his country from Europe, his answer would probably be, ' Very likely you may be right, but I don't desire my country to be employed in nothing but a great wool business ; I want it to become more of a nation, and to have all sorts of trades in it ; and as the high rate of wages makes it impossible for us to compete with cheap goods imported from Europe, I am content to put up 5 66 GENERAL POLITICS with Protection, believing that it will be better for my country in the long-run.' Now, the case was much stronger when they came to countries like France and Germany. They simply could not allow themselves for a moment to become dependent upon any foreign country for the neces- saries of life. It might be as much as their national existence w r as worth, and it was necessary for them that they should be self-sufficing. So strong was this argument that it had always filled him with astonishment and wonder how it was such able and intelligent men as Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright should have ever imagined that these countries would go in for unlimited Free Trade, and he could only account for it by supposing that they believed the era of univer- sal peace was about to set in. These arguments about self-sufficing nations did not apply to England at all : they became out-of-date the moment we adopted Free Trade. If they studied the history of this great question during the last half of the eighteenth century, and until the time when Free Trade came into force, they would find it was something like this — there was a continual growth of population, which kept pressing against the limits of subsistence, and at all these recurring periods of distress there had been passionate outcries in the country against the laws which made food dear and also diminished the supply. The struggle was pro- tracted, because the people felt that those arguments which he had alluded to in the cases of France and Germany then applied to us. They had felt that very strongly, and they did not like the idea of England being dependent upon foreign countries for its food. CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 67 He believed that idea had had much more to do with the resistance to Free Trade than those selfish and class interests to which the opposition to their proposals had been attributed by Cobden and Bright. The nation had tried every sort of thing — sliding scales and enclosure of waste lands — to increase the national food-supply and obviate the necessity|for Free Trade, but at last the time came when the Corn Laws were swept away, and from that time the arguments which made foreign countries cling to Protection ceased to apply to this country, and became futile. The whole character of the country was speedily transformed. The flood- gates of trade and population were opened, and from a self-sufficing country England grew rapidly into a coun- try with a population which it could not possibly sup- port, and a country which produced all kinds of manu- factured goods which it exchanged for food sent from abroad. He need not point out to them how necessary it was that such a country should have cheap food and clothes and raw material, and avoid everything that could possibly handicap them in their competition with the foreigner. The country having changed in that degree, he wanted to point out that they could not now go back to the old state of things, any more than a man of thirty could put on the clothes he had worn when he was ten years old; and when people^said, 'Is it likely that England is wiser than all these other countries which have a protective tariff ?' the answer was, 'The arguments which weigh with those other countries, and make them cling to Protection, do not apply to us now, for the day is gone by for them.' He did not believe that Protection would ever 68 GENERAL POLITICS I be resorted to again by this country, but he knew that a great many members of the Conservative Party disagreed with him, and therefore he should like to say a word upon the argument that was com- monly addressed by the Fair Traders to the agricul- tural labourer. A great many speakers went about the country talking Protection to the labourers, and they said, ' If you had Protection on corn it would be cul- tivated more profitably in England, and consequently there would be more employment, and you would get better wages.' That was a very plausible statement, but he advised that it should be taken with a grain of salt, and that these orators should not be trusted blindly, because if they looked back upon the times when Pro- tection was rife in the country, they would see that the wages of the agricultural labourers were then very low. The reason was because, owing to the resources of the country not being developed, the general rate of wages was very low. There was constantly-recurring distress Protection and lack of employment. The rate of agricultural does not raise rr .. , . . - . . . wages. wages was anected by the general rate of wages which existed in the country, and if he was right in that con- tention, it followed that if they went back to Protection, and supposing that, as he believed would be the case, Protection caused enormous distress in the towns, the effect would be, not to increase agricultural wages at all, but to lower the wages all through the labour market, and so, in spite of increased employment, the agricul- tural labourer would find himself with wages going down and prices going up. He was sure none of those present wished to see that. He confessed he should have had much more sym- pathy with the rider which the Conservative caucus CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 69 at their meeting at Oxford had added to their reso- lution on the subject of free imports if it had been to the effect that it was desirable to put a stop to the stream of pauper immigration that was flowing into London and other towns. That was a subject he felt very strongly about, and several years ago he had pointed out. in the press — the Pall Mall Gazette — what an important subject this was, and how very serious were its effects upon the labourer in this country. It seemed to him that it was quite useless to preach to the English working man about thrift and providence, and to tell him he should be careful how he brought children into the world without being certain how they could be supported — it was useless talking to him like that if all the time there was to be a constant stream of the foreign element coming into the country, swamping his employment and lowering his rate of wages. There- fore he hoped the Government would find some way of dealing with that question, and he would only say this : other countries did not allow it. America did not permit paupers to be landed on her shores, and if America did not he did not see why we should. But if we were to succeed in excluding these people, we should not succeed in altogether excluding the deleterious effect of pauper labour abroad. Some very serious revelations had come out about the sweating system, and they had read about men and women who were working from six o'clock in the morning until twelve at night for wages that would buy them bread and water. It was terrible to think of. Then the sweaters told their story, and he thought they had shown that it was not true that they were making great profits out of these people, but that they could 7o GENERAL POLITICS Starvation wages. Population outstripping subsistence the cause of pauperism. Fallacy of sup posing that the rich man absorbs wealth. not afford to pay more money, because if they did they could not compete with labour at starvation prices on the Continent. If he was tempted to go in for Protec- tion at all, it would be to help these poor people, but he doubted very much whether it would be wise to do so. He hoped to see a day come when all civilized men would refuse to offer or take a wage that an average man and woman could not work upon in health, and he made bold to believe that nobody would be the poorer for such a course. He was extremely sceptical about the economy effected by starvation wages, for he believed what was saved in one way was lost by the crime and sickness and pauperism and political discontent which always ac- companied it. But he feared such a blessed state of things would never come about until the civilized world had done more than they had done yet to master that great question of the relation of population to the means of subsistence. So long as we had too many hands for the work, and too many mouths for the bread there was to eat, so long would there be an irresistible temptation to men to offer starvation wages, and so long would there be people to accept them. They must never forget that this tendency of population to outstrip the means of subsistence was the fundamental cause of pauperism. Some people did not like to be told this, because it discounted the value of their pet reforms ; nevertheless, it was true. The Socialists said, ' You have no right to talk about over -population until you have tried equalization of wealth.' The fallacy at the bottom of this idea was that they seemed to imagine that the man who had £20,000 a year ate it all. But he did CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 71 nothing of the kind. The man who had that income, let him be ever so greedy and wasteful, could not spend more than a few hundreds upon himself, his horses, and his other animals ; the greater part of his income went to support other people. Let the rich man be ever so selfish, he could not help this being so ; and if the Socialists were to divide up the wealth of the country to-morrow, they would find there would be very little left for more mouths, and such a process would have a terribly bad effect upon the production of wealth. People said it could not be over -population that caused poverty, because we heard the same thing years ago, when the population was much smaller. But that was no argument at all. The truth was simply this : the population was pressing against the means of subsistence then as it pressed against the existing means of subsistence now. The means of subsistence were elastic, and could expand, although not at an unlimited pace, or more than to a certain extent, while the powers of increasing population were infinite, and only checked by the limits of subsistence — in other words, by poverty and starvation. Let them look at the case of England to-day. There was a great complaint of want of work in the countr}-, and they read of it in every newspaper they took up. Yet, if they went to statistics, they would find that the amount of employment in England was greater now than it had ever been in the country before. There was more money paid in wages now than ever before. But the truth of the matter was that, although employment had increased rapidly, the population had increased faster still. It was increasing Increase of at the rate of 1,000 per day ; every day there were ?2 GENERAL POLITICS 1,000 fresh mouths to feed. He knew that was a most unusual sort of speech to make on such an occasion, but he made no apology for talking to them about the question of population and its relation to the means of subsistence in that way, because the question of poverty was the great political problem of the day. All our legislation, all our measures, were attempts to alleviate it. In his opinion, most of them were only palliatives ; some of them were unsound and mischievous ; and others, which were sound and useful so far as they went, were wholly inadequate to deal properly with the great evil. It was the English habit to concentrate our atten- tion entirely upon those practical reforms that lay within our reach. It was a good habit so long as it did not make us exaggerate their importance too much, and forget that there was a great problem beyond. They could no more cure the great curse of poverty by altering the tenure of land or the incidence of taxation, than they could overcome a great flood with a house- maid's mop and pail. They must do what was practicable, but they must never lose sight or forget the fact that mankind must master this great problem of how subsistence was to be kept ahead of population unless they were content to be left face to face with poverty for ever. Problem of Sometimes one felt almost inclined to despair of sXiste^ 6 the problem ever being mastered, for the great move- be in advance m ents of humanity, as one saw them in the history of the popu- lation. of the world, seemed too vast to be controlled by any combination of human intellect and will. It seemed as though we were unconscious atoms in the grasp of great natural laws, and that we had as little CONSTITUTIONAL DINNER AT WILTON 73 influence upon them as upon the succession of the seasons or the course of the stars. But he would never willingly give way to a feeling like that. Man was a self-conscious animal, and would not accept with- out question, as the beasts did, the fate that was allotted to him. He was always asking the why and wherefore of everything. His efforts were ceaseless to improve the position and prospects of his race. All those political measures which we talked about, however inadequate they might be, were directed to this end, and when they looked at the wonders which the genius and persistency and powers of combination of mankind had effected in the past, was it unreasonable for them to hope that at last this great problem of poverty might, after all, be surmounted, and that man might find himself, to a degree that now seemed like a dream, master of his own destinies, with all the worst extremes of poverty and want lying conquered beneath his feet ? As he had said before, however, these were dreams, and what they had to do with in the main was practical reality, and the most practical reality they had before them at that moment was to return a Conservative member at the next election. He would therefore take that opportunity of appeal- ing to them not to relax in their efforts to spread the cause of Conservatism throughout that division during the next year, so that when the election came they might have the pride and happiness of finding their division represented by some type of that progressive Conservatism which, he was glad to say, was so common now, and which, while it had a true reverence for what was good in the past, also had a ready eye for improvement in the future. 74 GENERAL POLITICS SPEECH AT SALISBURY CONSERVATIVE WORKING MEN'S CLUB* 1888. The Earl of Pembroke said he felt much honoured in returning thanks for the House of Lords to them that evening. He was one of those peers who, with the most sincere admiration and respect for the House of Lords, for that very reason would be very glad to see it reformed and strengthened, provided it was done in the right way. He would like to see the land-owning element — which was a very good element for the House to contain — not done away with, but modified in its quantity. He would like also to see in the same way the hereditary element — which he thought ought to be there — also modified in quantity. In fact, he would like to see — and he did not despair of seeing it yet — the House of Lords become what it was in the beginning, and what it was intended to be all through — viz., an assembly of all the notable men in the country. He sincerely hoped in the next few years they would see that reform taken up by Con- servative statesmen ; but if there was to be a reform in * The periodical reassertion of the claims of Ireland to Home Rule, and the occasional accession to the Home Rule Party of some who had stood aloof from it in 1S86, rendered necessary the reiteration of the case of the Government. The following speech aptly summarises the position of the Government in 1888. The organized attempt to ' rush ' Trafalgar Square during the winter, for which Messrs. Conybeare and Burns, M.P.'s, had been con- victed and imprisoned, was a temporary aggravation of difficulties already considerable. SPEECH AT SALISBURY 75 the House of Lords, Mr. Labouchere was the very last person he would think of trusting it to. Now, the House of Lords was nearly always a dull place, and the dullest time in that House was at the beginning of the session. Nevertheless, they had had one or two interesting debates. There was a debate on the sweating system, and there was also a very in- teresting debate the other ijight upon the question of railway preference rates. This was a subject upon Railway rates, which English producers had a very great apparent grievance, and, he thought, a real grievance. The railway companies carried foreign goods very much cheaper than they carried English goods. They could send a ton of American wheat from Liverpool to London for a very much smaller sum than they could send a ton of English wheat a much lesser distance by railway. That seemed very much like a bounty upon foreign produce, and it seemed very hard upon the English producer. The railway companies did this because, if they did not offer these very low rates to the foreign producer, foreign produce would go straight by sea to its ultimate destination, and they would not get the custom. And they said— and said it with great truth — that if they did not offer these low rates, and the foreign produce did go by sea, it would not benefit the English producer in the least, because the foreign produce would go by sea pretty nearly as cheap as it now went by railway. That was true enough, but it seemed to him that the question was not so much whether they charged the foreigner too low rates, as whether they charged the Englishman too high. He was sure it might be pre- sumed that the rates at which they carried foreign 76 GENERAL POLITICS produce paid them, otherwise they would not carry it ; but if this was so, surely it was hard upon the English producer that in some cases he should have to pay something like double or treble the amount. He knew what the extreme advocates of the railway companies answered to this. They said they were obliged to offer these low rates to the foreigner, be- cause if they did not do this they would lose the foreigner's custom ; that they ought to be allowed to charge as high rates as they liked on English goods if they could do so without losing custom, provided they did not exceed the maximum rate that was prescribed by Parliament. It seemed to him that the fact that a maximum rate was so prescribed indicated the weakness of this argument, because if the companies had the right to charge the English producers what they could with- out losing their custom, why should there be such a maximum rate prescribed ? The justification of this seemed to be that the railway companies were mono- polists in the strictest sense of that much-abused word. The English producer, if there was no maximum rate, would be entirely at the mercy of the railway com- panies ; for, practically, he must use the railways ; he must send his goods by that route and pay the com- panies what they chose to charge him. So that he (Lord Pembroke) thought that argument of the railway companies did not hold good. This subject was a very difficult and complicated one. He was given to understand that it would be impossible to do away with preference rates alto- gether, and he thought the Government had taken the right line in their new Bill in simply giving the SPEECH AT SALISBURY 77 Railway Commissioners much stronger powers than they at present possessed, to deal with this question in a spirit of equity both towards the railway companies and their customers, the home producers. And, after the debate that took place the other night, he had little doubt that the Bill would be still further strengthened in the interests of the manufacturers or farmers of this country. Now, he was not going to say anything much about the House of Commons, because that fell to the lot of his friend on his right. But he would say in pass- ing that he hoped Mr. Hulse would give them some explanation of the extraordinary change that had come over the House. Obstruction, which seemed to threaten our legislative institutions a few years ago, seemed to have passed away like a cloud. The mem- bers of the House had given up late hours and bad lan- guage. He must say he was rather suspicious of these sudden alterations. At the same time, one did not like to express any doubt, for fear such doubt might tend to prevent the repentance proving real. He hoped his friend on the right would explain to them what it all meant, and give them some assurance that it was going to last. Well, one of the subjects that had been most dis- Ireland, cussed during the present session was the question as to whether the Government, on the whole, deserved credit for their rule in Ireland. The Government said that Ireland was now in a state of order ; that rents and taxes were fairly paid over the greater part of the country, and that there was little disorder of any kind. The Irish members and the Gladstonians, on the other hand, said the National League was un- 7 3 GENERAL POLITICS broken, and the Plan of Campaign always succeeded ; and if there was improvement in the country it was because the National League was so strong, and the Irish people were soothed by the sympathy that had been shown them by the English Liberal Party. He was not going to balance these views one against the other in any detail that evening. He, however, wished to say this, after having considered the question with as much impartiality as anyone in these days could : he did think the Government deserved great credit for the way in which they had governed Ireland. Because, really to appreciate this question, they must take into their remembrance what the state of things was at the time when the Government assumed the reins of power. Mr. Gladstone — as though impelled by some evil destiny — perpetuating one of the worst and most heart-breaking traditions of misrule in Ireland — the tradition of never allowing any settlement to take root — suddenly brought in the proposal to grant Ireland Home Rule, before he knew whether he could frame any acceptable pro- posal to place before the country, and before he had any reason to believe that the country was ready to accept it. They knew what happened. Mr. Gladstone's Bills were rejected by the House of Commons ; he appealed to the country ; and the country decided against him, and restored the present Government to power, with a commission to govern Ireland upon the old lines. He (Lord Pembroke) considered they were entrusted with a most formidable task. A most high-spirited and ex- citable nation had had their hopes of national inde- pendence raised to the utmost by Mr. Gladstone's SPEECH AT SALISBURY 79 proposals, and the cup was dashed from their lips just at the moment when they supposed their wishes were going to be realized. It was very hard upon them, and he had profound sympathy for the outrageous disap- pointment to which the Nationalist Party in Ireland were, to his mind, wantonly subjected by Mr. Glad- stone. The present Government undertook the government of Ireland under circumstances requiring the greatest care and wisdom, and he thought they had shown these qualities. They had shown both firmness and moderation. He had not the slightest doubt, if they had shown any sign of weakness, Ireland would have got out of hand. Neither had he the slightest doubt, if they had really harassed and vexed the great mass of the people of Ireland by their administration, that Ireland would have been in a blaze from one end of the country to the other before many months were out. But they showed they were not afraid to punish any man who broke the law, and at the same time they abstained from anything that was tyrannical and vexa- tious ; and they had a fair right to say it was partly in consequence of their wisdom and fairness and prudence that Ireland was now seen in a quiet condition. It was at this moment quiet, and as the months went on, as the novelty of political martyrdom began to pall a little, it would be in a quieter state still. Thinking this, as he did, he must own to a good deal of disappointment at seeing the Government was not supported in a more whole-hearted manner by the country as manifested in the late by-elections. It was quite true they had had their victories, but in some cases the Unionists had got the worst of it, and in So GENERAL POLITICS other cases their majorities had been reduced. Con- sidering how well the Government had done its duty, he admitted that this result surprised him not a little. He believed that one of the reasons was this, that Governments never got credit for things that did not happen. People did not take any notice of the measures in which the Government were successful through their wisdom. He had already spoken of Ireland, and how easily the weakness in legislation might have resulted in trouble there. He had not the slightest doubt in his own mind that the Trafalgar Square disturbances, with a weak Government, might also have got us into serious trouble. He did not think people took sufficient account of the way the dangers and difficulties were sometimes suc- cessfully overcome and put aside by Governments. The great mass of the people did not trouble their heads enough about politics to do that. When they had Mr. Gladstone in power, and they were in con- tinual hot water at home and abroad, all these people felt inclined to say, ' How the Fates do persecute that great and good man !' and when, on the other hand, Peace abroad they got Lord Salisbury in power and they had peace andorderat abrQad and Qrder ^ homQj all that they f e l t inclined to say was, ' Dear me ! how very dull politics are getting !' Now, there was a second reason which, he thought, accounted for the way the country had not supported the Government in by-elections as much as it ought to have done ; and it was this : He was almost convinced that people were beginning, in spite of all the speeches that had been made, to forget the practical difficulties that stood in the way of Home Rule. These were SPEECH AT SALISBURY 81 passing out of people's minds. There was, for instance, the insuperable difficulty of the Land Question, the difficulty whether they were to settle the whole Land Question by buying out all the landlords at once before granting Home Rule, or whether they were to leave the question to be settled by the Home Rule Government. There was the insuperable difficulty as to whether they were to include or to exclude Ulster from the sway of the Home Rule Government of Ireland ; the insuperable difficulty as to whether they were to retain the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament ; the insuperable difficulty as to whether they were to allow Irish members to come into the English Parliament, to interfere in English and Scotch business, whereas English and Scotch members would not be able to interfere with the Irish business ; or whether, on the other hand, they were to cut them out, and to continue to tax Ireland for Imperial purposes, without giving them Imperial representation in the Imperial Parlia- ment. All these things had been put on one side. The Opposition speakers took great care not to talk about them. All they talked about was conciliation versus coercion ; why should not Ireland manage its own affairs ? and things of that sort. One often used to hear it said in the earlier stages of this controversy that Mr. Gladstone had never declared himself against the principle of Home Rule. Well, he (Lord Pem- broke) thought he might say he also had never declared himself against the principle of Home Rule ; it was not a thing a man was likely to do. Everyone would be in favour of the principle of Home Rule were it not for insuperable practical difficulties. 6 82 GENERAL POLITICS These things were now being forgotten, but they must come to life again whenever a practical pro- posal was made. He reminded them of these things because, when they got a majority pledged to grant Home Rule, it would be too late to remember them then. But they ought to be remembered now, because they might depend upon it that whatever scheme Mr. Gladstone or his successor might introduce would con- tain just the self-same difficulties as those of which he had spoken to them. Meetings in With regard to those incidents that occurred in Trafalgar .... . Square. Trafalgar Square, in the main that was a question of common -sense, much more than a question of law or right. These meetings were held from day to day, followed by processions through the streets. They began by being a nuisance, and they ended by becoming positively dangerous, and the Government were forced to forbid them. When they had been for- bidden, and the people still advanced upon Trafalgar Square, determined to have their own way about it, the Government had no choice but to break up the meet- ings and to hold their own. But they would be mis- taken if they did not think there was an important question underlying these circumstances. There was no question amongst an}- body of English- men about the value of public meeting. All English- men regarded the right of public meeting, and would be very zealous to defend it, if they thought it was being attacked. But there was a party in the country who wished to press that right far beyond its legitimate uses. When they tried to govern the country by public meetings, when they tried to overawe the Legislature by it, and superseded the proceedings of Parliament, it SPEECH AT SALISBURY 83 was thoroughly mischievous, and extremely dangerous to popular institutions such as ours. And he wished further to say there was no excuse for it, and it was a perfect anachronism. In the old days when the people were unrepresented, it was the rough method, but it was the only method they had of bringing their views before Government. Now all classes were represented, and the proper manner for them to bring their griev- ances before the Government was through their ^' representatives in Parliament. The great danger of democracies lay not in the Th e danger of . . democracies tyranny but in the weakness of their Governments, lies in the Let no man persuade them to the contrary of that. ^ir Gove°rn- What had the people possibly to fear from the tyranny ment - of a Government whose continued existence depended upon the people's votes at the next election ? But they had much to fear from its weakness. History showed that democracies fell because representative Govern- ments had a tendency to become weak and timid in governing the people who were their masters. And when they became weak like this, all the forces of government became discredited, and the spirit of The s P ir J l °[ ■"■ anarchy leads anarchy ensued, which rendered a return to a more to tyranny, tyrannical form of government almost indispensable. If this were to happen in England — the home of free government for so many centuries — it would be a dire disaster to the world, and he certainly thought the present Government, in setting the example to our young democracy in the first years of its most extended power, in setting them the example of firm, self-respect- ing government, deserved the thanks of all Englishmen, and of none so much as those who were most deeply attached to democratic institutions. 84 GENERAL POLITICS SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE* December 20, 1888. The Earl of Pembroke said he felt much honoured in returning thanks, not only for his own House, but also for the other House of Parliament, that evening, and he wanted to say first of all a few words about his own House. They knew that in the spring they were all very busy with the idea of reforming the House of Lords, but this had not, he was sorry to say, had any Life peerages, effect. His (the speaker's) object was, by means of life peerages, to gain what was best and most worthy in the democratic spirit of our times, by throwing open the House of Lords to the poor man who was willing to sit there, as well as to the rich. He was very often answered, ' It is nonsense to talk about meeting the democratic spirit, with regard to the House of Lords, because you cannot turn the House of Lords into a democratic institution without destroying it altogether.' That was a very plausible answer, but he was not at all sure it was one to which they should altogether listen, because it came to this, it came to saying, ' You are not to do that which is an improve- ment and wise as far as it goes, because if you do, you may not be able to say no to something that is mis- chievous and destructive.' That was an argument that * The improved condition of law and order in Ireland could now be instanced in proof of the success of the Government's treatment of that country, and the following speech deals with the difficulties to be expected from the continued Irish representation at West- minster under a system of Home Rule, and the inherent difficulties of Home Rule all round. SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 85 the best statesmen of England had always been ex- tremely shy of, and an argument that, if generally accepted, would put an end to that moderate and gradual reform that had been the distinctive feature of English politics. But, reformed or not, the House of Lords was not an object of which any Englishman need be ashamed. It had undergone a great deal of discussion lately, and he sometimes thought it was, in some degree, under- rated by even its friends. They thought it was com- posed of a very few brilliant men, and a mass of nonentities. The reason why this was said was that the great mass of the members of the House of Silent char- t i 1 • 1 11 1 • r 1 acter of the Lords did not speak much, but to think trom that House of that they were incapable was a very great mistake r s * He would give them an evidence of the truth of what he said. The other day there was a joint committee of both Houses appointed to consider what was called the Private Bill Legislation of Parliament — that was, the procedure by which all the great railways, docks, and commercial undertakings of this country were arranged for. This committee in its report said that every wit- ness whose attention was called to the point, testified that the House of Lords' committees were superior to those of the House of Commons. That was very strong testimony to the merits of Capabilities what he called the rank and file of the House of Lords, f Lords because these committees were composed of the rank P rov ^ d by the r excellent and file of that House, who did not very often lift up qualities of its ., . , , T , 1,1 committee their voices and speak. It must be remembered that work. the committees of the House of Commons were picked bodies of men, and if the House of Lords' committees were superior to them, it showed that the members of 86 GENERAL POLITICS the House of Lords were men of considerable intelli- gence and capacity. The reason why they did not speak was not that they were incapable of doing any- thing, but they had no constituents who wanted to hear their ideas, and the centre of political power was not in their House, and so there was very little inducement to them to speak. They, therefore, preferred to sit still and listen, and enjoy the sensation of feeling that they had not got to speak, which was one of the keenest pleasures of civilized life. If they did not talk in the House of Lords, no one could make the same complaint about the House of Commons, for that House was almost paralyzed by unnecessary talk. The Government were obliged to drop a great many valuable measures every year because there was no time to pass them, and the little legisla- tion they did accomplish was got through by rules of procedure to check debate, which he thought would turn out as dangerous to procedure in the future, as it affected the libertv of the individual. He wished to call attention to this because this question was of special importance to working men, who had much to hope from legislative changes. It was of the deepest interest to them, and a thing that was entirely in their hands to cure, so far as English Waste of time members were concerned. No one could pretend for of Commons. one moment that a great part of the talk that went on in the House of Commons was not sheer waste of time. Mr. Labouchere, by way of wasting a little more, the other day moved the adjournment of the House in order to attack the conduct of business by the Government, and to check its progress. Mr. Chaplin got up and pointed out that the cause of the want of SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 87 progress was not far to seek ; since, in that short autumn session, four members of the House, of whom Mr. Labouchere was one, had made 147 speeches. It was, however, a waste of words to blame these Responsibility men, or even to blame the leaders who countenanced e ncies. their conduct, because the fault lay, not with them, but with the constituencies that allowed it. He did not mean by that that they could blame their own constituencies or expect them to turn out their own talkative members, because a constituency naturally took a pride in its member cutting a figure. What he meant was that the country, the electors, had it in their power to punish this waste of time at every election, and particularly at a General Election. Up to this time they had not done so. Whether it was that the country did not mind its business being neglected, or whether it was that they had been misled, and that they had laid the blame for the bad performance of business upon the Government instead of upon the Opposition, he could not say ; but the fact was, they had not punished obstruction, and therefore it went on. It went on simply because it paid ; but as soon as the electors of the country showed obstruction did not pay it would come to an end. Now, Radicals would tell them they could get rid of the obstruction which blocked the business in the House of Commons if they would only pass Mr. Glad- stone's scheme of Home Rule, and the chief object of the present obstruction was to make them believe that. He wanted to point out to them what an entire and complete and unfounded delusion that was. They were underjsome disadvantages in discussing this sub- ject because Mr. Gladstone would not put his scheme 88 GENERAL POLITICS in black and white before the country, and that enabled No scheme of the adversaries of the Government to take up a very Home Rule . . . . . offered to the curious and inconsistent position, because if it was doctors assumed that Mr. Gladstone's scheme was the old scheme that was rejected last time, the Radicals said, ' No, these Bills are dead,' and if it was complained that it was not known what Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule was, they said, ' Oh, you know well enough ; it is the old scheme over again, but with this difference : there will be no buying out of landlords, and the Irish members will be retained in the Imperial Parliament.' He accepted the second of these two inconsistent positions, and he believed that it was the truth. It would be the same old scheme over again, only there would be no buying out of the Irish landlords, and they would have the Irish members still kept in the Imperial Parliament. If Mr. Gladstone was ever given a majority, the)- would find he (Lord Pembroke) was a true prophet in this matter. Assuming it to be true, he wanted to explain to them how absurd it would be to expect for one moment that such a reform as Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule scheme could either pacify Ireland or free Parliament from the block of business which was caused by Irish questions. He spent the greater part of this autumn in the South and West of Ireland. First he wanted to say how very erroneous was the general idea held in England about the state of Ireland. They were misled in the first place by the reports in the newspapers, which naturally reported every violent speech and trifling dis- turbance that took place in Ireland. They were misled also by the increasing chorus of misrepresentation SPEECH AT B1SH0PST0NE 89 and exaggeration that was kept up by the Irish mem- bers and their Gladstonian friends in the House of Commons. It was a perfect surprise to him to find how peace- fully and quietly the country was governed. Law and order there was generally respected, and men were able to go about their business without fear or hindrance. Everybody he talked to in the country was full of the immense change that had taken place during the past year or two under the present Government. He only wished that every English elector who had to record his vote at the next General Election could have Fallacy of the opportunity of going to Ireland to see for himself, the state of for then he would realize how absurd it was to say, as l ^^f could was often said by Gladstonians in England, that no changed for the worse change in the state of Ireland could possibly be a change for the worse. But this was hardly his point at this moment. What impressed him more, perhaps, than any other informa- tion he gathered while he was in Ireland was that the Irish tenants were in favour of Home Rule, not only because of that long traditional hatred of England, which it would take many years of good government to wipe out, but also because they all believed that when Home Rule came they would get the land for nothing. He asked those present that evening, as sensible men, if this were so, how was it possible that the granting of Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule could possibly either pacify the country or put a stop to the obstruction in the House of Commons ? They must remember that Mr. Gladstone had given up the idea of buying up the landlords and getting rid of 9 o GENERAL POLITICS Probable con- tingency of civil war in Ireland. the Irish members from the Imperial Parliament. It was quite inevitable that the granting of Home Rule would be followed by a total collapse of the law, and a state of disturbance that would probably end in civil war. He knew what their Gladstonian friends would tell them about that. They would tell them that the very moment they gave the Irish Home Rule Irishmen would change their ways, and turn round and begin to obey the law. He asked them was that likely, or even possible ? Was it likely that men who had gone in for Home Rule, because they thought it would give them the land for nothing, would, at the moment they got the power of doing what they liked, begin to pay their rents ? And was it possible that their leaders, the men who for years past had been discouraging the law of the land as odious and brutal, would, at the moment they were put in power, turn round, and tell the people of Ireland they were going to uphold the law they had been denouncing for the past five years ? It was im- possible for any man to believe that for one moment. It was perfectly inevitable that the granting of Home Rule would produce a complete state of anarchy: and he would tell them this, the Irish leaders them- selves were very w r ell aware of this, although they, for their own purposes, pretended they did not know it. One of the ablest and most honest of the Irish leaders told a friend of his last year that if the Imperial Par- liament left the Land Question to be settled by the new Home Rule Parliament, it would amount to a political crime, and nothing less. But the Separatist Party were unwilling to admit the existence of this danger, for the reason that if it was going to be once admitted that the SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 9' English Parliament could settle this Land Question in Ireland, whereas the Irish Parliament could not do so, what became of the great argument for Home Rule, that only an Irish Parliament could manage Irish affairs ? And if the English Parliament could settle this Land Question, he would like to know what Irish question there was that an English Parliament could not settle ? Therefore, if the electors were foolish enough to give the Gladstonians a majority at the next election, they would shut their eyes to this inevitable trouble, and Ireland would be plunged into greater disorder than ever, and the Irish members would still remain in the Imperial Parliament, to make all other business impossible until we granted them real separation, or set to work to reconquer the country. He ought to remind them that there were many other difficulties under Mr. Gladstone's scheme, all of which would produce intolerable friction, all of which would be again reflected in our House of Commons by the Irish members. Of course, he perfectly understood the reason why Mr. Gladstone changed his scheme, and consented to retain the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament, supposing he was allowed to pass the Home Rule scheme. The reason was very obvious ; it would have been impossible, as he proposed in the last scheme, to tax Ireland for Imperial purposes — the army, navy, and so on — and yet allow her no voice in the Imperial Par- liament. Such a course would in a few years lead to separation, and it was therefore out of the question. But making this change, and retaining the Irish members, only landed Mr. Gladstone in a lot of fresh, and perhaps worse, difficulties. In the first place, it 92 GENERAL POLITICS would be monstrous to allow Irish members to inter- fere in our affairs in the British Parliament, if we were not to be allowed to interfere in Irish affairs. And, again, it would be impossible, if Home Rule were granted to Ireland, to refuse it to Scotland and Wales, who were beginning to demand it. Lastly, he would say they could not refuse to give Home Rule to England also, because it was absurd to suppose if Ireland and Scotland and Wales were to have separate Parliaments of their own, in which the English people were not to interfere, that at the same time Scotchmen, and Irish- men, and Welshmen were to be allowed to settle English business. They would finally come to this : that they would have four separate Parliaments, and an Imperial Parliament in which the representatives of the four would meet together for Imperial purposes. He wanted them to understand that this question of Home Rule was not a thing by itself; it could not stop there by itself; it must be the first step of an enormous change in our Constitution, that Constitution of which we were so proud — a change so great that, even if it could be successfully carried out, it would take more than the lifetime of one generation to carry through. What he wanted them to remember was this, that during this time— which he put at least at a generation and a half — during the time this great constitutional change was being carried out, all those measures of internal reform, in which the working men were most interested, would have to stand over and be neglected. He must confess it astonished him that this argument did not weigh more with the Radicals than it did. He declared to them that, if he were a selfish Tory who was afraid of reform, and cared for nothing but his personal SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE interests, he would go in for Home Rule, because he knew that, if Home Rule were granted to Ireland at the next election, there could be no great internal change in England in his lifetime at lea>t. In conclusion, let him say this : 'Was it certain after all, when they had carried through this great change which he had spoken to them about, and which, if the Gladstonians came into power, they would see carried through — did the)- think it was at all certain, when this was over, they would be the better for it, and that the British Empire, when they had separate Parliaments for the four countries, would be more stable and stronger than it was before ? He, for one, most emphatically disbelieved it. It was against all the teaching of modern history, which had furnished us with plentiful examples upon this subject. Even - Consolidation country that had wished to be strong had had to con- strengt h to solidate and obtain unity. Let them take Germany ever >' countr y- as an instance. Germany had absorbed an enormous quantity of small States, and drawn the others closer together, and the new German Empire was just as strong as the old German Confederacy of States was weak. Italy they had seen fighting for unity, and when she gained it she became a great nation. France and Spain had swept away their provincial distinc- tions, and even America had been obliged to assert its unity against State rights in the most terrible civil war of our time. He believed the granting of Home Rule would be entirely a step in the wrong direction, and a step that would lead to the breaking up of our great Empire. It remained with the people who were going to vote at the next election to decide whether that fatal step should ever be taken. 94 GENERAL POLITICS Non-political character of County Councils to be aimed at. He did not like to sit down without making some sort of an apology to them for inflicting upon them, after dinner, a very serious thought-out political lecture ; but they were all agreed that they wanted to seriously understand and master politics, and he could not help taking these opportunities when he came amongst them —even at a dinner — to try and tell them what he thought and felt upon these questions, even though such serious matters seemed to be rather out of place. These were the only opportunities he got of talking to them about such matters, and so if occasionally he made them a speech which was a little dull and tire- some and difficult to understand, he hoped thev would all forgive him. In returning thanks, the Earl of Pembroke said that he was always glad to come amongst them, and was pleased that there was a prospect of his connection with them being drawn still closer by his becoming their representative on the County Board. Though the subject was not a political one, perhaps, as many of those present were ratepayers, he might be allowed to take the opportunity of explaining why he was not holding meetings and making speeches in connection with his candidature. He did not do so because he- thought that there was a mistaken view of the duties and functions of these County Councillors, which was very prevalent, and which meetings and speeches would tend to confirm. Some people seemed to fancy that the new Councillors were going to make laws and pro- mote policies, whereas their duties would simply be to administer the law as already made as efficiently and economically as they could ; to do the work, in the main, that had been done up to now bv the SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 95 magistrates at quarter sessions and the various local boards. The County Councils not being yet in existence, there was really little or nothing for candidates to talk about, unless they dragged in politics, which, in his opinion, was the very thing they ought not to do. And he would tell them why. If once the spirit of part} politics were introduced into their County Councils, efficiency and economy would suffer. Each member would be thinking more of how to distinguish himself in the eyes of his constituents, than of how to save their pockets and do their business well, and the rate- payers would have to pay for the exhibition. No doubt, as time went on, questions would arise on which there would be divisions of opinion, and it then would be their (the members') duty to take counsel of their con- stituents, expound their views to them, and ascertain their wishes, and he should be the first to do so. And. no doubt, before long other and more contentious matters would be added to the functions of the Count} Councils. But it would be time enough to discuss these matters when they were about to be brought before them ; at the present time he really had nothing to say to them except, as he had already said in hi: address, that he would try to become an efficient member of the Council, and do all he could to promote the interests of the ratepayers. 96 GENERAL POLITICS CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE* February 22, 1889. The Earl of Pembroke said he felt much honour in returning thanks for the House of Lords. He was not going to say very much about Parliament that night, because the Houses of Lords and Commons were at that moment taking a short rest from their labours. In a few days they would recommence their duties, and he had no doubt that in the House of Commons, at any rate, there would be plenty of talk. All that he wanted to say about the House of Lords was this : Last spring, he dared say some of them would remember, the air was full of proposals for the reform of the House of Lords ; but somehow or another they did not hear much about it now, and he thought he could tell them per- fectly well why that was so. The reason was that the majority of those who were most keen about reforming the House of Lords were not men, like himself, who were anxious to reform it entirely on the old lines — that was, without departing from the old lines — but people who were anxious to turn the House of Lords into an elective and representative assembly. * The Local Government Act of 1888 came into operation this year. The clauses in the Bill affecting the system of licensing for the sale of intoxicants had been withdrawn, and the main effect of the Act was the transfer of the administrative business heretofore conducted by Quarter Sessions to the new County Councils, which took effect on April 1. These bodies were elective, with a propor- tion of co-opted aldermen. Peers and clergy were not disqualified from office in the council, and many of them became members. The county franchise included women. During the year several members of Parliament underwent terms of imprisonment for offences under the Crimes Act of 1887. CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 97 The truth was that, amongst those who thought about that kind of thing, elective assemblies at this moment were not quite up to the high-water mark of favour. The state of the House of Commons, for instance, was not a very satisfactory one. There was a good deal to be found fault with in the Metropolitan Board of Works, and he thought the new London Count}- Council was not very promising. The House of Lords was, in fact, beginning to shine by contrast, and he believed there was a silent, but very strong, feeling that, if they tried to reform the House of Lords by making it a representative assembly, they had better wait till the time came when there would be more cer- tainty that they would improve it by making it elective. That brought him to what he wanted to say a few words about that night — the County Councils. They all knew that the great feature of the past year had been the passing of the Local Government Act, and they were now all looking with a great deal of interest at the formation of the County Councils, and at the first steps they were taking. He wanted to say to them that he hoped they would continue to watch the County Councils with a very keen and anxious interest. They were not to think those assemblies were going to be complete and perfect successes. English people were such strong believers in popular government, that they were apt to think that, if they got elective assemblies with a wide enough suffrage, success was ensured at once. He did not think either the experience of America or England would bear out that pleasing illusion. No doubt popular election was by far the best system upon which to base the Government of the country — no one was more strongly of that opinion 7 98 GENERAL POLITICS Imperfections of the London County Council. Things to be avoided in new County Councils. than himself — but popular election did not mean, any more than anything else in this world, a short-cut to perfection. If they wanted an illustration, they had only to look at the new County Council for London. He thought it would be difficult to deny that any sensible man could have nominated a better board than that which the London electors had chosen. Doubtless the Council contained good men. Lord Rosebery and Sir John Lubbock were men elected by the Conservatives in the City, and no doubt there were other good men who might be named. He did not believe he should be going too far in saying that the London County Council had already, in the short period of its existence, showed ominous symptoms of possessing in some degree — let them hope in a small one — almost every bad quality with which such a body could be afflicted, except cor- ruption. They had shown a tendency to be visionary, loquacious, unpractical, unscrupulous, unbusiness-like, undignified, quarrelsome, and full of party spirit. It was too early yet to judge of their work, but he could not help feeling that his friend, Lord Rosebery, would have need of all his great powers to make them a thoroughly useful and beneficial body. Now, in Wiltshire they had got a very good County Council ; but there were certain difficulties and dangers which were inherent in all elective bodies, and against which they, like all other Councils, must be on their guard. In the first place, there was party spirit — he need not talk about that ; in the second place, there was a danger that the members would waste time by trying to cut a figure in the eyes of the electors — he believed such a thing had been known to occur even in CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 99 the House of Commons ; and then, thirdly, there was the very insidious danger of what he might call local and class spirit, which was a tendency on the part of the Councillors to think it their special duty to regard only the classes they happened to belong to, or the localities which happened to have elected them. He wanted to give this word of warning : that if such a spirit became general, the efficiency of the Council must necessarily suffer. It was not only the petty wranglings between localities and class interests which would lower the whole tone of the Council — and that, he asked them to remember, was a very important thing indeed — but besides that, there was the waste of valuable time, which was a very precious thing — con- sidering they went to the Council meeting by one train, and came away by another — and the result of conflicts between classes would possibly be that unfair work would be done. Therefore he did hope that the members of the Wiltshire County Council would make up their minds to keep local and class spirit within proper and due limits, and remember that their duty was to the county as a whole, and not to any class or place in it. These tendencies of which he had spoken were natural enough, as they sprang from the common, but fallacious, idea that the great principle of popular government was that, if everyone interested was repre- sented, they would fight their hardest and struggle for their own interests, and that the result would be satis- factory. People who took that view of popular govern- ment should remember the sad story of the Kilkenny cats, who fought till nothing was left but their tails, and he never heard that either got its fair share of ioo GENERAL POLITICS whatever they were fighting for. Something more than selfish interests all round was required to make this world and human institutions work properly and run smoothly. No Parliament or Council could ever have success, could ever be efficient, without high aims, wide views, and unselfish public spirit. Turning" to general politics. Lord Pembroke said the most stirring incident had been the agitation about Mr. O'Brien, but the fizzle seemed to a great extent to have died away since Mr. Balfour or the gaolers had returned him his beloved clothes. The agitation rather put him in mind of what he read in that delight- ful book. ' The Pickwick Papers.' They would re- member Mr. Nupkins, the magistrate, asked the Chief Constable if the people were quiet, and he replied that popular excitement had in a measure subsided, owing to the boys having dispersed to cricket. He thought the O'Brien agitation had fizzled out in a manner not much more dignified than that. To him (Lord Pembroke) it was most surprising that the Radical Part}-, of all parties in the world, should teach that there ought to be a different law for the rich man and the poor man. It was not true that Mr. O'Brien was imprisoned for making a political speech. He (Lord Pembroke) had said it before, that a man in Ireland was no more interfered with by the law for making a political speech than in England. Every Irishman might abuse the Government, he might curse Mr. Balfour, and advocate Home Rule with all the violence of language with which his education had furnished him, and if they read the Irish news- papers as he (Lord Pembroke) did, it would be seen that they were continually taking advantage of that liberty. CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 101 There was perfect freedom of speech on political Freedom of speech in questions in Ireland as in England. The Govern- Ireland. ment and the law only interfered and punished speakers for inciting men to crime and lawlessness. He should just like to read to them some of the words for which Mr. O'Brien had been put in prison. One sentence would be enough. He said : ' I am afraid land-grabbers are living and thriving in the midst of you. ... If all our labours for the last ten years have not been in vain, you ought to know how to deal with a land-robber.' He would explain the circumstances under which those words were said. The speech which contained them was made in a part of the country where agrarian agitation was going on, and which Mr. O'Brien himself was trying with all his might to promote and fan into flame by means of the Plan of Campaign. Some of those present might not know what that Plan of Cam- was, and he would tell them, therefore, as shortly as he could. It was a combination on the part of the tenants of an estate to refuse to pay any rent, and to hold their holdings by force against the law, until they could bring the landlord to accept their terms. It was a combination which was supported and kept going by means of persecuting, and if necessary mur- dering, every man who dared to break away from it by paying his rent, or who took a farm which another man had been forced to leave. The amount of terrorism resorted to by the Plan of Campaign to carry out its work was simply terrible. Mr. Russell, a tenant farmer himself and a most impartial man, had recently been writing a series of interesting accounts to the Times, giving the most terrible description of intimidation he io2 GENERAL POLITICS had known. He (Lord Pembroke) was not going to bore them that night by detailing them, but Mr. Russell had mentioned two or three instances where tenants had paid their rent in secret to the landlord, and had actually got him to go through the sham of turning them out of their farms in order to avoid sus- picion of their having paid their rent. They were not to believe what Radicals told them, that the Plan of Campaign was always resorted to on account of the harsh terms of the landlord. Mr. Russell showed most conclusively that on many estates the Plan of Campaign had been resorted to when there were no harsh measures on the part of the owners, and when there was no high rent, because it had been fixed by the Land Court. An estate was selected by the Plan of Campaign because probably the landlord was a poor man, who could, the}- thought, be reduced to the verge of starvation, and would then accept any terms they liked to offer. It was in circumstances of this kind that Mr. O'Brien used the words which he had quoted. Mr. O'Brien knew just as well as he did that these words of his might be, and very possibly would be, the death-warrant of some unfortunate tenant living in a lonely farm on a hillside. Mr. O'Brien was deservedly punished for those words. The Court where he was tried showed no vindictive spirit whatever — in fact, he (Lord Pem- broke) thought it had shown mistaken leniency. The magistrates offered to let him off if he would promise not to repeat the offence. He would not do so, and they sentenced him to six months' imprisonment. He thought it served him right. There was another thing the Radicals told them, CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 103 which was that the man was being punished for saying Seditious speaking, in Ireland what he would be perfectly free to say in England. What did that amount to ? They might walk about their house or in that room with a lighted candle without doing any harm, but if they did the same in a powder-magazine they would be interfered with very soon. A Radical might in Salisbury de- nounce the rich, and say they should be exterminated, and nobody would interfere with him ; but if he said the same thing in a dangerous riot, he would be punished and find himself in prison. He entirely questioned that, if the circumstances in England were similar to those in Ireland, such words would be un- punishable by law. Turning to the coming session, his lordship said he was told it was to be a useful but humdrum session. The measure which would be of more particular in- terest to them was the Tithe Bill, which might be called a message of peace and goodwill to parsons and farmers. And then there was the Employers' Liability Bill, which was to settle the compensation which should be paid to workmen injured through the carelessness of their fellow-workmen. There were other measures, but by far the most im- National portant of them was the measure for national defence. Now, every competent man who had gone into that question had come to the same conclusion, that our navy was not strong enough for purposes of defence. It was quite true that the fleet was slightly larger than the next largest navy in Europe — the navy of France — and he had no doubt that if war were declared, and they brought the whole of the French fleet into the Channel to fight a pitched battle with the British, the io 4 GENERAL POLITICS British would get the best of it. But the French would do nothing of the sort. Their object would be to attack our mercantile marine all over the world, and attempt to cut off our food supplies. Any attempt to prevent them doing that should be made by block- ading them in their fortified ports ; but, as the recent manoeuvres showed, the British might not be success- ful, and if some succeeded in getting out, they would play havoc with our ships, and we should not have one ship to spare from the blockade to follow them up. If we did not try to blockade them, but let them out of their ports, taking the chance of being able to find and destroy them outside, the matter was still worse, because we should not dare leave the Channel and our shores unprotected. The consequence would be that a greater part of the French fleet would scatter over the ocean, destroying our merchant ships. Some people said, ' But we could do the same with the French mercantile marine.' So we could ; but their mercantile marine was so small that if we de- stroyed the whole of it, it would do France no vital injury. If it was because our mercantile marine was of more value to England, and that we were entirely dependent on it for supplies from abroad, such an argument did not hold good. Two-thirds of our food came from abroad, and nearly all the raw material , of our manufactures. England could not supply herself, and if our supplies were cut off, we should be starved into submission in a few weeks, and have to accept any terms of peace, however ruinous and disastrous they might be. He ventured to say that that was a risk which must not be allowed to exist for another year. The}- must CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 105 make up their minds to pay for a sufficient navy, and Increase of to look upon such an outlay as nothing but a reasonable ne c e "sity. a insurance of our increased national wealth ; and on this point he would say that, while the wealth of the king- dom had during the last century been doubling and trebling, the navy defence had not been increased in any like proportion. As a matter of fact, although other countries were having an increased number of ships, we were paying no more than we did twenty years ago. Of course, their friends the Radicals would make Possibility of capital out of the doctrine that if England pursued a colonial pos- policy of non-intervention there could be no danger sessions being . disputed. of war. That doctrine was never very true, and what- ever truth it ever had, had entirely gone during the last twenty or thirty years. Powers who had not many colonies then were assiduously pursuing a policy of colonization, so that England, instead of being isolated in the matter of colonial expansion, was cheek by jowl with other European Powers all over the world, and no man could tell that in some part of the world some occurrence might not take place which would plunge us into war, and which by no possibility could have been foreseen or prevented ; and as these disputes and difficulties were often of the nature of what the Americans called ' a game of brag,' the weaker we were thought to be, the sooner were we likely to be forced to fight. It was living in a fools' paradise to suppose that England, with such pos- sessions all over the world, could always be secure, could always be free from attack, and never get into war. Foreign nations, for one reason or another, did not 106 GENERAL POLITICS love us. He would not go into the causes of quarrel, but, whatever they were, the) - were not fond of us. They could not expect Germans and Austrians to be very sorry if they saw the restless energies of France or Russia absorbed in an attack upon Great Britain. He said, therefore — and he had gone into the matter at great length — that it was important they should seriously consider this matter ; it would be really shameful to the country if the Government lost favour with it for taking necessary steps for its protection. He could not help saying — and he supposed it was rather a foolish con- fession to make, but he said it frankly — that he was rather disappointed with the way the country had sup- ported the Government according to its deserts during the last year or two, at the by-elections. Contrast be- When they compared the Government with the and present Government of 1880-85, which put the country in Governments. d an g er a H over the world, he could not understand how anyone who observed the policy of the two Govern- ments should not desire the present Government to remain in power. It was the best Government they had had for many years, and he was afraid it was the best one they were likely to see in the lifetime of man. He said this, not merely because the members of it had talent — for cleverness was common enough — but they had character, they had backbone ; because they had the courage to take a course which they thought right in spite of a little unpopularity. Such men as Lord Salisbury, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Arthur Balfour, were the right men in the right place, not only because of their great capacity, but because they could be trusted to take the course they really thought best, without much regard to the clamour, from the platform and the CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 107 press, of men who might dignify their utterances by the name of public opinion, but were, at any rate, not responsible for the right government of the country. Of course, he understood part of the reason why the country did not support the Government with a more certain and unmistakable voice, and it was a reason, he might say, with which he sympathized to a certain extent. He thought that the working classes of Eng- land very naturally felt somewhat impatient that this question of the Union should be standing in the way just at the moment they had gained great political power which they hoped to put to their use. This question of Union, which did not appeal directly to their interests — though they would soon find out how deeply it con- cerned them if Home Rule were granted — was blocking the way. It was only natural that there should be a feeling of impatience, and the support given to the Government only half-hearted. But that was not a valid excuse. It had been shown over and over again that Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals would do nothing to get rid of the Irish difficulties which stood in the way ; not only would they not settle one of the diffi- culties that the question contained, but they would place Ireland in a worse position than now. Under the Union, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welsh- men stood in a position of perfect equality ; they took an equal right of feeling proud of the greatness of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Empire ; but if Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill were passed, Ireland would be in a position of mere dependency — more dependent than one of our great colonies. They could not get any patriotic Irishman io8 GENERAL POLITICS to be content with such an arrangement and scheme as that ; they might depend upon it that no patriotic Irishman would rest content until, as Mr. Parnell had said, the last link which bound Ireland to England had been severed ; and he for one could not blame him. Therefore, they must support the Union. What he wanted to impress upon them, and what he really believed with all his might, was that if they were firm and persistent the Irish difficulty would be over- come before very long. They must not let themselves be frightened by the outcry they heard against Mr. Balfour and his government in Ireland. Men all over the world, and more particularly Irishmen who were being governed to some extent against their will, hated a weak Government more than they did a strong one ; and he could tell them of his own knowledge that the present Government was not hated nearly so much as was Mr. Gladstone's Government four or five years ago. They might depend upon it they had only to be steadfast, and not be too impatient for immediate results. They must not expect the agitation to die out so long as there was a chance that Home Rule might become certain. They could not expect that the Irish members would give up the game until they knew it was doomed ; but if the electors gave their support to the Unionist Government for the next few years, they would show unmistakably that England was determined to maintain the Union ; and they would see that Irish- men, like any other men, would recognize and accept the inevitable, and adapt themselves to it, and the electors would be rewarded by finding that the agita- tion had died out, and a great danger to our national THE SEPTENNIAL ACT 109 life had been overcome. But if, on the other hand, through weakness, ignorance, or impatience, the)' gave in to the cry for a separate nationality, he believed that their names would be execrated by all future generations of Englishmen. THE SEPTENNIAL ACT. (Speech at Stapleford.) July 6, 1889. Lord Pembroke, in returning thanks for the House Septennial of Lords, noticed that Mr. Gladstone had lately said that the Septennial Act, which made Parliaments last for seven years, was a very bad thing, and he con- tended that Parliaments ought to be a great deal shorter. Like most people, he (Lord Pembroke) had watched Mr. Gladstone's career with great interest during the time of his political life, and he had always noticed that whenever Mr. Gladstone was in Oppo- sition he attacked the Septennial Act, but when he returned to power they heard no more about it, so that there was not much reason for saying anything on the subject, because if at the next election he came in with a large majority, the very last thing he would do would be to attack the Act. TherS were other men, however, who advocated shorter Parlia- ments, and who were more in earnest than Mr. Glad- stone, and as his authority would no doubt be quoted in future, it might be necessary to say something about it. He (Lord Pembroke) was astonished — if anything no GENERAL POLITICS that Mr. Gladstone said could astonish him now — that a statesman of his experience should have ad- vocated that reform, because he was convinced it was one that would be most fatal to popular institutions in this country, and that it would do an enormous amount of harm. In the first place, one of the great evils of democratic or popular government with an extended suffrage was that the mass of the people voted much too lightly, and were much too fickle in their politics, and did not think enough of the importance of what they were doing. If all those men were going to think in this way, ' Supposing I do wrong, there is to be another election soon,' they would vote more lightly and be more fickle than ever. Another great weakness of popular government was that it rendered it difficult to secure what was called a con- tinuity of policy ; there was so much change, elections happened so often, that if they seriously shortened Par- liament the Government would find it impossible to institute any policy which required time to carry out and time to justify itself. But he really did not think that was even the worst of it, because it would be utterly destructive of anything like conscientious government. Xo Ministry with a General Election constantly hanging over their heads could refuse — as everybody who had been behind the scenes'in politics knew — to listen to the whips and partv managers, who were always saying, ' You must not do this or that, for fear of losing votes by it.' At present a strong and conscientious Government could refuse to listen to that sort of pressure, because they knew there was time for what they thought right to justify itself. THE SEPTENNIAL ACT in There was nothing about the present Government that he admired more than the way they had set to work to do what they thought right for Ireland and the Empire without caring too much for the passing waves of un- popularity. They had said to the country, so to speak, ' We will do our best to govern according to the best of our opinion and lights, leaving the country to judge at the end of Parliament, be it long or short, what we have done, whether it be well or ill.' But it would be impos- sible for a Government to take that line if they had short Parliaments, because they would always have to be thinking, not of what was right or wrong, but what would lose least votes at the next election. Therefore he was quite certain that the shortening of Parliaments, such as Mr. Gladstone advocated, could only have the effect of bringing free institutions into discredit. In connection with Mr. Gladstone's speeches, he had another remark to make. In one of the speeches made by him (Lord Pembroke) in this part of the country, he- ventured to prophesy that Home Rule could not pos- sibly stop with the case of Ireland, that if they allowed the Irish members to remain in the Imperial Parlia- ment — and unless they wished for separation it was absolutely necessary those members should so remain — they would find it impossible to allow Irish members to interfere in English, Scotch, and Welsh business, whilst English, Scotch, and Welsh members were not allowed to interfere in Irish affairs ; and that that fact would cause them sooner or later to grant Home Rule, not only to Ireland, but to England, Scotland, and Wales, with an Imperial Parliament in which their representatives should meet. Of course at the time he (Lord Pembroke) made that statement it was looked ii2 GENERAL POLITICS upon as a mere Tory bogey, but the logic of events had been too strong, and it was now found that he was perfectly right, because the other day, when Mr. Glad- stone was down in the West, he admitted that Home Rule for Ireland would infallibly lead to the same sort of thing for the other countries of the kingdom. He (Lord Pembroke) remembered that in his own speech, to which he referred, he pointed out that the passing of such a piece of Constitutional reform would occupy years, during which all the business in which they were interested would be hung up, and that it would probably make the country weaker instead of stronger than before. Constant fric- Mr. Gladstone, of course, trotted out, as he always Austria and" did, m or< ^ er IO show how Home Rule had succeeded, the Hungary. cases of Sweden and Norway, and Austria and Hungary. He (Lord Pembroke) would be quite prepared to join issue with Mr. Gladstone about that, because it was a great mistake to think that in those countries Home Rule was a success. Between those countries there had been an immense amount of jealousy, ill-feeling, and friction ; but what he wanted to point out was the difference between Great Britain and the other countries referred to. England had a vast Empire to govern on which the sun never set ; those other countries, com- paratively speaking, had nothing outside their own borders to administer. So far as Austria and Hungary had anything outside, the)' made a great mess of it, and entirely bore out his theory. If they chose to split up the British Isles into four countries, he did not believe they could govern the British Empire for five years, and he believed that the longer the English people looked upon the proposal to make Great Britain THE SEPTENNIAL ACT 113 a federation of four countries the less they would like it. The truth was, it was the most absurd fallacy in the world that Home Rule tended to unite nationalities. In one sense it was true, but only in one sense, and that was when they had two countries like Austria and Hun- gary, so entirely distinct and antagonistic that there must be separation in one form or another in order to avert total disintegration. Home Rule was like grant- ing a judicial separation to husband and wife — to avoid a divorce ; but to suppose it made countries more united was absurd, and opposed both to all that history taught and to human nature, which was full of partisan spirit. The more they encouraged national and provincial dis- tinctions, the more national and provincial jealousy there would be. In the British Isles it would work most intolerably. They would have rich and populous Eng- land continually in Parliament overruling the smaller countries, who would not like it, and when Ireland, Scotland and Wales outvoted England, would she be content ? They might say that often happened now, but Paralysis of • t • 1 t i 1 j 11 lne central they did not mind it, because they looked upon all p 0Wer should as one country, and therefore did not resent it ; but p^^entf if thev were split up into different Parliaments they bc instituted „ jin the British would object to it very much. They could not afford isle-. to be paralyzed in that way. Mr. Goschen said the other day, ' There is one thing more than separation which we are not prepared to grant, and that is the paralysis of the central power.' They might depend upon it Imperial action would be paralyzed by pro- vincial dissensions, and England could not afford to be paralyzed by dissensions within her own borders, 8 n 4 GENERAL POLITICS as Hungary and Austria so often were in their foreign policy. It would be utterly ruinous, and he believed it would very shortly bring the Empire to an end, so that if they cared either about their national greatness or their bread-and-butter they would set their faces against anything of that kind. He wished to congratulate them upon their gather- ing that day. He was thoroughly pleased to see them coming together in support of the present Govern- ment and of Constitutional principles. They had a good Government, which had strengthened their naval defences, passed a great and liberal measure of Local Government, reduced the National Debt, restored order in Ireland, and last, but not least, had kept out of any foreign complications, all in the space of two or three years. It was for them to sup- port it, and show at the next election by their votes that intelligent and courageous administration was thoroughly recognized and appreciated by the English people. THE POLITICAL SITUATION* (Speech at Wilton.) March 4, 1890. Apparent Lord Pembroke said : I have hesitated a good deal political* areu- as to wnat I should talk to you about. The science of ment. politics has this great drawback, that, as the old farmer said of the bottle of claret, ' You never seem to get no * The tactics of the Opposition were still to insist on the import- ance to the English voter of getting the Irish question moved out of the way, without attempting to particularize the lines on which THE POLITICAL SITUATION 115 forrarder.' In other sciences, when a point arises for discussion, the matter is thrashed out ; and if the evidence on one side or the other is overwhelming, the point is settled, and you go on to something else. But in politics, owing to the enormous mass of people that you have got to convince- — people of every degree of political knowledge, and whose political motives are extremely complex — it often seems as though error was quite impervious to argument. The Home Rule question is an instance of this. If ever there was a question thoroughly thrashed out, and on which the argument on one side was over- whelming, it is this. Mr. Goschen, Lord Hartington, Lord Derby, and many others that might be mentioned, in a long series of splendid speeches, that have never been answered because they are unanswerable, have treated the Home Rule proposal from every possible point of view, and have not left it a leg to stand upon. Yet, so far from the question being settled, the by- elections seem to show us that the Unionist cause is barely holding its own. It makes one feel as though in politics truth had no advantage over falsehood, and as though a man might just as well talk nonsense as sense. But, apart from all counsels of despair, it does such a change was to be effected. Among the economic events of this period was the great strike at the London Docks in August of 1889, unique in being largely subsidised by subscriptions from strangers, and the gas-stokers' strike in South London. The New Unionism, which came into being with the organization of trades not before organized, introduced a fresh political factor, for in its desire to proceed with least delay in restricting the hours of labour it resolved, in opposition to the action of the older unions, to use the machinery of the State to secure such restriction. n6 GENERAL POLITICS become a matter for serious consideration whether it is of any use to go on reiterating proofs and arguments that seem to have so very little effect. In my opinion it is of use. We must remember, as I have said, what a mass of people we have got to convince, and how long it must necessarily take to drive the rights of such a question into their heads. Nor must we forget that, bad as things may seem now, we cannot possibly tell how much worse they would have been if these convincing speeches had not been made. But we ought to do something else ; we ought to try whether there are not other ways by which we can gain the confidence and support of those whom our Home Rule arguments do not seem to reach. I think it is more than probable that many people are lost to our side, not because they are converted to Home Rule, but because they neither know nor care anything about it, and fancy that by conceding it they will get rid of the Irish Question, and clear the way for measures in which they are more interested. There is no greater delusion, as I shall presently show you ; but the best practical answer that the Government can make to such people is to show them that it is quite possible to pass useful and important measures while the Union is still maintained. I was very glad, there- fore, to learn from the excellent speech which Mr. Goschen delivered the other day that he and his col- leagues had their pockets full of Bills which they intend to pass this session. I doubt their passing them all. Between the opposition of open and avowed obstructionists like Mr. Labouchere, and that of other members of the Home Rule Party, who would not obstruct for the world, but who happen, unfortu- THE POLITICAL SITUATION 117 nately, always to have conscientious objections to everything that the Government may propose, it is not very easy to get any measure through the House of Commons in these days ; but if their record this session is as good as it has been in the preceding years of this Parliament, the country will have nothing to complain of. The Irish Question, as I have said, has got ' no forrarder ' since I last addressed you. Mr. Gladstone's plan is still undeclared, and the country is still in the dark as to what he intends to propose. On this point Sir W. Harcourt said very aptly, in a recent speech, that counsel were not in the habit of addressing the Court after it had declared in their favour ; and that, as the by-elections showed that the country had declared in their favour without requiring them to produce their scheme for Home Rule, there was no necessity for them to do so. From a party point of view I think he is wise. If the Gladstonians can manage to carry the country at the next election without producing their plan, it certainly would be wise of them to keep it back, because I do not believe that the ablest man in England could construct any scheme of Home Rule that would satisfy the Nationalists, which any man of average sense and knowledge could not drive a coach- and-four through in half an hour. Take as an example the question as to whether the Irish members should or should not be retained in the Imperial Parliament. You will remember that, in Mr. Gladstone's old Bill, they were to be excluded. This was the great bait of the Bill. After years of Irish obstruction, the prospect of getting rid of the Irish members was a great inducement ; but it did nS GENERAL POLITICS not require much knowledge of politics or much common-sense to see that this would never do. Gladstonians as well as Conservatives woke up speedily b i the fact that it would lead inevitably to separa- tion. It would be impossible to tax Ireland for Imperial purposes — for our army and our navy — while denying her representation in the Imperial Parliament. So we have been given to understand, in no very definite way, that this is to be changed in the new Bill, and that the Irish members are to remain in Parliament. But this alternative is very little better. To retain them lands you in difficulties no less serious. Think of the anomaly of Irish members being allowed to in- terfere in English and Scotch business while English and Scotch members were allowed no voice in Irish affairs. Now. Mr. Morley made a very clever answer to this objection. He said it was a theoretical objec- tion, and that it was a characteristic of the English people that they did not mind theoretical anomalies. That is quite true. The English are a very practical people, and as long as they produced no great practical inconvenience they would tolerate anomalies and incon- sistencies that would make a more logically-minded Frenchman tear his hair ; but this is the most practical matter in all the world. Xow. I am not going to touch to-night on the numberless and wide - reaching difficulties that vou would get into in the attempt to transform the British Constitution into any federal scheme — which have been so elaborately dealt with by Lord Hartington and Lord Derby — I shall not even stop to point out that, by splitting up Great Britain into four distinct THE POLITICAL SITUATION 119 nations, you would be going right in the teeth of all the teaching of modern history, and would almost certainly weaken, instead of strengthening, your Empire. What I want to impress upon you is that this great series of constitutional changes, which necessarily follow upon the granting of Home Rule to Ireland, will take years to carry out, during which time all other reforms of an)' importance will have to be postponed. If the Radicals realized this a little more clearly, I think they would not be quite so keen for Home Rule as they are now. Only one other point connected with this Irish Question. A few months ago I read a speech of Mr. Parnell's (I think at Liverpool). It was one of those speeches of his which are specially manufactured for English con- sumption. It was eminently gentle, moderate, and reasonable. All that they wanted, he said, was to be allowed to manage their own affairs in their own way, and, more especially, to develop the material resources of their country, not, as was now the practice, with English money from the pockets of English rate- payers, shamefully wasted and squandered by ignorant Englishmen like Mr. Balfour, but with Irish money, administered by Irishmen who understood the wants of their country. You can imagine how delightful all this must have sounded to his English hearers ; but I could not help wondering how it must have sounded in the ears of the people of Ulster. Ireland is a poor country. Ulster is the only part of it that possesses much wealth. If Mr. Parnell's speech meant anything, it must have meant that Ulster was to be bled to produce the means by which the material resources of the rest i2o GENERAL POLITICS of Ireland were to be developed. Now let me remind you that, of all experiments that a State can undertake, the most dangerous, and the most seldom successful, is that of attempting to develop the wealth of the country by the use of public money. For all public funds come out of private pockets, in the shape of taxes, and it is generally found much better to leave them there, and let people make their own fortunes themselves. And, from what we know of them both in Ireland and in America, the Irish race is of all the higher races the least fitted to carry out such a business successfully. But it does so happen that we are in possession of some evidence of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues' special qualifications for work of this kind. Some years ago, when there was much talk about the necessity for emigration to relieve the congested districts of Ireland, the Nationalists declared that such expatriation was unnecessary, and that migration from the poorer to the richer parts of Ireland was all that was required. A com- pany was formed with a great flourish of trumpets, com- posed entirely of Irish Nationalists, headed by Mr. Parnell, to carry out the scheme. They collected £1,000 ; they borrowed £32,000 from the Board of Works ; and they bought an estate in a fertile district. And there the matter stopped. Not one single man has been ' migrated ' there from that day to this. Their excuse is that they paid too much for the estate. But what a testimony is this to their fitness for managing such undertakings ! And these are the men who cry out about the ignorance and incompetence in such matters of Englishmen like Mr. Balfour. I think, if I were an Ulster man, when I read Mr. Parnell's speech, I would have made up my mind to die in the last ditch THE POLITICAL SITUATION 121 before I consented to be handed over to him and his colleagues. And this brings you face to face with another of the insuperable difficulties of Home Rule — difficulties that are insoluble by any scheme. If you hand over Ireland to the Nationalists, you will certainly have civil war, as well as perpetrate a great injustice ; if, on the other hand, by dividing Ireland into two or more separate States, you enable Ulster to protect itself, you will be offering the Nationalists a gift which they would not care to accept. I should like to say a few words to you about the Portugal, dispute which has arisen between England and Portugal. It is not at all unimportant. The case, in short, is this : The Portuguese, who, during the 300 years or more that they have been on the East and West Coasts of Africa, have never succeeded in penetrating far into the interior, have done nothing to open up the country, and who, until lately, have been wholesale slave- traders, have made a preposterous claim, in the general scramble for African territory that is going on amongst the nations of Europe, in the first place to the Shire highlands near Lake Nyassa, a district that has been partially civilized by English and Scotch missionaries, headed by the great Livingstone ; and secondly, to a belt of country stretching right across South Africa from ocean to ocean, which claims, if admitted, would prevent for all time English settlers from the Cape penetrating northward into Africa. In the interests of the present missionaries and their beneficent work, and of English settlers in the future, Lord Salisbury courteously but firmly refused to admit these extrava- gant territorial claims and when the Portuguese tried i2 2 GENERAL POLITICS to rush the matter by force of arms, he has insisted on their retiring. I should think that everyone who remembers how English interests abroad, and especially in South Africa, were neglected and mismanaged by Mr. Glad- stone, must have felt a little thankful that Lord Salisbury was at the head of affairs. If you wanted to form an idea of how a Gladstonian Government would probably have handled the matter, you had only to study the daily utterances of your Daily News. I remember in those melancholy days of the surrender of the Transvaal and the desertion of the Soudan garrison, blunders for which we are still paying and suffering, and shall do for many years to come, Glad- stonians used to say as a kind of excuse that the people — meaning the working classes — did not care a brass farthing for foreign and colonial questions. That was no excuse whatever for Ministers, who ought to know better, but I think there was some truth in it. I think we are still in the reaction from the opposite extreme of a century ago. The monarchical and aristocratic Government of the last century cared too much for affairs abroad, and too little for home politics. I remember an utterance of that witty woman, Mrs. Montagu, that exactly illustrates the spirit I allude to. It was at the time when the English fleets were driving the French and the Spaniards out of many an ocean possession in the West Indies and elsewhere, and when there was great discontent in England. Mrs. Montagu wrote to a friend, ' It seems probable that his Majesty King George will soon find himself in posses- sion of every island in the habitable globe, with the exception of Great Britain and Ireland.' THE POLITICAL SITUATION 123 Now we have swung' rather into the opposite extreme. British But I am very much mistaken if the British workman sessions. 1 ' does not very soon wake up to the importance of his colonial possessions. It is a question not merely of sentiment, but of bread-and-butter. The livelihood of much of our great population depends upon our foreign trade. Now, trade follows the flag. What this means in its simplest form is that, as every sailor can see, in 1 French port you will find a preponderance of French ships and French goods, in an English port of English ships and goods, and so on. It is proved conclusively by the fact that our trade with our own colonies has increased of late years out of all proportion to our trade with foreign countries — even with an English-speaking country like America — and this natural tendency of trade to follow the flag of its own country is aggravated by the fact that nearly all European nations try to exclude foreign goods from their territories by means of heavy duties. So that at the present time, when most of the nations of Europe are scrambling to take possession of, or establish protectorates over, all lands that have not been yet appropriated by civilization, a Government that neglects the interest of Englishmen and English trade really deserves to be impeached. There is only one other subject that I wish to touch The dock • 1 ii- • i-j_- 1 strike, upon to-night, and that, in one sense, is not a political question at all. Yet in another sense the most im- portant political event of the year has been the great dock strike, together with other strikes and wages questions more or less connected with it. I think there was a great deal in the history of the dock strike of which we as a nation have a right to be proud. In the first place, there was the extremely orderly behaviour i2 4 GENERAL POLITICS of the great masses of men who were out of work. More striking still, I think, was the general sympathy towards the dock labourers shown by the moneyed classes. Though they must have felt that their own selfish interests were in some danger, and that their own turn might very likely come next, the great mass of the well-to-do classes showed (practically and other- wise) an amount of sympathy with the strikers that went, perhaps, even beyond what was strictly just to the unfortunate owners of the London Docks. It was a great proof, if any were needed, of the genuine goodwill of the well-to-do classes in England towards the labourer. I believe myself thoroughly in the sincerity of that goodwill. I believe that the great bulk of the well-to-do classes are sincerely anxious that the working man should not be what the Socialists call ' exploited '; that is, worked like a slave for a bare sub- sistence wage, while others take all the profit of his work. I believe that they are sincerely desirous that he should have his fair share of the profits of his own labour, either in the form of good wages, or, what is perhaps better, by being given a share in the profits of his employment. I say the latter is better, because sometimes when a man is receiving high wages he does not realize that he is sharing in profits, though he is really doing so ; whereas if he earns a lower wage, but receives, a share of the profits, he does grasp the fact that he is a profit-sharer. So far, then, the dock strike and its settlement showed features that were by no means on the whole unsatis- factory. Since then, however, there has become apparent in the attitude of the trades-union leaders something that is very threatening, and ominous of THE POLITICAL SITUATION 125 future mischief. As you all know, the dock strike has been followed by man}- others, some no doubt reason- able, others very unreasonable indeed. I wish to call your attention to the gasworkers' strike in the south of London. This strike did not begin in the ordinary way with a demand on the part of the men for higher wages or shorter hours. It began with a proposal by the managers of the gasworks to give the men a share in the profits, if they would bind themselves to remain in their employment for certain specified periods. Now, let me say that on the face of it the gas com- pany had a perfect right to make such a condition as that. No man can expect to be made a partner in a concern by receiving a share in the profits, and yet re- serve his right to turn his back on it at a week's notice, to the probable injury of the business. And apart from this, the gas company were quite justified in taking advantage of such an opportunity to protect themselves and the public from such a calamity as a sudden strike among the gas-stokers. I believe a majority of the men were quite willing to enter into such an agree- ment ; but the trades union forbade them to do so, and ordered them, if the proposal was not withdrawn, to come out. The trades-union leaders alleged that such agreements would injure the unions (as if they were an end in themselves, instead of a means to the well-being of the workman) ; but they went on to say that it would deprive them of their right to strike at a week's notice, and that they would never consent to give up. I think the meaning of this is pretty plain ; but let us go back for a moment to the docks. Within the last few days a new strike has broken out at Hay's Wharf. One of the articles of agreement that closed the great i26 GENERAL POLITICS dock strike was that there was to be no pay for meal- times. But last week the men at Hay's Wharf struck for pay during the dinner-hour. When Mr. Tom Mann, one of the trades-union leaders in the late strike, was asked by the masters to explain how he reconciled the action of the men with the agreement that had been so recently signed by both parties, he made what I cannot but call the impudent answer that that agree- ment was not intended to last for ever (it had lasted four months, and I wonder what the men and their friends would have said if the masters had set it aside on that ground?), and that, as trade was pretty brisk, they thought it was an opportune moment for obtaining further concessions. Now, if you will take this and the action of the trade-union in the gas strike together, the intention of the union leaders becomes, I think, tolerably plain. They evidently mean to ' exploit ' the capitalist, just as they say he has exploited the working man. He is to be deprived of his share of the profits by opportune strikes for higher wages. The public who have money or savings to invest are to construct docks or gasworks at a cost of thousands or millions, for the benefit of the working man, and whenever it becomes clear that they are making a profit, the men are to strike for a rise of wages and swallow it up. Now, I say nothing about the right or wrong of all this, because a man's views of right or wrong in such matters depend entirely upon what assumptions he Trade and starts with. If you believe that all property is robbery, or if you say with Mr. Henry George that all wealth is due to labour, and therefore that all wealth belongs to labour, you will probably feel it quite right to deprive capital. THE POLITICAL SITUATION 127 the capitalist of every sixpence. But I will point out the unwisdom of it. In the first place, repeated strikes must drive away trade. The channels of trade are delicate things. Trade will go on running for an in- definite time in the groove it is used to, but let it be forcibly turned out of that groove by some temporary cause like a strike, and all the king's horses and men may not be able to get it back again. It would take an immense deal, of course, to shake so solid a trade as that of the port of London, yet figures show unmistak- ably that the recent strike has not been without its evil effect ; for in spite of the general revival of trade, the tonnage of the London Docks has to some extent fallen off. But there is another evil consequence to this attitude of the trades -union leaders which, to my mind, is more serious still, and that is the certain discourage- ment of the investment of capital in English enter- prise. Radicals pooh-pooh this, and it is not a danger that it is easy to make people see. You cannot show people the works that have not been built, but which would have been built if capitalists had had more reason for confidence ; you cannot easily even make them aware of the quantity of English capital that is poured into foreign enterprises in preference to English ; because such transactions are more or less private. But as for telling me that these strikes and the threatening attitude of the trades-union leaders will not affect commercial enterprise in England, you might as well tell me that if I knocked over that glass of water it would not run off the table. Just think what the position is ! The investing public are to lay out their thousands in a work, and to take all the risks of i 2 8 GENERAL POLITICS failure, and then, if it turns out to be a success, the trades unions are to step in and absorb the profits. Alienation of Radicals say that they are not afraid of frightening capital. -ii • • t-. away capital, because it must invest itself. But they forget that in these days it is quite as easy to invest your money in foreign or colonial stocks as it is in English. Thousands are so invested every day. And do you suppose that if a man had a thousand pounds to invest, and was doubting whether he should put it into, say, an English dock company or an American railway, that he would not take into consideration the recent strikes and the attitude of the trades-union leaders ? I say all this more by way of warning than of comment on what has actually taken place. The mischief has not gone far enough yet to do any very great harm, and the failure of the gas strike will, it is to be hoped, bring a good many men to their senses. But I do regret that the trades-union leaders should have taken up an atti- tude towards capitalists, and towards enterprise, that would be intolerable and disastrous if they were strong enough to maintain it ; and I also regret that they should have set their faces against the system of profit- sharing, because I believe that ii is to profit-sharing in one form or another that we must look for the eventual amelioration of the relations between capital and labour, rather than to the barbarous method of strikes, which tend to estrange classes, and impoverish both parties, drive away trade, and paralyze commercial enterprise. Patriotism. It is to education, I am quite sure, that we must look for an improvement in the tone of public spirit upon this, as upon the other great subjects that I have touched upon to-night. With increased knowledge men do, I am sure, tend to take a wider and loftier THE POLITICAL SITUATION 129 view of their political duty. Some people will tell you (and they are not by any means generally Conservatives) that it is of no use to appeal to the patriotic spirit of the mass of working men, or to expect them to consider anything in politics beyond their own immediate interests. I have never believed this for one moment. Patriotism and public spirit are not the property of any class. The British ploughboy goes to certain death fi >r sake of his country quite as heroically, considering his inducements, as the officer by his side. The difference between classes, such as it is in their views and feelings about politics, is due to education and knowledge. How can you expect a man to feel the full grandeur of the Empire to which he belongs, and to realize his deep political responsibilities towards it, when he has hardly an idea of what it is ? But with education and in- creased knowledge come a profound sense of the many- sided greatness of his country, a pride in its glory, and a devoted interest in its destiny, and with these a spirit of unselfish patriotism and public duty, without the existence of which in those who exercise political power no nation can hope to prosper long. THE POLITICAL SITUATION* (Speech at Wilton.) March 7, 1891. The Earl of Pembroke delivered an address. He said : I was invited some time ago to deliver you a lecture to-day upon the eternal subject of politics, and I think * The deaths on two successive days in this year of Mr. W. II. Smith and Mr. Parnell formed a striking landmark in the history of the Irish question. Private scandals had, however, previously 9 i 3 o GENERAL POLITICS it is a very good moment for taking stock of the situa- tion. Recent events have become rather less recent, and a time has arrived at which it is possible to form some estimate of their effect upon the future. Now, there can be no doubt whatever that these events have greatly strengthened the case of the Unionists. They have shown the Unionists to be right and their oppo- nents wrong on several most vital points, and exposed more than ever the desperate nature of the Home Rule proposal. First as to the character of Mr. Parnell. Mr. Parnell's character was, up to a few months ago, one of the Gladstonian trump cards. All misgivings about closed Mr. Parnell's leadership of the Irish Party — a leadership which had endured unquestioned from the date of its assumption sixteen years before. His personality and methods had been sur- rounded with a veil of assumed mystery, which seemed to find a sort of sympathetic accord in the attitude of reserve which Gladstonians displayed in approaching the question of Home Rule. All the more disastrous on the collapse of the alliance was the resulting exposure of the slender basis of confidence on which it had rested. It was shown that the parties were never really at one. During the period of Mr. Parnell's dictatorship his domina- tion had been supreme — so complete, indeed, that even after his fall the Romish Episcopals hesitated, until reinforced by English social opinion, to strike the final blow at his supremacy that was perhaps long foreseen. This year marked an advance in the pro- gress of the New Unionism, whose representatives succeeded in capturing the Trades L T nion Congress at Liverpool in September, where they asserted their principle of State interference, with the result that the Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee resigned his post, which devolved eventually upon John Burns. The cleavage of the Labour Party was thus become acute, the New Unionists' proposal of municipal workshops, among other reforms, being symptomatic of those Socialistic leanings which reached a pronounced development in the resolutions of the Norwich Con- gress four years later. THE POLITICAL SITUATION 131 the future of Ireland under Home Rule were met by appeals to the strength and moderation of that great and noble patriot, and as he really is a very strong man, the argument was not without force. They refused to listen to a word against him : they shut their eyes to the evidence of facts and speeches, and the findings of the Special Commission. But henceforth no Glad- stonian will dispute what we have said all along, that he is unscrupulous, untrustworthy, and an enemy of England. They are converted at last, and they have all the zeal of converts. Liberal newspapers, which almost worshipped him six months ago, attack him daily with a wealth of vituperation to which no Tory can pretend. It is very encouraging. It is impossible not to hope that their conversion will go further still. Secondly, there has been made perfectly plain, what we Unionists felt always certain of but could not abso- lutely prove, that there is not and never has been any real agreement as to the nature and limits of Home Rule between Mr. Gladstone and the Irish Nationalists. It was never really true that they accepted the Home Rule Bill of 1886 as a settlement of the question. In that blessed Committee-room 15 the other day the whole story came out. It was contradicted by no one. We learnt how the Irish members had been dis- contented with the Bill to the verge of rebellion ; h< >w their leader told them that they had already driven two statesmen out of the Government (Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain), and that if they went on they would wreck it altogether, as Mr. Gladstone threatened to resign if they did not accept the Bill as it stood ; and how, on hearing this, they wisely resolved to take 132 GENERAL POLITICS the Bill as an instalment, and agitate for the rest after- wards. The process would have begun the moment the second reading was passed. So that those who have been telling you that the Nationalists accepted Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill as a settlement have been misleading you, and we who denied it were per- fectly right. The alliance between the Gladstonians and Irish Nationalists has been a gigantic sham from first to last. There never has been any real agreement between them as to their ultimate aims and objects. Thirdly, thanks to this split, we are able for the first time to form a pretty shrewd idea of what the next Home Rule Bill will be like. We know that it cannot be a moderate and guarded measure, be- cause it must be such as will, if not satisfy Mr. Parnell's requirements, at least go far enough to enable Mr. MacCarthy to bid successfully against him with the Irish people. It is really unnecessary, in the face of these plain considerations, to analyze the am- biguous wording of Mr. Gladstone's guarded pledges to the Irish members. I think he spoke the simple truth when he told the Irish members (in answer to Mr. Parnell's request for pledges) that the best pledge they could have of the satisfactory nature of the next Home Rule Bill lay in the fact that no English Minister could pass a Home Rule Bill that was not accepted by the Irish representatives. Mr. Parnell will take care that they ask enough. With him bidding against them, there would be hardly any concession that Mr. MacCarthy could not extort from Mr. Gladstone. And even if the Nationalists patch up their differences, there can never again be any pretence of being satisfied with a Bill like that of 1886, after the late disclosures. So that it is THE POLITICAL SITUATION 133 quite clear that all the safeguards in Mr. Gladstone's scheme that Home Rulers have dwelt upon so earnestly are likely to be quite imaginary ; and you will have to face the fact that the next Home Rule Bill, if there is to be one, must be shaped to the satisfaction of Irish Nationalists, most of whom are bitter enemies of the English connection. But is Home Rule dead ? Have all these damaging revelations killed it? That shrewd politician, Mr. Chamberlain, says it is as dead as Queen Anne. With all respect, I doubt it. Northampton and Hartlepool, where we had by-elections the other day, do not look like it. Mr. Chamberlain, no doubt, would say that they do not tell against him, because he does not mean that the Liberals will not win the next election, but that they will not be able to pass a Home Rule Bill if they do. I confess I do not see how, if Mr. Gladstone wins the next election, he will be able to drop Home Rule, even if he wants to do so. I quite agree with anyone who says Home Rule ought to be dead. But if argument could have killed it, it would have died long ago. It has been a favourite boast of our opponents that an unanswerable speech by a Unionist leader has gene- rally been answered by a by-election going against the Government. The case for it may be destroyed, but Home Rule survives. As Professor Dicey well said at Lord Hartington's banquet : ' The Home Rule argument is dead, but Home Rule never depended upon argument, and to destroy its logical basis is not to destroy its illogical fascination.' This persistent vitality of the Home Rule cause in the constituencies is very curious, and it is certainly our business as 134 GENERAL POLITICS Unionists to understand it, in order that we may be able to deal with it. So I should like to give you my idea to-night of how it is to be accounted for. In my opinion it is based on three ideas or feelings, two of which certainly are hardly touched directly by the ordinary Unionist arguments. Those ideas or feelings are : (i) A superstitious belief in self-government : (2) a great indifference to the whole subject, coupled with a desire for Radical legislation ; (3) an overweening confidence in Mr. Gladstone. Now, of these ideas the first is far the most respect- able. Everybody believes in the virtues of self-govern- ment as a general rule. Unfortunately, in politics it is not safe to apply a general rule without looking to the circumstances of the particular case. There are gene- rally not one but several things to consider, and in this case there are other things besides the merits of self- government to think of. A very important one is the necessity of retaining Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. Would Home Rule tend towards this or the reverse ? Home Rulers say it would strengthen the Union, because Ireland would be more contented. That is very plausible. But Unionists answer that it is founded on a complete misconception. Irish Nationalists do not hate England because they want self-government. The}', rather, want self-government because they hate England, and they think very rightly that it would place them in a far better position for obtaining a separate nationality than they are in now. But putting aside this perhaps disputable argument, can any sane man who looks at the facts say that Ireland is in a state to receive complete self-govern- ment ? Into whose hands would the Government go? THE POLITICAL SITUATION 135 Those of the very men who for years past have been struggling against the law — not merely coercion law, mind, but Mr. Gladstone's great Land Acts which were to pacify Ireland. It would be impossible for them to turn round and enforce the law the}' have been denouncing. It would be suspended ; not a rent would be paid, not a contract observed. The landlords would have to combine and fight for their own, supported by the Protestants and trading classes of the North. And then you would have to send British soldiers to shoot down men of your own blood and religion who were struggling for their just rights. I am afraid it is hardly a case in which the merits of self-government would be very conspicuous. Now let us turn to those people who form, I believe, the bulk of the supporters of Home Rule — the people who don't care twopence about it, but want Radical legislation. They imagine that they can get the Irish Question out of the way by conceding Home Rule— which is a complete delusion that you cannot dispossess them of — and clear the way for Radical legislation in the interests of the working man. What they think the Radicals are going to do for them is by no means clear ; probably it amounts mainly to a general feeling that they will legislate for the poor against the rich. Doubtless the New Unionists, as they are called, will vote Radical to a man, and would be very glad to capture the House of Commons ; and if they do, and manage the business of the country as they manage their own business with their employers, we shall have a gay time. But it is rather curious that there has seldom been a time of recent years when the Liberal programme has 136 GENERAL POLITICS One man one been so poor as it is at this moment. The only definite proposals it contains of general interest are ' one man one vote,' and the Eight Hours Bill, and on the last the Liberal Party is not yet united. Now, who would be a penny the better for 'one man one vote'? And would it be worth while from the Radicals' point of view to hang up the whole course of legislation while you made such an alteration in the machinery as that ? And it is not such a simple matter. If ' one man one vote ' means anything, it means that every man's voting power should be equal. But to bring this about you would have to embark on a general redistribution of seats, and take members from Ireland and Scotland and give them to London, because London is at present very much under-represented, and an Irishman's vote is therefore of much greater value than a Londoner's. I do not fancy that this idea will find much favour with the Liberal Party. Eight Hours Well, then there is the Eight Hours Bill. Personallv I think that eight hours' hard work a day is enough for any man, and I should be very glad if nobody had to work more, beginning with Ministers in the House of Commons, who constantly work twelve hours and more, to the injury, not unfrequently, both of their health and their work. But to say this is quite different from say- ing that it is wise to prescribe by law that no man may work more than eight hours. That would mean in many trades reduced wages or loss of employment. Its Radical advocates say ' No,' because they fancy that employers generally could afford to pay the same wages for less hours out of their bloated profits. I believe that this is quite a delusion ; the margin of profit is often very low, as workmen who have tried co-operative THE POLITICAL SITUATION 137 production have often found out, and such an addition to the labour bill in proportion to the work done would certainly bring many a business to am end. A general Eight Hours Bill in England, therefore, would neces- sarily either lower wages or diminish employment ; and then I suppose would follow laws to keep up wages ; and, when that diminished employment still more, pro- tective laws to keep up prices ; and then — it would be time to emigrate. But, then, it is proposed first of all to restrict this Eight Hours Bill to miners. Surely if any body of workmen are strong enough to make their own terms with their employers without the help of Acts of Parliament, it is the miners' unions ? If Par- liamentary protection is granted to them, it will be impossible to refuse it to weaker trades far less able to protect themselves. In politics the exception of to-day is always the precedent of to-morrow. So much for the desire for Radical legislation. As to the indifference to the Home Rule Question which accompanies it, it is a part of the general indifference of a large portion of the electorate about all foreign and colonial questions, which they imagine (wrongly enough) do not affect their personal interests. I have long noticed that on this subject there has been growing up a curious difference between what I may call, for want of a better name, the governing classes and the bulk of the electorate. The governing classes (to some extent of both parties, for Lord Rosebery and Mr. Chamber- lain are as strong Imperialists as any Tory) have at last woke up to the vital importance to England of our Importance of Colonial Empire. With foreign nations struggling to Ern p™e. exclude our trade from their possessions all over the world, it has become clear to them that the loss of our 138 GENERAL POLITICS colonies would be probably a grave material disaster, as well as a blow to our national greatness. The masses are behind them in this matter. Indeed, since the last extension of the suffrage, English political opinion as a whole seems to have .become rather more than less insular than it was. I am often told by Gladstonian friends that what they call ' the people ' don't care two- pence about any foreign or colonial affairs, or anything that does not directly touch their interest as a class. Now, the only answer to this is that they must learn to care, because such questions do concern them deeply. But meanwhile their indifference constitutes a very serious danger. Conscientious statesmen will, of course, try to do their duty in questions that they know to be important to the national welfare, whether they are to gain credit for it or not. But they are always likely to fail if they cannot count on the hearty support of the country, and they are under constant pressure from party considerations to neglect their duty. A statesman like Lord Salisbury gains little or nothing in popular credit by doing well in such matters ; a statesman like Mr. Gladstone gets no punishment from the electors for doing very badly. Ministers are always under great temptation to pander to the popular indifference, and to neglect important matters in which the people are not interested for the sake of others in which they are. The truth is that England has got before her one of the most difficult tasks that the world has ever seen, which she must accomplish, or fall into decay. She has to show that a democracy, in which political power is chiefly in the hands of the working classes, THE POLITICAL SITUATION 139 is capable of governing a great Empire. Perhaps you will say that we have managed well enough up to now. Don't be too sure of this. At this moment Canada, there is hanging on the result of an election in Canada the question whether or not Canada shall have com- mercial union with America and close her ports to us with a prohibitory tariff, with the probable ultimate result of annexation to the United States. You will remember that last year the Americans passed the McKinley Bill, putting enormous duties on English and Canadian goods. This was no doubt a considerable injury to Canada. So the Liberal Opposition in Canada have determined to go in for Free Trade with the United States. They can only obtain this from the United States by adopting the McKinley tariff against England, otherwise, of course, English goods would pour into America through Canada, duty free. If the Liberals carry the elections, a severe blow will be in- flicted on English trade, and Canada will have gone more than half way towards joining the United States. This question, so momentous to us, is to be decided next Thursday, and, as far as I know, we have no power to do anything whatever but look on and watch the result. You might well ask how such a state of things has come to be. It would be very unjust to lay the blame of this upon the English people. It was their rulers who so long misled them on these questions. For many years it was a general belief among the Liberal leaders who shaped the destiny of this country, and who created the Constitution of our colonies, that the destiny of the colonies was independence, and that, as they and India were an expense rather than a profit i 4 o GENERAL POLITICS to us, it did not matter if they went. So, instead of trying to create ties of mutual interest between the colonies and mother-country, as might so easily have been done then, they almost went out of their way to avoid and destroy them. Imperial con- 1 should like to read you a part of a very able speech by Lord Beaconsfield, when Mr. Disraeli, in 1872. After showing how continuously Liberal statesmen had been trying to get rid of our Colonial Empire, and how nearly they had succeeded, he says : ' When those subtle views were adopted by the country under the plausible plea of granting self-government to the colonies, I confess that I myself thought that the tie was broken. Not that I, for one, object to self-govern- ment. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self- government. But self-government, in my opinion, when it was conceded, ought to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied with an Imperial tariff, by securities for the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the Sovereign as their trustee, and by a military code which should have precisely defined the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should be defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from the colonies themselves. It ought, further, to have been accompanied by some re- presentative council in the Metropolis which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home Government. All this, how- ever, was omitted, because those who advised that policy — and I believe their convictions were sincere THE POLITICAL SITUATION 141 — looked upon the colonies of England, looked even upon our connection with India, as a burden on this country.' None of these things which ought to have been done were done. On the contrary, everything was done that could be done to make the colonies feel that they must stand alone. I was in New Zealand when the last troops were withdrawn, in spite of the passionate protests of the colonists, and I shall never forget how outraged they were. They protested in vain ; they offered to pay £40 a man for every soldier kept in the country. They only wanted a regiment or so ; it was a matter of sentiment more than anything, but the sentiment was real and most valuable. But in the doctrinaire fanaticism that prevailed on this subject, Lord Gran- ville disregarded the remonstrances and withdrew the troops. And now we grumble that the colonists are not loyal ! And could anything be madder than to neglect to provide that there should be Free Trade, or something like it, between England and her colonies ? to give them the right to tax our goods as much as they please ? What other country would in these days be guilty of such a folly ? Probably our rulers believed then all the world would become Free-Traders ; but such a thing could only have been done by a nation that was heedless, and by rulers who believed that independence was the destiny of the colonies, and did not care to prevent it. What is to be done to remedy all this culpable neglect and wanton mischief ? It is very difficult to say. The talk we hear of Imperial Federation represents rather a wish than any definite idea of what can be done. It i 4 2 GENERAL POLITICS is a very difficult matter. Tie? that would have been easy to create when the colonies were being launched are impossible to create now. Privileges once granted cannot be withdrawn. It would have been easy to have inserted stipulations about English trade in the beginning : it would be impossible now to withdraw the right of taxing English goods at discretion, except for some quid pro quo most difficult to find. But the con- - lidation of the Empire is a task which the statesmen of the next generation must face if the country is not to decav; and it is at least in their favour that there is a strong wish both in the mother countrv and the colonies for closer connection. Mr. Glad- And now we come to the third and last of the notions that I believe are the real basis of the Home Rule cause in this country — the overwhelming confidence in Mr. Gladstone. To me it is by far the most unintelligible. I can understand any amount of admiration for the man himself as a human wonder, for his energy, his versatility, his unrivalled brain power, his eloquence, his striking personality, all of which combined place him in a class by himself amongst living men. But how anyone can have confidence in his political opinions beats me entirely. For how can you believe in the opinions of a man who is always proving them to be wrong ? When I am asked if I believe in Mr. Glad- stone, I always feel inclined to reply. ' At what date ? In '50 or '60 or "70 or "So ?' For all through his long life he has been perpetually changing his mind. If he could live to the age of Methuselah, no doubt there might come a time when his opinions became stable and when it would be possible, if not wise, to take him as a guide, but in the span allotted to modern men THE POLITICAL SITUATION 143 there is no chance of it. Indeed, the process of change has become more rapid in his later years. He seldom comes down to the House now to make a great speech without recanting some opinion that he uttered in the rash days when he was only fifty, or sixty, or seventy years old. The other day it was on religious disabilities, the next week it was on Welsh Disestablishment, and a few days later on the incidence of taxation. In his Welsh Disestablishment speech it seemed to strike even himself as being rather amusing, from the good-humoured way in which he joked about his incon- sistency. ' I do not question,' he said, 'that I shall be fairly and properly saluted with citations from a speech of my own on a former occasion ' (when he had stated that to separate the English from the Welsh Church was impossible). ' I do not remember exactly in what year.' (Sir G. Trevelyan : ' 1870.') Mr. Gladstone : ' Twenty-one years ago. Since that time I have had time to be born again and come of age.' But he was over sixty in 1870, remember. It really was very funny. It was as simple as Bene- dict's speech in ' Much Ado about Nothing,' ' When I said that I should die a bachelor, I did not know that I should live to be married.' Mr. Gladstone did not argue that the case had changed in any way, except that there were more Welshmen for Disestablishment in 1891 than there had been in 1870. When he said in 1870 that it was impossible to separate the case of the Church of Wales from that of England, what he ought to have said was that there were not enough Welshmen asking for Disestablishment. Indeed, with Mr. Gladstone political opinion seems to be to a strange extent a mere question of numbers. It would 144 GENERAL POLITICS be very rash to say what he would not go in for if he were convinced that the majority were for it. I don't think even Protectionists need despair if there were only more time. In Scotland this autumn he made a speech on the Eight Hours Bill — a proposal which is opposed to what are probably the longest- held and stablest convictions of his life — the belief in freedom of trade and labour. He made an admirable speech against the proposal. But when the time came for declaring absolutely against it, he would not do it, and he let it be clearly seen that if there was a majority of the party for it he would give way. Now, of course I know that with popular government a party leader must have regard to popular opinion in deciding on his line. But what I do say is, that a leader who carries the practice to the extent that Mr. Gladstone does is worthless as a political oracle, be- cause he follows rather than leads. Indeed, Mr. Glad- stone and his followers are constantly running round and round in a vicious circle ; they think that they are following him, and he really is following them. And I should like to ask Home Rulers what are Mr. Gladstone's credentials that he should be considered infallible in this particular matter? He tells you now that his Home Rule Bill will pacify and content Ireland. But did he not give you exactly the same assurances . about his measures in 1868 and 1870, and again in 1881 ? What reason is there for thinking that he will prove a better prophet now ? I have now dealt with the three principal ideas or sentiments that, separately or together, in my opinion account for the persistent vitality of the Home Rule cause in the constituencies — (1) pedantic belief in self- THE POLITICAL SITUATION 145 government ; (2) complete indifference to Home Rule coupled with a desire for Radical legislation ; (3) con- fidence in Mr. Gladstone — and I hope I have shown that none of the three are worthy of any very par- ticular reverence. The Government, who I fancy are pretty much of my opinion as to the causes of the results of recent by-elections, are meeting the most important of these sentiments in the only possible way, by showing that they take a proper interest in questions that interest the working classes. They have introduced a new Factory and Workshop Bill ; they have appointed a Select Committee on the hours of railway servants ; and they are about to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the disputes between capital and labour. I think that a very good thing, not merely for its political effect, but because I think it most desirable to turn the dry light of a Royal Commission on to these great and constant struggles between employer and employed that are causing so much suffering and threatening to drive away trade from our shores. The more light we have upon this subject, the better. I have a firm faith that, in the long-run, the better employers and em- ployed understand each other's case the less they will quarrel over their joint business. What will be the upshot of it all? What will happen if Mr. Gladstone gets a majority at the next election, pledged to support any Home Rule Bill he may bring forward ? Prophecy may be a gratuitous form of error, but looking forward is a duty in politics. Up to a cer- tain point I think it is easy to foretell. Mr. Gladstone would be obliged to bring in his Home Rule Bill. It would necessarily be an extreme Bill for reasons I have 10 i 4 6 GENERAL POLITICS given He must satisfy the Irish Nationalists. The House of Lords would be obliged to throw it out. Would Mr. Gladstone dissolve ? He has never ad- mitted the right of the House of Lords to force a dissolution ; and his party, you may be sure, would be dead against dissolving. I believe he would go on with a Radical programme, and leave unlucky Ireland to stew in its own juice. A Gladstone Ministry could not govern Ireland; they are too deeply committed to Irish lawlessness. Law would be suspended in that country, and all the good of six years of firm and temperate government would be lost in a few months. They would let things slide, and lav the blame on the House of Lords. Then, with Ireland in a state of anarchy and England plunged into a Constitutional struggle, it would be foolish to try to say what would happen. Perhaps, with our usual mixture of good luck and good sense, we should get out of the scrape somehow without irremediable disaster. But an electorate that was rash enough to return Mr. Gladstone to power with all this staring it in the face would not be justified in trusting very much to its good sense. There is a grim old Greek proverb that is well worth remembering : ' Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.' CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 147 CONSERVATIVE DIXXER AT WYLYE* March 5, .'892. Lord Pembroke said he hoped they would allow him Agricultural questions in to remark this much, that the ' House of Lords was a the House of toast which ought to be received well at every assembly r s " in an agricultural district like theirs, because there was no body of men who had a more thorough understand- ing and knowledge of all rural affairs. Men like the late Duke of Devonshire, Lord Leicester, Lord Vernon, and many others whose names he might mention, were standing authorities upon agricultural questions all over Europe, and he would assure them that they might be perfectly confident that the House of Lords would receive in the most sympathetic spirit all proposals for rural reform which were likely to be of benefit to the people. The Radicals always tried to make them believe the House of Lords would not act in that spirit. But he asked them, as reasonable men, why they should not. They had every reason — every selfish reason even — for * At the close of this years session the retiring Ministry could record among its achievements the Local Government Act, 1888, Free Schools, and the two Allotment Acts, of which the latter (1890) had supplemented the former by giving the petitioners direct access to the County Council to secure the enforcement of the pro- visions of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts in certain cases. None of these Acts, however, nor all combined, served to secure the Government's escape from the 'swing of the pendulum.' It was indeed felt, moreover, that the time had arrived when the Opposition should be forced to declare their Irish policy, for which their irresponsible position had enabled them to derive the credit of generous if undefined intentions. i 4 8 GENERAL POLITICS being anxious to see the number of owners of land increase. They had every reason, both selfish and un- selfish, for desiring to see the labourers living upon their estates numerous, prosperous, and contented. Landlords. Landlords were no better than other men, but they were no worse ; and they had those kindly feelings towards their fellow-men which he was glad to say were characteristics of all classes of Englishmen. Per- haps they were not quite so enthusiastic as a body about some proposed measures of reform as a good many of their young politicians on both sides. Perhaps they knew rather too much about it, and had no very great faith in the possibility of making people better off by Acts of Parliament. But they had given proofs of their good intentions and good feelings towards the labourer. There was an old story of a man who professed to care very much about something, and of a Quaker who said to him, ' How much dost thou care, friend ? I care £5.' He could tell them that the landlords of England during the last fifty years had cared many thousands of pounds for the people who lived upon their estates, and therefore he stated with confidence that they would receive any proposal which was in- tended to benefit the lot of the people who lived on the land, with true sympathy for its object, and very considerable knowledge of all the difficulties of the subject. He wished to protest against the doctrine that no young men who belonged to noble houses should stand for Parliament at all, as in some way outraging the) liberties of the people. What would happen to all 3 their noble families who had young men, who had been' CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 149 doing hard work in Parliament, if they were to say they were to have nothing to do with Parliament ? They would, like the nobility on the Continent, become of no use whatever ; and he could hardly imagine the bitterest Radical wishing for such a thing as that. If they looked at the past, which party really had the most claims upon their gratitude ? Let them just look at what the present Government had done. It had given the country a Local Government Bill, Free Education, the Allotment Acts, and now they had the Bill of Mr. Chaplin's for the creation of small holdings, which seemed to him about as good and ingenious a measure as could well be constructed to deal with an extremely difficult question. He knew their Radical friends were fond of saying all these measures were shams, or else that they (the Radicals) invented them ; and they particularly stated that the Allotment Acts were a sham. Well, he had had some experience of legislation by Allotments, this time, and he could only say it would be a very good thing if the generality of Acts of Parliament were as successful as those Acts had been. There had been something like 100,000 added to the number of allot- ment-holders since they had been passed. The Radicals said, ' Oh yes, but not under the Acts.' He maintained that it was directly in consequence of the Acts. Those Acts had been passed, and they called the attention of landowners all over the country to the question. In his own case, when people began to talk about it, he at once set to work to see if he could not meet the want everywhere. In one or two cases there were actual requisitions sent in from the villages that the Act might be put into force. He naturally inquired, i 5 o GENERAL POLITICS and wherever he found allotments were wanted he gave them without putting the Act in force. But that did not content the Radicals. They thought the thing was a failure unless someone was annoyed, the landlord bullied, or someone put under the harrow of the law. It had been said, ' Oh, we don't care about a voluntary grant of allotments to working men, we don't care about their being given them ; they want to take them as a right.' He (Lord Pembroke) also saw it was stated at a Liberal meeting that the Allotment Acts had never been put into force in Wiltshire. But why had that been the case ? Again he replied that it was because in nearly every place where men wanted allot- ments they had been able to get them. Another grievance — this time, for a wonder, a real one, though a little one — was that in a great many cases the men were made to pay too much for their allotments in proportion to what was paid by the farmers. The grievance was not so common as people supposed, because, when looked into, it appeared there were causes which brought up the rent in the case of allotments. But very likely, owing to carelessness or some other cause, people had in some cases charged too much for allotment ground. But he wanted to ask them what that grievance amounted to ? Why could not those men who had allotments, if they felt they had been charged too much in proportion to others, go to the landlord and tell him so ? In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the landlords would be only too glad to put things straight, because they only wanted to do what was just and fair. While telling them what had been done by the Government and private individuals, he must also tell CONSERVATIVE DINNER AT WYLYE 151 them frankly that he did not like the custom of bribing people to vote in what was thought to be the right way by measures or by any other means. To some extent that practice was inseparable from their system of politics. They could not carry on the political system of the country without paying for votes to return the party they thought to be the right one. That was part of the game, but it ought to be played fairly. He should like to draw their attention to three rules that ought to be observed. They should never propose any- thing bad in itself; they should never rouse vain hopes that could not possibly be fulfilled ; and they ought always, as far as possible, to avoid raising enmity against either persons or classes. It seemed to him that their opponents broke every one of those rules as regularly as possible. First of all, they proposed things which, if they could be carried out, would certainly do a great deal of harm in rural districts ; but, fortunately, they were found quite im- practicable. They talked of small reforms, from com- pulsory allotments to parish councils, as if they were going to bring about a new heaven and a new earth. He rather thought it was chiefly the ' one man one vote ' that was going to effect that little job. Then, they never lost an opportunity in advocating those things of spicing and flavouring everything they recom- mended by attacks on landlord and farmer. Was that right ? and, what was more important from the Radical point of view, at any rate, was it wise ? They could not get rid of landlords and farmers, whatever they might say, and the well-being of each of those classes had a direct bearing upon that of all. He was very much struck by something said by 152 GENERAL POLITICS the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Hartington that was, himself now a great landlord, and a son of one of the best and most liberal landlords in England. The other day, at a meeting of the Labourers' Rural League, he had the courage to give utterance to the old-fashioned truth that good landlords would bring in course of time good tenants, and that good, capable, and solvent tenants would pay their men well, and would treat them well. Then he went on to say that if that were the case it would be wiser, instead of in- volving the landlords in one common denunciation, and ignoring the tenant farmers, to hold up for example and imitation the practice of good landlords and good tenants. How those were to be multiplied was a very large question, but they might depend upon it that the foundation of such a happy state of things on an estate must be always due to the goodwill and zealous and deep sense of duty on the part of all classes towards each other ; and the way not to do it was to try and set them all by the ears. CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT BISHOPSTONE* March 12, 1892. Lord Pembroke, in returning thanks for the House of Lords, said he thought the toast was an appropriate one at a country gathering like theirs, because he * Down to the time of the General Election of 1892, at least, the Land Nationalization Society attracted a certain amount of notice among the more ignorant of the rural labourers, but its hold on the voter appears somewhat slender. Inspired by the views of CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT BISHOPSTONE 153 believed no assembly was more closely connected or more sympathetic with the agricultural interest than the House of Lords. Their political opponents, when they wanted to be particularly witty, called it the House of Landlords. Although he thought the House of Lords had sometimes done foolish and shortsighted things with regard to rural reform, he believed it would be a very good thing indeed for the agricultural interest if that House had more power — more initiative power — than it possessed in dealing with questions affecting land. At any rate, they should be saved from the sort of persistent hostility which the agricultural interest for many years past had had to experience at the hands of Liberal Governments when they had been in power. The other day, when he was speaking at Wilton, he warned the labouring men to be very careful how they supported Radicals, for this reason, that, as he said, and as he proved out of their speeches, the Radicals were not prepared to do one single thing to take any of the burdens off the agricultural interest. They had always been hostile to it. But he found afterwards, thinking it over, that he had really understated his case. He might have said even more than he did, because he found that Mr. Gladstone had committed himself actually to increasing the taxation which fell upon the agricultural interest. Henry George, with which the public were made familiar in 1884, the exoteric propaganda of the society seem, nevertheless, to stop short of thoroughgoing Socialism, and the logical difficulty of defining the precise point at which the application of the principle is to be limited presents a task too embarrassing for the class of itinerants generally engaged in their exposition. . i54 GENERAL POLITICS Taxation of A year ago Mr. Provand, a Member of Parliament, introduced a motion in the House of Commons which was in these words : ' That the proportion of taxation which falls upon land and its rental is insufficient and ought to be increased.' Mr. Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and a great many of the leading Liberals, went into the lobby and voted for that motion. There- fore he wanted them to take in the fact that Mr. Gladstone stood committed to increasing the taxation upon the landed interest if ever the opportunity arose for him to do so, and it was quite impossible, please understand, to tax agriculture or any other industry without affecting the workers, the people, who were the labourers themselves. There were men who were willing to go in that direc- tion a great deal further than Mr. Gladstone was willing to go. There were those young Radicals who saw visions and dreamed dreams of all sorts of fine things that they thought were going to happen in consequence of measures they were seeking to introduce ; and one of their favourite dreams was that they were going to reform the agricultural system and sweep away all the landlords and big tenants and everything of that kind. In thinking over that, there was one reflection that must have occurred to those men, viz., that if they were to buy out all the landlords it would be ruinous, and that to turn them out without giving them compensa- tion would be rather shocking. So they had hit upon the happy idea of taxing them out, taxing them so heavily as to absorb all their incomes, and in that way to make it unprofitable for the men who held the land to continue to do so, and thus to drive them away. He had been told by a friend of his in the House of CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT BISHOPSTONE 155 Commons that one of the Liberal vans that was going about the Midland or Northern counties had been dis- tributing a leaflet to this effect about the landlords : ' Don't buy them out ; don't kick them out ; tax them out.' That was the programme. Well, he thought his friend on his right would probably say that doctrine was a little immoral. Even taxing people out was a little immoral, but he did not think the Radicals were very fond of looking at political questions from a moral point of view. The Eighth Commandment was not very popular amongst them ; and, in fact, if it were not occasionally convenient to recall it in order to pitch into a landlord whose ancestors had enclosed a little common, they would very soon dispense with it alto- gether. They reminded him of a story he once heard in reference to a church in America, where, after the Emancipation, one of the negroes was preaching on the subject of the Ten Commandments. He said, ' I don't believe that old man Moses ever talked any such stuff as that,' and he went on to say that he thought all the Ten Commandments had been invented by white men for the express purpose of preventing the negroes from doing everything they liked best in the world. He (Lord Pembroke) was waiting for the day — and he was quite sure it would come soon — when they would hear their Radical friends say the Eighth Commandment had been invented by the landlord and capitalist for preventing the democracy from ever doing what they liked best. He was doing nothing irreverent in citing the story he had told, but was employing it as a serious illustration of a fact. But he was going away from the programme to which 156 GENERAL POLITICS he had referred, for taxing out the landlords. He asked the men of Bishopstone who were present to just think for one minute what it would mean there. Supposing they taxed the landlords to the extent designed, the first thing of course would be that all subscriptions and that kind of thing would cease. That was a small matter. The next thing would be that all the cottages and farm Estate repairs, buildings would begin getting out of repair and tumbling down, for the landlord would have no money to put them right. In the third place, the big farmers who were paying — he did not know the extent of their busi- ness, but a good deal over a thousand a year in wages — would give up their farms, because they could not stay with all the buildings tumbling about their ears. Most of the labourers, if they did not wish to starve, would have to go too, and what would be left on the land would be a few people who would try to pick up a living the best way they could without any capital or any wages to help them. That was what would happen if they were to try to get rid of the landlords by taxing them to death. They might say that was a most impracticable thing. Yes, it was, but that sort of thing — the idea of sweeping away the landlords and giving the land to the people, what was called nationalizing the land — was considered by their political opponents, however impracticable, to be quite good enough to get votes with, and that was what they used those things for. It was part and parcel with all their tremendous promises and the exaggerated things they proposed to do, calling up all sorts of visions which took the poor man's fancy. That was how, he believed, their opponents had won so many agricultural seats. But there would be a day of reckon- CONSERVATIVE MEETING AT BISHOPSTOXE 157 ing for all that, he could assure them, because the hopelessness of those politicians fulfilling their promises must be found out in time, and when the labouring men found out that all those vain promises ended in nothing but smoke, when they had very likely got on bad terms with their employers and were disappointed in things they had tried to do and expected to get, they would be very much disgusted with the Radicals, and would come round to the Conservative side, just as the work- ing men in the towns had done. A few years ago it was a favourite joke on the part of their Radical opponents to talk about the Conservative working man as if he did not exist. Nobody made jokes about the Conservative working man now. He returned members by the score in the big towns in England. And why ? Because the Conservative work- ing man had found out the value of a great many of the promises made by the Radical Party, and, what was more, he had found out the genuineness and popular character of the Conservative Party. He had learned that the Conservative Party had the interests of the poor man at heart every bit as much as the Radical Party had, and that they were just as anxious as the Radicals to give the working man the means of rising and improving his position in life. The time would come when the agricultural labouring man in the country districts would find that out just as his brother in the towns had done before him. The Conservatives were not behind the Radicals in their true sympathy for the working people of this country, and in their earnest desire to make personal sacrifice, if need were, to raise the general condition of the masses in England. The proof of that lay in 158 GENERAL POLITICS their actions. Let them look at the whole history of the present Government, let them look at the measures that they had passed and were at that moment pro- posing to pass for the benefit of the working man, to give him opportunities by continuous steps of bettering himself and raising his position in life. As good a Radical as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain the other day, in talking about what this Government had done and proposed to do for the people, said theirs was a pro- gramme of which no Liberal need be ashamed. SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. ERt 14 OCT. 1920 o T/CAl -HE \» 1 ' *. >* -*r* ' » ' , ' >"■ ... **»«-CT^n V %i v*V*i*f. \ • »•»♦».. . « . I . . ■ >v .•«.«.,,„..„. «, *"--••-.... < •* ....... .v« kt ;^ \ ■••••* "... .«.. • •••,, tt< ;,..»...,. »<«»i*»'##., . » . ''.::•'••■ iM '.«..., '••«.... — W*t)vht SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. ON FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 1882. At Salisbury Lord Pembroke said : As they were all aware, it was during the last few years that the society had tided over a great crisis, and he believed it had sur- mounted the danger chiefly because of the great energy and perseverance of its worthy president, Lord Nelson, who, in his opinion, fully deserved the eloquent enco- miums passed upon him by Mr. Morrice. He really believed that the society was now in a thoroughly sol- vent and satisfactory condition. They had a strong and hard-working committee, and were determined it should remain so ; they had a good secretary, and the number of members was slowly but surely increasing. Although, of course, during the late crisis the committee had had to draw in their horns, he hoped that shortly they would be able to offer further benefits to the mem- bers — benefits as great as any society which intended to remain solvent could afford to offer. There was one new improvement which had been touched upon, and that was the institution of the juvenile branches — the 11 1 62 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. boys and the girls. These branches would, he hoped, fulfil the object in feeding the adult society. He did not think they could inculcate habits of providence at too early an age. He was sure that the boy who invested a penny or twopence in a friendly society instead of bull's eyes or marbles would never have occa- sion in after-life to regret the choice. As they had heard from more eloquent lips than his what were the benefits conferred upon the country by institutions of this sort, he would not detain them by any remarks about them ; but he wished to say this : One indirect benefit that they themselves derived from these societies had not yet, he believed, received that Capital and amount of notice which perhaps it deserved. They were all aware that all over the civilized world — not England particularly, but all over Europe — the rela- tions between capital and labour, between employers and employed, were considerably strained. There was a very strong, a very natural feeling amongst the working classes all over the Continent — all over the civilized world — that they did not share sufficiently in the profits of the labours of their hands. And their feeling took various forms ; it assumed a dangerous attack upon the capitalist class of the country. Such a manifestation of feeling was extremely dangerous and mischievous, because if the whole of the capital of the capitalists were confiscated to-morrow, the working classes would not be better off, but worse off; it would mean that savings had been dissipated, that the accumulations of capital — by which enterprises were undertaken and employment of labour was found — had been got rid of. At a time like this it was natural that one should look ON FRIENDLY SOCIETIES 163 round, that every interest should ask whether there was not a healthy channel for labour and investment; it was but natural for the working classes to say they did not get a sufficient share of the profits to which their labour could be turned. He would ask whether there was not an arrangement that could be arrived at which would bring to an end this antagonism between capital and labour. He believed himself that there was such Co-operation. an arrangement, and that the name of it was co-opera- tion. He believed that probably some of them — and he hoped he should be one of them — would live to see great co-operative industrial societies, in which working men would be their own employers — not onlv being the labourers, but finding their own capital and taking their own profits. This, he believed, would happen. They had proved it in the present day that it was not merely theoretical. Everyone would probably remember how the Rochdale Pioneers — a few work- men — started with a capital of £28, bought a small house,- commenced business, and went on increasing until they were now worth thousands of pounds. And there had been other institutions of the same kind, started entirely by working people, without any outside help whatever, and doing a flourishing business. It might be asked, if this had succeeded in a few instances, why should it not generally be more adopted ? The answer was found in this : Financial business was very difficult, the management of capital was extremely difficult, and many of the working classes had no such knowledge as to enable them to carry on such under- takings. There had been among the working men no body of men possessed of the requisite knowledge. He 1 64 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. thought that undertaking such societies as the present was very admirable training for the management of practical financial business. Only the previous day he was poring over their report with feelings, he fancied, not unlike those of some ignorant working man who was trying to master the details of an industrial co-operative society to which he belonged, and it struck him (Lord Pembroke) what an admirable training it must be for the working man to take an active part in these socie- ties. It was to be hoped that before many years were out there would be seen a body of men who were really fit to manage for their fellow working men great indus- trial co-operative societies. Personally, he hoped to live to see the day. The last speaker had given them such a complete and able account of the present posi- tion and prospects of the society and things that were wanted in connection with it, that he would not detain them with anything more on the subject of the report. PROVIDENT SOCIETIES. Wilton, /une, 1885. The Chairman, in proposing the toast of the da}-, ' Prosperity to the Wilts Friendly Society,' said he had made up his mind to say a few words to them on that occasion on a certain subject, but he woke up one morning and found by the newspapers that a much greater man— Lord Salisbury— had just made the whole of his speech. Still, he felt it might be of use to say some few of the things he had intended to say to them. PROVIDENT SOCIETIES 165 He was always very glad to attend meetings of provident societies, and to give them every encouragement in his power, because he looked upon them as embodiments of the great principle of self-help. That principle was not half so popular at this moment as it was a few years ago. The principle of help by Act of Parliament was taking its place now. His belief was that the present generation would State inter - . ference. have to decide a great question — the question whether Government ought to try to secure to men the greatest possible freedom to advance their own interests, and leave them to take care of themselves, or whether they ought to interfere with them, and take care of them. His opinion as to which system was best was very much the same as Lord Salisbury's. He thought State interference was demoralizing, hampering, and expensive. We should certainly find, even if we were starting in a new country, that it would be much better to leave people free to push their fortunes as they could — better for the national character and the national wealth, and less productive of extreme poverty and pauperism — than to try to regulate prosperity and make everybody well off by taxing Peter to help Paul. Much of what he wanted to say to them on this Socialism common to subject was what he often said to his Socialistic friends Conservatives in London. It was not at all a question of party Liberals. politics, for there was just as much Socialism amongst Conservatives as amongst Liberals. What he wished to point out was that this question was not an open one at all in England. It was much too late to think whether we should have a Socialistic form of Govern- ment or a free form of Government. It might have been an open question at the beginning of the century. 166 SOCIALISM. LIBERTY AND PROPERTY. ETC. Then we had., comparatively speaking, quite a small population — a population which, it might be said, the agricultural produce of the country was almost suffi- cient to support. But since then we had multiplied our population by three, and we had now about 30,000.000 instead of 10,000.000. This increase of 20,000,000 of people might be said to have been brought into existence by the energy and enterprise of men whose laws and institutions gave them freedom to grow rich by their own efforts, whose svstem of Government enabled them and encouraged them to push their fortunes to the utmost advantage. The freedom of commercial enterprise and the lightness of taxation were conditions on which the very existence of these people depended. To turn round now and say we would discourage all this making of fortunes, all this accumulating of wealth, and try to get equality by taxing capital and interfering with industry, seemed to him to be the greatest madness in the world. It would be starving almost the whole of the working class in England : it would be killing the goose that laid the g Iden eggs. Like most people who had thought on this subject, he should like to see a greater equality of wealth in England if it could be brought about by proper means, but the starvation of the working class was very much too heavy a price to pay for it. There was no doubt that all those who feared such a result ought to work tooth and nail to preserve the principle of freedom of enterprise which had made our country so prosperous and so great. But the spirit of the times was very much against them. He had seen a great many measures passed of late years and a great many more introduced into Parliament which PROVIDE:: 50CIET1 - - : r - to mat pn: fact, ixtremel and mischi would not gc >vei th< list : tl mention one rapped : ibont i affected sociz rs. In the H; - F Coi - I Horace I in the teeth : the the Oppositi i a ci tion Bill to the effect ti t ti --.-. should not rrir.zhise. I: : :;:r.. thing, and tha: :: i be r : ~ir. from the parish : but h look at the other - . :" :he man obhged to resort t th because he had never been r anything for a - ? t: :' - ocii I . ■ iher da vhichc- I '.:. at and :: : :ra- >f medicai - :r: rr. exercising t his .all hrir^T" narn ' - -- ...-_ _. — _ . : : . i rr. e i Eari " ".err. : le questic q. Wl :h-. v..r:^h : Was :: r.:: provident enough : la; Loci ■ - ties like this. C i : ~:r: a rest induce] - .eii :a: : : clubs was that I I be saved :r::_. : ?tigi and disabilities :: going apoi rates And look at the importance : : Legislatui uing moment, as th igh : af a man a parish rehef. Fifty or sixf its s E _ and was nearly ruin - / rav.rer:?: works wcv.id re: parish - : .: : -wallowed up time when men tx economv — when : i I • I fessoi " " - : " related h hole zultivation be; [ 5. It was. : r; : much in poli: sjh.t it - - . ~ - 1 68 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. — and the country roused itself to a heroic effort, and shook off the incubus which threatened to strangle it. But the struggle with pauperism did not end there. Pauperism was a noxious weed that could only be kept down by continual effort, and therefore the Legis- lature should not do anything that would appear to give it the slightest encouragement. As for saying that medical relief was distinct from poor relief, any guardian would tell them how often the one led to the other. Well, they all knew the end of that motion. It went up to that very unpopular place the House of Lords, and they threw it out. All his friends were ex- claiming that this was another nail in the coffin of the House of Lords, and that the Conservatives would be punished for it at the next election. He did not believe it, but if it should be so he should not repent. He thought there was a great deal too much seeking after what was popular at the expense of what was right, among poli- ticians of all parties. He could not see how the country was to be prosperous if the men of all parties did not, now and again, in the face of opposition, stick to what they thought was right, and therefore he was glad that the poor old Conservative Party had, for once in a way — it did not do it very often — stuck to a principle it believed to be a sound one. But he was getting too near the forbidden ground of party politics, and had better turn to other matters. He would make one final remark on the subject of their report. That report seemed to him, as far as he could understand it, to be a very satisfactory one. He had heard rumours that the society was going down, but he did not believe that was the case. If it was going down, PROVIDENT SOCIETIES 169 it was not because provident societies were becoming less popular, but because its work had been done and its place was being taken up by the larger societies, that offered, or seemed to offer, greater benefits and as great security. If it were dying it would die with honour, because it was one of those societies that had led the van in bringing providence and independence home to the working man. But on reading the report he did not see any sign of disease ; on the contrary, he saw many signs of vigorous and healthy life, and therefore, without misgiving or regret, they could join in drinking prosperity to the club. ADDRESS TO MEMBERS OF THE LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE* At Westminster Palace Hotel, June, 1885. The noble Chairman, in addressing the members of the League, said : I am met at the outset with the diffi- culty that the subject is too vast for a single speech. It * The Liberty and Property Defence League, of which the design originated with the late Mr. W. C. Cross, was publicly launched on July 5, 1882, at a meeting at the Westminster Palace Hotel, the Earl of Wemyss (then Lord Elcho) presiding, and with the approval of such veteran statesmen and legislators as Lords Shaftesbury, Grey, Bramwell, and Penzance. The motto of the League was ' Self-help versus State help,' and its objects were the resistance to over-legislation, the maintenance of freedom of con- tract, and the advocacy of Individualism as opposed to Socialism, entirely irrespective of party politics. The period was one when temporary causes, among them the projected extension of the iyo SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. is difficult to know where to begin, still more difficult to know where to leave off. The idea on which the League is founded brings one face to face at once with the whole question of the laws which govern the life and character both of social bodies and of individuals. If such matters are not too subtle and profound for speeches, they are certainly too vast and wide-reaching for any single speech, even if I possessed the know- ledge and the power to deal with them adequatelv. I feel, therefore, compelled to confine myself to a short practical justification of the existence and work of the League ; and if my treatment of the facts strikes you as superficial, or if I leave out much that is most worth saying, I must plead the vastness of the subject as a sufficient excuse. I do not propose to dwell upon the causes that have produced the change in public opinion that has brought the League into existence. They are probably numerous franchise, contributed to favour and popularize the idea of State interference. 'The gross departure from all principle,' as Lord Penzance expressed it, had set the example in Ireland of fixing rents by law. Michael Davitt and Henry George were believed to be co-operating in a mission to extend the cult of confiscation to England, while later certain embryonic speculations of Mr. Chamberlain's upon the origin of civil society had betrayed them- selves in the picturesque but disquieting metaphor of ' ransom.' In its corporate action the League aimed at the defence of the principle of individual ownership and freedom of contract in pro- perty of all kinds, the defence of private enterprise from harassing State restrictions, voluntary and direct adjustment between trade- unions and employers, and the federation of existing agencies for the protection of individual industries : while its work in elucidating the principles which underlie the rights of Liberty and Property lent reinforcement and concentration to the efforts of their defenders. To this work the following essays were an important contribution. LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 171 and complex. But I believe the two principal ones are these : First, the natural reaction from the creed of the last generation. When men have followed a certain course for some time, they become blind to its bene- fits and impatient of its drawbacks. Truths become platitudes, and lose all power and significance by constant repetition. In the second place, the transfer of political power to classes whose inexperience in political science and whose circumstances in life render them peculiarly liable to be tempted to try to better their position by the apparently short and easy method of legislation. Whatever the causes may have been, the change is State help, indisputable. Thirty years ago State help was con- sidered to be pernicious, delusive, demoralizing, ham- pering, expensive, and unjust ; that it was far better both for national character and national wealth to give men the greatest possible freedom to advance their own interests and to take care of themselves, than to inter- fere with them and take care of them ; that freedom of enterprise and security of property were the corner- stones of prosperity — all these things had become dogmas which scarcely any statesman claiming to be enlightened dared to call in question. Now there is hardly a measure introduced into Parliament or a speech made on the stump which does not set one or more of them at defiance. Look, for instance, at the discussion that has been going on about the refusal of the House of Lords to alter the law which makes the receipt of medical relief a disqualification for the franchise. I know very well that there are two sides to this question. I should be glad myself if such disqualification could be 172 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. suspended for a while, to enable those who wished to do so to clear themselves of their disabilities by joining clubs and dispensaries. But what is significant is the way in which the question is treated. So far as I know, not a single statesman has thought it worth while to warn the people of the danger of giving the smallest encouragement to pauperism ; to remind them how once it was near ruining the country ; to impress on them that it is a noxious weed that can only be kept down by continual effort. Not one has cared to remind them that it is not right for a man to get his medical expenses from the rates unless he is driven to it by sheer necessity. Self-help. You could not have a clearer illustration or a more striking proof than this curious silence of the extent to which the principle of self-help has gone out of favour, and how the idea of help by Act of Parliament has usurped its popularity and place. One would think that, under such circumstances, it was hardly necessary to justify the existence of any organization to defend principles of such importance to the national well-being, to watch the case on their behalf both in Parliament and out of it. But the world is by no means convinced of the necessity for our League. The Liberty and Pro- perty Defence League is regarded with scant favour, not only by Socialists of all degrees, who naturally dis- approve of its action, but by a great man)' people who are not Socialists at all (or who are unconscious of it if they are), and who regard its action as unnecessary and mischievous. The position they take up is some- thing like this : They declare that they believe in the virtues of the principles of self-help and freedom just as much as we do, but that they regard all or most of the LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 173 infractions of it — the Land Acts, the Shipping Acts, the Education Acts, the Factory and Workshops Acts, the Water Companies' Acts, and others which I could mention, as exceptions that are justified by the circum- stances of the particular case. I confess I have much sympathy with the principles on which this view is founded. I do not believe there is any simple principle that will tell us in all cases alike what the State ought or ought not to do. I believe that in human affairs the right course is determined by a balance of many conflicting considerations, which vary more or less in every case. Far be it from me to deny that there may be special cases in which the principles which this League represents, deeply im- portant as they must always be, are outweighed by other considerations. But I cannot see how such a view disproves the necessity for our League. Surely such exceptions need the most jealous watching. The world is a hard school, and there are always pleas ap- pealing to kind and tender hearts to make each case an exception to the stern rules that lead to real improve- ment in well-being. Under our system of party govern- ment there is always some strong political expediency for making the case an exception. And I must remind you that the mere dubbing these as exceptions (though it is most desirable they should be so called) will not annul the evil results that naturally proceed from them. Further than this, exceptions, if sufficiently multi- plied, become the rule. Everyone who watches the course of politics knows how measures that are intro- duced and defended as exceptions, and remain so as long as they are in their crude or Bill stage, suddenly 174 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. develop into precedents the moment they are trans- formed into Acts. The exception of to-day is the precedent of to-morrow. Each one that is added to the list weakens popular belief in the principles of freedom, and inclines towards those of Socialism. ' But,' say the objectors, ' the country will never be mad enough to go in for State Socialism, and therefore the danger you profess to guard against is a perfect bugbear.' I admit the fact. I entirely dispute the deduction. inadequacy of Thorough-going State Socialism — a system under State ... . . Socialism. which Governments provide people with food and employment, administer capital, fix prices, rate of wages and hours of labour, has never yet in the history of the world shown itself to be practicable. And if it has never succeeded in the past, it is still less likely to do so under the more complex conditions of modern social bodies. I question whether the ablest State administration could feed London for a week without a disastrous breakdown of the commissariat — waste in some places, starvation in others. Still less could it carry out with success the thousands of enterprises with capital which are now conducted with such energy and skill by individual capitalists, seeking their own interests, and giving employment to millions in the process. The idea, therefore, is preposterous, and is scarcely worth talking about. But because State Socialism is a chimera that has never existed and never can exist, it does not in the least follow that there is no danger to be apprehended from legislation based on Socialistic principles. Socialism may be incapable of full social development, but it can go, and has before now gone, quite far enough to injure or ruin the LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 175 material prosperity and the national character of the people. I wish to impress on you how peculiarly and specially great this danger is to England. A nation whose trade and population are both small, whose people subsist almost entirely upon the internal re- sources of the country, may play tricks with Socialistic legislation. It may tax Peter in the hope of benefiting Paul, or with a view to producing an artificial equality, without any immediate disastrous results. But look at the position of England. Our commerce extends to every quarter of the globe. We have a huge population, that has not yet ceased to grow. Since the beginning of this century we have multiplied by three. To the ten millions then existing we have added twenty millions, who ma)- be said to have been brought into existence by the energy and enterprise of the people whose laws and institutions gave them freedom to grow rich by their own efforts, whose political system enabled and en- couraged them to push their fortunes to the best advan- tage. Those vast multitudes subsist upon a trade that has its roots or its branches in every country in the world. Freedom of commercial enterprise, lightness of taxation, and security of property, are the indispensable conditions on which the daily bread of the rank and file of this huge industrial army depends. Hamper the On capital, capitalist with restrictions or burden him with rates and taxes so that he cannot compete successfully with the foreigner; if you discourage the accumulation of wealth by making property insecure, you inevitably condemn the people to misery and starvation. If we bear these facts in mind, the danger that threatens us from the spirit of the times at once 176 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. becomes apparent. Look, for instance, at the attitude of public opinion towards enterprising public com- panies. In the last generation men who risked their money in enterprises which, if successful, would benefit the public, were looked upon as benefactors, and encouraged. Now they are looked upon as public enemies — as Shylocks, who use their legal rights to plunder the public, and against whom any spoliation that is legal is fair. The benefits they confer, the risks they run, the failures of other capitalists less skilful or less fortunate, are all forgotten. Nothing is remembered but the bitterly-grudged profits that they are enjoying. Water companies, railway companies, lighting com- panies are all looked upon as burdens rather than benefits to the country, and as though the state of a Greek or Spanish town was preferable to the state of any town in England. Electric light- To take one instance out of many. I read in the Times a few months ago that those interested in electric lighting went as a deputation to the President of the Board of Trade, and pointed out to him that the progress of electric lighting had been stopped by a pro- vision in the Act of Parliament to the effect that the public should have the right to take over the property of any public electric light company at the end of twenty-one years at a certain price. The childish simplicity of the idea is more worthy of the Dark Ages than of the nineteenth century. The companies were to take all the risks of failure, and in the event of success were to be deprived of the profits. As a natural consequence, public electric lighting is now at a standstill. Could anything be more foolishly short- sighted ? Could there be a more absurd instance of the LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 177 policy of killing the goose which laid the golden eggs ? Is there no danger to a country which acts in such a spirit ? Does not such a state of things need energetic exposure and constant opposition ? And remember how insidious an evil this is. It is not often that cause and effect are made so apparent, and in such an obvious and striking way, as in the case of the electric lighting. People do not miss improvements and inventions that they have never known. It is quite possible — I even fancy that I see signs of it already — that we may find national enterprise decaying, and other nations passing us in the race of progress, before we have realized the cause of our atrophy. Let us now turn to the question of security of pro- perty. The air is full of proposals of confiscation, and we have almost ceased to be shocked at them. I doubt if there was ever a time when public opinion was so un- certain and confused about property rights. Scarcely a week passes without some man or body of men of more or less importance denying them, and sneering at them or ignoring them. The other day I took up the Nineteenth Century and read an article by Mr. Broad- hurst about his Bill for compelling landowners to sell their houses to leaseholders. Mr. Broadhurst is always spoken of as a model working-man member, remarkable for moderation and good sense. The first thing that struck me on reading the article was that the question of whether it was right to force one man to sell his pro- perty to another was not dealt with at all. It was treated as long since disposed of or unworthy of men- tion. But, further than this, nowhere could I even find a trace of the principle on which the terms of the transfer were to be settled and justified. You would 12 178 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. have thought that a matter of this kind would be settled on some principle which would be much the same in 1887 as in 1885. Mr. Broadhurst expressly warns us against believing anything of the kind. The democracy, he gives us to understand, acknowledges no rights in such matters but its own might. If the landowners are wise enough to cast themselves at its feet without delay — to refrain from claiming any rights whatever — to offer it a portion of their possessions by accepting Mr. Broadhurst's Bill at once — they may possibly allow them to remain in possession of the rest. If the land- owners do not do this, if, as Mr. Broadhurst delight- fully puts it, they dare the democracy to the utmost, then, as all experience teaches us, the terms dictated will certainly not be such as they otherwise might be. This is a very uncourageous way of saying that they will be robbed to some extent undefined. From begin- ning to the end of the article there is no acknowledg- ment of any property right whatever. Think, again, of that admirably instructive and interesting series of speeches lately delivered by Mr. Chamberlain, who is a man of no small import- ance. No one can call him a theorist or a visionary. The legislative changes that he foreshadows are not the dreams of a philosopher, but the proposals of an eminently practical statesman, who means to put them into practice. He has an immense following in the country, and he may possibly be Prime Minister before very long. In the course of his speech at the Eighty Club, he drew a most terrible and eloquent picture of the misery and poverty that form the worst side of our great civilization. I would not say a word to lead any- one to suppose that I make light of its evils. I am as LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 179 anxious as can be for any reform that would really better them without bringing worse in their stead. But when he proceeds to assume that the evils existing are so great that no change can be for the worse — to argue that we ought not to criticize or oppose any proposal for remedying them unless we have an alternative scheme to suggest, because we cannot make things worse than they are — it is time to enter an emphatic protest. Before assenting to such a doctrine, we are bound to English civili- ..... . zation. inquire whether our civilization is such a bad one after all. Such things can only be pronounced good or bad or relatively by comparison with others. We must ask ourselves whether the proportion of misery in our civilization is greater or less than in others present or past. Poverty, wretchedness, and unsanitary con- ditions are, sad to say, no monopoly of any time or country. We find them in every nation in Europe, in communities as unlike ours as India, Russia, Egypt, or China. And if we turn to the past we shall not forget the starving mobs of ancient Rome, nor the terrible glimpses of the sufferings of the poor that Greek writers give us even as far back as the days of Homer and Hesiod. I do not think our civilization would come badly out of such a comparison as this. And, on the other hand, when we look at the other side of the picture, whether we go to statistics, such as are furnished by Mr. Goschen or Mr. Giffen in the papers, or trust to the evidence of our own eyes, we are convinced that there never was a time that produced so widespread a well-being. No observant man can walk down a busy London street, or sit for half an hour at one of our great railway-stations, without being struck by the huge 180 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC numbers of people that he sees well fed, well clothed, and prosperous. Is it not the height of folly to forget even for a moment these prosperous millions that our social system has produced, and to declare that we are justified in reckless experiments upon it, because any- thing must be better than leaving it as it is ? Some- how, these prosperous crowds never seem to strike the political philanthropists. They are curiously incon- sistent. They are so fond of their fellow-man that they cannot bear to see him poor. Yet, when he becomes well off and sleek, instead of rejoicing at the sight, they cease to regard him at all. They make one wonder sometimes whether it is not the comfort of the well- to-do that they hate almost as much as the misery of the unfortunate, and whether, if by some miracle all men were to become well off, they would not turn out to be misanthropists rather than philanthropists, after all. From his picture of the miseries of our social state, and his depreciation of all criticism of attempting to remedy them, Mr. C. passed on to the most mischievous sophism I ever heard from the mouth of a statesman. He begged people not to be frightened at a name. He told them that there was no longer anything to fear in State interference, because they themselves had become Fallacy in pro- the State. Could there be a more complete misrepre- posed remedy. ... „ . r , , . sentation of the case against State interference than is implied in this argument ? It assumes that the only objection to it is that it might be used against the will of the people — whereas this is the smallest objection of all — and could there be any doctrine much more mis- chievous to teach than that legislation could bring no evil consequences if it happened to be passed with the LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 181 full approval of the people ? It seems to me that there is plenty of necessary work for the League in exposing such sophisms as these. But it is when we come to Mr. C.'s remedy for the defects of our social system that the full danger of his political creed becomes more apparent. These are to be got rid of, or. at any rate, to be diminished, by the simple expedient of taxing the rich for the benefit of the poor. The process is justified partly on the ground that such a mulcting of the well-to-do is only a fair ransom for them to pay for the privilege of enjoying the rest of their wealth in security, and partly on the ground that it is a fine for certain unknown and in- definite offences which they have committed against the poor. You will remember Lord Salisbury's severe but just comparison of the doctrine of ransom to the doctrine of brigandage. This reminds me — I spent some of my youth in New Zealand and the South Seas — of the old Maori law of muni, or robbery. The law of muru was an expedient of the Maori democracy for counter- acting the tendency of wealth to run into pockets — to use Mr. C.'s gold-seeking simile. It provided that for any offence against law, custom, or etiquette, a man might legally, by the tribe, be dispossessed of his all. Those offences were so innumerable, and everyone was so interested in getting up a case against a man who was worth spoiling, that every rich man was sure to come, sooner or later, under its operation. It was cer- tainly most effective in preventing the accumulation of wealth. But it kept everyone very poor ; and it is worthy of the attention of reformers that, as soon as contact with the white men gave the savages the opportunity to become really well off, they allowed the i8 2 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. law of muru to drop into disuse as incompatible with well-being and commercial prosperity. Mr. C.'s serious and cynical justification of his proposal is a much less serious matter than the pro- posal itself. The idea that the poverty of a nation can be ameliorated by taxing the rich is the most dangerous of all delusions. There is no way of taxing the rich to any appreciable amount that will not at once affect the wage-earning class. It is not only that every pound taken from the well-to-do in taxes, or the expenses of collecting them, leaves them twenty shillings less to spend in wages, or the products for which wages are paid, but that every measure which discourages the accumulation of wealth, and every tax which handicaps our capitalists in their competition with foreign rivals, inevitably diminishes employment, and adds to the amount of poverty and distress in the country. I have already pointed out how deeply and terribly England is pledged both to light taxation, freedom of enterprise, and to security of property ; but its effect upon employment, fatal as that would be, is only half the mischief that the adoption and application of such a doctrine would work. Consider its effects upon the minds and actions of the people. There is no doubt Causes of whatever that one of the chief causes of our poverty and distress is the over-rapid increase in the population amongst the. poorest of the wage-earning classes. This is proved by the fact that, though the volume of trade and the amount paid in wages is as great, or nearly as great, as it has ever been in the history of the country, there is a loud and increasing complaint of want of work. There can be no great amelioration of poverty in this country until the rapidity of this increase has poverty. LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 183 been checked. So long as it continues the supply of employment must be constantly failing to keep pace with the demand for it. And now that the growth of our trade is almost certainly reaching a point beyond which further development will not be possible, the necessity for checking it is growing more serious every day. And as this can only be done by the intelligence, providence, and determination of the people themselves, is it not madness at such a time to try and make them believe either that their own class is in no way respon- sible for their distresses, or that their distress may be effectually ameliorated by taxing those who are better off? I must point out that the danger of Mr. C.'s doctrine is aggravated by the fact that if it was once to gain acceptance it would be next to impossible to arrest the country in its downward career. For when the first steps in State Socialism were followed, as they inevit- ably would be, by increased distress and want of work, a cry would at once be raised for more relief of the same kind, whilst the distress would be attributed to our land system, to our fiscal system, to every cause but the right one. Thus, there would ensue a succes- sion of attacks upon property, every one of them in- creasing the general misery, until we found ourselves face to face with a calamity too terrible to contem- plate. Well, some may say : After all, it is only Mr. C. who preaches such principles. Let me beg of you not to fall into such an error. They are being preached by thousands of men, who are forming to a greater or less extent the opinion of their age. The only difference between them and Air. C. is that he brings out with 184 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. startling clearness and crudeness idea? and arguments that they contrive, unconsciously, to drape in seductive disguises. Onlvlast night I read a paper by that gentle and thoughtful writer. M. de Lavelaye, in which he promulgated every one of the doctrines that I have dealt with as Mr. C.'s in a tone which seemed to show that he had not any idea that there was anything dangerous to our social fabric about them. I think that I have shown that there is plenty to justify the existence of the League, and that there is plenty of work to do. In all the measures that are introduced into Parliament, it must watch the case on behalf of the principles of liberty and self-help. It must struggle to protect the security of property and freedom of com- mercial enterprise. It must keep a jealous eye upon the growth of rates and taxes : it must busily diffuse sound political knowledge, and persistently refute and expose the sophisms and fallacies by which it is so con- tinually obscured. The work of its members will not be altogether pleasant. They will have often to defend interests that seem merely selfish. In the cause of true kindness they will often have to shut their ears to the voice of sentiment. They will have to endure unlimited abuse, both from those who misunderstand their motives and those who spitefully misrepresent them. But I do not believe they will be deterred by this. I often think that the first quality of English public men is the admirable mixture of humility and self-respect with which they endure unmerited detrac- tion and abuse. I hope and believe that the members of the League will not be wanting in this quality, and that thev will feel themselves sufficiently rewarded for LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 185 their pains if, at the end of the next twenty years, they find that the great wave of dangerous opinion that is now threatening us has, partly through their own efforts, passed harmlessly away, and that their country is advancing steadily along the path of progress, guided on sound principles of political science. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM. Article published by the Central Office of the Liberty and Property Defence League ; also in the ' National Review.' 18S6. In a leading article of the Times of February 15, on the Interfercnc y ° •' u and non-inter alarming increase in Government expenditure, I read ference. the following sentences : ' The admirable maxims which a generation ago were the watchwords of Liberalism are disappearing with an alarming rapidity from the minds of men. Long after the Prime Minister entered Parliament, one of the chief notes of instructed Liberalism was the dogma that the best government is that which interferes least with social affairs. The grandeur of the principle that the free play of individual character is the surest guarantee for the well-being of the nation was then unquestioned, save by the retrograde and disaffected. It required as much courage to deny its universal truth and applica- bility as to doubt the sphericity of the earth. Now, it is hardly too much to say that every Liberal measure of any consequence involves, directly or indirectly, a negation of that principle.' 1 86 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. And in another notable article, of later date, appa- rently by the same hand : ' The doctrine of Laissez faire is as dead as the worship of Osiris.' Coming from such a source, such words possess, I think, no little significance. The Times is not much given to unprovoked researches into the deeper strata of political philosophy. Neither, except on those rare occasions when it tries to ascertain by experiment whether it can still make the British public think what- ever it pleases, as it used to do in days of old, can it be called a rash print. Its leading articles are more often characterized by a caution inclining towards generality and vagueness, than by the over-boldness that is born of the desire to be clear and striking. So when we find it making so important and so decisive a statement about the fundamental principles of politics, we may be tolerably certain that the facts on which it is founded are nearly indisputable. I doubt, moreover, whether any competent person will be found to deny that the statement is in the main correct. The most careless observer of politics cannot fail to be aware that a complete revolution of ideas has taken place upon this subject. A few years ago the doctrine of non-interference seemed to be paramount in English politics, and anyone who ventured to prophesy that there would be a reversal of public opinion before the end of the century was ridiculed as a crotcheteer and an alarmist. Yet even then it ought not to have been difficult to discern the growth of several factors hostile to its exist- ence ; and a slight examination of the grounds on which it was based in the popular mind might have suggested LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 187 a doubt of its permanence. The number of people who could have defined their belief in it, and justified it by solid and sufficient reason, was at no time very large. With the vast majority it was little more than a feeling, impressed on them by a peculiar concurrence of causes ; some, at least, of which were of a merely temporary character. Amongst these the chief cause, no doubt, was the prestige the doctrine had acquired during the long struggle for commercial freedom. From beginning to end it had always turned out to be right. It came to be regarded with superstitious reverence. When men observe constantly recurring phenomena, they always infer some law — whether Divine or natural — beneath it. They began to suspect that what was true in trade was true in every other department of human affairs. They hoped they had discovered an infallible maxim applicable to every political problem. Now that they have found it is not quite this, there has been a natural, but undue, revulsion of feeling, and a tendency to doubt the truth of it in matters to which it un- questionably applies. Secondly, the people had just arrived at the end of a similar struggle with the State for more complete personal liberty and self-government. They had not yet had time to forget the advantages of freedom, as nations so often do when they have possessed it a little while ; nor had they got out of the old habit of re- garding the State as an alien and semi-hostile power. They had not realized that they themselves had become the State, and that in future the exercise of State power would mean the gratification of their own wishes. It was inevitable that when they did realize this, there i88 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. should ensue a considerable modification of their views upon State interference. Men invariably look upon persecution or dominion with a different eye, according as they are persecutor or victim, ruler or ruled. Of all the honest and eloquent treatises on behalf of slavery and arbitrary government that the world contains, I never heard of one being written by a man who was suffering, or thought himself in danger of suffering, under either. There is always a tacit proviso that the advocate of it is to belong to the dominant faction. When we further remember that the doctrine of Laissez faire seems like a justification of the unequal distribution of wealth from which the majority are suf- fering, or by which, at any rate, their poverty is made more galling, it ought not to have been difficult to fore- see that it would not hold sway for long without a determined challenge, even in those industrial depart- ments in which its value had been most conclusively proved. In truth, its effects on these very departments con- stitute one of the most important of the factors that have produced the reaction. As the Times points out in the articles from which I have quoted, the Laissez faire doctrine has brought into existence a superabund- ant population of working producers, the monotony of whose existence it is awful to think of, and the squalor* of whose lives is inevitably increased by every increase in their numbers beyond a certain point that * I use the word 'squalor' advisedly. I do not believe that the increase in our population has as yet caused any increase in the general poverty of the people. The fact that, though the army is a more attractive profession in every way than it has ever been before, it is impossible to get a sufficiency of able-bodied recruits, is worth a bundle of ordinary statistics. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 189 has long since been passed. It is by their daily grow- ing sufferings and wants that we are being driven, with a pressure that feels irresistible, into expedients that no principle can justify, and of which, I fear, we shall find out the desperate unwisdom when it is too late. The difficulty of resisting demands for mischievous and futile tinkerings with the distribution of wealth and other matters, is made the more hopeless by the fact that we have lately transferred all the governing power of the nation into the hands of this very class. By this I do not mean merely that they may be expected to use their power selfishly. A really wise regard to their own permanent interests, even if they considered nothing else, would be of no danger to the State, and of very little to any other class. It is their ignorance and want of experience in the business of government that are dangerous. The old governing classes, if they had little Complexity of human affairs. scientific understanding of the matter, had at least found out by long experience that human affairs are extremely complex ; that it is not nearly so easy to obtain a desired end by legislation as it looks ; that, on the contrary, new laws very often not only fail to pro- duce the desired effect, but are followed by indirect consequences which no one ever expected ; and that false steps in legislation are most difficult to retrace, and generally gave birth to an interminable chain of evil results, growing at once more intolerable and more difficult to get rid of with every succeeding link.* But to the new constituencies, who now command our law- * The Poor Laws are a trite but striking instance.— P. i 9 o SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. makers* to an extent that was unknown before, these things are as a lesson that has yet to be learnt, and which must and will be learnt, partly, I hope, by the infusion of a more scientific and thorough spirit into the study of politics, chiefly, I fear, by the bitter teach- ing of experience. Nothing seems easier and simpler to many of our new citizens at present than to put a stop to what they do not like by passing a law against it ; and even the wiser among them are loath to believe that their passionate wants and grievances cannot be in some measure relieved by Acts of Parliament of the proper sort. Amongst other things that helped to bring about the reaction, was the fact that it had been an era of con- tinual political reform. Laws and institutions that the nation had outgrown had to be removed ; restrictions that our wiser knowledge had shown us the folly of had to be swept away. One would hardly have sup- posed that this process could have been favourable to * Professor Huxley seems rather to have forgotten this in his article on 'Administrative Nihilism' ('Critiques and Addresses,' p. 13), when, in minimizing the dangers of State interference, he re- marks : ' So far as my experience of those who carry on the busi- ness of government goes, I must say that I find them far less eager to interfere with the people than the people are to be interfered with. And the reason is obvious. The people are keenly sensible of particular evils, and, like one suffering from pain, desire an instant remedy. The statesman, on the other hand, is like the physician who knows that he can stop the pain at once by an opiate, but who also knows that the opiate may do more harm than good in the long-run.' Very true ; but who determines what legis- lation shall take place in these days — the people or the statesmen ? Sometimes the latter, no doubt, but very often the former. It is an open secret that measures are often passed of which the authors and supporters really disapprove, though they consider them neces- sary on account of the strength of the popular demand for them. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 191 a belief in the efficacy of interference. But, however strange and unreasonable, it is undeniably true that in many minds this purely liberative and destructive course of legislation has given rise to the notion that perpetual meddling by Act of Parliament is necessary to prevent stagnation ; that unless our legislators keep stirring things up, progress will stop ; that what is called on platforms ' beneficial legislation ' is a kind of stimulating manure indispensable to the national growth. To those who hold this profoundly foolish, but by no means un- common view, the very name Laissez /aire implies dereliction of duty, and thereby stands condemned. I have no doubt that the exaggerations in which the preachers of the doctrine of non-interference have often, no doubt quite honestly, indulged, have had a like ten- dency. In their enthusiasm for self-help they laid down unlimited principles that would really condemn all laws whatever, and replace them by the more primitive and invigorating methods of boycotting, lynching, and pri- vate vendetta. They invested the State with an almost supernatural power of doing wrong and idiotic things. They proved their denunciation of it by vast catalogues of its mistakes and failures, forgetting, apparently, that by such a method it would be equally easy to condemn the practice of medicine or surgery ; and these failures (often selected, by the way, from undertakings to effect which private enterprise would be completely power- less) they compared, not with the failures, but with the successes of private enterprise. Sanitary, Adulteration, and Factory Acts they condemned off-hand, without a hearing, as infractions of the sacred principle. Public opinion has revolted instinctively against such an overpressing of the case. The Government, it is i92 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. felt, is nothing but a picked body of men carefully selected for the service of the nation, and, in England at any rate, a very high class both as to intellect and character ; and as to its mistakes and failures, what would private enterprise look like if its mistakes and failures were collected and pilloried in a similar manner? Law is nothing but public opinion organized and equipped with force, however grave the questions affect- ing such organization and equipment may be ; and so far from law being always a worse thing than private action, the difference between them is in many cases simply the difference between civilization and barbarism. So long as you employ or permit a policeman to arrest a burglar, instead of leaving the injured householder to catch him himself, and to learn in a wholesome way the folly of not having iron shutters and a blunderbuss by his bedside, it is absurd to contend that Factory or Sanitary or Adulteration Acts can be disposed of by a mere appeal to the virtues of self-help and the mischief of State protection. In the first place, we must consider whether the evils which these Acts are intended to meet are ever likely to be modified without the aid of that organi- zation and equipment of public opinion that we call law. It is a law of human nature that when an evil is impossible to remove except at a very great cost of time and trouble, men and women will prefer to endure it for ever, even at the cost of health, and even life ; and, as a fact, it is practically impossible for poor men to protect themselves against such evils as adulteration or bad drains. In such cases it is absurd to claim that private enterprise would be more ' effective ' than State regulation. Should the fanatical LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 193 non-interventionist rejoin that even so it would be Where State 1 i -m 1 • 1 • interference is better to let Nature take its course, as by protective necessary, legislation we should be simply producing a survival of the unfittest, to the injury of future generations, it may be answered, not only that such an argument logically carried out would forbid the removal of any causes de- trimental to health, and all social ameliorations what- ever;* but that female labour in mines and undue child labour in factories, and bad food, and unsanitary dwell- ings, also tend to lower the physical and moral type of the race ; and so, as Dame Nature has not the smallest scruple about either deteriorating or exterminating even Englishmen (a fact that those who are for leaving everything to her care seem sometimes curiously for- getful of), there is nothing for it but to choose the least of the two sets of evils involved. And here we touch upon the more reasonable causes of the general defection from the creed which the thinking politicians of the last generation believed and practised so stoutly. Paradoxical as it may sound, I think that there can be no doubt that the present chaos of opinion as to the proper province and principles of government has been brought about in no small degree by new and truer perceptions of the nature of human affairs ; and that if it is the case that an ignorant idea of their simplicity has tended towards the discarding of the old doctrine of thorough-going non-interference, it is no less true that a sounder idea of their complexity has worked somewhat in the same direction. It is the progress of natural science that has effected this change of ideas. Science is in the very air we * 'Introduction to the Study of Sociology,' by H. Spencer, p. 338.-P. 13 194 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. Antagonism of breathe nowadays, and colours all our thoughts, often principles. ... . without our knowing it. Consciously or unconsciously, we are learning to take a scientific view of social com- munities ; to believe more thoroughly that their affairs are governed by natural laws, and to suspect that such laws, when found, will prove, up to a certain point, analogous to those which have been discovered in other departments of the universe. And observation and ex- perience are confirming the suspicion. All through the natural universe we see a constant, never-ending strife between opposing and contradictory forces, and evolution proceeding by the balance that is the result of their antagonism. All through animate Nature we see life carried on by a continual balancing of hostile and irreconcilable considerations, all true, and all involving some punishment for their neglect, between which every living creature has constantly to choose, with a remorseless penalty hanging over him should he choose wrongly and incur the greater sacrifice. In the lives of men and nations we see the same mysterious process equally at work. Social progress is carried on by the conflict of antagonistic forces, such as Egoism and Altruism, Conservatism and Progress, Peace and "War,* Liberty and Socialism, each necessary and true in spite of their absolute opposition to each other ; making, therefore, no course that we can take in life wholly right (in the sense of being without evil consequence), but only the least wrong. What can be more irreconcilable than the principles of Egoism and Altruism ? It is quite contradictory to * On the way in which these two hostile forces evolve progress, see some very interesting remarks in the ' Introduction to the Study of Sociology,' by H. Spencer, p. 191. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 195 say, ' You ought to care for your own interests more than your neighbours', and also you ought to care for your neighbours' interests more than your own.' Yet both principles must be regarded in life. We cannot adopt the one and repudiate the other. If every man thought only of his own interests and nothing of his neighbours', society would break up. If, on the other hand, every man cared for his neighbours' interests and neglected his own, a state of confusion would ensue that no one but the gifted author of the ' Pirates of Penzance ' could adequately depict. Every day we have to balance (whether we do so consciously or not) the considerations which support the one against those that are involved with the other, and decide according to our lights and the circumstances of the particular case to which we should give the preference, which sacrifice it is least harmful to incur. So it is with the forces with which we are here more particularly concerned. The complete antagonism between individual liberty and Socialism is generally, though not invariably, recognized ; but it is not infre- quently forgotten that, contradictory as they may be, both are indispensable. One hears often enough of proposals to eradicate altogether the elements of Socialism from our civilization, and to carry the prin- ciples of individual liberty to their complete and logical end ; and no doubt in other circles one might hear the converse of these doctrines. I hope and believe that in the future political science will give us a far wider and more definite knowledge than we possess at pre- sent, of the particular departments of social life in which each of these principles is generally or invariably to be preferred to the other. But to talk of eliminating 196 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. either is surely nonsense.* To subordinate individual liberty entirely to State control would at once stop the growth of the healthiest nation in existence, and pro- bably kill it almost immediately ; while to carry the principle of individual liberty to its logical end would be to bring about its instant dissolution. Professor Huxley tersely sums up the question in these words :t ' If individuality has no play, society does not advance. If individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.' The truth of these remarks is proved by the whole history of the world ; and they seem to me to contain one of the keys to the great mystery of the rise and decay of civilizations. Compromise. We must make up our minds, then, that we cannot get rid of either, and that, inharmonious as they may be, we must find a compromise between them. And as in this, so in other matters. Everywhere we find a clashing of true considerations, and a necessity for arriving at an illogical compromise between them. There is hardly one of what are commonly called poli- tical principles that will not lead to ruin and absurdity if carried to its logical end, and which must not, there- fore, be met at some point, and limited by its opposite. There are no plain ways to absolute truth and wisdom in human affairs, no simple principles by adhering to which we can make sure of always being right. I only wish there were. It is pretty obvious that if these views are common, it cannot be their pleasantness that has made them so. * I am aware that such language as the above is sometimes used with a meaning that could not be fairly so characterized, but I can only say that when it is so used I think it is very misleading. — P. t Essay on ' Administrative Nihilism ' in ' Critiques and Ad- dresses.'' — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 197 The moderation they enjoin must be distasteful to many an ardent nature ; the atmosphere of doubt and dif- ficulty that they cast over every political problem, and their pessimist reminder that all we can do at best is to choose the lesser evil, must be painful to all ; the very idea that there should be, in any sense, a want of harmony between things that are true feels to some at first like an outrage on human nature. It is the stern logic of facts that has, I believe, driven them, or some- thing like them, into many a man's head ; and to them must be attributed in no small degree the unsettling of the articles of political faith that a few years ago promised to become as firm as rocks. For it is evident that no one who holds these views can be content with the principles that so amply satisfied the last generation on the subject of liberty and State interference. It is not that he doubts the truth of those principles ; it is that he feels they are only a portion of the truth, and that the question of their applicability must depend upon whether they are the larger or the smaller portion. The old-fashioned Radical who be- lieved that freedom was the one and only requisite for the attainment of moral and material perfection ; the Cobdenite who believed that non-interference would always turn out to be right, however much facts might seem to be against it, and that Factory, Adulteration and Sanitary Acts were mere concessions to ignorance and folly — seem to him about as wise as a man who, having mastered the principle of gravitation, insists that a small stone placed on the roof of a house will find its way to the ground. If I may borrow a sentence from Mr. Justice Stephen, it seems to him 'that the crrcur mar of their speculations on political subjects lies in 198 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. the fact that they are advocates of one out of many forces, which, as they act in different directions, must and do come into collision, and produce a resultant according to the direction of which life is prosperous or otherwise.' But such opinions, it will be said, are not of a sort likely to lead to over-confident legislation, or rash attacks upon liberty; they are really a justification of that moderate and compromising spirit in politics that is so often derided as though it were based upon a mere deficiency in the logical faculty. This is certainly true. But the doubts they have cast upon the broad and simple maxims about non-interference have afforded men of strong equalizing, or socialistic, predilections a good excuse for following their political inclinations at the expense of considerations of liberty, and of the due limits of State action ; and this, I believe, is the chief explanation of the strange spectacle we witnessed in '81, when the successors of Cobden and the political economists figured as the chief supporters of an Act that undertook (amongst other things) to prescribe the rent a farmer should charge to the labourers of whose weekly wages he was left free to decide the amount. Moreover, these opinions have this great inherent weakness, when it is attempted to use them for purposes of defence, that it is impossible to get up the slightest enthusiasm • for them. No one can feel enthusiastic about moderation or compromise. The ideas that move the world are always extremes. The man who makes the crowd follow him is never a preacher of wise com- promise, but one who takes a single one-sided principle, and .makes it so luminous in the eyes of mankind that they fancy they can see in it a solution of all their LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 199 doubts and difficulties, and a satisfaction of their desires. If Sakya-Muni had declared that the principle of self- conquest must be compromised with a rational enjoy- ment of what life can give, he would have been nearer to the truth than he was, but I doubt if we should ever have heard of Buddhism. So much for the reasons that have caused the change of popular opinion in the past. Let us now turn to the future, and inquire whether any, and if so, what, position can be taken up on the basis of the new ideas for the defence of the proper province of individual liberty and private enterprise against unwise and improper aggres- sions by the State.* If the view here laid down is correct — if it is true that Socialism and Individuality are of the nature of two antagonistic but indispensable forces evolving social progress by their continual collision — it is evident that whenever they are thus opposed, their claims must be weighed against each other, and that element disre- garded, the neglect of which, in the particular case, will be least harmful to the permanent welfare of the nation. Of course, I do not mean that this process is to be gone through in every case — less cumbrous rules for guidance can no doubt be found ; but whatever secondary rules or classifications we may make use of, this is the fundamental principle that must underlie them all. Nor does it, of course, imply that in every case there must be doubt as to whether the claims of * On this point see a remarkable passage by Kant, quoted by Professor Huxley in his article on 'Administrative Nihilism,' ' Critiques and Addresses,' p. 22. The work from which it is taken is called 'A Conception of Universal History in Relation to Universal Citizenship,' and was translated by De Quincey. — P. 2oo SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. Individuality or Socialism should prevail. In many classes of cases there is no doubt whatever. Experi- ence has proved, and common-sense shows us, that the considerations on the one side always largely outweigh those on the other. To glance at the analogous forces of Egoism and Altruism, no man doubts that he has a right to keep his wife's affections, and that he is not bound to forego them for the benefit of others ; and, on the other hand, there is {pace the Fenians) no question that a man may not blow up his neighbour's house to gratify his taste for pyrotechnic display. Nor, in the same way, does anyone question the right of the State to restrain crime, or to control the organization of the army ; nor, on the other hand, of the individual to choose his own boots, or go into trade. But between such extremes as are represented by these examples are cases in which the proportions which the claims on either side bear to each other vary in an infinite grada- tion till something like equality is reached, and when this is the case, I do not see how we are to decide between them, except by weighing them carefully against each other with the aid of every kind of light that can be brought to bear upon the case. For the sake of simplicity, I have spoken here as though the claims of the two great elements of In- dividuality and Society were the only considerations that we have got to put into the scales. But this is rarely, if ever, the case, and to argue as if it were would be to commit the very blunder which I borrowed Mr. Justice Stephen's words to condemn — namely, that of considering only two out of the various forces engaged. On an earlier page of this article, I showed briefly the LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 201 diversity of considerations that are involved in such matters as Factory, Sanitary, and Adulteration Acts. The fact is that, though the two great considerations are nearly always present in any question of State action, whether it be directed towards the undertaking of certain functions or to the actual restraining of in- dividuals, they are by no means usually the only ones, or even always — in seeming, at any rate — the most im- portant. When we are considering whether the State ought or ought not to undertake the railways of the country, the question whether it will manage them better or worse than private enterprise seems quite as im- portant as the more general question, whether it is good for a country in the long-run that such things as railways should be managed by the State. And when we are considering whether certain forms of wickedness should be restrained by the State, it is not enough to balance the claims of Individuality against those of Socialism* to decide that it may do so ; we must have regard to more immediate considerations arising from the nature of law as an instrument, and its consequent fitness for the purpose of repressing them. In short, when we are trying the legitimacy of a State action, we have not merely to weigh against each other the two fundamental considerations, but to add to one or both of them a quantity of others. But, it is said, this method of deciding such questions by weighing and balancing the considerations is an im- possible one. No man that ever lived could possess a * I am very hard driven, all through, for a word to express my meaning. 'Socialism' is unsatisfactory; 'Society' or 'Sociality' would be still more likelv to mislead. — P. 202 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. as against those of society. complete and accurate knowledge of all the factors, past, present, and future, involved in each case. Is there no simple principle to be found limiting the rights of Society against the individual, and of the individual against Society? — a principle which, if it cannot, owing to the limitations of human knowledge, completely solve all difficulties, will at least prove a true guide in all cases in which we can see correctly how to apply it ? Difficulty of Though the argument as to impossibility is not quite finding the . . . exact limita- so conclusive as it may appear, since in all the walks divWuaLriffhts °^ ^ e we nave to act upon merely probable and often utterly insufficient evidence, no one can be more alive than I am to the desirability of discovering such a prin- ciple. But I cannot conceive it to be possible. I can no more imagine a principle that would tell us in every case the limits of individual and State rights than one that would tell us in every case whether the dictates of Egoism or Altruism were to be obeyed. Principles, in the sense of sound rules based upon accurate observa- tion of men and societies, their functions and their cir- cumstances, may be found, and prove of great value, no one doubts ; but not a single simple principle in the sense here intended, that shall be at once of universal application and of practical uss in defining the wise limit of State interference. The dual or manifold aspect of all actions, whether of the State or of the individual, and the number and variety of the considerations by which they are affected, seem to me entirely to forbid it. And even if we put aside all alien and secondary considerations, and regard State action as a matter in which the direct interests of Individuality and Socialism only are concerned, I think we shall find that it still is impossible. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 203 *If these two great elements in human society really stand towards each other in the relation I have attributed to them, it is evident that there must always be some sort of compromise or compact existing between the individual and the society, and that compact must con- tain the principle, if such a principle there be. But if we inquire what the terms of this silent treaty are in the various races of the world, in the several stages of their development, we find that they are never the same. Men themselves, the societies of which they are units, and the external circumstances by which those societies are surrounded, are not only all extremely diverse at any given moment, but they are all in a state of continual modification ; and at every step in the dual transformation of the man and his society the bargain between them will be, in some degree, a different one. The demands of the individual on the one side, and of the State on the other, alter according to the alterations that have taken place in the nature of each ; and the change is probably further increased by variations in the external circumstances of the society, or in its forms of government, which have placed the one party or the other in a better position for driving a bargain, t In an early stage of civilization, for example, the individual probably demands little more than some pro- * See Professor Huxley's treatment of this identical problem, ' Administrative Nihilism,' p. 23, ' Critiques and Addresses.' I wish I could afford the space to quote it at length. — P. f When the form of government is democratic, society and the individual will be commonly united in the same person ; and this ensures the freedom and fairness of the contract between them, even though the individual has little or no choice about joining or leaving the society. When the form of government is aristocratic or autocratic, this is not the case in the majority of instances, and the bargain will therefore be commonly a very one-sided one. — P. 2o 4 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. tection to life and liberty, some certainty of sufficient food, and freedom to marry and bring up children ; while his nature is such that Society, to avoid dissolu- tion, and to make any progress, is obliged to require of him, in return, a large surrender of his personal liberty, in the form of submissive obedience. But, as man becomes more civilized, the things he requires from Society become more numerous and less simple. In addition to those primary needs enumerated above, the object for which he is ready to barter some portion of his liberty is the opportunity of more fully exercising his faculties in various directions than is possible in a state of solitude : the desire to trade, to interchange ideas, to pursue art, to acquire wealth, power, or fame — all those things that make man more a man. (And here we get a hint of the importance to mankind of a variety of type in his society.) At the same time, his nature having become more rational and intelligent, his instincts more conformable and more disciplined, and his knowledge of how to do things and his desire to do them having both greatly increased, it is no longer either wise or necessary for Society to do so much for him or to exact of him so great a sacrifice of his liberty as before ; except, of course, in so far as the external circumstances of the State may necessitate at times his complete submission for purposes of national defence. Thus we see a tendency on the part of the State, as civilization advances, to leave more to private enterprise, and to relax its restraints upon individual speech and action ; and it seems not impossible that in the immediate future the untoward circumstance of a too rapidly increasing population, causing as it does both a deterioration of the moral type and an insuf- LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 205 ficiency of material wealth, may bring about a temporary alteration of the compact in a retrograde direction. Until we have learnt how to control or deal with it, Society may consider itself forced to demand tem- porarily some contraction of individual liberty in more branches than one. However this may be, it is quite clear that the compact between the individual and his society that we are enjoying in England in the nine- teenth century is not only different from that which existed in the feudal ages, but would have brought about general dissolution if it had been applied to those times ; and there is no reason for believing that it will not prove just as unsuitable in one direction or the other to the civilization that will be in existence five centuries hence. Now, what principle can we find, common to all these varied compacts, which would be of the slightest use to us in determining the proper limits of Government interference at the present day ? The school that is represented by Mr. Spencer and Von Humboldt would probably reply that the common feature that is to be observed in all these bargains is that what man barters some portion of his freedom for is always more freedom — freedom to use his faculties ; and they would deduce from this that the principle of Government should be ' Absolute freedom for each, limited only by the like freedom for others.' I do not feel satisfied with this deduction* ; for one reason, because it seems to me to * I think it is an instance of the usual futile endeavour to dis- cover in human affairs a simplicity and unity that never exist. If man requires of Society opportunity to exercise his faculties, he also requires of it the very contrary benefit — that is, to be saved the trouble of using them — and no theory that leaves this out of sight can be a true one. — P. 206 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. be only arrived at by an undue straining of language. What man barters some portion of his freedom for seems to me to be : first, some security for life and liberty ; secondly, opportunity rather than freedom to exercise his faculties. But, allowing it to pass as cor- rect, of what use is it for our purpose ? If by any effort of ingenuity it be stretched wide enough to be made the true rule in all known stages of human progress, it is evident that its width of interpre- tation would make it quite useless as a practical guide to us. If, on the other hand, it is admitted that it could not apply as a wise practical rule to all these phases, or even to any one of them that has yet been known — and it is only claimed that it is an ideal principle towards which progress is constantly tending, and which may become of universal application when men are very different from what they are now — its equal uselessness to us in the present day as practical guide or test is no less plain. I would ask those who hold that, whatever may be the case with the past, the time has now come in which it may be safely treated as an infallible guide, to consider how, by way of an instance, they propose to deal with the law of marriage. Are they prepared to abrogate this greatest of all interferences with freedom of contract, and do they hold that such a reform would bring a preponderance of benefit in our present state of civilization ? If, on the other hand, they declare that the principle of ' Absolute freedom for each, limited only by the like freedom of all,' does not condemn such a law, I am puzzled to guess what form of State regula- tion it is capable of defending us against. We must not loosen or tighten its interpretation to suit our convenience. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 207 I do not think, then, that it is possible to find any single principle of any practical use that will prescribe for us the proper limits of State action, and I think if we carefully study the argument of the greatest of living philosophers, who has certainly gone nearer than anyone else to the establishment of such a principle, that we shall not fail to find indications of its impossibility, and fresh grounds for suspecting that the debateable land between the State and the individual is still a very wide one, and likely to remain so for some time to come. The principle he lays down is this : That, excepting for purposes of external defence, such as the army and navy, the action of the State should be always negatively regulative, never positively regulative ; that it should restrain, but never stimulate nor direct ; and that it should always be directed to the securing of freedom. He illustrates the meaning of the terms in the following manner : ' If a man has land, and I either cultivate it for him, partially or wholly, or dictate any or all of his modes of cultivation, my action is positively regulative ; but if, leaving him absolutely unhelped and unregulated in his farming, I simply prevent him from taking his neighbour's crops, or making approach roads across his neighbour's land, or depositing rubbish upon it, my action is negatively regulative. There is a tolerably sharp distinction between the act of securing a citizen's ends for him and the act of checking him when he interferes with another citizen in the pursuit of his end.'* This conclusion is supported by a mass of arguments * 'Specialized Administration,' 'Essays,' vol. iii., pp. 145, 146. — P. 208 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC that I cannot attempt even to catalogue here, drawn from an exhaustive study of the nature and functions of every sort and kind of human society, either in the present or the past, of which knowledge is attainable, assisted by such lights as can be thrown upon the sub- ject by the working of natural laws in other departments of science. I must content myself here with touching — and that only imperfectly — on what I think may fairly be considered the culminating confirmation of his argument : the marvellous analogy that he has dis- covered between the facts of biology and those of sociology. After pointing out a most curious series of similarities between the body physiological and the body politic, from the lowest to the highest types of each that are known to us, he brings us to this : that, as in the former there are certain external functions, such as movements of the limbs, which are under the direct control of the brain and nerves, and certain internal and nutritive functions that are carried on automatically by the nutritive organs without any such control ; so in the latter there are certain external functions, such as the defence of the State, which are necessarily and pro- perly dependent on the governing power, and certain internal industrial and social functions that can and ought to be carried on without the intervention of that power. He calls our attention to the marvellous elaborateness and perfection of these internal structures of Society, such as trade or language, that have grown up from the smallest and rudest beginning to what we see them now, not only without the assistance or direction of Government, but without conscious or- ganization on the part of anyone whatever. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 209 He instances the feeding of a great city like London, and bids us consider the difficulties of the task : ' Difficulties caused by the inconstancy in the arrival of supplies ; by the perishable nature of many of the commodities ; by the fluctuating numbers of consumers; by the heterogeneity of their demands ; by variations in the stocks, immediate and remote, and the need for adjusting the rate of consumption ; and by the com- plexity in the process of distribution, required to bring due quantities of these many commodities to the houses of all citizens.' It may safely be said that the cleverest body of officials in the world, if they were set to organize such a work with every appliance at their command, could not carry it on through its daily varying vicissitudes without constant alternations of waste and shortness of supply. As it is, there is hardly an atom of waste, and scarcely even a household misses its milk in the morning. And this extraordinary work is executed, not only without State organization, but without any conscious organiza- tion whatever. To quote Archbishop Whately,* from whose work the illustration is taken : ' This object is accomplished far better than it could be by any effort of human wisdom, through the agency of men who think each of nothing beyond his own immediate interest, who, with that object only in view, perform their respective parts with cheerful zeal, and combine unconsciously to employ the wisest means for effecting an object, the vastness of which it would bewilder them even to contemplate.' And Mr. Spencer further points out to us that not only is the State unable to assist these internal functions, * Introduction to ' Lectures on Political Economy-' — P. 14 2io SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. of which the above is an instance, by positive regula- tion, but that it has been repeatedly shown that attempts to do so prove uniformly mischievous. All that the State can do, and what it must do for such functions, is to maintain law and order, and to enforce contracts. Mr. Herbert ' Just in the same way that a bodily organ that per- analogy be- forms function, but is not adequately repaid in blood, bodvVoiitic mus t dwindle, and the organism as a whole eventually and the human suffer, so an industrial centre which has made and sent body. out a special commodity, but does not get adequately repaid in other commodities, must decay. And when we ask what is requisite in the body politic to prevent this local innutrition and decay, we find the requisites to be that agreements shall be carried out, the goods paid for at stipulated prices, that justice shall be ad- ministered.'* But if the correctness of the analogy be admitted, if it be granted that the industrial functions of the State are self-working, and not to be meddled with without mischief; even if it be admitted further — and I own I find it difficult to resist the conviction — that we are dealing here ' not with a figurative resemblance, but a fundamental parallelism 't of deep significance, the difficulty of defining the precise limits of State action does not seem to me to be got over. We have set apart certain classes of acts as unfit for State regulation, but that is all. Of course I do not mean that it is of little importance. Protective fallacies are not yet dead, and it is something to be able to set them aside with con- fidence. It suggests the uselessness and mischief of the wanton interferences with contract that we seem to * 'Specialized Administration,' p. 141. — P. + ' Introduction to the Study of Sociology,' p. 328. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 211 be so given to in the present era. Its bearing on the Socialist schemes that are so fast becoming popular is of the greatest moment, and it tends to correct the absurd, but extremely widespread, delusion that the material and other progress of a country will necessarily stagnate if its institutions and trades are not continually meddled with by legislation. But it will be observed that the social functions in which the accuracy and completeness of the analogy are most perfect are precisely those about which there is least dispute. Only a few people contend that Government regulation of trade is desirable ; and the wildest politician has never yet proposed the institution of a Minister of Language. If the industrial functions are regarded from the point of view adopted in this article, it will be noticed that they are matters in which there is very little clashing of the interests of Society and the individual ; very little sacrifice on either side, therefore, necessary to effect a compromise between them, and the minimum of doubt as to their respective rights. The right of the individual to trade at a profit is unquestionable, since he benefits Society as well as himself by so doing, and the right of Society to prevent his making use of criminal methods is no less indis- putable. Moreover, the functions about which there is most T '^ analog- dispute are precisely those in which the analogy helps perfect. us very little, if at all. They present few, if any, of the similarities to the nutritive functions of the body that are so striking in the case of trade, or the supplying of a great city. No examination of their working will show that they can be trusted to carry themselves on with the utmost completeness and perfection without 212 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. organization or assistance, under every variety of cir- cumstance. When we examine a social function like the feeding of a great city, we are readily convinced that State interference would be both mischievous and unnecessary, because we perceive that the simple motive of self-interest suffices to carry it on as perfectly as we can conceive possible. Can we say the same of sewage organization, for instance, or National Education ? How much do we see in these social functions of ' that curious and admirable arrangement by which each man secures Reasons for j^jg nee d s bv ministering to those of others'? As re- compulsory - ° sanitation and gards the former, which Mr. Spencer adduces as an compulsory . r . . . . . education. instance ot the way that State regulation prevents the introduction of new and improved methods, it is noto- rious that in our huge towns private enterprise is quite incapable of dealing with it, strong as the promptings of self-interest are, and that State regulation is neces- sary to prevent disastrous results.* The same insuffi- ciency of internal motive power presents itself in the case of National Education. Mr. Spencer complains that the laws of supply and demand are hardly ever re- cognized as applying to it. No doubt they are not * Mr. Spencer would probably reply that the State should inter- fere, but only negatively, by forbidding nuisances under heavy penalties, while leaving everyone free to dispose of his sewage as he thought fit. This is the same principle that Mr. Mill laid down about education. He thought that it should be compulsory, but not provided by the State ('On Liberty,' 189). I have no doubt that such a course would be preferable in either case if it were practicable. But it is not. The State could not enforce com- pulsory education without providing school accommodation, or punish the inhabitants of crowded towns for nuisances without find- ing them means for disposing of sewage. This is not a bad instance of the way in which a principle that seems undeniable theoretically fails to cope with the complexity of realities. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 213 sufficiently recognized, but ought not this very fact to suggest the probability of a difference in the cases ? To what extent do they apply to it ? They will ensure that where there is a demand for authors and engineers, authors and engineers shall be forthcoming. But will they ensure that every household that wants education will get it with the same regularity that they ensure that every household shall receive its milk in the morning ? The cause of its failure to do so lies, I suppose, in the fact that self-interest, which seems to be as necessary to the working of self-acting functions as steam to a boiler, is very often directly opposed to education. It is, or seems to be, of very little importance to factory- owners, or farmers, that their workmen should be edu- cated, while the loss of child-labour is a serious draw- back ; and the same remark applies to parents. But whatever the cause, there can be no doubt of the fact. No one can contend that National, in the sense of Universal Education, is possible in the England of our day without State agency. Private enterprise, whether prompted by egoistic or altruistic motives, will not effect it. Mr. Spencer, perhaps, would say that it is not an end that we should determine to attain, because the price we shall have to pay for it in the loss of variety and the habit of self-help is out of all proportion too great. I do not wish to be understood as disputing Mr. Spencer's conclusion on this point. It is a problem about which I have never arrived at any feeling of cer- tainty. I merely wish to show that National Education cannot be defended from State regulation on grounds that are sufficient for the defence of industrial processes, that it cannot be accurately classified with functions which discharge themselves with the greatest conceiv- 2i4 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. able perfection without external assistance from the State, without even any conscious organization on the part of the individuals by whose actions they work.* It seems as if it might be rather an instance — perhaps not the best that could be chosen — of social functions of a hybrid character, partially self-working, partially (under certain circumstances) in need of external regu- lation. Would not the analogy from Biology, if followed out, lead us to expect such cases ? Are there not in the body physiological functions that lie between those that are purely self-working, and those that are always directed by the brain and nerves — belonging partly to one class, partly to the other — sometimes working automatically, sometimes by external control, functions with which the brain and nerves may be said to interfere, or not, according to the circumstances of the particular case?\ * The rough line that is usually drawn between State regulation and private enterprise seems to me very unsatisfactory and un- scientific. Many private organizations possess in varying degrees the defects that are commonly held to distinguish State organiza- tion. Large Joint Stock Companies, such as Railway and Water Companies, that are necessarily to some extent in possession of monopolies, are actuated by the same reasons for a sluggish regard to the public interest as any body of State officials (in addition to some peculiar to themselves), and private educational endowments exhibit the same disinclination to grow and develop that we observe in public institutions. The one feature that usually distinguishes private from State organizations is that the former are stimulated by self-interest in its strongest and most direct form, while the latter are not. But even this is not invariably the case, as we may see by private endowments on the one hand and local government on the other. But perhaps it will be said that local government should be classed under the other heading. — P. ■f I should not have ventured upon this suggestion if I had not found some confirmation of such an idea in Professor Huxley's article already quoted. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 215 I think, therefore, that even if we admit to the full the accuracy of the analogy between the body and the State, it will fail to show us the limits of legitimate Government action. Furthermore, if we attempt to apply the maxim, that in all internal affairs the action of the State should be only negatively regulative, as a practical rule of scientific truth by which we may determine those limits in every case in which we can see how to make use of it, I think we shall be assailed by the same doubts of its infalli- bility that beset us in considering the principle of ' Absolute freedom, limited only by the like freedom for all,' from which it is to some extent a deduction. Let us take the same example as before, and ask how it would apply to the law of marriage. It seems to me that it would unmistakably condemn it. For the doc- trine of negative regulation I understand to be this : 1. That the State should onlv forbid, never direct or prescribe. 2. That the sole and direct object of its action should be to secure the free working of the func- tion affected. Now, surely the law of marriage infringes both these canons. It is the clearest case of positive regulation ; and it is not aimed directly at the securing of freedom. The State does not content itself with enforcing such contracts as men and women are pleased to make. It prescribes the contract. I think we have a right to ask those who tell us this is an infallible practical rule, whether they are prepared to adhere to it in this instance. If they answer in the affirma- tive, as Von Humboldt did,* most people will have a strong opinion about the soundness and wisdom of the principle ; if they admit that we have hit on an * P. 34. Humboldt's ' Ideen,' etc.— P. 2i6 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. exception, there is an end of its infallibility and trust- worthiness. But perhaps it will be said that I have given the principle a narrower interpretation than would be sanc- tioned by its great expounder — that under it the State need not be confined to action directly and immediately aiming at freedom, that it would be justified in con- sidering the more remote consequences of men's actions and their effects upon freedom, and that, understood in this way, the principle would not condemn the law of marriage. I do not believe that I am guilty of any mis- interpretation,* or that Mr. Spencer would endorse such a construction ; but the answer to it seems to me to be twofold. In the first place, it does not in the least get over the objection as to the positiveness of the regula- tion ; secondly, if it is to be construed in this way, I do not see how it is to be any sort of bulwark against State aggression. If the State may interfere with a man's liberty on the ground that the secondary and possible consequences of his free action may be prejudicial to the liberty of others, I cannot see that there is any limit (in principle) to what the State might do with him. All the worst interferences with liberty * I am not quite free from doubt, however. I am not always able to follow the distinction which Mr. Spencer draws between positive and negative regulation. For instance, he seems to put Building Acts in one class and Merchant Shipping Acts in the other. I should have thought that their principle was identical, and that they were both positively regulative. Adulteration Acts he calls negatively regulative on the ground that adulteration is a breach of contract and an injurious fraud, but I am not sure that the Contagious Diseases Acts, which he unreservedly condemns, might not be justified on the same ground, if anyone cared to undertake so odious a task. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 217 the world has seen have been excused on the ground that, when the remote consequences of the action in- terfered with were considered, they really protected free- dom, in this world or the next, and it is against this doctrine that every defence of liberty has been directed. Lest, from my having selected it twice, it should be thought that there is any unique peculiarity about the marriage law that has led me into a misconception, I would point out that the infallibility of the principle of negative regulation can be equally well tested by so simple and familiar an example as the prescription of cab fares. This is a glaring and unmistakable infrac- tion of the principle. Yet will anyone contend that its abolition would be an improvement ? that cabmen should be allowed to make what bargains they please, Govern- ment contenting themselves with enforcing the con- tracts ? Think what extortions would be practised on the nervous, and everyone who was obviously anxious to catch a train or keep an appointment ! The argument that was made use of in testing the value of the maxim of ' Absolute freedom, limited only by the like freedom of all,' will not apply to the very similar principle enunciated by Mr. Mill. And for this reason. Mr. Mill deliberately limited it to compara- tively modern times. By so doing he deprived it of a good deal of authority. When we are told that a prin- ciple would have been generally inapplicable in the time of Charlemagne, we cannot help suspecting that there may be cases in which it is inapplicable in the present day. But a principle so limited escapes the destructive criticism that can be levelled against one that professes to be an eternal law inherent in the nature of man. But this is of little practical moment, as the slightest 2i8 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. examination will show that as a defence against Govern- ment aggression it is wholly insufficient. 'The principle is,' to use Mr. Mill's own words, 'that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, indi- vidually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection ; that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so ; because it will make him happier ; because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reason- ing with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the con- duct from which it is desired to deter him must be cal- culated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to Society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.'* I do not think this dictum can be considered indis- putable, even though its application be restricted, as Mr. Mill restricts it, to civilized times and nations, and adult men and women. Those who, like Mr. Huxley and Mr. Justice Stephen, hold that societies are governed and guided by a minority of the wise and good, will generally, I think, meet it with a direct negative. Per- * 'On Liberty,' pp. 21, 22. — P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 219 sonally, I have no wish to run atilt against it. On the broad ground of the widest expediency on which it pro- fesses to be based, and with which its imperious tone sounds perhaps a trifle inconsistent, I think its wisdom as a practical rule of government can generally be justified: and that limited, as Mr. Mill has limited it, it would seldom lead us into serious mischief, and would keep us out of a good deal. But, regarded as a rampart against improper interference with liberty, it seems to me perfectly useless. All that it really lays down is that Society can have no business to interfere with acts that are purely self- regarding. But how far does this take us ? The very kernel of our difficulty is the fact that hardly any actions are purely self-regarding. The greater part of them bear a double aspect — one which concerns self, another which concerns others— and Mr. Mill admits that, ' as soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interest of others, Society has jurisdiction over it* . . . that whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law.'t It is true that he qualifies this by excepting ' merely contingent or con- structive injury to Society,' on the grounds that 'the inconvenience is one that Society can well afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom ' ; but what is this really but a weighing of the considera- tions on the one side against those on the other, and an expression of Mr. Mill's opinion that in certain cases the benefit to Individualism will outweigh the injury inflicted on Society ? The fact is, that hardly any acts * 'On Liberty,' p. 135.— P. f Jbid., p. 147.— P. 220 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. are purely self-regarding, and Mr. Mill could only estab- lish the claims of liberty to the provinces he wished to assign to it, partly by dubbing certain classes of acts self-regarding that are only occasionally or usually so, partly by leaving his principle behind him occasionally, and fighting with the weapons that some of his followers characterize as useless. He executed this surprising change of front with the utmost frankness. For instance, after claiming under his principle ' complete liberty of conscience, thought, and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological,' he goes on to say 'the liberty of express- ing or publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual that concerns other people ; but being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same Mill's argu- reasons, is practically inseparable from it.'* In other ment for com- . T ., piete liberty words, or almost the same words transposed, Liberty sketdwd to© 18 °^ s P eecn ar >d writing is almost as important as liberty widely. f thought itself, rests in great part upon the same reasons, and is practically inseparable from it. But it cannot be brought under the simple principle by which liberty is to be defended, because it is not a self-regard- ing action ' (as we hardly need to be reminded at a time when a statesman whose liberality is unquestionable has solemnly declared, without possibility of contradiction, that ' articles and speeches may be just as much a part of the machinery of murder as sword-canes and pistols'). Therefore Mr. Mill leaves his principle to take care of itself, and goes forth to do battle on behalf of free speech and a free press without it. * ' On Liberty,' p. 26.— P. LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 221 Indeed, when it is applied to any practical question, such as the sale of intoxicating liquors, its futility becomes at once apparent. Mr. Mill dealt with this question himself,* and demolished a temperance secre- tary who wanted to put a stop to the drink traffic on the ground that it invaded his social rights. I think Mr. Mill's arguments against such interference over- whelming, but, for the life of me, I cannot see how his principle condemns it. Is drunkenness purely self- regarding ? Does it not injure others ? Is it not notoriously accompanied by poverty, crime, and con- sequent taxation, and do not others have to bear the burden of such things ? We may argue if we like, with Mill, that all these evils are less than those that are inflicted on national character by a Maine liquor law, and declare, with an eloquent prelate, that we would rather see England free than England sober, if it were necessary to choose between the two ; but this is to throw the principle overboard, and argue the question on its merits. The more we examine it, the more clearly shall we perceive that it is quite insufficient for our purpose. When we are considering whether, in a particular case, the claims of the Individual or of the Social elements should be considered paramount, how often is it of any use to remind ourselves that Society may only coerce a man to prevent harm to others ? What we generally want to know is the limit to this right of Society's, which the principle admits ; and of that it will tell us nothing. I think, therefore, that we must make up our minds to give up the idea of discovering any single principle * 'On Liberty,' p. 159.— P. 222 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. that will enable us in all cases to set the proper boundaries to State action and protect the province of individual freedom. It is not without great reluctance that I have come to this conclusion. It would be difficult to ex- aggerate the value that such a principle would possess to mankind. Equivalent to a law of nature, it would constitute a valuable confirmation, even where proof from expediency was clearest, and an infallible guide when proof from expediency was impossible. Especially valuable would it be at a moment like the present, when the temptation to ignore the importance of In- dividualism is so peculiarly great. If anything could certainly save us from the undue leaning towards Socialism that marks the present day, and the disastrous consequences that must, I believe, inevitably ensue from it, it would be the discovery of some such simple prin- ciple, easy to comprehend, believe, and apply. I can well understand, therefore, the almost passionate reluct- ance of those who believe they are in possession of such a touchstone to admit that it has yet to be discovered. But a searching analysis of the problem has shown us the prima facie impossibility of finding such a principle; and we have seen that the test of practical application throws a grave doubt upon the validity of all the maxims that make any claim to such a character. And if a true principle would be invaluable, a faulty one is worse than worthless ; for when it is discovered to be fallible, and, therefore, useless as a universal rule, all the truth it contains is apt to suffer with it. It has been found false in one case ; it is forgotten how true it is in many others. The genuine considerations on which it is based are discredited and discarded along with it. Common men will not draw fine distinctions between a principle, LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 223 and the contentions on which it is based, and the argu- ments by which they are justified, separate and distinct though the three may really be. I cannot but think that Mr. Mill's magnificent pleas for freedom of thought and discussion, and for the necessity of individual variety as an element of well-being, have suffered somewhat in their influence on public opinion from being (apparently) bound up to stand or fall with a principle that has been felt insufficient to justify them. But if it is the case that any such principle is out of our reach, the task set the present generation is to dis- cover how the just claims of individualism are to be maintained without it ; whether it is not possible, on the view of the nature of human affairs described in this article, to make an adequate defence of the proper province of individual liberty and enterprise by means of experience and observation (in the widest meanings of those words), and such rules and generalizations as we are able legitimately to base upon them. I am aware that most of the champions of liberty are given to expressing little hope of such an enterprise. They answer usually that it means deciding all cases by a balance of narrow expediencies ; that proof from expediency is impossible, because it is impossible to obtain possession of all the data involved in such questions ; and that if there is no definite principle to appeal to, there is no commanding reason why Govern- ment should not decree the shape of our hats, and the shops we should buy them at, to-morrow, or anything else that is mischievous and absurd. To which I should like to give the following general answers : In the first place, if the view we have taken of human affairs be admitted, there is a principle to appeal to, 224 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. none the less real because we are unable to define it exactly. If Individualism is admitted to be an essential element in social progress, the action of Government must always be restrained by a due consideration for it. There is no greater fallacy than to think that men will pay no regard to considerations which they know to be real, because they are unable to define them precisely. And why ' narrow ' expediencies ? Why not the widest expediencies, such as those on which Mr. Mill based the principle he attempted to establish ? What- ever may be the case with that principle (and I have already' said that, when not unduly stretched, it seemed to me to be a sound one), there was nothing in his method of arriving at it in the least inconsistent with the view here adopted. He recognized the antagonism of social and individual considerations. He set himself to prove that in certain classes of cases the evils of interference with liberty always exceeded the benefits, and that interference, therefore, was, in such cases, invariably inexpedient ; and on the base of these con- tentions he attempted to frame a general rule for the guidance of mankind. It cannot, therefore, necessarily land us in chaos to have to decide such questions by considerations of expediency, unless we are willing to admit that Mr. Mill's rule was founded upon chaos. The method on which we have to rely for ascertaining whether, in certain cases, the State ought or ought not to interfere, is simply the method that he relied on for the same purpose, and the work that he did is the work that we have to go on doing. Moreover, I deny that proof is so hopeless of attain- ment as it is sometimes made out to be. The reasons why the State should not do certain things, should not LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 225 interfere with certain actions, are often obvious enough, and, when they are not, experience in the shape of history frequently steps in and gives us the required guidance. Doubtless there are many cases in which it seems impossible to arrive at certainty by such means. But it is the merest rhetorical trick to speak of this uncertainty as though it were peculiar to this subject. The old myth of the Sphinx applies for ever, not to one, but to every kind of human action. It is not merely in politics, but in every department of our life, that we have to act constantly on evidence of the merest probability, and that even when the direst penalties in case of mistake are hanging over our heads. Nor will it be the least necessary to decide ever}' case on its merits, as if nothing of the sort had ever hap- pened before. Experience and observation will enable us to frame rules and principles that will become wider and more general with the advance of political science ; and if in this science the first principles should be the last things to be discovered, we should remember that it will prove no exception to the general rule.* Lastly, those who speak so strongly about the im- possibility of deciding such matters by a balance of expediencies should recollect that, even if they were in possession of a perfect general principle, its truth would have to be proved in that very manner if they wished to convert the world to a belief in it. It could only gain general acceptance by repeated and continual appeals to facts for its confirmation. Not only are most men incapable of appreciating the cogency of deductions * I believe this is true of all the sciences, including even mathe- matics. We all know that it is true of morality, the first principles of which are as obstinately disputed now as they were 2,000 years ago. — P. 15 226 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. from a principle, but they are rightly quite as sceptical about a man's infallibility in arriving at truth by this process as of his arriving at what is expedient by calcu- lating the practical consequences of actions ; and they feel besides that, while it is comparatively easy to check the accuracy of the latter process, as all its mistakes are exposed by the course of events, errors in the former may pass undetected for an indefinite period. It might even be added that human nature is so weak that men will often go wrong on points about which they really have no doubt, unless the practical consequences of their action are kept steadily before them. Not even the religious can afford to dispense with this kind of proof from expediency. On all these grounds, it is evident that, even were we in possession of a general principle that would determine for us the true provinces of Individuality and State regulation, we should be com- pelled to justify the boundary-line by demonstrations from expediency as well. To those who have already set their hands to the defence of freedom by joining the Liberty and Property Defence League, I venture specially to commend the considerations which this article contains. For, in the first place, such a body, though it cannot hope to be unanimous, and though it may wisely abstain from any profession of faith, must, in practice, make up its mind as to the broad grounds on which it will fight. Secondly, to have any hope of success, it is necessary that it should be, to a certain extent, in sympathy with current ideas and beliefs. It is not merely that it is impossible to refute what is not fully understood : it is that it is impossible to convert anyone unless there can be found some common premises to start from. If the LIBERTY AND SOCIALISM 227 League wishes to convert the world in general, it must find somewhere premises on the subject to which the world will not be unread)' to assent. It is not of the slightest use for it to content itself with a mere repetition of the maxims loss of faith in which has been the cause of its being called into existence. Of course what was true in the old formulas is true still, but it must be pre- sented in a form suited to the wider knowledge and the altered feelings of the present day. For instance, there may be good reasons for opposing measures akin to the Factory or Sanitary Acts ; but to denounce them on the sole ground that they are infractions of a sacred principle would have, in my opinion, no effect but to put the League hopelessly out of court. Unless it remembers this, as I trust it will, it must fail to obtain any real influence in the country ; and it will tend to become nothing but an obstructive Society for the pro- tection of vested interests, and the preservation of ideas that are out of date. In the present article I have attempted, first, to delineate the view of human affairs that I believe to be both approximately true, and to some extent in harmony with the current ideas of the majority, or at least a large portion, of thinking humanity ; secondly, to point out what I think should be the nature of the defence of individual liberty and enterprise that we should strive to base upon it. Space forbids me to go farther at this moment, but in a future article I hope to show conclusively the urgent practical necessity for framing such a defence at the present time, and to enumerate a few of the points which I think it should not neglect. Pembroke. 228 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. EXTRACT FROM ' JUS.'— EXAMINATION PAPER. (Quoted in Full.) January, 1888. Individualists vary in the degree of their individualism. This is as it should be. We are a practical people, and the adoption of extreme views all of a sudden would not be a sign of superior practical wisdom. A sound prin- ciple must be adopted cautiously, and by slow steps. Readers of Jus have now had an opportunity of seeing the case for laissez-faire laid before them for a year of weeks upon every conceivable question. It would, therefore, be of interest and of real public use if they would sit down and answer the following questions. It would be a good exercise for a practical thinker of any school, but more especially for individualists. We will, therefore, ask each of our readers to write ' Yes ' or ' No,' opposite each of the following questions, to tear off the page, and to return it to the editor signed. Should the answers seem to the sender to be based on any general underlying principle, it would be well to explain it in a short accompanying note. Names will in no case be published without special permission. The cross-voting will, it is believed, be instructive. Copies of the questions may be obtained for distribution among friends on application to the editor or publisher, 4, Westminster Chambers, London, S.W. Should the State carry letters or parcels ? Should it prohibit private persons from competing ? Was the State right in taking over the telegraphs ? 'JUS' EXAMINATION PAPER 229 Should the State buy up the railways ? Should the State buy up the mines ? Was the Polar Expedition under Captain Nares justifiable ? Was the Challenger Expedition justifiable ? Should the British Museum be put up to auction ? Should there be an Astronomer Royal ? Or a Poet Laureate ? Should science or art be State-subsidized ? Should the State maintain roads or bridges ? Or provide public parks ? Or public washhouses and baths ? Should the State extinguish fires ? Should the State supply water, or gas, or electricity ? Should the State provide cemeteries ? Do you approve of State education ? If so, should it be compulsory ? Also, should it be free of cost ? Also, should religious teaching be given ? Do you approve of the Poor Laws ? Or any Poor Laws ? Do you approve of compulsory insurance ? Should the State prohibit betting ? Should it prohibit the sale of alcohol ? Should it restrict the free sale of alcohol ? Should it empower local authorities to control it ? Should it enforce a particular sewage system ? Should it compel people to vaccinate their children ? Should it allow fever patients free locomotion ? Should it permit anyone to store gunpowder or explosives ? Should citizens be permitted to carry firearms ? Should clergymen be precluded from the House of Commons ? 230 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. Should the Church of England be specially repre- sented in the House of Lords ? Should the State enforce Sabbath observance ? Should there be State-enforced holidays ? Should prostitution be made penal ? Should the State ever prohibit public meetings ? Would you repeal the blasphemy laws ? Should the State forbid free contract between land- lord and tenant ? Or between railway companies and travellers ? Should the block system or brakes be made com- pulsory ? Should the State interfere with railway rates ? Should the State forbid the tunnelling of the Channel ? Should safety-lamps be made compulsory in mines ? Do you approve of the Truck Acts ? Should working hours be regulated by the State ? Should employers be made responsible for accidents to their workpeople ? Should there be special laws for women's and chil- dren's labour ? Should sailors be prevented from going in unsea- worthy ships ? Should marine insurance be limited by the State ? To the Editor of 'Jus.' Wilton House, Salisbury. Dear Sir, I think you may claim the honour of having composed the most formidable examination-paper that ever was set amongst the millions by which our unlucky 'JUS' EXAMINATION PAPER 231 generation is oppressed. To anyone who believes, as I do, that such questions as are here propounded must be settled on the merits of each particular case rather than by the application of any simple principle to all and any of them, the study of a lifetime would seem to be necessary before attempting to answer the whole list. A thorough-going Individualist, such as Mr. Auberon Herbert, who believes that all such questions can be settled by a reference to principle, would have felt a thrill of triumph, not unmixed with pit) - , if he had wit- nessed the look of blank dismay with which I ran my eye over their formidable array. The more I looked at them the less it seemed possible to answer the majority of them satisfactorily with a simple ' Yes ' or ' No,' even when I possessed the requisite knowledge to form a judgment ; and it occurred to me that it would be more amusing, and not less profitable, to give my reasons for thinking this, than to fill in your paper with 'Yeses' and ' Noes ' that I felt were either meaningless or mis- leading. To some of them a ' Yes ' or ' No ' answer seems to me impossible. ' Do I approve of conscription ?' for instance. Under some circumstances, certainly not ; under others, no less emphatically ' Yes.' I should say ' Yes ' at this moment in Germany, and ' No ' in Eng- land. Or to take another. ' Do I approve of State education?' Not in the abstract, certainly; but I think it a necessity in the present condition of our nation. Or, ' Should citizens be permitted to carry firearms ?' As a rule, ' Yes,' but it is not difficult to imagine a state of affairs in which it might be quite right for the State to forbid them. I have taken these examples quite at random, but 232 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. there are many questions in the list to which ' Possibly,' or ' It depends,' would be the only short answers not inaccurate or misleading. The true answer to most of the questions depends upon an immense quantity and variety of considerations, for and against (of which those connected with In- dividualism may or not be the most important). To answer ' Yes ' or ' No ' to such questions, without giving the reasons which have been held to turn the balance, is very futile. To illustrate the absurdity of it in a small matter, I should answer ' No ' to the question about the Polar expedition, and ' Yes ' to the question about the Challenger expedition. Such answers would be devoid of all significance without an explanation to show where the difference between the two cases is held to lie. Or take the question whether the telegraph system should be managed by the State. I imagine this is a matter in which considerations for and against would be very evenly balanced. Indeed, it is a very nice question whether a great national work of that kind would be best managed by the whole nation acting through its appointed servants, or a small portion of the nation calling itself a company and acting through its appointed servants. You would have to weigh, amongst other things, the advantages springing from the self-interest of private enterprise against the dis- advantage of having such a national concern in private hands, and the strong, and often unreasonable, feeling of the public against private companies, necessarily to some extent monopolist, which make profit out of the national wants. What, I think, would decide the ques- tion in my mind in favour of State management would 'JUS' EXAMINATION PAPER 233 be a question of revenue ; but who could guess this from the ' Yes ' or ' No ' of my answer ? This points me to another and special manner in which ' Yes ' or ' No ' answers to these questions would be misleading. We are supposed to answer these questions qua Individualists, yet our answers in some cases would be based on considerations that had not the remotest connection with Individualism. Take the question of the Channel Tunnel: the principle of In- dividualism is hardly concerned at all, since I doubt if the most frantic Individualist would question the abstract right of a State to forbid a private enterprise that would plainly endanger the country ; that he would doubt, for instance, the right of the French Govern- ment to forbid any private enterprise that would in- validate the security of the frontier fortresses. My answer, and I take it most people's, would turn entirely on my estimate of the military and other dangers of a Channel Tunnel. But, in conclusion, though I am critical of the answers which you propose should be given, I would not have you suppose that I carp unduly at the questions. They are most pointed and practical, and I can imagine nothing more wholesome than that people should acquire the habit of putting such questions plainly to themselves, and asking themselves how they should answer them, and what the grounds or justification of their answer would be. So much so, that I should feel quite tempted, if I were filling in your paper, to answer the last question, ' Should the reading of Jus be made compulsory on all ?' in the affirmative. Yours, Pembroke. 234 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. OTHER 'LESSONS FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE.' 'Pall Mall Gazette,' March 30, 1886. By the Earl of Pembroke. And so, to judge by the remarkable article on Friday last under the above heading, the Pall Mall Gazette is going over to the Socialists. If so, I fear its conversion is hardly likely to be stayed by any pleadings of mine. But it has always lent such a ready ear to common- sense, even in the unpopular shape of political economy, that I trust I may be allowed to make a few comments on the article in question. It asks, in effect, why there should not be a certain irreducible minimum, as of prison fare and lodging, guaranteed to every one by the State ; whether there would not be still margin enough and to spare in which to stimulate human activity ; and whether, admitting that such a proposal involves some interference with liberty, the poor are not likely to think that the fleshpots of a Socialist bondage are more tempting than liberty to drudge and to starve. Let me begin by saying that the last point entirely begs the question as regards the objections of anti-Socialists. If it really appeared that Socialism would increase the material comfort of the working class, how many would there be who would continue to oppose it for fear of its effect upon character, or upon the future of the race ? The man who would do so must be either a demigod or a pedant. Their chief objections to Socialism are based on the conviction that its flesh-pots are entirely illusory; that it would make the poor poorer, not better off, not OTHER 'LESSONS FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE' 235 only by discouraging providence, but more immediately by diminishing employment. Was not the very plan you advocate tried under the old poor law, and did it not end in whole districts becoming uninhabitable from the burden of the rates, in the impoverishment of all classes, and the poorest class most of all ? And how can it be otherwise ? Free meals and lodgings must be paid for by somebody ; and however ingeniously and carefully you may confine rates and taxes to the backs of the well-to-do, you cannot prevent them from directly and immediately injuring the wage-earner ; for every pound that you take from the rich in rates or taxes means a pound less to be spent in wages or in products for which wages are paid. This truth is so obvious in itself, and has been so often proved by practical experience, that it is rather difficult to understand why so many fail to realize it — as they undoubtedly do fail. I fancy that it arises from the fallacy, held half unconsciously to a greater or lesser extent by a great many people, that a rich man con- sumes his entire income himself, just as a poor one does, and that, therefore, to take his wealth from him by taxes or otherwise injures no one but him. And certainly, if a Duke consumed £30,000 a year as a work- man consumes a pound a week, there would be a good deal to be said from the point of view of public ex- pediency in favour of taking the duke's income and distributing it for the benefit of his neighbours. The £30,000, instead of only supporting one Duke, would provide a living for 300 people at £100 a year each. But what is the real state of the case ? All but a frac- tion of the Duke's £30,000 does at this moment go to 236 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. the support of other people, and this is to a great extent true even of those rich who spend their wealth in the most unproductive manner. There is a story — whether true or false — of the late Mr. Vanderbilt that deserves to be inserted in all text-books on this subject. ' I wish I could change places with you,' said a gentleman not very well off. ' Do you mean to say,' answered the millionaire, turning a wearied gaze upon him, ' that you would be willing to administer my immense fortune for the sake of your board and clothes — for that is all I get for it ?' If the State had confiscated Mr. Vanderbilt's wealth for the public benefit, I doubt if it could have con- trived to support with it half a dozen more men than actually did get their living from it while it was in Mr. Vanderbilt's possession. The truth is that the number of extra mouths that could be fed by any rearranging of the distribution of wealth is very small, while the effect of such interference on the intelligence and enterprise that are the foundations of extended production and employment would be quite disastrous. This is the cardinal objection to all Socialist schemes of plunder, and most of these will, I think, be found to have the fallacy I have mentioned in greater or lesser degree at the base of them. Think, too, of the effect of such a provision as you suggest on the question of over-population. Are the existing checks on it so effective that we can afford to dispense with one of them ? Few will presume to dog- matize as to how the curse of poverty is to be finally overcome ; but it is quite safe to say that it never can be conquered until increase of population has ceased to continually press upon or outstrip the means of sub- OTHER 'LESSONS FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE ' 237 sistence. For this is the fundamental cause of poverty, to which all others are subsidiary. It is not in the least to the point to argue, as Mr. Chamberlain did the other day, that the same thing had been said when the population was half what it is now, and that, therefore, it could not be true. The population may have been pressing upon the smaller means of subsistence that existed then as it is pressing upon the greater means now. The truth becomes obscured by the enormous de- velopment of the means of subsistence that has taken place, and the immediate and special causes of distress in particular trades, but it is really plain enough if you go down to the bed rock. Everyone knows that the time of greatest prosperity that the English work- ing man ever knew was the period that followed the depopulation of the country by the Black Death. And at this moment, when everyone is talking or writing about the unemployed, we have a Mansion House com- mittee reporting ' that the volume of trade ' (and, con- sequently, the amount of employment) ' has enormously increased during the last ten years,' is greater, in fact, than at any previous time in the history of the country. How is it possible to account for the present distress and want of work except by the fact that if employment has increased population has increased faster still ? Think what the position of the English workman would be now if his numbers had increased only half as fast as they have during the last half-century — all necessary deductions and qualifications being freely admitted ? What the effect of a State subsistence for all would be upon the reckless production of children, no less than on wages and employment, a study of the administra- 238 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. tion of the old Poor Law will tell us. With such an exact analogy in recent experience before us, who can doubt that such a provision as you suggest would lead to a continual decrease of employment, a continual increase in the numbers receiving State support, and in the amount of the rates, each of these factors acting upon each other and growing ever more rapidly, until the burden of taxation became too heavy to be borne, and all classes were plunged with a crash into a con- dition of poverty and starvation such as the civilized world has never seen ? Let me conclude by saying that there is one point bearing on the question of population, mentioned in your account of life in Common Street, that has hardly yet received the attention it deserves. I refer to the crowding of our labour markets by foreigners. It must be dealt with some day if ever the poverty of our work- men is to be really ameliorated. Orthodox economists should be the last people to throw up their hands in horror at such an idea. For if they hold that poverty can only be cured by population refusing to outstrip the demand for employment, they must admit that its cure becomes hopeless if our labour markets are to be for ever flooded by an influx of needy foreigners, willing to work for the lowest wages. What would be the use of the British workman stinting himself of luxuries to put by money, marrying late, or restricting his family, if his wages are to be kept down and employment rendered scarce — if, in fact, he is to be robbed of the fruits of his self-denial by a continual inpouring of foreign labourers ? It is a question that must come to the front whenever the problem of poverty is seriously attacked from the OTHER ' LESSONS FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE' 239 right direction. Two ways of treating it are conceivable. 1. Protection against foreign immigration, such as the Americans are attempting against the Chinese. It does not seem to be very successful even there, and would probably prove quite impracticable as between European nations. 2. An international organization of labour, wider and more thorough than any that has yet been devised, which would not content itself with waging war agairrst capitalists, and protecting the interests of its class against them, but would also to some extent guide and direct the movements of workmen, and, above all, persistently preach and teach to all its members the hard and difficult lessons of individual prudence for themselves, and still more for their children, without which it is not possible for their class as a whole to reach a substantially higher standard of comfort and of civilization. But I fear this is as yet but a dream. LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE. (Address at Freemason's Tavern, London.) July 12, 1888. Lord Pembroke, in responding for the House of Lords, said : My Lords and Gentlemen, I feel much honoured in returning thanks this evening on behalf of the House of Lords. That House, as you are all aware, has lately been occupied with the question of its own reformation in the direction of introducing life peerages. You are also aware that those Bills have been dropped owing to pressure of business in the House of Commons. 2 4 o SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. I for one am extremely sorry for it. As a good member of the Liberty and Property Defence League, I am with all my heart in favour of freedom, width, and absence of restriction both for men and institutions, and I cannot feel content with the House of Lords being so much restricted, for the talent it contains, to the amount which the accident of heredity may be kind enough to send it, as it is now. And on that ground I am extremely sorry that those contemplated reforms have been dropped, at any rate for the present year. I may say that I think this is a very appropriate toast to be drunk at a dinner of your League. There are several reasons why the House of Lords at the present time can do more for the League than the House of Commons can. There is one very good reason in the fact that your energetic and able president is a member of the Upper House. But there are other reasons as well. One of the drawbacks which you have to set off to the many advantages of a widely extended suffrage is the fact that it places political power in the hands of men who are necessarily some- what ignorant of political science, and who apply to political questions rather a generous sentiment than any considerable amount of hard thinking ; and, to men like that, you must always remember, the prin- ciples of your League are necessarily extremely un- palatable. Moreover, I think it is the fact, that all truths have alternate periods of popularity and unpopularity ; and the reason is this : there is no principle or doctrine in this world of ours which has not got its evil consequences as well as its good ones, however much the latter may outweigh the former, and what LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 241 happens then is this : when a political doctrine or principle has held practical sway for some time, men become rather forgetful of the good consequences that flow from it, and come to look upon them as part of the order of nature which there is no danger of their losing, and become at the same time very impatient of the bad consequences resulting from it. In my opinion the principles of your League, which I may mainly describe as the principles of self-help and non-inter- ference, are passing through one of these temporary phases of unpopularity, and one of the results of it is this : though I believe six out of every dozen of educated men at heart agree with the principles of your League, there are very few members of the popular House — the House of Commons — who care to be associated with it, or who will get up in the House of Commons and boldly enunciate its doctrines. One of the very Self help and r it 1 1 11 1 • 1 • * r t^ i non-interfer- tew who does so boldly and consistently is Mr. Brad- ence advo- laugh, and I always notice that he is careful on those jfradiaugh occasions to assure his audience that he has no connec- tion whatever with this unpopular society. Please do not imagine for a moment I am pre- suming to find fault with members of the House of Commons on this account. I do not do so in the least degree. In the first place they are not only bound to represent the opinions of their constituents, but I go further, and say that you cannot do any worse service to a truth than by forcing it down people's throats, in season and out of season, at times when they are deter- mined not to receive it. It is doing a far better service to any such truth to refrain from doing that, to remind them of it, now and then, on suitable occasions, and to wait patiently for the time when they will be more 16 2 4 2 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. read\- to receive it, and when they will probably per- ceive that they have discovered it for themselves. But, my lords and gentlemen, it is a very different matter with the House of Lords. The House of Lords is very often reproached with the allegation that it is not sufficiently in sympathy with popular opinion. If that is true I think we may claim that the peers at least have the virtues which go with that defect. They are a very independent body of men indeed. I was once talking with a very distinguished peer — one of the most distinguished — I don't like to mention his name — about a particular British peer, and I remarked how extremely able, talented and sensible he was, and how odd it was that upon some subject or another his judgment seemed to be quite off its balance. The distinguished peer with whom I was conversing replied : ' Have you not noticed that nearly all peers are like that ? I have noticed that they are so, and what I put it down to is the extraordinary, almost unique, position of independence — socially and politically — in which their lives are passed.' I think that is perfectly true of the House of Lords. Owing to the fact that they have no constituents, and, from their social position perhaps, the}- are able to think and say pretty much what they please, and they are able, as hardly anyone else in the world is, to judge of questions upon their, merits if only Providence has given them brains enough to enable them to do so. The consequence of this is that the House of Lords is a kind of temple of unfashionable opinions. It is the natural asylum and refuge for truths that are un- popular or unpalatable, and one of its most important functions in my opinion is, the duty — the function — of LIBERTY AND PROPERTY DEFENCE LEAGUE 243 keeping alive such truths, through the periods of their temporary depression. The House of Lords during the last few years has been performing that service on behalf of the Liberty and Property Defence League. I think that League has been doing great good by pointing out the mischief and absurdities of State interference, by protecting — as many of you know it has protected — industries and interests, and warning the country lest it should drift into the principles of Socialism with its eyes shut. In my opinion, in this case the period of eclipse with regard to the principles of the League will not be very long. I do not wish to underrate the dangers of drifting into the Socialist system. The dangers of Socialism are very patent, and I do not deny they are menacing ; but, on the other hand, I have a very strong feeling that Englishmen have a real love of liberty. I feel, further, that such a truth as that security to amass and enjoy property and individual freedom is the very foundation of civilization, is a truth so obvious and so important that it can never, by a sensible and civilized nation, be lost sight of for a very long time. Indeed, I think it is impossible to travel about the world at all without having it impressed upon one. One may find communities in which this condition is conspicuously absent which produce types of life and specimens of mankind that are by no means to be despised ; but without a high degree of security for property and liberty for enterprise you will never get, you will never find, that free development in all directions of the powers and possessions of mankind which is what a white man means by ' Civilization,' and which, I believe, he will never be content to dispense with, even if under 244 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. present circumstances it were possible for him to do it. For these reasons, my lords and gentlemen, I hope some here may live to see the day when Socialism shall have become once more a mere bugbear, and that this Liberty and Property Defence League of ours, carrying on its unpopular character to the end, will be con- temptuously told that there never has been the slightest reason why it should ever have existed. ANSWER TO AN ARTICLE BY THE REV. CANON BARNETT. I do not believe in our getting out of the difficulties and miseries, that are arising from over-population, by any such measures as Mr. Barnett suggests. Nay, I rather believe they would aggravate them. The more you persuade Paul that it is not his business to provide for himself and his family, so much as it is Peter's, the more likely he is to go on improvidently keeping up his numbers, to a point that makes nothing but a bare sub- sistence possible to himself and his fellows. Everyone dislikes Political Economy, but none can get rid of it. Shut it out at the door, and it will come back by the windows. And one of its most certain truths is, that the fund out of which wages are paid cannot be stretched beyond certain limits, and that if the number of labourers in a country who share this fund amongst them is unduly increased, there must be poverty and misery. It seems that our only chance of avoiding a great catastrophe lies in a recognition of this truth by the working classes : in their recognizing that it is a natural law, that no amount of clever juggling by the State of ANSWER TO CANON BARNETT 245 the national wealth from one pocket to another can get rid of, and the consequences of which neither the State nor any other power can avert, save their own prudence and energy as individuals, and collectively. To teach the working man that it is the business of the State, that is to say of his fellow-citizens, to pay wholly, or in part, for his education, doctoring, entertainment, and pensioning in old age, is certainly not the way to impress this truth on him. Obvious as it is, it is often forgotten that the State has no money but what it takes out of the pockets of the people. Attempts to abolish want by State subsidies are, in principle, identical with getting into a clothes- basket and lifting one's self up by the handle. What you put into one pocket comes out of the other ; more- over, the cost of transfer is never costless. Something is always deducted to pay for expenses. It is essentially bad economy to pay State officials for spending your money for you, instead of laying it out yourself. ' Oh,' it will be answered, ' we all know that. What we mean to do is merely to equalize a little — to take some of the superfluous wealth of the rich, and let the poor have the benefit of it.' But that is not nearly so simple as it sounds. It is almost impossible to find a system of taxation that would bring any quantity of surplus wealth into the national coffers without affecting capital as well. Directly that is touched the poor suffer. Mr. Barnett's article is certainly very taking ; the title is attractive ; the style charming ; the picture of the squalor of an English labourer's life so striking and affecting, that one is apt to forget how little his proposals, on his own showing, do to remedy it. And his wise remarks on the mischief of destroying independence, 246 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. put one off one's guard. But his so-called practical proposals seem to me to have all the usual defects of Socialistic programmes. If our danger is what nearly all are agreed that it is, what can be more fatal than to remove most of the natural checks on population by persuading every work- ing man that he has a right to demand that someone else shall find for him education, doctoring, lodging, entertainment, and a pension for him in his old age ? Such a belief, accompanied as it would necessarily be by a belief that the State was able as well as bound to accomplish these things, would inevitably produce a still greater pressure of population. The surplus wealth of the rich, out of which it is vaguely supposed that the wants of the poor are to be satisfied, would prove the merest ' fleabite in the ocean ' ; the working classes would be the first to suffer, from the overtaxing of capital producing want of employment, and there would come a nice little explosion. Mr. C. would have to tell the starving millions that unfortunately he and his colleagues had been a little out in their calculations ; population had increased faster than they had expected ; their attempt to meet the needs of the poor had exhausted the wealth of the country; and that he feared that there was really nothing for it, but to return to the old policy of laisscz /aire, reduce taxation, and go through a sharp, but he hoped a short, course of starvation and survival of the fittest, after which he hoped the national industry might revive ; and in two minutes, nothing would be left to him but the camellia in his buttonhole. What makes people so recklessly blind to the dangers of Socialism is, that they do not realize the possibility, ANSWER TO CANON BARNETT 247 I might almost say the certainty, of such a result. They are rendered at once desperate and careless by two ideas, both of which, I believe, are fallacious. First, that the working classes never have done, and never will do, anything to improve their own position, by thrift and providence in breeding ; secondly, that their present misery and poverty are about as bad as they can be, and cannot become much worse. I do not believe in either of these notions. I believe they have already made immense steps in thrift and providence and well- being, and would in time, with the help of education and experience, work out their own salvation if there was such a thing as patience in the modern world. I believe still more strongly that it is possible for them to be immeasurably worse off than they are at the present moment, when, with all our countless numbers, the starvation of an able-bodied man is almost an unknown event. To assume that we may try what experiments we please, because we cannot make the working men worse off than they are, seems to me an unpardonable bit of recklessness. When Mr. Barnett deals with the demoralizing ten- dency of Socialist measures, he evades the real point at issue. He advances the plausible theory that it is not the receiving of alms but the having to ask for them as a favour that demoralizes a man, and that if you can only persuade him that he has a right to his neighbour's purse, the taking of it will do no harm to his character. I am a little reluctant to assent even to this. The English labourer of fifty years back firmly believed in his right to outdoor relief, but I never heard that he was saved from demoralization thereby. But, true or not, it is beside the point. Whether the labourer's 248 SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. belief in his right to poor relief prevented its adminis- tration deteriorating his character or not, it did not prevent the evil consequences of the vicious system : and no more will a similar saving faith avert the evil consequences of his believing that the State can and ought to find him subsistence under all circumstances. By the way, what mischievous and inexcusably wrong-headed sermons those wretched Poor Laws are the text for. Every Socialist refers to them with approval, and uses them as a precedent, and nearly everyone has forgotten that a generation ago they nearly brought the country to ruin ; from which nothing saved it but the wave of faith in political economy that hap- pened at that moment to be passing over the nation. But to return to Mr. Barnett, I complain of him that he not only ignores the ultimate bearing of his measures upon the population question, which is at the root of the evils he wishes to deal with, but that he altogether misrepresents the question of expense. He does not seem to have an idea what his proposals would come to in rates. To have to pay every workman over sixty, who had never been a pauper, a pension of ten shillings a week would be a pretty fair lump, even if it extin- guished general pauperism. To nationalize all the hospitals and infirmaries, and provide State doctors for the poor, would be another frightful addition to the rates. If his proposal were carried out, and every man given the right of admittance to such institutions, not only would the voluntary support and unpaid adminis- tration come to an end, but a great increase in their number would be rendered necessary. He asserts that no additional outlay would be needed, but does nothing to prove it ; and immediatelv afterwards admits it is ANSWER TO CANON BARNETT 249 want of money that prevents the proper medical atten- dance of the poor. As to education, anyone can see that to give a free course, ending with the universities, to any appreciable number of working men, would cost a large sum. So, too, the artizans' dwellings ; cheap and good houses on convenient sites could only be procured at a ruinous price on any extended scale. Sites for free libraries and playgrounds can, of course, be procured, as well as sites for infirmaries and work- houses, but as the latter will be required the former will be an additional expense, which somebody will have to pay for. When the total cost of all these pro- posals is added together, I am convinced it would amount to a burden of capital that would immediately injure the very classes it was intended to benefit. When he turns to the question of where the money is to come from, one feels inclined to laugh. Endowed charities, saving in the public offices, and increase of the Land Tax. About the first, I will only say that I doubt if they would furnish spare cash enough to pay half the cost of the cheapest of Mr. Barnett's proposals. For the second, there is no reason for believing that it is practically possible to conduct the public service more economically. A salary here or there may need cutting down, but no saving, worth the name, is to be made in this direction. And Mr. Barnett's schemes, if carried into practice, would vastly increase the Civil Service estimates. Think what an' army of State-paid school- masters, doctors, librarians, building boards, ministers, and countless other functionaries ! And if the Land Tax might safely be increased in the case of house property, agricultural land will certainly 2 5 o SOCIALISM, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY, ETC. bear no extra burdens. It is already so taxed that it has become the luxury of the rich. It is amusing that one of Mr. Barnett's practicable ideas is to make it an easy investment for the poor. The success of Mr. Barnett's article is in the main, I think, a triumph of style. It is so simply, modestly, sympathetically and seductively written, that one glides quite easily, in reading it, over all objections and argu- mentative lapses. But for all that, the instinctive, approval it has met with shows how the wind is blowing. It is what people feel first rather than what they think, after calm reflection, that determines the direction of national movements. So I believe we are in for a course of Socialism, and I can only wish the country safely through it. But, like all such habits, it is terribly difficult to shake off when once contracted. Every step seems to necessitate the other, and there is no going back without great suffering. And our modern poli- ticians are so wanting in backbone ! I suppose I shall be asked what I have got to recom- mend instead, with an insinuation that if I have got nothing, we are logically bound to go in for Socialism. I do not admit the logic at all, since it would surely be better to keep things as they are, than to make them worse. But I think I see an alternative course ; that is, to preserve freedom and independence, and inculcate sound science in politics, with every weapon in the armoury, and to promote co-operation. It is in co-operation that I see not only the means of bridging the gulf between labour and capital, but the means of coping with the great population difficulty. Once give the workman a practical possibility of acquiring pro- perty, prizes in life to be won by skill and diligence, and ANSWER TO CANON BARNETT 251 such a standard of comfort and dignity to rise to and, may be, to fall from, and he will soon become as pro- vident as any other class in the State. The Rochdale Pioneers have shown how it is to be done. Mr. Albert Grey and others are starting a co-operative store in the house-decoration line, and the Maison Godin in France gives another illustration practically at work. LAND QUESTIONS. LAND QUESTIONS. AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS.* (Speech at Warminster.) October 1 1, 1881. The Earl of Pembroke, who was received very heartily, in proposing ' Prosperity to the Warminster Farmers' Club,' said the present time was one when it was very important to consider the causes of the agricultural dis- tress that at present existed, and the best means of * A wet harvest and one or two previous bad seasons had even now accelerated the collapse of British agriculture, and the occasion was seized by a political faction to attempt to extend the unsound principles of Irish legislation to England. The Farmers' Alliance, of which Mr. O'Donnell claimed to be the author, had been formed in 1879, just before a Royal Commission on Agriculture had been appointed (as was cynically suggested) to keep agricultural ques- tions open till after the General Election. The Alliance had this year drafted a Land Bill, tending, among other things, to restrict the rights of the landlord by Act of Parliament, and sought the iavour of the tenant interest by its promulgation. The aspirations of the tenant farmers have, since the extension of the franchise to labourers, become a matter of secondary importance to election- mongers, but the natural independence of their class made them at no time very hopeful subjects of the demagogic art, and a social programme whose ultimate boon was to ' fix them on the land ' was alien to their spirit of enterprise. Nevertheless, the vague utterances of certain politicians had so far prevailed to obscure 256 LAND QUESTIONS meeting that distress. The country had arrived at that state of mind when it felt that something must be done, and they had it on good authority that that was the worst state of mind that a country could get into. There were all sorts of remedial proposals in the air, and they should make up their minds as to what the true causes of distress were, and how those causes should be met and remedied. It was very strange that there should be such difference of opinion as to what those causes were, and he could not help cynically suspecting that they might be explained by the old proverb that there were ' none so blind as those who would not see.' What are j^ e wou ld first refer to those matters which he did not not the causes of think were in any true sense of the word the causes of the present . distress the present agricultural depression. He meant such turef" CU questions as insecurity of tenure, compensation for un- exhausted improvements, the law of entail, and so on. What he meant was, that there had been the severest distress on estates, which could not be said to have been even remotely affected by such minor causes as these. He often wondered how anyone had the courage to tell an assemblage of practical farmers that these were the causes from which they were really suffering. How much better off would the farmers of South Wilts be now, if they had had fixity of tenure, perfect protection for their improvements, and had changed their land- lords once a fortnight ? What were the real causes ? First, the bad harvests, of course ; secondly, he thought landlords and tenants in the prosperous times the relations of landlord and tenant that one of the members of the Royal Commission was encouraged to plead, in a separate memo- randum upon the report, for the recognition of ' the tenant's interest as the law may define it in his tenure.' AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 257 had, like other people, too much speculative enterprise. Land had been reclaimed that ought never to have been put under the plough. They had lost heavily by ploughing up downland and trying to grow corn on it. Farms had been increased in size with the idea of attracting large capitalists, who, it unfortunately turned out, did not exist in the farming class, the sole result being that men with capital barely sufficient for five hundred acres, took farms of one thousand acres. Then there had been extravagant outlay in building, necessitating either a dead loss to the landlord or a rent which, together with his other burdens, was ruinous to the tenant. Next, there was the American and colonial competition, that made bad harvests in this country so terribly ruinous ; and, lastly, there were the heavy burdens on English land. Then came the question. How are these evils to be met or remedied ? For the harvests they must trust to the powers above, but the competition they must tackle themselves. He could not coincide with the hopeless tone that many used about it. He could not believe that with the whole width of the ocean on our side we could be per- manently beaten out of our own markets. No doubt, too, as America and the Colonies became populated the competition would diminish. But there was no immediate prospect of that, and it was very poor con- solation for those who were being ruined in the mean- while. How, then, was this competition to be made less disastrous to us ? The answer was evident. You must put the competitors on a more equal footing, and this could only be done in one of two ways. They must put more weight on the American producer or take it *7 258 LAND QUESTIONS off the English. They must put a protective duty on foreign corn or they must take some of the burdens off English land. A protective duty was a broken reed. Either it would raise the wages of the manufacturing classes or it would not. If it did, it would at once handicap our manufacturers in their competition with the foreigner. If it did not raise wages, the manu- facturing operatives would at once rebel against such a tax upon their stomachs and pockets. Some people said, ' No, because their trade would be improved by the prosperity of English agriculture, and anything they lost by the price of bread would be more than repaid by the steadiness of employment.' Was this true ? Against the custom they would gain among English agriculturists, must be set off the custom they would lose among the shipbuilding and carrying classes, and every other class either here or in America that was injuriously affected by the tax. And even if he were wrong about this, he could hardly believe that the working man would forego such a palpable and im- mediate advantage as cheap food, for the sake of a problematical improvement in regularity of employ- ment. But even from a landowner's point of view he did not think a protective duty on corn desirable. Their political enemies were strong and unscrupulous, and a tax on corn would place them at their mercy. Every objection they raised to mischievous legislation would be met with the fatal answer, ' We pay for you : we shall do as we like with you.' He thought, there- fore, they would do well to discard the idea of imposing burdens on the foreign producer, and direct their atten- tion and energy to the alternative remedy of lightening the burdens on the English one. AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 259 He was aware that this question of the taxation of What are . some of land was a very difficult one, on which very contra- the causes dictory opinions were held ; but it always seemed ° re s S e to him that the agricultural industry was taxed in a way that was reasonable enough at a time when land was the staple wealth of the country, but which was now out of all proportion to its commercial value as compared with other sources of wealth. And they were so accustomed to this state of things that they hardly noticed it. Nearly the whole support of the Established Church, for instance, was on the shoulders of English agriculture. What a pretty outcry there would be, and what complaints there would be about the impossibility of competing with the foreigner, if such a burden was placed on any other industry in this country ! It was a burden that they would not get rid of if they could, but it certainly ought not to be left out of sight in estimating the conditions under which they were now competing. But this relief of burdens on English land was just the very thing that their reformers were least inclined to grant. And why ? Mr. Gladstone, in a speech which showed that he at least was most unwilling to lead the attack, which will come none the less upon English land tenure, let the cat out of the bag at Leeds with magnificent simplicity. Forgetting, he supposed, for the moment that the smaller landowners were in quite as great distress as the farmers, he objected to such relief, on the ground that every sixpence of it would ultimately go into the pocket of the landowner. Now, in the first place, this was not correct. It was identical with the statement that was often made, that tithes and rates really mattered nothing to the tenant, 2 6o LAND QUESTIONS because if they were taken off the landlord would raise the rent by a like amount. But this was not true. Landlords did not want to rack-rent their tenants, and would be glad to let their farms for less than they could now afford to do. There had always been a strong feeling of live and let live amongst them, and after our recent experiences of the evils of over-renting, he thought it would be stronger than ever. It was the burdens on the land that were responsible for most of the over-renting that had existed. The way in which these burdens produced over-renting was this : The landlord's rent might be nothing but the lowest interest on the value of the lands and buildings he had erected. He could not possibly afford to ask less ; yet when the rates and tithes and all the rest of it were added to it, the tenant was a stiffly rented instead of a moderately rented man. And in another way the tenant was directly injured by the existing burdens, and would be benefited by their removal. Landlords were chary of spending money on their farms, because the existing burdens made it most difficult or impossible to obtain a fair interest on the outlay. That the tenant was the loser by this was evident. If they could remove or lighten these burdens appreciably there would at once be a large outlay of the landlord's capital on the soil, to the direct benefit of the tenant. But of course it was true that such relief would benefit the landlords, and that was the very last thing their Radical friends desired. He verily believed that some of them would see all the farmers in England ruined, rather than do anything that might tend to preserve our present system of tenure or put a sixpence into the pockets of the large landowners. AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 261 And here they arrived at the insuperable obstacle to any real relief at their hands, and the reason why, when you ask them for bread, they offer you a stone. They were willing to do anything for the farmer that would not benefit the landlord ; they would be delighted to do anything for him that would injure the landlord. But they had set themselves an impossible task. The interests of the two were so identical that they could Identity of not do anything that would really benefit the tenant i an diords without benefiting the landlord ; nor could thev iniure tenants > the landlord without injury to the tenant. England bourers. was not like some parts of Ireland, where they might remove the landlord and all his works without the slightest loss to the tenant or the land. In England the landlord found an amount of capital that few tenants could afford to dispense with, and any legislation that would check such outlay would be a direct injury to the tenant. It was necessary to insist upon this, because our land reformers so studiously ignored it. They were always crying out against the mischief of a state of things that discourages the tenant from investing his capital in his farm. Yet, with charming inconsistency, they were agitating for changes in the law which would infallibly discourage the landlord from laying out his capital — to the loss, of course, of both the tenant and the estate. Thus it came about that all the legislative remedies proposed seemed to have one of two objects — either the injury of the landlord, or the distracting of the farmer's attention from the real evils that were oppressing him. The other day he read an English Land Bill drafted by the Farmers' Alliance. It contained several condi- tions that rather astonished him as coming from tenant 262 LAND QUESTIONS farmers. They were all to have leases, whether they wanted them or not, and rent was to be recovered like any other debt — through the County Court. But the vital defect of such a Bill, was the one he had spoken of. It would at once put a stop to all investments of landlords' capital on permanent improvements, and throw the whole burden of them on to the capital of the tenant, which they all knew was already at the lowest ebb. And he could not help asking, by the way, what the tenant farmers wanted with such a Bill at all at the present time. They could hire farms at half the rent that was paid for them a few years ago ; they could demand leases if they wanted them, or secure themselves against unjust increases of rent by agreement with landlords. A farmer who still had capital to farm with could make his own terms about almost everything. Now let them turn to more moderate and reasonable projects. Mr. Gladstone proposed to secure to the tenant by law, compensation for unexhausted improve- ments. He should be most happy to support such a measure if it took a shape that was not unjust to the landlord ; but it seemed to him a perfect mockery to represent it as in any appreciable degree a remedy for the present distress. Then Mr. Gladstone foreshadowed a reform of the laws relating to the devolution of land and entail, and perhaps the cheapening of transfer with the same object. Now, he (the speaker) was very much inclined to lend a favourable ear to such pro- posals. Economically he believed that the large estate system was the best, that it produced better farming, more crops to the acre, and more general prosperity than AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 263 any other. But politically it was extremely dangerous. Large Our riches and our weakness in numbers were a tempta- economic- tion to the evilly-disposed. They were already engaged ^^ JX in picking a quarrel with them, in principle not unlike the celebrated one that the wolf got up with the lamb. He should be very glad, therefore, to see the number of proprietors in England multiplied by twenty. But when these changes were made to figure as measures for the relief of agricultural distress, he was bound to say that they were not only nothing of the sort, but that their benefit to the tenant farmer was extremely doubtful altogether. Changes of landlords not unfre- quently meant revisions of rent, and this would make a great set-off against the advantage of getting rid of impecunious landowners. And there was another point. Radicals had gone on repeating that a man who had only a life interest in an estate, could not and would not treat it properly till people had begun to believe it. He considered it was, as a rule, quite untrue. Surely the feeling that a man had inherited an estate from his ancestors, that he hoped to leave it to his heirs for generations yet unborn, that he only held it in trust, so to speak, for his lifetime, was to ordinary human nature a stronger incentive to duty than any feeling of unlimited posses- sion — that he could do with it what he liked — especially if that feeling of unlimited possession was to be modified by anything like the Farmers' Alliance Land Bill, which was advocated by the very same inconsistent reformers who were so alive to the mischief there would be, in any restriction on the owner's right to do what he liked with his land ! And the great hereditary estates were a proof in themselves. In spite of all hard swearing to 264 LAND QUESTIONS the contrary by Radical writers, they were notoriously the most generously-managed estates in the country. He thought, in considering the remedies that our re- formers might propose to administer, they would do well to remember the old Latin saw, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, which might be freely translated, ' I dis- trust the Radicals and the remedies they offer for our distress.' He had given them two reasons for caution ; first, that they were bent on injuring the landlords, and could not hurt them without hurting the farmers ; and that they wished to distract attention from the ques- tion of lightening the burdens on the land. But he would give them another. They would find the Radicals very bad allies. They professed great friendship for them now, when they wanted help from them to cripple the landlords, but they might depend upon it the farmers' own turn would come next. Their ultimate object was something very different from making England the Para- dise of large tenant farmers. They might talk loudly, now that they were campaigning, against the laws of entail, about the necessity of putting more capital to the land, and all that ; but at the bottom of it all they would very shortly find out that the capitalist for whose benefit they were all required to give place was no one in the world but the agricultural labourer. Now, there was something extremely attractive to all that was best in our nature in the idea of peasant pro- prietorship, and there was much in the lot of the agricultural labourer that they would gladly alter if they knew how. But he believed peasant proprietorship was a thing that it was quite impossible to produce anew in England in the nineteenth century. People AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 265 deceived themselves about it in the most natural way. They saw French or German or Belgian peasant pro- prietors displaying extraordinary industry, thrift, and perseverance, working like galley-slaves, clinging tena- ciously to their holdings, and, where the conditions were favourable, often attaining considerable prosperity. They put it all down to 'the magic of property,' and did not see why the institution should not succeed equally well in England. They forgot entirely that the Continental peasant Feudal- was the descendant of countless generations of men orkriifof who, attached by feudal law and other circumstances peasant t -i • proprietor- to the soil, had farmed in the same way before him and ship, has handed down to him their experience and their qualities. longeT For generations the weak and idle had been weeded out abroad than in by the stern hand of Nature, till a race had been bred, England, whose industry, thriftiness, and passionate attachment to the soil were all equally marvellous. Peasant pro- prietorship on the Continent was in point of fact a legacy of feudalism — that feudalism that was always being thrown in our teeth, but which really died a natural death and was replaced by commercial contract in England before any other country, and the last vestige of which, so far as the English peasant was concerned, disappeared with the abolition of the settle- ment laws. But abroad, the feudal peasant and the feudal lord lasted till the great revolution. The feudal lord was then swept away by violence or legislation, and the feudal peasant remained where he had been for cen- turies, only better off. He was the product of circum- stances and the product of time. They could not create him in the England of to-day. The circumstances that 266 LAND QUESTIONS produced such thrifty persevering attachment to the soil had happily ceased to exist. And what was there in the life of our labourers to qualify them for such a life ? Peasant proprietorship might succeed in Ireland. If they had not got the thrift (and perhaps the magic of property might bring that), they had at least got the peasant farmer there accustomed to cultivate his plot, to live on very little, and to look upon the land as the sole possible field for his industry. But in England ! What Englishman would work eighteen hours a day for a bare subsistence (as many of the foreign peasants did on the testimony of their own admirers) when he could get at least fifteen or twenty shillings a week by working half as hard for wages at any kind of handicraft ? As Judge Longfield, the great Irish authority, acutely put it, ' In general it is not for a man's interest to become a peasant pro- prietor.' ... ' I do not deny,' he went on to say, ' that every peasant wants to become a proprietor ; but I say that in general the proprietor would not wish to remain a peasant,' and he went on to show most conclusively that if a man had a farm of thirty acres of his own the very worst thing he could do would be to cultivate it himself, and that he would do far better for himself and family by letting or selling it, and taking a larger farm or going into trade, or emigrating with the proceeds. They could not create peasant proprietorship in England any more than they could bring back the use of bows and arrows ; but they could do this — they could ruin the present system of tenure and all engaged in it by reckless attempts to do so. And there was a strong body of men, some of them well meaning enough and all the more dangerous, who meant to do this — to assail AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS 267 bit by bit in any and every way what they were pleased to call territorialism, but what would be really more accurately described as the principles of commercial freedom in dealing with land, in the wild hope that out of its ruins some form of peasant proprietorship would grow up. They were willing to offer heavy apparent bribes to the farmer, at his landlord's expense, if he would countenance their assaults. He hoped he would have both the honesty and the foresight to refuse them. The removal of burdens upon the land was the only way of relieving the present distress, and of enabling them to compete with the foreigner successfully. He hoped they would allow no proposal, however seductive in appearance, to divert them from that object. AGRICULTURE.* (Speech at the Chamber of Agriculture.) Salisbury, 18S2. ? The Earl of Pembroke said that the report of the Royal Commission had been a good deal complained of for want of arrangement and so on, and he did not * The Royal Commission on Agriculture had sat for more than three years, and received evidence from all parts of the world, when its report was produced in 1882. 'The general im- pression left on the minds of the readers of that report,' wrote the Hon. G. C. Brodrick, ' is that in the judgment of the Commissioners little or nothing can be done by the State or individuals, either to relieve agricultural depression in the present, or to ward it off in the future/ Probably in view of the vague hopes unduly raised in the minds of some, the Commission effected valuable service in checking exaggerated expectations of the good to follow from the transfer, which was afterwards effected, to a Board of Agriculture, 268 LAND QUESTIONS think that the practice of running two reports into one, as if they were the same thing, was to be commended, nor were all its recommendations so clear as they might be, and he thought that they had some right to com- plain, considering what a trite subject the whole of agriculture was, and what a lot of time and trouble they took, that they did not show more boldness in discriminating between evils and the proportionate value of the remedies proposed. But he was not disposed to complain of the report very much. It was a sort of resurrection pie, and like all resurrection pies, if they poked about well in it, they could find some very valuable things. There were one or two very wholesome and valuable remarks in it. They told them with great clearness and emphasis that it was not only their land which had suffered from bad times, but that other lands had suffered ; they told them that the wheat crop had not failed entirely owing to the of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council over injurious insects, cattle diseases, and stray dogs. The most drastic recommendation of the Commission was that of ' further legislative provision for securing to the tenants the compensation to which they are equitably entitled in respect of their outlay,' and that ' the principle of the Agricultural Holdings Act (1875) relating to compensation should be made compulsory in all cases where such compensation is not otherwise provided.' These recommendations were carried out in the Act of 1883 with very general assent. Of the objections to the proposals contained in this speech, the first, that relating to the principle of freedom of contract, was strongly urged by Lord Grey. The second, that relating to the difficulty of applying a statutory rule of compensation, has received within the last few weeks what seems to be a singular confirmation. Speaking at a local chamber of agriculture the other day, Mr. C. S. Read, a very leading tenant farmer, declared that he contemplated, for con- venience' sake, quitting his farm under the local custom in prefer- ence to exercising his rights under the Act. AGRICULTURE 269 law of entail, and that the sheep-rot was not due to the laws of primogeniture, or something of that sort. He wanted to say a word on local taxation, and the proposal in the report was not very clear. At one moment it seemed to propose a tax on personal property, and shortly afterwards they saw that it was impossible, or vice versa, he forgot which. But he should like to point out that a very strong objection to tax personal property was this — they would very likely tax it twice over. Perhaps a man had a mill or factory or something of that sort that was already taxed, and it would be very hard if it were taxed a second time. As to the proposal made to put the indoor poor on the consolidated fund, he did not think that they would find that that proposal would be listened to. He took a very gloomy view of all the proposals for the relief of taxation. At this moment a very formidable agitation Proposed was being set on foot to eat up the whole of the rent of Nation ° land by increased taxation, under the mistaken idea ? n \ he J land. that the landlords had absorbed the prosperity of the country. He did not believe that the Government would give in to any such absurd outcry, but he thought that they were acute enough not to give a flout in the face by going against it and taking burdens off land. The principle that the rates should be borne equally by owners and occupiers was a very good one, and he thought that the sooner they set about carrying out that principle the better. He approved of the proposal to institute agricultural colleges, colleges not merely for rich men's sons and agents, but useful for the sons of working farmers. He thought that that would be a very good thing if they could get it adopted. He particularly liked it when 270 LAND QUESTIONS taken in conjunction with the proposal to have a Minister of Agriculture. He did not quite share the view that he would have a great deal to do as Minister of Agriculture. He was afraid that he would not have enough, and he bore in mind that celebrated hymn of Dr. Watts about idle hands. If they had Mr. C. as Minister of Agriculture, he should like his time to be taken up as much as possible in the institution of colleges or something of that sort. The Royal Commission made some remarks about rent. He could not call them by any other term than remarks ; they were so true that one rather wondered what the necessity was for making them, and he was not sure that anything was gained by stating indisputable facts as though they were disputable matter. It gave them to understand that rent was raised very much by the over-competition for farms, and that they had much better lower them — as if they could help it — in consequence of the under-competition. He thought that if ever the over-competition for farms which took place some years ago recurred, landlords in England would be very much to blame if they did not take very great care not to let their farms run up a bit more than one could pay in other years. If landlords and tenants, principally landlords, were not wiser another time, they would have the whole of this over again in the next twenty years. The Royal Commission did not recommend any pro- posal with regard to the land laws. He need only say to them that there would be changes whether the Com- missioners proposed them or not, and whether they were necessary or not, he might also add. The only thing they did touch upon with regard to legislative AGRICULTURE 271 changes was the subject of unexhausted improvements. He wanted to say a few words, not as a landlord, but as a politician, as one who cared, in however humble a way, about the political principles which guided this country. He was sorry that the Commissioners re- intcrfer- commended any interference in the contracts between co ' ntr acts landlords and tenants. He had been brought to that p et w ee ° landlords conclusion a great deal by the study he gave to the and tciitints question of the Irish Land Bill, which very much changed his opinion. He believed that there was no political question which, from its great variety and its great difference in different localities, was so entirely unfitted to be dealt with by legislation as the question of tenants' improvements. He did not believe that they could lay down any general principle which would satisfy both parties on the subject, nor did he think that they could define a law in any way that would meet the vast quantity and variety of cases that must necessarily arise over the country. He did not believe, therefore, that they would either get finality or satis- faction. If there was anything which confirmed his view, it was the remarks of Mr. Lywood, in which he proposed an extension of the principle of compensation for agri- cultural improvements, which, he must say, would not leave them very far short of the state of things which they had in Ireland, by way of legislation to prevent rent from being raised upon improvements. If once they admitted things of that sort he could not see where the end of it was to be. They must remember that, besides what he had mentioned, the want of finality and satisfaction, there were certain evils in- separable from such a scheme. 272 LAND QUESTIONS It was not only necessary that the}- should not get men into the way of looking to legislation instead of to their own wits to protect themselves ; but there was another thing — if they had legislation on matters like that they would prevent those improvements in custom and those improvements in agreements which would take place naturally if things were left to the self- interest and experience of the parties concerned. There was a tendency to stick to customs, whether good or bad, and they did not want to be shackled by legislative enactments. He was quite sure that when they con- sidered these things they would agree with him that nothing but the strongest necessity could justify the alteration proposed. Nearly all tenants had had some opportunity of getting their agreements amended, and under the circumstances he could not see what excuse there could be for such a change. It was not enough to say that because there were bad customs here and there it was necessary. Those bad customs would cure themselves without all the rest of the country being punished or injured to do what was needed. The only cause for it must be that it was considered that one of the contracting parties was unable to look after his own interests. He saw that a good deal had been said in the report about restrictive covenants. He thought that everybody in that room who had had to do with agri- cultural affairs knew that a good tenant suffered very little from restrictive covenants. As to the law of distress, it seemed to him to be much more a question for farmers than landowners as long as tenants under- stood that the landlords must be protected, and that if the law of distress were done away with rent would AGRICULTURE 273 have to be paid in advance. For his own part, he was in favour of a modification. Another question was that of railway rates. He Railway • • rates, thought that that was a very serious evil, and one which might very well be remedied. He did not quite understand the recommendation of the report, because at one moment they proposed to control railway com- panies, but they qualified it afterwards by remarking that it was impossible. It gave one the impression that they did not seem bold enough to do anything. He could not see why, if it could pay to carry foreign produce at certain prices, the companies could not be made to carry home produce at the same prices. Of course, they ought to make a difference between pack- ages and parcels which were convenient and those which were inconvenient, but apart from that he could not see why they should charge more for English than foreign, and although that might seem like a contra- diction to what he said just now about interference and non-interference, they must remember that railway companies were given a monopoly by the State, and the State had a right to see that they did not make a wrong use of that monopoly. FARMING WITH BORROWED MONEY. To the Editor of the ' Wiltshire County Mirror.' Wilton House, Salisbury, October 20, 1882. Sir, I learn from the papers that Mr. Stratton, whose opinions on agricultural affairs no one will feel inclined 18 274 LAND QUESTIONS to undervalue, has taken me to task at the farmers' dinner at Warminster for having maintained there last year that farming with borrowed capital was one of the real causes of the agricultural distress. I should like to say a few words in defence and explanation of the state- ment I ' believe ' I then made. I say ' believe ' because, oddly enough (for I do not doubt the substantial accu- racy of Mr. Stratton's recollection), I cannot find on searching the report of my speech any actual reference whatever to farming with borrowed money. The nearest approach to it is the statement, in enumerating the causes of our troubles, that ' Farms had been in- creased in size with the idea of attracting capitalists, who, it unfortunately turned out, did not exist in the farming class, the sole result being that men with capital barely sufficient for 500 acres took farms of 1,000 acres.' This may be taken to be an indirect condemnation of the unlimited use of borrowed money in farming, and it expresses directly the very view of the matter that Mr. Stratton characterizes as erroneous and misleading. I may probably have said in addition, and I certainly believe, that in many cases the extent to which farmers relied upon borrowed capital was so great as to make their financial position an unsound one. In a succession of bad seasons they were inevit- ably crushed by the amount of interest they had to pay, with no means of paying it, and the smallness of their real as compared with their borrowed capital was at least one of the reasons of that cessation of credit which, I quite agree with Mr. Stratton, was rather a sign that something was wrong than a primary cause of the evil. In this sense, it seems to me that I should have been quite justified in classing an undue use of FARMING WITH BORROWED MONEY 275 borrowed capital amongst the real, if minor, causes of agricultural failure. Nor do I think that there is anything in Mr. Stratton's speech to show that this view is incorrect. Let it be granted at once that the lending of money at interest is the ordinary means by which capital flows into the businesses that are in want of it, that farming is a busi- ness like any other, that farmers cannot be expected to be content with a lower rate of interest (beyond the fractional difference that may be produced by the attrac- tiveness of the life and such-like causes) than other people, that for farming to be in a sound and healthy condition a man ought to make at least five per cent, on his capital, and a fair wage for his skill and industry besides ; all this, though it is a sensible and convincing defence of the use of borrowed capital in agriculture, does not disprove that it may be very easily abused. The fact is, that the extent to which borrowed money Farming can be safely used in any business must depend a great borrowed deal upon the certainty and regularity of the profits. ca P ltal - Where their amount and the date at which they will become available can be calculated to a nicety, it may be quite wise and safe to make use of borrowed capital to an extent that would be sheer recklessness where those conditions are reversed. If the farmer could make sure in each and every year of the five per cent, on his capital, and the professional income which he has a right to expect on the average of years, it is evi- dent that theoretically he could farm entirely with money borrowed at five per cent. But to suppose this, is to suppose the very reverse of the fact. I cannot call to mind a trade in which the uncertainty of the profits and losses is more constant or more beyond 27 6 LAND QUESTIONS either human foresight or control. Two or three bad seasons must inevitably ruin the man who is wholly or mainly dependent on borrowed money. The interest must be paid every year, and there is nothing to pay it with. Farming, therefore, is pre-eminently a business in which the use of borrowed capital needs very careful limitation. One word with regard to those other businesses adduced as examples by Mr. Stratton. In the first place I should like to point out that one of them, at least, does not seem to me to be a true parallel. He speaks of railways as being made with borrowed money. Now, a railway company is a joint-stock affair, in which each shareholder contributes the capital which he actually possesses. And though these shareholders may seem to lend their money to the directors and managers just as the moneylender or banker may lend to the farmer, there is an identity of interest in the one case which does not exist in the other ; and this leads to an important practical difference when times are bad. When the farmer cannot pay his interest, the natural course for the moneylender is to sell him up, and recover his capital. The ruin of the farmer is no loss to him. But the shareholders are in quite a different position. They themselves are the railway company, and to sell it up would be to ruin themselves, so they grumble and wait for better times. I should like to ask, further, for I confess my com- plete ignorance of the subject, whether it really is the case that businesses requiring large capital are habitually carried on entirely, or almost entirely, on borrowed money ? I should have thought that both the uncer- tainty that exists in all trades and the competition of FARMING WITH BORROWED MONEY 277 men with capital of their own seeking employment would have forbidden it as a general thing. But, however this may be, I think I have shown that it is hardly possible that farming should be one of them. Nor will a study of the countries in which agriculture is supposed to be most prosperous and unshackled point to a different conclusion. In Australia and New Zealand the great sheep-farmers borrow largely from the banks, but it is a truism amongst them that no man ought to hope for success unless he has a large capital of his own as well. The truth is, I suspect, that Mr. Stratton misunder- stood me, owing to the omission of all qualifications in my brief reference to the subject. I am not quite sure that I have not returned the compliment on him, owing to his having equally forgotten to limit his advocacy of the practice. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. LAND TENURE: THE OLD SYSTEM AND THE NEW PROPOSALS.* (Speech at Farmers' Club, Warminster.) October 16, 1885. The Earl of Pembroke said he had been present on many occasions at this dinner when a good many of them had felt ' down in the mouth ' about the state * The Hon. Sidney Herbert had been returned unopposed for the Wilton Division at the by-election in the previous July, when his appointment as a Junior Lord of the Treasury had necessitated his presenting himself to his constituents for re-election. The General Election in the autumn of 1885 was now imminent. 278 LAND QUESTIONS of agriculture ; but he did not think that he ever was present on any occasion when the prospects of agricul- ture were so depressing as at this moment. They had had a long period of low prices and bad seasons, and now, on the top of all that, had come a threatening of legislative attacks on our system of land tenure, some of which were so wild, and showed such ignorance of the whole question of agriculture, as to make him think they must have come from the person who said he thought every poor man should keep a sheep in order that he might have kidneys for breakfast. At such a time as this he thought it required some boldness to say a good word for the agricultural system Fervid Socialistic oratory had marked the electoral campaign of some of the left wing of the Liberal Party, addressed, no doubt, to the supposed affinities of the newly-enfranchised voters. The necessity of appealing directly to the thousands of these that were scattered over the country and inaccessible to accustomed means of suasion had liberated a quite unprecedented flow of irresponsible rhetoric throughout the land, and on both sides extremist groups considerably strained the bonds of party. Lord R. Churchill, the leader of the 'Fourth Party' (as an independent knot of Tories had been named) embarrassed the Irish question by an unex- pected proposal to drop the Crimes Act. On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain's Unauthorized Programme comprised Free Educa- tion, improved labourers' dwellings at fair rents, a Land Bill on Irish lines for British farmers, the provision of allotments and other things by elected bodies at the charge of the ratepayers, and ' work and employment for our artisans at home.' Mr. Gladstone, on the contrary, indicated but ' four points ' as requiring the im- mediate attention of Parliament, viz. : Local self-government, Parliamentary procedure, the cheapening of land transfer, and the simplification of Parliamentary registration. Mr. Goschen's philo- sophic eloquence at Edinburgh, and Mr. Gladstone's guarded moderation, only enabled the divergent atoms under his lead to hold together till the explosion of the Home Rule Bill in the follow- ing year cleared the air and enfranchised the Liberal Unionists. LAND TENURE 279 of England — the system of landlord, tenant and labourer. English land, svs- They were all out of heart ; and not only that, but when tem. a system had lasted some time, people got very much alive to its defects, and very blind to its benefits. They thought the advantages were part of the system of Nature which they were not likely to lose, whatever happened. But that was not so, and we, who knew how the happiness of many thousands was involved in this matter, and how much mischief might ensue from ill-advised interference, ought not to be deterred from speaking the truth from any fear that it would be received with coldness or scorn. And he thought there was one reason why the public should listen with patience to a good word on behalf of the English system of land tenure, and that was the wonderful way in which, on the whole, that system had stood the terrible strains to which it had been exposed during the last ten years. He knew a good many people would be surprised to hear him say that. It was perfectly true that many landlords had been pinched, and had suffered severely, and that some farmers had been ruined ; but there had been among the class least able to bear anv diminution of their incomes — namely, the labourers — very little distress. They had had nothing like starva- tion. They had had no Lord Mayor's fund to relieve their distress ; they had borne their own burdens, and had worried along somehow. He asked them, as prac- tical farmers, to consider what would have happened had the greater part of the land of England, or any large portion of it, been in the hands of small pro- prietors ; that was to say, men who were absolutely dependent for their daily bread upon making a yearly profit from agriculture. He had no hesitation in saying 2 8o LAND QUESTIONS that if the land of England had been in the hands of men of that class, we should have had a famine as terrible as that in Ireland. He believed that this system of landlord, tenant, and labourer would see a good many of us out, because the vast accumulation of capital it brought to the land, and its power of tiding over long periods of low profits, made it, upon the whole, most suitable to the condi- tions of modern agriculture. He felt it would last, not because anybody wanted it to last, but because it was, on the whole, the most convenient and most profitable to all the parties concerned. They all knew that it suited the landlord, because he got his estate adminis- tered by skilled agriculturists, and because he got the advantage of the tenant's capital. They knew that it suited the tenant, because he obtained the land and the buildings from the landlord at a low rate on their value, and, not being obliged to buy the land, was able to devote the whole of his capital to his farm. That was all well known, and hardly worth the say- ing, because no one cared nowadays whether the system suited landlords and tenants or not. But he (Lord Pembroke) maintained that it suited the labourer as well, because under it he could make a better livelihood by working for wages than he could do by farming the land on his own account. That was a statement which they all received with assent from that room, but which would be indignantly denied by the general public out of doors — at least, by those who lived in towns. He asked them to listen to him for a moment while he put before them some figures on the subject. Even here in Wiltshire, where wages were very low, a man and his family could make from £35 to £50 a year by working LAND TENURE 281 for wages, and he got a cottage worth from £150 to £250 for 52s. a year, or, in some cases, where his cir- cumstances were not so favourable, for £5 a year. Let them imagine a man and his family in possession of ten acres of land worth £1 an acre, and ten acres were about as much as he and his family could manage. What would be the gross profit on such land ? He thought they would say he was putting it very high if he said that the average gross profit on land of that description, taking one year with another, was about £4 an acre, so that the gross amount of the man's income would be about £40. From that they would have to deduct at least £5 for rates and taxes, and repairs to his cottage, if he were the owner, which would leave him with an income of about £35. So that even if he got the land and the house, and the necessary working capital, for nothing, he would not really be better off as regarded his income than he was at the present moment, and he would be a very foolish fellow in his (the speaker's) opinion, being in that position, if he did not either sell the land or let it, and free himself to do something better. But, of course, he could not get the land for nothing ; not even Mr. C. himself could give it to him. Ten acres of such land, he calculated, would be worth about £300 ; a cottage — a much worse one than he lives in now — would cost at least £100 more ; and then he would want a working capital of between £50 and £60 for stock and implements. Now, how was he to get that ? Did they suppose that the taxpayers of England would make up their minds to a tremendous sacrifice for the sake of attempting to institute a peasant pro- prietary in this country, and advance him the money at 2 8o LAND QUESTIONS that if the land of England had been in the hands of men of that class, we should have had a famine as terrible as that in Ireland. He believed that this system of landlord, tenant, and labourer would see a good many of us out, because the vast accumulation of capital it brought to the land, and its power of tiding over long periods of low profits, made it, upon the whole, most suitable to the condi- tions of modern agriculture. He felt it would last, not because anybody wanted it to last, but because it was, on the whole, the most convenient and most profitable to all the parties concerned. They all knew that it suited the landlord, because he got his estate adminis- tered by skilled agriculturists, and because he got the advantage of the tenant's capital. They knew that it suited the tenant, because he obtained the land and the buildings from the landlord at a low rate on their value, and, not being obliged to buy the land, was able to devote the whole of his capital to his farm. That was all well known, and hardly worth the say- ing, because no one cared nowadays whether the system suited landlords and tenants or not. But he (Lord Pembroke) maintained that it suited the labourer as well, because under it he could make a better livelihood by working for wages than he could do by farming the land on his own account. That was a statement which they all received with assent from that room, but which would be indignantly denied by the general public out of doors — at least, by those who lived in towns. He asked them to listen to him for a moment while he put before them some figures on the subject. Even here in Wiltshire, where wages were very low, a man and his family could make from £35 to £50 a year by working LAND TENURE 281 for wages, and he got a cottage worth from £150 to £250 for 52s. a year, or, in some cases, where his cir- cumstances were not so favourable, for £5 a year. Let them imagine a man and his family in possession of ten acres of land worth £1 an acre, and ten acres were about as much as he and his family could manage. What would be the gross profit on such land ? He thought they would say he was putting it very high if he said that the average gross profit on land of that description, taking one year with another, was about £4 an acre, so that the gross amount of the man's income would be about £40. From that they would have to deduct at least £5 for rates and taxes, and repairs to his cottage, if he were the owner, which would leave him with an income of about £35. So that even if he got the land and the house, and the necessary working capital, for nothing, he would not really be better off as regarded his income than he was at the present moment, and he would be a very foolish fellow in his (the speaker's) opinion, being in that position, if he did not either sell the land or let it, and free himself to do something better. But, of course, he could not get the land for nothing ; not even Mr. C. himself could give it to him. Ten acres of such land, he calculated, would be worth about £300 ; a cottage — a much worse one than he lives in now — would cost at least £100 more ; and then he would want a working capital of between £50 and £60 for stock and implements. Now, how was he to get that ? Did they suppose that the taxpayers of England would make up their minds to a tremendous sacrifice for the sake of attempting to institute a peasant pro- prietary in this country, and advance him the money at 282 LAND QUESTIONS 4 per cent. ? He was very sorry to see that Mr. C. told a popular audience at Trowbridge the other night that they ought to get money advanced to them for this purpose at the same rate as it was advanced to the Irish peasant. That was not a sound financial transaction, but a desperate remedy to meet a desperate state of things, a complete deadlock in the land market, brought about by the agitation and the Land Act. Well, we will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the State advances him the purchase-money at 4 per cent. : 4 per cent, on /400 amounted to £16, to be subtracted from the miserable £35, leaving him with a pittance in an average year, and a starvation allow- ance in a bad one. He knew the advocates of peasant proprietary would say, ' Oh, but he would add to his income by working for wages ;' but he would reply, ' Not if he took enough land to make it his chief means of subsistence.' Firstlv, he would not have time. Secondly, the seasons at which the farmer would be willing to employ him would be just those in which he wanted to be at work on his own land. And in this neighbourhood, and doubtless many other parts of England, there was another reason. Here in Wiltshire most farms had a little good land in the valleys, and much bad land on the hills. If they cut up the good land for peasant proprietors (and the bad land on the hills would be useless to them), the land on the hills would go out of cultivation, since none could farm it without the help of the better land. Farms, there- fore, would be given up, and there would be great lack of employment. This was brought home to him rather curiously a few weeks ago. It was suggested to him to sell some of his property in small lots. He was anxious LAND TENURE 283 to comply; but when he went into the matter seriously, he felt that he could not do it. What would have happened would have been this : The small lots in the bottom would have been bought, not by agricultural labourers, but by the village tradesmen and artisans ; but the hill-land would have been left on his hands, useless for agricultural or any other purposes, and must have gone out of cultivation, causing loss of employ- ment, and distress in the surrounding villages. He believed it was indisputable that even here, and far more so in the North, a man was better off working for wages than he would be working his own land. Now, what was the truth at the bottom of this ? That the profits of cultivation were low, and required great out- lay of capital, and that therefore land must be to the poor man rather a luxury and an assistance than a chief means of livelihood. That, however, was no reason why he should not have it. He (Lord Pembroke) believed that a small bit of land might be a great help to a man, and the chance of acquiring it a great incentive to industry and thrift. He had always been in favour, for this reason, of facilitating and cheapening the sale of land in small parcels. If this was all that was meant by the vague pro- posals that were before the country, he had nothing to say but that it was a pity to describe them in language such as restoring the labourer to the land, or the land to the labourer, which naturally bore a different meaning, and which must excite dangerous hopes and mischievous fears. But if they meant trans- forming the labourer into a peasant owner, then it was time they spoke out plainly, and proved, as it was easy to do, that, instead of improving his position, it would 284 LAND QUESTIONS greatly worsen it. If he had to advise labourers at the present time, he thought he would say, ' By all means use your political power to bring the purchase of small plots within your reach ; but do not forget that land- owning, with its low profits and immense demand for capital, is a bad livelihood for a poor man. What are of greater importance to him are good wages and steady employment, cheap food, and good cottages and gardens, most of which benefits are by no means fostered by giving support to wild proposals which must inevitably deter landlords and tenants from the free expenditure of capital on the land.' MODERATE LIBERALISM. (Address at Wilton.) October, 1885. Lord Pembroke said he thought that Mr. Herbert's political opinions would be of more interest to them than anything he might say, and he would therefore not stand between them for very long. But on looking around him, and seeing before him an assembly of Wilton people, many of whom had been his friends for a long time, and whose forefathers had been friends of his for many years before, he felt tempted to make one remark to them that perhaps he would not care to make to any other audience. It had been said several times lately that his brother and he had abandoned the principles of their father, the late Lord Herbert, whose name was still so deeply loved and well remem- MODERATE LIBERALISM 285 bered all through the country, and particularly in that neighbourhood. Speaking for himself alone, he would tell them frankly that, even if the charge were true, he would not think that it necessarily cast any stigma upon him, because he held that, in the matter of politics, it was the duty of every man to take the side which he be- lieved to be right, no matter what his personal ties were. But he believed the charge was quite an untrue one, and those who made it had quite lost sight of the extent to which political parties had changed their prin- ciples during the last twenty-five years. He believed that they had quite forgotten the degree to which Liberalism had become more revolutionary, and to which Conservatism had become more progressive. He should very much like to ask one of those people who said these things — and especially if they knew the late Lord Herbert — to take the speech of Lord Salis- bury in Wales the other day, and to take the collection of speeches Mr. C. had been making during the recess, to read them over together, and ask themselves honestly which they thought Lord Herbert would most have approved. He would find Lord Salisbury's speech sensible, practical, sober, and liberal ; full of the sense that we must march with the times, and carry on the never-ending struggle for improvement, and yet at the same time with a statesmanlike grasp of the problems that must be solved, and the difficulties that must be overcome, if any real improvement was to be effected. On the other hand, what would he find in Mr. C.'s speeches ? He would find them full of rash promises that could never be performed, full of irreverence for existing things, and, as a natural accompaniment, full 286 LAND QUESTIONS of blindness to the fatal obstacles that lay in the path of his crude proposals of reform. They would find them full of appeals to the greed and envy that exist in human nature ; full of incitements to one class to hate all the rest ; full of that most dangerous of all fallacies of modern Radicalism — that to cure poverty they had only to plunder the rich. Could anyone present who knew the late Lord Her- .bert doubt for a moment with which he would have sympathized most ? He — so reasonable, so practical, so fair-minded as he was, so moderate, and full of a constant belief that not one, but all classes of the English people he loved and served so well, were worthy of the respect of man. Could anyone, he asked them, doubt for a moment the sympathy and support he would have given to the one, and the scorn and indignation with which he would have repudiated the other ? He had spoken very strongly, but it really made him angry to hear that honoured name coupled by people in their ignorance with that of the unscru- pulous demagogues who, to his firm belief, were doing their best to tempt the people to their ruin. It might be said that the Radicals were not every- body, and therefore why should not he and his brother be Moderate Liberals ? Well, he would tell them why. It mattered very little, in his opinion, whether a fair- minded man, who believed that both truth and wisdom usually lay between two extremes, called himself a Moderate Liberal or a Liberal-Conservative so far as the name went ; but it mattered a great deal if one name represented a power for good in the country, and the other did not. In his opinion, the Moderate Liberals had long been ceasing to be a power in the MODERATE LIBERALISM 287 country ; and when Mr. Gladstone, who now formed a link between them and the others, retired, he feared their power would be still further diminished. If anyone doubted that, let him look at Lord H. giving his countenance with grave misgivings to measure after measure, and when, on rare occasions, he ventured to raise a protest against a new departure from the principles he believed to be true, being jeered at by his followers as ' a wet blanket,' or ' the late leader of the Liberal Party.' Look, again, at Mr. Goschen making a series of noble speeches in the North of England — for which none thanked him more sincerely than he (the speaker) did — and yet sometimes almost hooted down, hardly able to gain a hearing for them unless by inter- larding them with partisan attacks upon Conservative leaders, which one felt was quite unworthy of so great a man. Look at Lord Derby, delivering himself, after his manner, of several columns of the shrewdest pos- sible sense, and yet coupling with it the intimation that, if his hearers did not like it, he would be foolish instead —to please them. These men, so far from representing any great power of the State, in spite of their great talent and the respect in which they were held, had to pick their words, to beat about the bush, in order to gain a favourable hearing from an average Liberal audience ; while Mr. C., on the other hand, said what- ever he pleased, and was cheered to the echo. They were not to think that he blamed those men for sticking to their party. He had no doubt that they had reasons which perfectly satisfied their own sense of right ; but what was the use of anyone joining that melancholy little band of Moderate Liberals whose fate it was to be dragged at Mr. C.'s chariot-wheels through 288 LAND QUESTIONS measure after measure of which they disapproved, and who generally spoke one way to satisfy their conscience, and voted another way to satisfy their constituencies, or sat in gloomy silence, and slunk out of the House when the division-bell began to ring ? In his mind, theirs was a task which it was im- possible to perform. They could not at present make the Liberal Party moderate, but they could make the Conservative Party Liberal. He did not think that any man could read the recent utterances of Conservative leaders without perceiving that a Liberal Conservatism, very closely allied to what they used to call Liberalism, had become the directing spirit of the Conservative Party. He was not thinking at the moment of that little band of dashing young Tories whom their op- ponents were always so shocked at, and whom they declared were like the Duke of Wellington's army in the Peninsula, ready to go anywhere and do anything, though their existence at all in the Conservative ranks was a proof of what he was telling them. He was thinking of the sober, sensible, conscientious men, either followers or leaders, who formed the backbone of the Conservative Party, and he begged to assure them that in these men they would find as strong a sense of their duty to the people, as great a readiness to entertain new ideas, and, above all, as great a love for, and as great a faith in, freedom, as characterized the old Liberals and the Peelites of twenty-five years ago. And that was why he, who was a firm believer in the ultimate progress of their race — who was a no less firm opponent of any class privilege that stood in the way of the welfare of the people — thought it at once more right, wise, honest, and fitting, to take his stand in the Conservative MODERATE LIBERALISM 289 ranks than to dub himself Liberal for the sake of old associations, and to carry on a never-ceasing but hope- less and vain war with the party to which he would nominally belong. He hoped they would forgive him for the egotistic nature of these remarks ; but they were a sort of family party there that evening, they were among family friends, and the explanation he had made was one he had long desired to make. Before calling upon his brother to address them, he would like to refer to the estimation in which Mr. Sidney Herbert was held. Mr. Herbert needed no introduc- tion from him, for they knew him almost as well as he (Lord Pembroke) did. But there was one thing he had had an opportunity of learning — what perhaps many of them had not an opportunity of knowing — and that was the extremely high estimation in which he was held by the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. Not one, but dozens of members of that party — amongst them some of the most distinguished men in the party — came to him, and congratulated him upon his brother's appointment. Those congratulations, too, were not mere formal ones, which were generally used on such occasions. They did not merely tell him that he was the best man for the particular post to which he had been appointed, but they almost one and all expressed a confident belief that it was only the first step towards a distinguished career. In his capacity as a peer, he was forbidden to say anything about elec- tions ; but he was speaking in a hypothetical manner, and he would like to say if, in the exercise of their dis- cretion, they should use the vote to send Mr. Herbert to Parliament as their representative, he believed they would not only be conferring a benefit upon him in J 9 2 9 o LAND QUESTIONS giving him an opportunity to use his talents in making a brilliant career for himself, but they would prove in the long-run that they had done credit to themselves, and honour to the country and to the little town of Wilton, whose interests they all had so much at heart. LORD PEMBROKE ON THE LAND QUESTION. Bishopstone, November 7, 1885. Transfer Lord Pembroke proceeded to say : I wish to take this opportunity of saying a few words to you about the various proposals for the reform of the land laws which have lately been brought before you. Both parties are alike committed, I am glad to say, to the facilitation of the transfer of land ; both parties, that is to say, have pledged themselves to do what they can to render the sale and purchase of land in small lots easier and cheaper. If you were to ask me which party would give you the best measure, I should be inclined to prophesy that the Radicals would give you the most sweeping measure, and the Conservatives the most practical one ; for the Radicals are never satisfied unless their legislation injures or irritates some class, and irritation does not conduce to the smooth practical working of laws. Then there are Mr. C.'s proposals for restoring the labourer to the land. I do not intend to go into this large and difficult question to-night. You must calculate for yourselves how far you would be able to buy or rent the land, how you would get the capital to work it, and what kind of a living you would make out of it when SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 291 you had done so. Only one thing I wish to impress on Losses 1 ill r • -i-i anc ' g a i ns you — that you should not lorget, in considering these in peasant proposals, to take into account what you would lose as ^p™ or * well as what you would gain by them. Liberal elec- tioneerers never tell you anything about that. They come and ask you whether you wouldn't like to have a few acres of land, and you say, ' Of course I should,' and small blame to you ; but they never say a word to you about what you must lose in order to get them. Yet there can be no greater mistake than to think that you have nothing to lose by such a change. If the labourer is to become a proprietor on his own account, how, for instance, can the system continue by which the landlord builds and keeps in repair for him a good cottage at a nominal rent ? Or how can you expect the tenant farmer to find work all the year round for a man who only works for him when it suits his own con- venience ? That is a consideration which I know will come home to the people of Bishopstone. And, again, you must remember that if the land is cut up sufficiently to give a few acres to most of the labourers, many of the farms will have to be given up, and there will not be so much employment for labour as there is now. I am not saying that such drawbacks as these necessarily settle the question, but I do say that they ought not to be forgotten — that in considering any such proposal, you ought to remember them, and weigh them carefully against its advantages. But I need say no more on this point to-night, because, as Mr. Herbert has already told you, the Liberals have gradually whittled these proposals down to next to nothing. Having made wild promises or suggestions to gain your votes, they are now unsaying 292 LAND QUESTIONS them in order to gain the votes of the people who are frightened at them. Lord Hartington tells us that he believes that the ' three acres and a cow ' are a wicked invention of the Tories ; and Sir Charles Dilke, who is Mr. C.'s lieutenant, deliberately declares that all Mr. C. meant by his eloquent language is an extension of the power of local authorities to buy land compulsorily for allotments. I hope you take good note of this, and realize that, in spite of all the fine language that has been used, nothing is now offered to you by the Liberal Party, according to the Liberal leaders themselves, beyond an extension of the powers of local authorities to buy land for allotments. Now, speaking as an individual and a landlord, rather than as a politician, I am not afraid of such a measure. So long as I was fairly compensated for the land taken from me, I don't think I should care to complain. But I doubt very much whether such a measure would benefit the labourer, or increase the number of allot- ments. Again, I must ask you to think what labourers might lose by such a measure, as well as what they Allot- might gain. The system of allotments is one that is ments. . . already nourishing amongst us. On my estate I have over 900 allotment tenants. The custom is a general one, and I believe it is capable of considerable increase. I know I must be very careful what I say on this point. If a Liberal offers you three acres and a cow, it is all right ; but if I were to offer you half an acre and a calf, it would be bribery and corruption. I hope you under- stand the justice of this, for I don't. But I think I may go so far as to say that I believe the allotment system might be extended. Hitherto it has perhaps been re- garded by landlords and agents rather as a benefit to SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 293 labourers than a matter of business and profit, as I think it might become. However this may be, the allotment system exists, and is growing here and in many other parts of the country. Now, what would be the effect of passing such a measure as Sir Charles Dilke proposes ? One effect would be this : You would take the responsibility for finding allotments off the shoulders of the landlords, and place it on those of the local authorities. Many landlords would say very reasonably, ' It is not my duty to find allotments for labourers. Parliament has taken that duty off my hands. If they want them, let them apply to the local authority, which has been given power to find them.' Now, what I fear is that the local authority would perform this duty far less liberally than the landlord does. There's an old say- ing that a Board has neither a heart nor a conscience. But, besides this, the duty is a much more difficult one for a Board than for a landlord. Near the big towns it would probably carry it out well enough. But I ask you whether, in a country village like this, you would have a better chance of obtaining allotments from the landlord, or from a Board elected by the ratepayers, which would have first to buy the land on the security of the rates ? If I were a working man, therefore, I should certainly think twice before shifting the respon- sibility for finding allotments from the landlord on to any Board whatever. But I think I can hear some Radical say, ' This is all very fine talk ; but we are not content to remain as we are, and we must try to get what we want by legis- lation. I should like to ask him two questions. First, whether he is sure that he can better the condition of 294 LAND QUESTIONS the labourer by legislation ; secondly, whether he is rnenUn 6 sure t na t there can be no improvement without it. I the con- should like him to ask some of the older inhabitants of dition or labourers Bishopstone whether there has not been a great im- last 30 provement in the condition of the labourer during the years. j as j. thirty years. I do not want to exaggerate it in the least, but no one can deny that wages have increased, that food has grown cheaper, that gardens and allot- ments have become more common, and that cottages have so much improved that the agricultural labourer in South Wilts is now, I do assure you, the best-housed working man in Europe, instead of being, as he was, one of the worst. I remember as a boy going into cottages in this valley which you would rightly say now were hardly fit habitations for a pig. But what I want to impress on you is that all this improvement in wages, food, allotments, and houses has not been brought about by any fostering Acts of Parliament whatever, but simply by leaving people free to do their duty both to themselves and their neigh- ane"-^^ hours according to their lights. You will say that there ample of was one Act of Parliament that had to do with it. Yes, State in- terference, but it was not an Act to interfere with or protect any class or interest ; it was an Act to sweep away such interference and protection. I mean the abolition of the Corn Laws, which gave you the cheap loaf. Our opponents are very fond of talking about Protection and the Corn Laws. I wish they would realize a little more fully than they do the lesson which they teach. I want you to consider for one moment what the Corn Laws were. They were very plausible laws. They were in- stituted with the honest intention of benefiting and protecting the whole agricultural interest — labourers SPEECH AT BISHOPSTONE 295 and farmers as well as landlords. It was easy to argue that they must benefit the agricultural labourer because they kept up the price of what he produced, and that their repeal must necessarily injure him — so easy and so plausible, indeed, that I do not feel sure that, if I had lived then, I should not have been misled by the argu- ment myself. And yet, if we look into the history of the past, and Com Law • Repeal study the reports of the various Commissions during beneficial the first half of the century on agricultural distress, t° r af nCU " how little good and what great harm these laws did to labourers, the agricultural labourer ! And how little he has lost and how much he has gained by their repeal ! I do wish the Radicals would call this to mind when they are advocating new experiments in interference and protec- tion for various classes and interests ; and I hope that you, too, when plausible propositions are made to you for bettering your condition by Act of Parliament, will remember the old story of the Corn Laws and the lesson that it teaches before turning a willing ear. One word in conclusion. I would not have you think, from anything I have said to-night, that I mean that you have only to compare what is offered to you by the rival parties, and to vote accordingly. If I have given that impression, the fault must lie with my op- ponents, who have tried to gain your votes with specious proposals, the fallacies of which we are obliged to expose. But no one feels more strongly than I do that the vote is not so much a privilege as a trust, and that it is the duty of the agricultural labourer, as it is the duty of men of every other class in the country, to give his support to the party to which he feels that the honour and interests of the nation as a whole can be most 296 LAND QUESTIONS safely confided. And in doing this I feel sure that he Political will, in the long-run, serve his own interests best. For fo boused there must come an evil day to England, and to every for class Englishman, if each class comes to look on its political interests. r power as a thing to be used principally or solely for narrow and selfish class interests. Some of you say, ' We know nothing about politics.' Well, until you do, take care that you send good men to Parliament. But now that you have the vote, }-ou will soon know as much about politics as any other class. I never can see, and never could see, why an agricultural labourer should not understand them as well as a factory hand or a miner, and, with his wholesome open-air life, I should not be surprised if he makes a sounder politician than either of them. And I fancy you will prove the truth of my opinion by returning your present member to Parliament again. PEASANT PROPRIETORS. (Speech at Barford St. Martin.) November 5, 1888. The Earl of Pembroke said : I will only touch on one point, and tell you how thoroughly I agree with what has been said to-night about the futility of trying to turn the labourer into a farmer on his own account, whether as a proprietor or as a tenant, and I venture to say a word about it because it is a question to which I have devoted some attention. I thought over it long before there was an}- idea of giving the agricultural labourer a vote in the counties, and I have PEASANT PROPRIETORS 297 been forced at last, with great reluctance, to the con- clusion that to make the labourer into a peasant farmer would be to make him worse instead of better off. I believe it would mean working twice as hard for half the money, and a more uncertain income — being worse housed and worse fed. I believe that it would lead to a lowering of the standard of living, both morally and materially, to an increase of infanticide, and to the serious evils that result from undue labour of women and children in the fields. From this cause, I assure you, in some villages in Germany you will see as many idiots and cripples as you would find in half an English county. But on the comparative advantages of peasant Hardwork farming and working for wages, I should like to give p ro PeaSant you some authority in support of my opinion. Mr. P netors - Jenkins, secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society, and, I think, one of the Special Commissioners of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, reports that ' the average return to the peasant owner in France, Belgium, and Germany is about £30 a year, and that he works twice as hard as an English labourer for half the wages.' But he is an Englishman, and may be prejudiced. Listen, then, to what Professor Voelcker says of the peasant proprietors of Germany and Belgium : ' The position of the small peasant pro- prietors is simply wretched compared to that of a decent English agricultural labourer. Man, wife, sons and daughters, on a small peasant property, have all to work hard from early morn till night, to gain enough to keep body and soul together. They exist upon the most frugal fare, and live in dirty, crowded hovels. As regards food and housing, the English 298 LAND QUESTIONS labourer is unquestionably 50 per cent, better off than they are.' Hear, too, what a Frenchman, M. Malo, a civil engineer, and many years Mayor of Lyons, says of the system of his own country at a conference at Lyons on political economy : ' Fearful labour ; an enormous amount of physical force spent, too often wasted, by the fault of hereditary routine ; a diet approaching that of his own cattle ; the necessity of making his wife and children work as much as, or more than, the beasts of burden ; the incessant fear that one of a thousand mishaps may destroy in a day the harvest and the fruit of the labour of the whole year ; the crushing misery of debt, which so often tortures him, renders him low and servile, and against which he must fight, under pain of being devoured by it. All this labour, all these miseries, all these harrowing anxieties to leave the inheritance of this rock of Sisyphus intact to his posterity ; an in- heritance most grievous of all, but accepted without murmur from father to son, without interruption, and with little hope that the terrible weight will diminish. And on the day when this galley slave is worn out, when at last his muscles refuse service, when he has become an onerous burden for his family, it remains only for him to hope that his uselessness will not be of long duration.' That is the saddest feature of all, and, even accord- ing to the most favourable accounts, the common and universal feature of peasant proprietorship in every country in Europe. So great is the poverty and penury, that when the old are worn out the younger generation grudge every morsel of food that is put into their now useless bodies, and both long for their death. These PEASANT PROPRIETORS 299 are the opinions of men who may fairly be considered authorities, but let us now turn to what are still more important — the indisputable facts of the case. I think it must have struck you how very slight and rare are the references to peasant proprietorship abroad by those who are advocating it so strenuously at home. It exists in nearly every country in Europe. Is it not odd that they do not point out to you how admirably it succeeds ? They do not because they cannot. In Russia, over large tracts of country, the poverty of the peasants is becoming famine; and many leading Russians believe that some terrible catastrophe must occur if Govern- ment does not deal with it drastically without delay. In Italy never a year passes without a cry for relief, and terrible descriptions of the people dying of pellagra, a disease brought on by living on nothing but maize. In France agricultural distress has been so acute that they have been forced to put protective duties on imported corn, and thus to sacrifice their workmen in the towns in order to keep their peasant proprietors alive. Mr. Leconeux, Professor of Rural Economy at the French Institute, says : ' Of the 8,000,000 proprietors of France, 3,000,000 are on the pauper roll, exempt from personal taxation. They have got rid of the landlords and their rents, but have subjected themselves to another though invisible power, that of the mortgagees, and their heavier and more rigid rents.' In Germany there have been no less than three Commissions sitting in different parts on agricultural distress. Some of their recommendations sound odd to us in these days. For instance, they recommend : 1. The restoration of primo- geniture in order to check subdivision ; 2. The pro- hibition of subdivision of land ; 3. Protection. In 3 oo LAND QUESTIONS Germany, as in France, they have been forced to put protective duties on imported corn, in order to keep their peasant farmers from starvation ; and we learn from Dr. Geffachu that in 1882 there were more than 7,000,000 families in Prussia exempted from taxation because they earned less than £25 a year, and the number is increasing. With such facts before us, we should be mad to try to institute such a system in England. That it never succeeds would be untrue to say, but where it does it is under peculiar circumstances of soil, locality, and people — such as some parts of Belgium, where towns are always close by ; but even in these cases I believe the toil is unremitting, and the remuneration inadequate. It is not fair to quote large yeomen proprietors as instances of the success of the system. The farmers of the Black Forest, for instance, are men worth several thousand pounds. If in England, they would be large tenant farmers ; and it is to this class, and not that of the labourers, that they correspond. I should like to remind you that most of the authori- ties in favour of peasant proprietorship wrote a long time ago, and never knew the English labourer as he is to-day. Arthur Young lived a century ago. Even Mr. Kay, who wrote such a good book on Free Land, knew nothing of the modern English labourer. The English labourer whom he knew, and compared un- favourably with the foreign peasant, earned 7s. a week, lived in a hovel, and ate barley-bread. This betrays itself amusingly sometimes. He finishes a glowing picture of peasant proprietorship in one place by saying that they nearly all wore shoes and stockings on Sundays. Good gracious, what prosperity ! But those PEASANT PROPRIETORS 301 times have passed away, and the labourer that we have to compare with the peasant proprietor is the labourer of to-day. Modern authorities, like Lady Verney, from whom I have been quoting, make the comparison the other way. Depend on it, you would soon want Saturday night back again. You have been told you can have Saturday night and the land too. That is nonsense, especially in this country. You cannot cut up much of the land into small lots, and have regular employment from the large farmers as well. The system will never take root in this country, because you will never persuade an English- man to live on 5s. a week by tilling his own land, when he can get 10s. by working much less hard for wages. But there is a real danger that you may ruin the present system by making wild experiments. I question whether labourers are aware of how much they are already losing by the insecurity that hangs over the possession of land. Many landlords, it is true, go on spending on schools, cottages, churches, and farms as if they were in perfect safety, but many more are not so unselfish, or so bold, and will not lay out money during the present uncertainty. It rests with you agricultural labourers to put an end to this insecurity, or to increase it. If you return Conservatives at the next election you will end it, and capital will once more flow into the land, because no Government would attack the landowners in the teeth of the labourers. But if you return Radicals you will prolong the uncertainty, and greatly increase it, for no one will lay out money when it becomes really probable that it will be confiscated, and I am afraid that many of you will suffer severely from the effects. 302 LAND QUESTIONS THE LAND SYSTEM. (Speech at Dinton.) November 13, 1885. The Earl of Pembroke also addressed the meeting, and spoke at great length on the Land Question. He said : I have been asking lately whether recent speeches have had any effect in persuading labourers that they would be ill-advised in trying to farm on their own account. I have been told ' Yes,' but there are two things in favour of its possibility that some of them Com- cannot get over : 1. The fact that allotment rents are parison of , . , . r . „. . farm rents higher than larm rents in many cases ; 2. 1 hat much and allot- f ^g l an d is labour-starved. In making comparison between allotment rents and farm rents, you must remember not to take the average rent of the farm, but the rent the farmer is charged for land of the same quality. Then you must deduct from the allotment rent all tithe, taxes, and rates that the farmer has to pay, and the value of whatever land is wasted in roads, paths, and boundaries. When these deductions are made, you will find that there is much less difference between allotment rents and farm rents than appears at first sight. Moreover, you must remember that the farmer is entitled to what is called in trade a reduction on taking a quantity ; and most justly so, because he cultivates much land that, if it were not for him, would go out of cultivation and pay no rent whatever. But even if it were true that allotment rents were higher than farm rents, it would not prove that the peasant farmer would be able to live. The price paid THE LAND SYSTEM 303 by labourers for these small allotments is no real test of what they could do as farmers, because, though they are a convenience and help to them, they don't depend on them for their livelihood. Because a man can pay £1 for half an acre of allotment ground, it does not the least follow that he could pay £2 an acre for a ten-acre farm if he were trying to make his living thereby — ay, or £1 an acre either. Then they say that the land is labour-starved, and that farmers would do better if they employed more labour on it. Now, I am not prepared to deny that some land is labour-starved, but it is a very difficult question. It is not the least settled by looking at the land and seeing that if it were more worked it would yield a greater produce. It is a question of a nice balance between expenses and profits, on which no one's opinion is worth much who is not a practical farmer. In these days of low prices profits are easily swallowed up ; and what does it profit a man to have worked his farm well, if at the end of the year his labour bill has exceeded his receipts ? You may say that the labouring farmer would escape this, because he would be his own labourer. Yes ; and he would find he had got a very bad master. It would come home to him by discovering at the end of the year that he had been so miserably repaid for his labour that it would have been better for himself and his family if he had been breaking stones on the road instead of farming land on his own account with modern prices. There is no subject connected with the land on which there is more confusion of ideas than this ques- tion of production. A great agricultural authority — some say it was Lord Derby, some Lord Leicester — 3o 4 LAND QUESTIONS is reported to have once declared that the produce of the country might be doubled or increased 50 per cent. — I am not sure which — if the country was farmed as it A fai- might be. Hundreds of thoughtless people have jumped estimate of to the conclusion that such an increase must pay the duction° producers, and hundreds more to the conclusion that it must be desirable for the good of the country whether it paid the producers or not. Yet, surely, if you only think, nothing is more obvious than that, if a man spends more on the soil than he gets back from it in the shape of produce, he does not enrich the country any more than himself by his action. Mr. C. preached a sermon on this text at , in which he declared that one and all of the real authorities on land told us that with proper cultiva- tion the production of the land of the country might be increased 50 or 100 per cent. He asked why it was not so cultivated, what was the cause of the deficiency, and answered that the land was in too few hands, that the large estate system was the cause of the deficient cultivation, of agricultural depression, of the depression of trade, of the fall of wages, of the over-competition and lack of employment in the towns, and, he might have added, of the large blue flies in the butchers' shops. Of course the audience cheered like anything. Sometimes when I read the newspaper it occurs to me that the Liberals of must be the silliest people in the world. For there is no non- sense of a certain kind that they will not swallow with avidity. If Mr. C. had applied to one of the authorities on land that he talked of, he would have seen that he was talking the purest nonsense. For he would have THE LAND SYSTEM 305 seen that England, the land of few owners, without by any means the best soil or climate, produced a far greater amount to the acre than any other country in Europe. In his book on 'The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food,' published in 1878, Sir James Com- _ . . . . , . . . r parison of Caird says : A system is best tested by its truits com- English pared with all other countries. Our threefold plan *" tem of landlord, farmer, and labourer appears to yield larger with that VV J b of other returns, with fewer labourers, and from an equal extent countries. of land. Our average produce of wheat is twenty-eight bushels an acre, as against eighteen in France, sixteen in Germany, and thirteen in Russia and the United States. We show a similar advantage in live stock, both in quantity and quality.' So that, whatever may be the cause of our production falling short of the ideal standard of Mr. C.'s authorities, it is quite evident that it is not the land being in so few hands that is the cause of it, since the countries in which it is greatly subdivided fall short still more lamentably. But he need not even have looked abroad. His con- Com- tention that small proprietors produce more than large p ? j 1 ^" ones is equally disproved within our own shores. The farmers 11 • • 1 1 and of place where peasant proprietary exists on the largest small free- scale in this country is the Isle of Axholme, in Lincoln- shire. Under the head of ' Comparative position of the large farmers in Lincolnshire on the one hand, and the small freeholders and small occupiers in the same county on the other,' Mr. Druce, one of the special commissioners sent out by the Royal Commission on Agriculture, said : ' First, which class grows the most produce ? and which cultivates the land to the greatest advantage ? In my opinion, these questions must be answered in favour of the large farmers. From my 20 3 o6 LAND QUESTIONS observations I cannot give any other answer. . . . On no large farm, on no moderate-sized farm, did I see land so foul and so poorly cultivated as are some of the small occupations. The crops of the large farmers had suffered and were deficient, but the crops of the small owners and small occupiers were worse.' But these are the sort of facts which do not interest a audience ; and Mr. C. went on to satisfy their taste with startling statistics of the numbers of land- owners in England and Scotland (I am sure I wish with all my heart there were more of them), and finished up with saying : ' Now for a contrast ! What is the case abroad ? In France there are something like 6,000,000 of proprietors, of whom more than 5,000,000 are small owners, farming, on an average, less than ten acres Distress in apiece.' He forgot to tell them that 3,000,000 of them rural dis- . .. , , ... . tricts in were on the pauper roll ; that the distress amongst them France. j ias j-, een so terrible that France has been forced to put protective duties on foreign corn to keep them going. Perhaps if he had, the Free-Traders would not have cheered so loudly. Not one word about the misery in Russia, or Germany, or Italy in Mr. C.'s picture of the case abroad. I naturally concluded that Mr. C. and the men of knew nothing about these facts. But it appears that I was quite wrong, for the very next day I read another speech, delivered on the Monday by Mr. C, on the subject of Free Trade, in which I read, to my great astonishment : ' We talk of depression here, but it is nothing to what it is in Germany. I have got the official reports. The complaints are universal of depression and want of employment and want of profit in all the leading industries of the THE LAND SYSTEM 307 country. . . . Corn has been taxed. In the first instance a small duty was put upon corn. That was not found sufficient for the agriculturist ' (the peasant proprietor, you will remember), ' and the consequence is that food, especially bread, is much dearer in Germany than in this country.' And he goes on to tell them how wages in the towns are down to 8s. and gs. a week, and of thousands oat of employment, wandering about the streets, and compelled to eat the flesh of cattle that have died of disease, and cats and dogs. And in yet a third speech on the subject, made on the Tuesday — of which more anon — he gives a scarcely less gloomy picture of France, the very country he had held up to our admiration and envv on the Saturday : ' The Distress . also in reports from France, again, were most distressing ; French there was not a single manufacturing town in which a large proportion of the population was not out of work. The other day a resolution was laid before the Assembly, from which it appeared that in Paris alone one-third of the workpeople were unemployed, and the rate of wages had been reduced probably as much as 20 per cent. At Lisle, a town of about 100,000 inhabitants, no fewer than 28,000 workpeople were inscribed on the books of the relief funds. There was hardly a town, not a single manufacturing town, in France, he believed, in which it had not become absolutely necessary to establish relief funds.' The fact is that on Saturday he was thinking about the land, and on Monday about Free Trade ; and it is a curious peculiarity of the Radical mind that when it is thinking about the Land Question the state of the Continent looks fat, smiling, and pros- perous ; and when it is thinking about Free Trade it 3 o8 LAND QUESTIONS appears distressed, gloomy, and desperate. The scene changes like magic. But I could not help thinking, as I laid down the second speech, that even in benighted some people must have been struck with the contrast, and, remembering the speech of Saturday, must have thought how odd it was that a country which had for years past been taking Mr. C.'s patent land nostrum, which is supposed to cure nearly every ailment to which the body politic is liable, should be still suffering so badly from those very maladies for which he tells us it is a sovereign specific. And it appears that this was so, because, in his Tuesday's speech, after the description of the miseries of France which I have read to you, he tells us that people have been saying to him : ' " You have been arguing in favour of small freeholders in France. There are a great number of these small proprietors, but you tell us that in France and these other foreign countries where small proprietorships obtain, there is a greater amount of distress than in England. How do you conciliate the two statements ?" His reply was, there were two great points upon which the prosperity of a country depended. The first was Free Trade, and the second free land. In England we had Free Trade, but not free land ; in France, in Germany, in the United States, they had what practically amounted to free land, but they had not Free Trade. Now, this is a most ingenious answer. He admits that these countries have not reaped the benefits that he claims for his nostrum, but he says they would have done so if the) - had had Free Trade as well. In England, he says, distress is caused by the land system ; abroad, by Protection. It is a very clever answer in more ways THE LAND SYSTEM 309 than one. There is nothing so hard to prove as a negative ; and as I am an advocate for free land myself, and wish to see purchase made easy, and the practice of settling land on the unborn modified or abolished, I am not prepared to deny that free land is essential to the best prosperity of a country. But let us inquire what Mr. C. means by free land. Land not • f ree i° He tells us that trance possesses it. That is quite France. incorrect. In France they have a law of compulsory subdivision of property at the death of every owner, which is quite as opposed to the principle of free land, and quite as mischievous to the national welfare in one direction, as our laws of primogeniture and entail are in the other. And what are Mr. C.'s own pro- posals for land reform ? Why, he is advocating, not Compul- free land, but State interference with land for the pur- division of pose of creating special tenures for special classes of the ^^^P people — the very contrary of free land. He has no duties, right whatever to figure as its advocate. In point of fact, what he means by free land is extreme and com- pulsory subdivision of land, and I certainly am not ready to assent to the proposition that that is an essential to the prosperity of any country. It is one of the causes, I believe, of many of the evils from which European countries are suffering, and certainly the immediate cause of that return to protective duties on food in France and Germany which Mr. C. so rightly deplores. Only one more point. You are told that large estates bring about low wages in agricultural districts. I believe the very contrary is the case. In every country where landlords and tenants are small men you will find the rate of agricultural wages low, even in 310 LAND QUESTIONS a prosperous country like Belgium. The poor man is always a bad master in this sense, and must be so. The You must see for yourselves how the large landowners, standard and in a less degree the large farmers, keep up the ma7n geS standard of wages. As a rule, they are the first to raise tained in wages and the last to lower them. I wish some of you the system of large who are so bent on upsetting the English land system would turn your attention sometimes to the state of Ireland. A great experiment in interference was tried there three years ago. Everyone, even its opponents, pro- phesied for it a great temporary success, since it con- ferred such great advantages on the existing generation of tenants. But already there are signs of the failure which was sure to come sooner or later. There has been a bad season, and landlords, whose rents are fixed by law, are naturally not as ready to make abatements as they were when they possessed the power of raising them in good times as well. And being deprived of all power over their estates, they naturally will not lay out money in improvements, and, as a con- sequence, the Irish labourer in many places has lost his best friend and most liberal employer, and his distress is very great. I hope you will not fail to take note of this. You have much more to lose than the Irish labourer had, for the English land system is in many ways a more liberal and generous one than the Irish was. The last word I shall say to you to-night will be in the shape of a homely proverb, ' Take care that you, too, don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.' LARGE FARMS AND SMALL FARMS 311 LARGE FARMS AND SMALL FARMS. To the Editor of the 'Salisbury and Winchester Journal.' November 18, 1885. Sir. I am told that my recent speeches have given some people the impression that I am altogether opposed to small holdings. This is by no means the case, and I should be glad if you would allow me to remove the misconception. I believe that large farms are generally better suited Steps in to the country in this neighbourhood than small ones. f rom the And I readily admit the good that the consolidation of J^ u ]j ng farms has done in attracting men of capital as tenants, the farm- 1 • • ii- 1 • • m S class in bringing more land into cultivation, and thus in- suitable creasing employment and raising wages. But I am c°u n [r y . strongly of opinion that — on my own estate, at any rate — the process was carried much too far ; and I look upon the almost total disappearance of small farms as a most serious evil. Even economically it was a mistake, because there were never enough farmers with sufficient capital to take all the large farms that were created. But, politically and socially, it was a deplorable error. It destroyed the steps of the ladder that led from the labouring to the farming class. It established between these two classes an almost impassable gulf. It ren- dered it almost impossible for the most thrifty and intelligent labourer to rise above the position of a bailiff or foreman. For these reasons I hold that even in a country to 312 LAND QUESTIONS which large farms are most suited a certain proportion of smaller farms should always be maintained. The restoration of small farms is a terribly expensive business, for the buildings which are suited to a large farm become nearly useless when it is subdivided ; and in these times even the largest landlords are very short of cash. But I think that if they would seize all reason- able opportunities it would not be many years before their estates showed a sufficient sprinkling of small holdings to accommodate every labourer who really possessed the thrift, the energy, and the intelligence necessary to enable him to rise into the farming class, and to create thereby a sympathy and a consciousness of community of interests at present, I fear, in many places somewhat lacking between the three classes who are engaged together in the cultivation of the land. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. SPEECH AT WILTON ON THE DEPOPULATION OF RURAL DISTRICTS* (Reprinted in a Pamphlet.) March i, 1892. The Earl of Pembroke said : You will probably be relieved to hear that I am not going to talk to you to-night on the subject of Home Rule, for I feel that if any among you are not yet convinced that there * In February, 1892, an article of Mr. Chamberlain's in the National Review had forced upon the public attention the question of the Poor Law, and laid down a definite basis for a system of national insurance. His plan was in turn attacked by Mr. Morley. SPEECH AT WILTON 313 is no possible scheme of Home Rule which the Irish would accept that is not either impracticable or per- nicious, nothing that I could say would have power to convince them ; for I never read now a Unionist speech without finding that it does not contain a single argument that I consider valid which I have not inflicted on one occasion or another upon the people of this neighbourhood. Nor am I going to discuss the Irish measures of the Government past or present, except in passing just to warn you not to be misled by the organized outburst of ridicule and abuse with which the Irish Local Government Bill has been received by the Opposition ; or the cry that they are now raising that the great measure of land purchase that was passed last year has been a failure. It has only been in force six months, and during that time the Irish members have been sedulously advising the tenants not to take advantage of it at once, but to wait and see whether they will not be able to get better terms out of the landlord after the next election. It is excellent advice, and if I was an Irish tenant I should certainly act upon it, as so many of them are doing. The outburst of scorn with which the Opposition — with all its factions for the nonce united — received the Local Government Bill for Ireland was very effective, and would have been more so if it had not been a little overdone. It was a little too absurd for the men who had supported Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill in 1886, which positively bristled with distrustful safe- guards intended to protect the minority, to be so dread- fully shocked at safeguards that implied distrust of the Irish Nationalists in the Local Government Bill, and 3M LAND QUESTIONS Depopu- lation of the rural districts. for the party which had had to suppress Boards of Guardians, not to mention Land Leagues, public meet- ings, and newspapers, a few years ago, to be so scan- dalized at a provision for calling County Councils to order. Nobody knows better than the Liberal leaders that it would be impossible under present circumstances to pass a democratic measure of local government for Ireland without some safeguards to protect the minority. And my own impression is that, taking all this into consideration, the Bill is about as good a one as could be devised. But the subject about which I wish to speak to you to-night is the Depopulation of our Rural Dis- tricts, its causes, and its possible remedies or allevia- tions, a subject which, if not less dull than the Irish Question, at least touches your own interests, and deals with facts within your own experience and observation. Is this diminution of the country population a fact ? I heard it stated the other day that the rural popu- lation had become stationary, and was not now de- creasing. I doubt this. But even if it is true, it would still mean that all the natural increase of the country population was flowing into the towns. Any way, there is no doubt that in the last twenty years the flow of the rustic population into the towns, and the diminution of the country population, have been immense. The lady who remarked ' how odd it was that nobody was ever born in London except children ' expressed an undoubted truth, though she expressed it oddly. Is this an evil ? and one so serious that it is worth our while to struggle against it ? For we know that to fight against a great natural tendency like this must be arduous and expensive. That it is a loss to SPEECH AT WILTON 315 agriculture is undoubted, for, unfortunately, it is the best men who go, and the land is sometimes labour- starved ; but this, surely, is much the smallest part of the mischief. It seems to me a national evil of the first magnitude. Physical health and strength are as necessary as brains I->eteriora- , . . . . . tionofthe and education to any nation that is to hold its own in race in the competition with others, and children brought up as £ f town- millions of English children now are, in the choking bred , ° people. atmosphere of a great town, without ever a day of fresh air or proper exercise for their growing muscles, and taking to indoor employments as soon as they are able to work, cannot grow up into vigorous men and women ; and their children after them will be punier still. They are not to be compared to country-bred folk either as labourers, soldiers, or emigrants, for there is no more helpless creature in a rough natural life than a weakly town workman who has been accustomed all his life to do one thing only in some department of a trade, and* to have all his wants supplied for him by other people, so that he hardly knows how to cook, and does not know how to bake or to build, or to use a spade or an axe, or a carpenter's tools, and finds all rough work both difficult and distasteful. It is too early yet to prove it by statistics, but I am convinced myself that it will presently become apparent that this transformation of the English people from a rural race into an urban one, that has taken place during this century, has altered, and in some ways deteriorated, the physical characteristics of the working classes of the nation, in spite of the rise of wages and the improve- ment in their food. I had to spend an hour or so at a great railway-station in the manufacturing districts of 316 LAND QUESTIONS the North last year. Train after train came in and went out, containing crowds amazing to eyes accus- tomed to the sparse population of the South ; but in all the thousands of people, mostly young or in the prime of life, that I saw, I did not notice one powerful-looking man or tall, well-developed girl. And yet the peasantry of Lancashire are a notably fine race. I believe this desertion of the rural districts is a national evil, and that is the only true defence of such measures as Mr. Chaplin's Bill for establishing small holdings. Old-fashioned politicians, with whom I have much sympathy, ask, with great plausibility, why you should use State money or State credit to set a man up as a farmer any more than as a bootmaker or a draper. The answer seems to me to be that the object is a purely national one, and if ever the same case could be made out for setting up drapers or bootmakers, it might be quite right to do it. I would remind you that no other great European country but our own has doubted that this tendency is a national evil, or failed to take vigorous measures to counteract it. In France and Germany it is watched with most jealous eyes, and the peasantry are encouraged to remain on the land by stringent measures of Protection for their produce, which means, as I need not tell an audience that enjoys the advantages of Free Trade, no small sacrifices on the part of all other classes of the nation. I have spoken of foreign countries, for the curious thing is that this tendency of the population to flow into or stay in the towns seems to be, in some degree, a universal feature of our time. Even in new countries, like Australia and New Zealand, where there is plenty of good land to be had for next to nothing, there is SPEECH AT WILTON 317 much greater difficulty than there used to be in getting the labourers to leave the towns and to face the soli- tude and inconveniences of the back country. French Legbla- ,., ...... . . tionofBis- literature is full ol allusions to it, and it is not many marck to years since Prince Bismarck increased the protective HfeinThe duties in Prussia with the avowed object of checking country, the tendency of the peasants to go to the towns, and of preserving the rural population, which he declared to be the backbone of the army and the nation. The causes of this universal tendency are somewhat obscure. Increased facilities for travel and increased education have both probably something to do with it. Both make it easier for men to move into the towns than it used to be, and the latter has probably made the varied interests of town life more attractive. Then, again (apart from the mere question of higher wages), to the young labourer there doubtless appears to be a much better chance of a rise in life in the town, with its manifold occupations and classes, than there seems to be in the country. I say ' appears,' for I doubt if it really is so. The common notion that the country labourer never rises is, I am glad to say, a very untrue one. I was much struck by a little speech made some time ago by Lord Suffolk at our County Council. Someone had been talking of the hard, dreary, hopeless occupation of the agricultural labourer. He answered in effect, ' " Hard," if you like, " dull," if you like, but " hope- less " — no.' And then he gave the Council some astonishing facts about the number of farmers on his estate and in his neighbourhood who had risen from the ranks of the labourers. Of course he lives in a small farm and dairy country ; but even here in South Wilts, 318 LAND QUESTIONS where the conditions are as unfavourable for a labourer to rise as can well be, I can call to mind a good many tenants whose fathers or grandfathers have followed the plough. Probably as time goes on, and the novelty of town life to the agricultural classes wears off, and its drawbacks become more familiar, such causes as these will diminish in potency, and the labourer will begin to appreciate more than he does now the advantages of a cheap and roomy cottage with a garden, and pure air in which his children may have a chance of growing up healthy and strong. FreeTrade But the chief cause in England, and the reason why the special . , r , . . . r . cause of the growth oi the towns and the depletion 01 the rural oHhe™ districts have been so much greater in England than towns. i n an y other country, is undoubtedly an economic one. Free Trade has been the special cause in our case. Cheap food has at once increased employment in the towns and decreased it in the country. It has made manufacture of all sorts more profitable, and agricul- ture, which is the production of food, less profitable It is no use to deny this fact, or to minimize its im- portance. And it is not open to us to attempt to tackle the evil by reverting to Protection. We are too far committed to Free Trade, and such a step is out of the region of practical politics. Besides that, it is very doubtful whether a return to Protection would benefit the agricultural labourer under our system of land tenure. It benefits the peasant proprietor, no doubt, because it raises the price of the produce by the sale of which he lives. But the agricultural labourer's interest in the price of food is that of a consumer; he has only his labour to sell ; and it does not at all follow that because the price of food went up his wages would SPEECH AT WILTON 319 rise too. Indeed, in view of the distress that would be brought about in the labouring classes generally by a return to Protection, I think it is extremely unlikely that they would rise at all. We are unable to deal at all, therefore, with this principal cause of the depopula- tion of our rural districts, and can only aim at miti- gating its effects in various ways. But though we cannot deal with it, we must be careful not to forget it ; for the poverty of the agricultural industry that has been produced by low prices underlies and affects all our rural questions, and unless we bear it in mind we are pretty sure to misconceive them and to be unable to form a just estimate of the value and suitability of the various proposals that are put forward for their solution. A deficiency of cottages is alleged to be one of the Deficiency causes of the agricultural exodus, and I think the " matter is one of considerable importance. Certainly in this part of the country cottages have been diminish- ing in many of the villages. Old cottages, as they fall in, are pulled down on account of their condition, and new ones are not built to replace them. I desire to say a few words on this subject from a landlord's point of view, for it is one the difficulties of which are very often imperfectly understood, even by those who live on the land. For instance, it is sometimes suggested that facilities should be given to people to build cottages as a commercial speculation ; or, again, that cottages should be built by the local authority out of the rates. The first would be useless ; the second disastrous to the rate- payers, because no labourer could pay a rent that would represent a fair interest on the outlay. The smallest sum that a landlord or a local authority can build a pair of cottages for, that would be considered decent 3 2o LAND QUESTIONS according to the standard of our day, is £350. Now, as cottages are a perishable investment, and require repairs as well, part of the expense of which would fall on the owner, 6 per cent, is the least that could be asked as rent. But 6 per cent, on £175 is £10 10s. a year, or 4s. a week, which is just four times what a labourer now usually pays for an ordinary farm cottage, and twice what he pays when he is less fortunately situated. Over a large part of England one shilling a week is the ordinary rent, and two shillings or half-a- crown the outside price, that an agricultural labourer pays for his cottage ; so that it is evident that such cot- tages cannot be built as a matter of business and profit. How, then, does it pay the landlord to do it ? Well, it does not pay him — at least, not directly. But the landlord regards his cottages as part of the accom- modation of his farm, making it more valuable by sup- plying convenient labour, and he looks to be paid for them (whether he lets them with the farm or to the labourer himself), indirectly through the rent of the farm and the general prosperity of the neighbourhood. But I am afraid that, even looking at it in this w r ay, building good cottages is a very expensive and un- remunerative outlay. And I do think that at this moment, when the landlords are being abused at even- Radical meeting, and held up as oppressors and enemies of the people, and ' depressing influences ' on the labourer, by people who have generally done uncom- monly little for him themselves, it is worth while to remember the millions that English landlords have laid out during the last half-century to provide him with a good cottage on such terms as these. But it is obvious that you cannot expect a landlord to SPEECH AT WILTON 321 provide more cottages than are actually necessary to work his farms on such terms as these. That is as much as he can be expected to do, and more than many land- lords can do in these days of agricultural depression. Rents have fallen enormously, and the building of a pair of cottages that used to be covered by half the rent of a large farm now absorbs the whole of it. And while rents have fallen so greatly, the outlays in addition and alteration required by farmers, in order to combat their difficulties with low prices and bad seasons, have rather increased than diminished. Landlords and agents find that these requirements must be met to keep tenants from throwing up their farms. And so it too often happens that, when the most pressing of these claims have been met, there are no funds remaining for other purposes. Old cottages are made to do for another year or so, and the building of new ones is reluctantly but inevitably put off till a more convenient season. In these days, then, unless a landlord has other means than those he derives from his estate — as, I am thankful to say, many landlords in England have — he cannot usually possibly build more than the minimum number of cottages that are required for the labourers who work on his farms. Who, then, is to build the others that are wanted in a village ? The larger shops may perhaps get themselves put up on ordinary com- mercial principles, but who is to build cottages for others who supply the labourer's wants and for the odd men of all sorts ? In making such inquiry one natu- rally asks, ' Who has built them up to now ?' Who built most of our village cottages ? Who built all those queer old, ramshackle, thatched, mud-walled, patch- work cottages with which we are so familiar ? 21 322 LAND QUESTIONS Few, if any of them, were built by the landlords. The custom of the landlord building the cottages is, in the main, quite a modern one. As far as I can make out, they were built by the villagers, by the old freeholders who have now so greatly died out, and by small men of all sorts — even agricultural labourers — on a system of leaseholds and lifeholds. Why do they not go on doing so ? What is it that has brought the system to an end ? In the main it has been the higher standard of comfort and decency in a cottage that has been set up. It is impossible to fix an exact date for a movement that of course began at different times in different localities, but I think it was about fifty years ago that systematic cottage-building by the landlords began. It was some- where about then that the conscience of the country began to be stirred on the subject of the housing of the S. G. O.'s country labourers. I can myself remember the echo of letter. . S. G. O.'s letter on the housing of the Dorsetshire labourer. The English landlords felt the shame and disgrace of the people on their estates being lodged like pigs, and they set to work all over the country building new model cottages and pulling down the worst of the old ones, a movement which has lasted to some extent down to our own day. Now, these cottages that fall into hand are very gener- ally below the standard of modern requirements, or else are too bad for repair, and the landlord feels that there is nothing for it but to pull them down, and if he did not wish to do so, perhaps the sanitary officer would make him. And as no one ever does anything to improve a cottage in the last years of a lease, landlords and agents have naturally come to think it a bad system, and do not encourage it by offering renewals. At the same SPEECH AT WILTON 323 time, the small man feels himself unable to compete with the new cottage, and that it is not as necessary to build for himself as it used to be, and so he is less anxious to do so. And so the system by means of which most of our villages have gradually been built has come to an end, and the system which has re- placed it is really in these bad times hardly able to do so. I venture to throw out the suggestion that land- Suggestion lords and agents should discriminate more than they lords and do in this matter, and that in certain cases where a S ents - the tenant of a cottage is a thrifty, industrious man, and the cottage not a very bad one, the landlord should offer him a new long lease at a reasonable rent (we are not allowed to take fines now), on his under- taking to rebuild or to put his cottage into proper repair. Here and there, I think, such an arrange- ment would be found practicable, and in these bad times advantageous to both parties. And landlords should be ready to offer a long lease at a low rent to any man who wishes to build and will build a decent cottage for himself. By such a policy, and by building themselves as much as they can afford to, I think land- lords might succeed in obviating any part of the evil that is due to insufficient cottage accommodation. Low wages of course drive men into the towns, but the question of wages is inseparable from the depression of agriculture and diminution of agricul- tural employment, with the causes of which we are, as I have said, powerless to deal. When a busi- ness is poor, you cannot raise wages either by act of will or by Act of Parliament, though I have no doubt some of our Radical friends will soon be anxious 324 LAND QUESTIONS to try. But if labour is as scarce as some say, employers will soon have to choose between paying higher wages and allowing land to go out of cultivation. But with regard to this I cannot forget that only a few years ago I was trying to persuade the young men of a village near here to emigrate, because there were between twenty and thirty of them out of work the greater part of the winter. Wages are not so low as people who do not understand agricultural matters sometimes think, because a nominal wage of ten shillings or eleven shillings often works out into an average wage of fourteen shillings or fifteen shillings, and the cheap- ness of house-rent must not be forgotten in comparing wages with those in towns. But they are very low about here, and no one would be more thankful than I to see them higher. It would simplify many of our diffi- culties. Let us now turn to some of the current proposals for mitigating the evil and improving our rural life by legis- lation. And let me say that I think that I and the majority of landlords are quite ready to meet them in a generous and receptive spirit. There is no earthly reason why we should not be. In the first place, we have something of the feeling of security of the penni- less tramp on a lonely road ; we know that we are very little worth robbing. And those who might be tempted to do it know it too, or you may depend upon it there would be much more enthusiasm for all these nice little compulsory schemes that are in the air for buying some- body else's land with everybody else's money. And those who don't know it will very soon find it out, when they discover by experience what an expensive and difficult thing it is to make a living out of the land. SPEECH AT WILTON 325 In the second place, we have every selfish reason for wishing to see the number of owners of land increase, and every reason, selfish and unselfish, for wishing to see the labourers on our estates numerous and con- tented. Perhaps the most important of the proposals I am ^ f° r ir >- • stituting speaking of is Mr. Chaplin's Bill for instituting Small Small Holdings. I do not intend to-night to discuss it in ° mgs * detail. Put briefly, it gives power to the County Council to use the rates to a limited extent to bu\ r land to sell in plots of fifty acres and under to suitable applicants on very easy terms, only one quarter of the purchase- money having to be paid down, and the rest paid off in annual instalments on the principle of the Ashbourne Act. And it further gives the councils power to buy land to let in smaller lots, so that the thrifty labourer may be given an opportunity of making some money to enable him to become a purchaser. It is drawn by a man who is a past master in all agricultural affairs, and seems to me to meet the great practical difficulty that lies in the way of any such scheme as well as it is possible to do. How far it will be successful in restor- ing the British yeoman remains to be seen. The enthusiasts for small proprietorship hope much from this or some similar measure. To those who Peace 1 • 1 1 • t- prices and object that the small proprietor in England died a Free natural death after the Battle of Waterloo, because he ^rtivtto could not stand peace prices, and that he will be still P easant proprietor- less able to stand Free Trade ones, they reply that the ship. advance of education will make the new yeoman a better farmer than his forerunner. There may be something in this, but I cannot forget that there is no country in Europe — and many have a better climate and soil than .•> 26 LAND QUESTIONS ours — where peasant proprietorship can be maintained without Protection, and Protection is, as we have seen, forbidden to England. But the question can only be decided by experiment on a small scale, and there is a general agreement that the experiment shall be tried. For my part, I am content to hope something from the Bill without any anticipation that it will trans- form the English land system, or even do very much to restore the rural population. Though a general system of small proprietorship may be impossible in England, it does not follow that there are not men who will make it a success under favourable conditions. And if Mr. Chaplin's Bill has the effect of giving such men their opportunity, and of providing two useful steps by which the labouring man may rise in the agricultural business, it will have been well worth the passing. And I would point out that if this is to be done it must be done by the State. A landlord can- not sell his land on such terms, and as for letting it in small lots, I hold that though a landlord should be liberal in granting allotments, and should maintain, if possible, a proportion of small farms, he would be very unwise to let out much of his land in five or ten acre holdings. For on such a small holding the landlord cannot provide buildings without loss. It must be left to the tenant to provide his own improvements, and so in the course of years you would have an agrarian question similar to that in Ireland. People would say how hard it was that a man should pay rent on a hold- ing that could barely support him, and on which he had done all the improvements ; and the landowner would be placed in an odious position, even if the SPEECH AT WILTON 327 public, in one of its fits of generous injustice, did not confiscate his property. I suppose Parish Councils must be put among the remedies, on the principle that every little helps, but strictly on that principle only. I must take care what I say after the way Lord Salisbury has been scolded for talking irreverently about their utility and their delights. Of course, in so far as they tended to add to the interest of village life, they would do some good ; but I really cannot believe that the pleasure of speaking or voting about footpaths or the state of his neighbour's pigsty would have much effect in prevent- ing the young labourer from going off to the town. Mr. Morley told his audience at Reading that such things as Parish Councils and one man one vote ' went to the root of our national life.' I sincerely hope that the root of our national life is a little deeper down than that. I really think Mr. Morley must have been carried away by the spirit of his subject, for there is something eminently ' parochial ' about the absurd exaggeration of this impassioned utterance. I would suggest to you that the unit of a village parish is really too small for a council. The multiplication of councils, with their necessary apparatus of election, etc., all costs money to the ratepayers, and such councils would represent too small an area to have much business of importance entrusted to them. Radicals have a passion for multi- plying political machinery and the business of adminis- tration for their own sakes. Unfortunately, busy men — and the best men are usually busy ones — do not share their taste, and cannot afford to waste time in wrangling over small matters. I incline to think that District Councils, such as have been promised by the present pensions. 328 LAND QUESTIONS Government, would on these grounds be more econo- mical and more efficient. Old age Then we come to Mr. Chamberlain's scheme for old age pensions to keep aged labourers from coming on the rates. I have immense sympathy with its object ; but I am sadly afraid that if it is to be as described by Mr. Chamberlain in a recent article, it will never work. The idea is that a man is to pay five pounds before he is twenty-live, and one pound a year afterwards for forty years, after which he is to receive for the rest of his days five shillings a week. The scheme is to be a voluntary one, and the first thing that strikes one is the unlikelihood of its being made use of by the very poor, who are the people it is most necessary to reach. A man thrifty enough to take advantage of it would be a man who was not very likely to end in the workhouse without it. But I am sadly afraid that even thrifty men will not have it. One of the great friendly societies tried a very similar scheme the other day, and only got two or three applicants. Working men will, I fear, never accept such terms. They naturally take shorter views ; they will not care to lock up their savings for forty years. The rainy day, on which they want them most (or the sunshiny day, when there comes a chance of investing their savings to some purpose), may come long before that. They may never reach the age, or they may have made money in other ways by that time, or when they do reach it their children may be capable of supporting them. I rather complain of the way in which, in discus- sions on this subject, this duty of a man's children is wholly ignored. Surely it is only one degree less of a natural duty for the son, who can do so, to support SPEECH AT WILTON 329 his aged parent, than for the parent to support the child. ' Oh, but,' it is said, and commonly believed, ' labouring people, who generally have children of their own to support, cannot do anything for their parents.' This is sometimes the case, no doubt, but they con- stantly can and do, not to mention cases when it is done voluntarily and without prompting. Here in this Wilton Union, whenever a deserving man comes upon the rates, the guardians ascertain whether he has any children or near relatives capable of contributing to his support, and if he has they make an order upon them to do so. And in this way the old man is kept out of the workhouse. I am inclined to think that no scheme for old age pensions will work which does not allow a man to draw out the savings he has invested whenever he wishes to do so. But this of course would greatly increase the cost of a five shilling pension, and we are landed in fresh difficulties. It is a matter in which we should exercise the greatest caution. The degradation and distress that grew up under the old Poor Law, with its laxer system of relief, should be an example that we should never forget. A severe but beneficial lesson in thrift and providence has been learnt since the new Poor Law was passed, and the intolerable state of things that the old one had resulted in has been suc- cessfully remedied. We should be most careful that we do not lose again the ground we have gained so hardly in the struggle with pauperism. Before I conclude I should like to give labouring men two plain reasons why I think they would be wise to give their support to the present Government and the Constitutional Party rather than to the Radicals. 33° LAND QUESTIONS I might urge that while Radicals have talked, Con- servatives have acted, and that nearly all the Acts in recent years by which the labourer has benefited have been the work of the Tory Party. I might point out with perfect truth that all the good intentions of the Radicals towards him will inevitably be thwarted by the Home Rule Question if they are returned to power. But there are two other considerations that I want more particularly to bring to his notice. The first is that the Radical Party are pursuing at the present time, on rural questions, two entirely incompatible objects. They love the labourer — and his vote. I do not ques- tion their sincerity about either, but they do not love the agricultural interest on which the well-being of the labourer depends. The}- wish to benefit him and to make him a landowner, but they have not the slightest wish to benefit landowners, or to relieve them of any of their burdens. They would rather anything happened than that. Mr. Mor- Mr. Morley made a speech not long ago on old age ley s speech on pensions, most thoughtful, interesting, and dispassionate Densions * n tone until he touched upon the subject of the Poor Law. And then he suddenly changed his note from one of pure political science to one of pure political animosity, as he warned his audience to take care, in meddling with that, that they did nothing to shift any portion of the burden off the shoulders on which it now rested. Not a word as to whether such an incidence was altogether fair in the present condition of agricul- ture. The landed interest was the enemy, to be treated as such. Lord Salisbury the other day at Exeter, with that pensions. SPEECH AT WILTON 331 grasp of the cardinal fact of his subject which always distinguishes him, threw out the suggestion that what would do more good to the rural population than either Parish Councils or small holdings would be a fairer adjustment of the rates and taxes which now press so heavily upon the land. Radicals are ready to scream at the very notion. But let me ask them what is the value of all their sympathy with the labourer about his low wages and his bad cottage when they will not do anything — nay, are ready to oppose anything — that would make it easier for landlords to build better cot- tages and for farmers to pay better wages ? And how are they going to encourage the existence of small land- owners and yet preserve an attitude of intense hostility towards everything that would make land-owning more profitable or relieve it of its burdens ? Until the Radicals have made up their minds which of these two incompatible lines they mean to take, I think the labourer will be wise to withhold his support, and sub- ject all their proposals of rural reform to a searching and suspicious scrutiny. Secondly, the Conservatives, he will notice, try to secure the co-operation of all three classes in effecting their reforms, whereas the Radicals do their best to set them by the ears, and treat landlords, and to some extent farmers, as classes to be attacked. I can hear some Radical say, ' That's just why there is some chance of their doing some good, which the Tories, who are so tender of the landlord's and the tenant's interests, can't do.' Well, this would not be a bad argument if it could be shown that the landlord's and tenant's interests were really hostile to the labourer's, and that there was any real chance of abolishing these ' de- 332 LAND QUESTIONS pressing influences on the labourer's life,' as Mr. Glad- stone has called them. But can any sane man honestly say that such a thing is within the bounds of possi- bility ? Value of I believe myself that the common idea that the system system, of landlord and tenant is one that will be reformed out brines °^ existence as civilization advances is a complete de- money to Jusion, and that as long as civilization exists a system the land. . to J m . so convenient and economical, and so strong in its reserves of capital, will never die out entirely. It is the only system by which you can keep rich men in contact with the land, to the benefit of those who live on it. I believe that the English system, owing to the large capital resources of landlords and tenants, has endured an ordeal that would have ruined any peasant proprietary, for no peasant proprietary in Europe has dared to face free imports of food. But suppose I am wrong in all this, suppose that I greatly overrate the value and probable permanence of our landed system — can anyone honestly contend that it will not last for a longer time to come than any of us are likely to be interested in ? that we are likely to see our landlords and tenants replaced by an occupy- ing proprietary ? Has such a one, if he exists, made any calculation of the amount of capital invested in the present system in buildings and so on, and the amount that it would cost merely to convert them to the needs of a peasant proprietary ? Why, that alone would bring ruin on the agricultural industry and all con- nected with it. But if this is so, is it not absurd to conceive all your rural reforms in a spirit of aggression against classes who are and must remain an essential part of SPEECH AT WILTON 333 your agricultural system ? What strikes one always in the honest consideration of such reforms as are now being proposed is the little they can really effect — at any rate, in the near future. Is it worth while, Agitators, for the sake of any of them, even if it were neces- sary, which it is not, to stir up hostility between classes whose interests are so closely bound together ? Landlords and farmers are men of like passions with other people. If you teach the labourers to hate them, will they feel no coldness in return ? They have the ordinary Englishman's sturdy independence and ten- dency to resent compulsion and ungracious treatment. And does anyone think it makes it easier for a landlord to sacrifice money and time in a generous spirit for those who live on his land, if he knows that they are looking upon him as an enemy and oppressor all the time ? Landlords, farmers, labourers, are all mutually dependent on each other for rent and accommodation, and considerate treatment and honest work. These things, which do go to the root of our national life in the rural districts far more than Parish Councils or ' one man one vote,' are hardly to be touched by any legislation. They depend upon goodwill and a right understanding of mutual relations and a sense of dutv, and if these are ever really destroyed in our agricul- tural life it will be generations before the most sweep- ing legislation will bring adequate compensation for their loss. 334 LAND QUESTIONS ARE SMALL HOLDINGS DESIRABLE ? WILL THE ACT FACILITATE THEIR ACQUIREMENT ? Letter to the ' Salisbury Times.' October 6, 1892. Sir, I have no objection to answering your questions, though it is difficult to do so briefly without some danger of misconstruction. You ask, ' Are small holdings desirable ?' but I note that you do not specify whether you mean ownerships or tenancies, and there are several very important dif- ferences between the two things. But, answering generally, I have no hesitation in saying ' Yes.' I should like to see a sufficient number of small holdings, whether freeholds or tenancies, in each district, to satisfy the demand of the men who are both ambitious to possess them, and capable of working them success- fully (not quite so large a number, perhaps, as we are most of us apt to think, in these days of political agita- tion about the land), and to provide stepping-stones for the men who have it in them to become successful farmers, but who can never hope to get together suf- ficient capital by means of saving to take a large farm to start with. Necessary But because a certain number of small holdings are limit to . & the exten- undoubtedly desirable, I must not be taken as admitting smal j that an unlimited number of them would be so. A con- holdings, version of our present system of land tenure into a general system of peasant proprietorship is, under ARE SMALL HOLDINGS DESIRABLE? 335 present conditions, so impracticable that it would be futile to point out its probable demerits. A general cutting-up of existing large farms into cottage tenancies would be only less impracticable, and certainly mischievous. Amongst other things, it would inevitably produce in a few years one of the worst features of the late Irish land system ; the holdings and the rent would be too small to render it possible for the landlord to do the buildings and the repairs, and he would become a mere charge upon the land ; while the tenants and the sym- pathetic public would declare that it was monstrous that a man should have to pay any rent at all for a plot of land that was barely sufficient to keep him and his family alive, and on which he did all the improvements himself. Your second question is : ' Will Mr. Chaplin's Act facilitate their acquirement ?' Indirectly I have little doubt it will do so. As to the probable extent of its direct operation, I imagine that no man whose boldness was not greater than his wisdom would care to commit himself to a confident opinion at the present moment. It is an experiment, and an experiment not very dis- similar has been tried before, and failed. It is an attempt to bring about, by ingenious legal facilities and inducements, what will not come about of itself in a natural way, and as such belongs to a class of measures that are always more to be admired for their audacity than ingenuity, and the excellence of their intentions than for their chances of success. On the other hand, it may be urged that the facilities are greater than have ever been offered before, and that, while the desire to become cultivators of the land 336 LAND QUESTIONS is more widespread amongst labourers than it has been at any previous time, the advance of education and of self-respect has increased the probability of their farm- ing successfully. It is really impossible to make any forecast of value as to the extent to which the Act will be put in force until the County Councils have had time to give prac- tical consideration to all the points which will arise. Much, I should imagine, will depend upon the physical conformation of the land. Where land is ' all of a piece,' so to speak, and can be cut into blocks of any size without any injury to the rest, there seems to be no reason, on the face of it, why, if the ratepayers really care to put the Act in force, it might not be given a very extensive operation ; when such conditions are absent, as in much of South Wilts, and farms are composed of a little good land in the bottoms and much poor land on the hill, it is difficult to see how small holdings are to be cut out of their better portions to any great extent without making them even harder to let than they are now, and so throwing more land out of cultivation, to the injury of our village population. Pembroke. LORD PEMBROKE ON THE AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION. (Address to Tenants at Wilton.) January, 1893. I think there can be no doubt whatever that the chief cause of agricultural depression, to which all others are merely subsidiary, temporary or accidental, is foreign AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 337 competition, and the low prices which result from it. The simple fact is that the English farmer, with a moderate soil, a bad climate, and heavily burdened land, has to face an open competition in every article of produce with every country on the earth that can produce it best and most cheaply, and this at a time when freights are so low that produce can be sent to British markets from abroad almost as cheaply as from English counties. And remember that this is true, not only of corn, but also of most of the thirty-eight millions' worth of foreign produce, the thought of which so distresses Mr. Jesse Collings. You have only got to go to the Channel Islands, or further south, to Normandy and Brittany, to understand at once why the agriculturists of these places, in these days of cheap transport, secure such a large share of the London markets. It is not in the least necessary to abuse the English farmer, and to insinuate that he does not know his business, in order to explain it. It is a question of soil, climate, and cheap transport, and little else. Of course, Protection would be the obvious remedy if we had nothing but the interests of British agri- culture to think of. It is difficult to understand how any rational beings can deny this ; but they do. I Free have always been a Free Trader, but I declare that I find the exaggerations and perversions of some Free Traders on this subject extremely exasperating. They are not content with justifying Free Trade, as I hold they can do ; they will have it that it is not responsible for agricultural distress, and that Protection would be no remedy. For instance, I read in the leading article in to-day's Times: 'The experience of protected Con- 22 338 LAND QUESTIONS tinental countries is a conclusive reply to the advocates of a duty upon imports. France, with all her advan- tages of soil and climate, has suffered quite as severely in her farming industries as we have for some years past, and, nevertheless, her wheat-growers are protected by very heavy duties against the importation of foreign corn.' Was ever misstatement more audacious ? I should like to ask the writer of that article to tell us — I. How many acres of French soil have gone out of cultivation ? 2. What has been the fall in the value of French land ? 3. Whether wheat in France has ever been down to its present price in England ? France has suffered in recent years from bad seasons, no doubt, but she has not suffered as we have, and that for the simple reason that her farmers have been protected, and ours have not. The mischief of such misrepresentations is that they confuse and mislead the public as to what is really a very plain matter, and enable faddists and agitators to draw red herrings across the trail, and divert attention to the land laws and large farms, and all sorts of things that really have little more to do with agricultural depression than the tides. Protec- Ought we, then, to go in for Protection ? I believe that, from the national point of view, to put protective duties on food supplies would be an economic mistake. Many of you here would, I know, disagree with me, but it is really not necessary that I should go into this most profound and intricate question, for this reason : A great revolution in fiscal policy, such as a return to Protection would be, can never be effected without a plausible popular cry and a vehement popular senti- ment. It was the cry of the cheap loaf, and the feeling AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 339 that a small class of landlords were battening on the food of the people, that swept away the Corn Laws, rather than any profound understanding of the great controversy. Looked at in this way, what chance is there of a return to Protection ? Where are you to find the motive force wherewith to reverse the decision ? Why, a good half of the agricultural labourers even — the only working men who would benefit by it primarily and directly — would be against you. And where else could you get any sufficient support ? There is more written in the papers at this moment about the unemployed in the big towns than there is about agricultural distress. Think what an outcry there would be if a measure were introduced into Parliament which might tend to raise the price of bread ! It will not come in our time. If ever we are Peasant all swept away and replaced by a peasant proprietary it tary could may come, because a peasant proprietary could not succeed exist without it ; and the working men in the towns without a return to may then bear it, partly under the idea that it saves Protection, them from competition with the rural population in the labour market, partly from a feeling of class sympathy of the sort that makes the American farmer submit to Protection by which he gains nothing, and is heavily taxed on almost everything he uses, because he thinks it keeps up the standard of American wages. Rents, of course, must come down if they cannot be paid. But I wish to point out that there is a limit to the relief that can be obtained in this way. I am not going to plead that ' a man must live,' because I might be answered, as the judge answered the highwayman who pleaded that, ' I don't see the necessity.' But if rents fall below a certain point, how are the houses. 34o LAND QUESTIONS buildings, and cottages on a farm, worth in all many thousands of pounds, to be built and kept up ? I believe that exceptional cases might be quoted already in which the farmer would be found, if interest on these were deducted from his rent, to be getting the land for nothing. I remember a very distinguished Liberal politician talking to me some years ago about nationalization of land. He said, ' If the land were taken from you, of course you would be paid the capital value of your buildings on it.' I told him that if I were paid the capital value of all my buildings, and the land was taken away, and all pecuniary responsibilities for the estate with it. I should be a considerably richer man than I am now. He was rather startled, but I showed him that it was true. What, then, should we go for? I think that we should try to get a reduction in the burdens on land. If we are to compete against all the world — against corn sent by State-built railways, and French farmers assisted in their own markets by Protection — we at least need not carry extra weight. We have a right to demand that we shall not be unfairly handicapped as well, and we have a right to demand that no miserable class jealousy shall be allowed to stand in the way of our obtaining our relief. That is our difficulty. There is a large party in the State whose hatred of the land- owners is so great that they are actually bent on in- creasing the burdens on land, and would strenuouslv oppose any attempt to diminish them. Our only chance of overcoming their opposition lies in obtaining real union between the three classes connected with the land. Landlords, farmers, and AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 341 labourers should never forget that, however they may jostle each other in the narrow bed to which bad times have reduced them (and, of course, agricultural depres- identical sion brings difficulties as to rent and wages), their {^^4° interests are reallv the same, and that what benefits classes- landlords, the agricultural industry will benefit them all. If these farmers, three classes can be got to make common cause, and to labourers, demand with one voice the relief to which the agricul- tural industry is fairly entitled, it will be difficult for any Government to refuse it. But as long as the labourers are indifferent and stand aloof, landlords and farmers will almost certainlv fail. AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND ITS REMEDIES. December 30, 1892. Agriculture, we are constantly told, is still the largest industry in this country ; and, as it is one that no man who ever leaves the town can avoid seeing something of, one would expect it to be the one whose chief difficulties and requirements would be most generally understood. Yet there is no subject on which there is greater con- fusion of opinion. The reason is that it has a political as well as an industrial aspect, and so every point con- nected with it is either demurred to or exaggerated on political grounds. Fanatical Free Traders who are not content to prove that Free Trade is right on national grounds, but must needs insist that it never injured agriculture, and that Protection could not help it : advocates of ' free land,' believers in small holdings, 342 LAND QUESTIONS champions of land nationalization, simple haters of the existing land system — all combine to darken counsel by their special pleading on behalf of their peculiar nostrums, until the public is completely bewildered by the babel of contradictory voices, truth seems to have lost any particular advantage over misrepresentation, and there appears to be no limit to the nonsense that may be talked by people otherwise sane upon this subject. The high-water mark has probably been reached by a writer in the Speaker, who, on the strength of its having been proposed by some eccentric or ill-used farmer at the Agricultural Conference, gravely suggests ' the three F's ' as a remedy for agricultural distress — Fair rent, fixed by a land court, when rents are falling every day, and on many farms amount to no more than a fair interest on the landlord's buildings ! Fixity of tenure, when the difficulty is to get farmers to stay ! And Free sale, at a time when the incoming tenant usually refuses to pay for the unexhausted improve- ments of the outgoing one ! Could mockery further go? And yet the matter is really a simple one. The cause of agricultural distress is evident ; the only adequate remedies are few and obvious. The chief cause of agricultural depression, to which all others are merely subsidiary, temporary, or accidental, is foreign competition, and the low prices which result from it. The simple fact is that the English farmer, with a moderate soil, a bad climate, and heavily burdened land, has to compete as regards every article of produce with every country that can produce it best and cheapest, and this at a time when freights are so low that produce AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 343 can be sent to British markets from abroad almost as cheaply as from the English counties. And though there may be room for further adaptation of English farming to the new conditions, this is true in the main, not only of corn, but also of the greater part of that thirty-eight millions of foreign produce the thought of which so distresses Mr. Jesse Collings. One has only to go to the Channel Islands, or further south to Nor- mandy and Brittany, to understand at once why the agriculturists of these places secure so large a share of the London market. It is chiefly a matter of climate, soil, and cheap transport, and it is not necessary to abuse the British farmer and insinuate that he does not know his business in order to explain it. Obviously, there are only two ways in which these to e res ° r e effects of economic laws and natural conditions can be th f J and to cultiva- adequately met, and British land that has gone, or is tion. going, out of cultivation be restored to it, if it is thought worth while to do so. Either we must resort to Pro- tection, as other European countries do, or we must lighten the burdens which English land has to carry. No other ways are adequate, let faddists say what they like. As regards the first, I fail to see the justice of the scream about class selfishness that is raised in some quarters whenever the word ' Protection ' is breathed. If ever Protection were resorted to, it would be because British agriculture was thought worth saving on national grounds, not for the sake of any class of individuals. And no one rails against the agriculturist of Republican France for insisting on Protection. Nor is it anything but a darkening of counsel to urge that Protection would be of no use because France has suffered from 344 LAND QUESTIONS agricultural distress as well as England. The French agriculturist has suffered — and suffered, as one may read in ' La Terre,' from American competition in wheat ; but, in spite of inferior methods of cultivation and the defects of his land system, he has not suffered as the English farmer has suffered, and French land has not gone out of cultivation as English land has, simply because the one has been protected from the extreme effects of competition and the other has not. But Protection is out of the question. I am a Free Trader, and believe that, with our huge manufacturing population competing with their produce in all the markets of the world, to put taxes on food for the sake of preserving British agriculture would be from the national point of view an economic blunder. But it is quite unnecessary to plunge into this great controversy, for this reason : No great revolution in fiscal policy, such as a return to Protection, would be, can ever be, effected without a genuine popular agitation and a taking popular cry. It was the cry of the cheap loaf, and the belief that a small class of rich men were battening on the food of the people, that swept away the Corn Laws far more than any profound grasp of the abstract merits of the Free Trade theory. Looked at in this way, what chance is there of a return to Pro- tection ? Where is the motive force to come from ? A great part of the agricultural labourers even — the only working men who could benefit by it primarily and directly — would be against it. And where else would it get any adequate support ? There is more written in the papers at this moment about the unem- ployed in the towns than there is about agricultural distress. One can imagine what the outcry would be AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 345 like if a Government proposed any measure that might tend to raise the price of bread. I do not say it will never come. If ever the land is to be restored to the labourer, it will have to come, for he will not be able to live without it, and the workman of the towns may then, perhaps, consent to endure it, partly with the idea that it saves him from competition in the labour market, partly from a feeling of class sympathy of the sort that makes the American farmer submit to Protection, by which he gains nothing and is taxed on all his implements, because he thinks that it keeps the standard of American wages from falling to the European level. But for our time, at least, it is outside the region of practical politics. There remains the other alternative — the reduction Inequality of the burdens on English land. The support of the tion. poor, education, highways, not to speak of the main- tenance of the National Church, all press unduly upon agricultural land (in spite of recent assistance from Imperial taxes), as compared with other forms of pro- perty — survivals of a time when land was by far the most important source of wealth. Why should not some of these be lightened ? The man with £15,000 a year from stocks pays no more in rates than his neighbour with £500 a year from land. Why should not real and personal property be assimilated, and all such burdens distributed more fairly ? If the British agriculturist is to compete against all the world, against corn sent by State-built railways, and foreign farmers protected in their own markets, while even his own railway companies give the foreign producer a bounty in the shape of lower rates, surely it is monstrous to expect him to carry all this extra weight as well. He 346 LAND QUESTIONS has a right — the stronger if public opinion requires that English land shall not go out of cultivation — to demand that he shall not be unfairly handicapped as well, and that no miserable class jealousy shall be allowed to stand in the way of his obtaining relief. Prejudice Here is the difficulty. There is a large party in the against land- State, comprising, probably, the bulk of the Gladstonian owners. Party, who are so hostile to the land-owners that they would strenuously oppose any attempt to diminish the burdens on land, and even propose to increase them. These people have persuaded themselves, we must charitably suppose, though the feat is miraculous, that the interests of the landlord can be separated from those of the farmer and the labourer, and that the former can be ruined without injury to the others. In the result they oppose everything that could benefit the agricultural industry, because it would benefit the landlords. And their only notion of dealing with agri- cultural depression is to use it to attack the English land system. A good instance of this method is to be found in the article in the Speaker above referred to. After denouncing the ' landlords ' for asking for protection at the Agri- cultural Conference, and studiously ignoring the fact that the demand came as much or more from the farmers, the writer goes on to propound a delightfully simple remedy for agricultural distress. It is simply to reduce or abolish rent by whatever legislative machinery may seem most suitable. British agriculture, he says, has to bear a burden of £70,000,000 a year in rent. That is the biggest and plainest fact in the situation. If that burden cannot be economically borne it must be removed. AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 347 Now, I suppose that this sort of thing must sound The prac- , ., . ...... tical use of plausible to some people, or it would not be written ; rent. so I should like to show how utterly misleading it is. I need hardly point out that it would bring no relief at all to the many who are farming their own land and losing money in the process. Where farms are still let, rents must, of course, come down if they cannot be paid. But there is a limit to the relief that can be obtained in this way. In many cases the farmer is already getting the land for nothing, the rent amount- ing to no more than a fair interest on the house, buildings, cottages, and other permanent improvements, worth, in the aggregate, many thousands of pounds. Is the landlord to get nothing for these, either ? And, if rent is to be abolished, how in the future are they to be built and maintained, and the many other wants of a landed estate provided for ? I remember talking some years ago to a distinguished Liberal politician about land nationalization, and saying how unjust it would be to rob the landlords of all the capital they had invested in estate improvements. He said that of course the landlords would be paid the value of all their buildings, etc. I pointed out to him that if I were paid the value of all my improvements, and were set free from all the pecuniary responsibilities of the estate, I should be better off than I was. He was startled, but it was true to absurdity. And this demand for outlay on the part of the land- The fall of lord is a constant one. What has hit the landlords so rentals, hard of late is that while the gross rental of their estates oiSoings has fallen perhaps 50 per cent., the outgoings have not are not ... 00 diminished. diminished at all. Indeed, the stress of bad times, and the changes in agriculture that they have brought with 348 LAND QUESTIONS them, have made the tenants' need for assistance in this way greater than ever. I should like to know how much of that £70,000,000 of rent, assuming the figure to be correct, ever finds its way to the landlord's private banking account ? There are many estates on which farms are languishing or going out of cultivation ; cottages are falling into disrepair, and everything is being let down, from sheer inability on the part of the landlord to make the necessary outlay ; where farmers and labourers are suffering from the landlords' lack of rent, standing illustrations of the inseparability of the interests of everyone connected with the land. It is only by a combination of the three classes that the opposition of the political enemies of the agricultural interest to any real relief of agriculture can be over- come. This ought not to be impossible. Surely land- lords, farmers, and labourers might see that, however much they may jostle each other in the narrow bed to which bad times have reduced them, their main interest is the same. And the position of the Radical agitator who tries to keep them apart is really an untenable one. He is full of sympathy for the farmer and the labourer, but he will do nothing to help the agricultural industry for fear of benefiting the landlord ; he is all for making the labourer a proprietor, but he will do nothing to make proprietorship spell anything but ruin. Labourers are shrewd enough to see this in time if it is put properly before them. It must be done unless worse things are to come. If landlords, farmers, and labourers would organize, and agree to demand with something like a united voice the measures of relief to which their industry is, under the circumstances, justly THE AGRICULTURAL QUESTION 349 entitled, I do not believe that the nation would refuse to hear them. As long as they all clamour for different things, legitimate objects though many of them may be, they cannot expect to be listened to. And as long as the labourers stand aloof, farmers and landlords will ask in vain. LORD PEMBROKE, 'THE SPEAKER; AND THE AGRICULTURAL QUESTION. Letter to the ' Times ' in Answer to a Letter from Lord Chetwynd. Wilton House. January 9, 1893. Sir, The writer of the article under the above title in the last number of the Speaker is kind enough to say that my ' arguments are typical, and will repay ex- amination.' At the risk of seeming ungracious, I cannot help saying that I wish he had examined them a little more closely, for, to judge by his reply, he does not seem to have apprehended them at all. He simply restates the proposition that I attacked, and takes no notice of the arguments that I brought against it, except to misrepresent them. These be tart words, but I use them in no ill-humour, and will briefly show that they are true. His proposition was, in effect, that the chief burden Rent and 1 111 1 c relief from upon the land was the rent, and that the remedy tor rent . agricultural distress was to sweep it away. I answered that (apart from the fact that this would obviously bring no benefit to those who were farming their own land and losing money in the process) there was a limit 350 LAND QUESTIOxNS to the relief that could be obtained in this way, a limit that had already been reached in many cases. Rents, of course, must and would come down if they could not be paid ; but if they were reduced below a certain point, it would become impossible for the landlord to construct and maintain all the permanent improve- ments, and to make all the miscellaneous outlays that are necessary for the welfare of an estate and those who live on it, and by which the cultivators benefit. And it is on this point — which your contributor oddly classes amongst the ' minor points ' of my article — that I have to complain of misrepresentation. My argument, he says, ' in respect of farm buildings ' (he should have included labourers' cottages and all other landlords' outlay) ' sounds hardly serious. Why should landlords' investments in farm buildings be specially protected any more than town holders' investments ?' Why, indeed ? I never said or implied anything of the sort. What I said was, ' Rents must, of course, come down if they cannot be paid. But there is a limit to the relief that can be obtained in this way. In many cases the farmer is already getting the land for nothing, the rent amounting to no more than a fair interest on the house, buildings, cottages, and other permanent improvements, worth in the aggregate many thousands of pounds. Is the landlord to get nothing for these, either ? And if rent is to be abolished, how in the future are they to be built and maintained, and the many other wants of a landed estate provided for ?' My argument was that, when rents fell below a certain level, the landlord was no longer able to provide and maintain such improvements, and that this marked the limit to which relief could be given to the cultivator by THE AGRICULTURAL QUESTION 351 reduction of rent. When it has been reached, reduc- tions of rent cease to be beneficial to the farmer, be- cause they place upon him, pari passu, either the burden of making outlays that have hitherto been made by the landlord, but which he can make no longer, or the dis- advantage of doing without necessary improvements. Your contributor takes no notice of this argument, of which I give here the brief outline, and which I pointed out could be seen illustrated by painful facts on main- estates already. Nor does he heed my reminder that a Much of 1 r- r • tne rent large proportion ot the £70,000,000 of rent (assuming goes the figures to be correct) goes back upon the land, and thTland' never reaches the landlords' private bankers at all, but nev< ! r . reaching continues to write, quite undisturbed, of ' rent ' being the land- ' a penalty upon industry, which goes straight into the pockets of a single and unproductive class,' and of ' the biggest and plainest fact of the situation ' being ' this £70,000,000 burdening and crippling British agri- culture.' With regard to the relief of the land from fiscal Two . lliain ij i-iti • r ■ questions, burdens, which I advocate, the writer of the article in the Speaker seems to incline to the doctrine of beati possidentes, and to take it as a matter of course that every landlord should be in favour of it, and everyone not a landlord against it. He fears that it is a question upon which interested parties will take their sides according to their interests. But is not this rather too narrow a way of looking at a big question of statesman- ship ? — a little wanting in sweetness and light ; a little unnecessarily cynical and brutal, even for the political days we live in ? Surely such a question might be considered, to some extent at least, upon its own merits ? It seems to me that there are two points for 352 LAND QUESTIONS consideration, and I positively declare that I feel open to conviction upon either of them, though your con- tributor opines that my conversion would be too much to expect of human nature, and expects me to turn away from the truth sorrowfully on account of my great possessions. Firstly, is The first is, whether land is or is not fairly taxed in the land . . . fairly proportion to its real value as compared with other forms of property ; and the second — if any further con- sideration should be thought necessary — is, whether it is worth while, from a national point of view, to do anything to keep British land in cultivation. Secondly, As regards this second question, those who are con- while to nected with British land have no right to ask more do any- than that it shall receive a thorough and fair considera- thing to ° keep tion ; but they have a right to demand that everyone British . . . ... land in who aims at guiding public opinion shall give it an Hon 1 ? 3 honest answer, and that those who are not ready to make the smallest sacrifice to keep British land in cultivation shall have the courage of their convictions, and say so frankly, instead of opposing in detail every proposal that is brought forward for bettering its con- ditions, and trying to distract attention from the true causes and the real issues by insinuating, without an atom of evidence, that the blame lies with the British land system, which they declare is doomed ; and assuming, without one particle of proof, that it can and will be superseded by some other system that will be more successful. It is altogether premature to make such an assump- tion until they can point to some other European country, approximately like our own, successfully facing the open competition in all kinds of produce that THE AGRICULTURAL QUESTION 353 the British land system has had to endure. The French peasant, in parts where the crops are at all similar to our own, with all his industry and thrift, scouts the possibility, and the experiment would be looked upon by nine Frenchmen out of ten as insane. There are many who believe — and I am certainly one Excellence r 1 ii-i it • °f English 01 them — that there is no known land system in Lurope i an d that would have stood the strain so well. In its best system ' developments — that is, on large estates, to which it is best suited — there is no system so elastic, for the large landlord can put up with a very small return from each farm, while the tenant is equipped with first-rate accommodation at a moderate cost, and has all his capital available to farm with, instead of having it locked up in land and buildings. This it is that has enabled him to endure a long succession of losses and low profits that would have ruined a small proprietor in a couple of seasons. ' What ! in spite of having two profits to make ?' people like your contributor will probably cry. Yes ; but with two capitals at his back, it must be remembered. And the British tenant-farmer is not the only cultivator who has to make a profit for someone besides himself. The erreur mere, if I may say so, of people like Rent is .. - . . . . . ' ... mainly the your contributor on this subject, is that they will interest on insist on regarding rent solely as a useless and iniqui- ^j^,,,, tous impost, and do not see that it is in the main improve- ments, interest on necessary capital, which has to be found somehow, and which has always to be paid for, sooner or later, in one form or another. And the British land-owner probably provides it on as reasonable terms as anyone. If they would read such books as ' Main-travelled Roads,* which tell of the unremitting 2J 354 LAND QUESTIONS toil and grinding poverty of the American farmer, they would realize that a man may be crushed by rent, though he has no landlord, and calls it by another name. It is interest on mortgages over there, and is certainly not less oppressive and inexorable than rent. Land, buildings, and all other improvements, have got to be provided and paid for somehow. If there is no landlord, the farmer must find the capital, and the interest on it will probably exceed the rent he would have to pay if the farm was let to him. Our farmers thoroughly understand this in their practical way. ' Dirt cheap ' as land often is now, they seldom buy, and often repent if they do. It does not pay them, they simply say. Either it locks up the capital they want to farm with, or, if they borrow the purchase- money, it spells ruin. The bank or the money-lender will not give remissions or lay out money to make the farm more profitable. For the same reason large land- owners used to be constantly besought by small free- holders to buy their land in order that they might realize their capital and use it in farming ; and this has been one of the chief causes of the regrettable extinction of the yeoman class. Many years ago the late Judge Longfield ingeniously demonstrated that the least profit- able thing that any man could do who possessed thirty acres of land was to farm it himself, and he showed, amongst other things, that it would usually pay him far better to sell it and subject himself to the iniquitous impost of rent. But I must not take up more of your space with the propagation of such hoary but unfashionable truths. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL UNION 355 THE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL UNION* To the Editor of the ' Times.' January 19, 1893. Sir, I have no wish to throw any cold water upon Sliding sco.Ic of the Agricultural Union, with the chief objects of which rent and I am in hearty sympathy ; but I feel compelled to utter pSc™ 1 a word of warning in time against the specious proposal al)le - to institute a sliding scale of rent and of wages based upon prices, which I see was adopted by Lord Win- chilsea at Ipswich. Nothing can be more attractive in theory than a sliding scale for rent based upon prices; it is so obviously equitable in principle, and seems so simple ; in practice it proves to be very unsatisfactory and full of incon- veniences and anomalies. Such a system was instituted on the Wilton House Estate in Wiltshire at the time of the abolition of the Corn Laws to allay the fears of the farmers, and as a wise measure of precaution against the possible results of that measure upon prices. It remained in force till 1871 or 1872, when I brought it to an end on account * The suggestion of forming a union of landlords, tenants, and labourers may be traced to a hint thrown out in the Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 1882. The Earl of Winchilsea took practical steps to consolidate the union of the interests of the three classes in an Agricultural Union for promoting ends common to all, viz. : the remission of unfair local burdens, the protection of cattle from disease, and the co-operation of producers and con- sumers. This union was inaugurated on January 5, 1893. 35 6 LAND QUESTIONS of its unpopularity with the tenants. They complained, first, that it worked unsatisfactorily, a farmer having sometimes to pay more rent in a bad season than he had in a good one, because prices were a little lower in the latter ; and, secondly, that it was so complicated — any such system, in order to avoid as far as possible such anomalies as the above, must necessarily be elaborate and complicated — that the)- were often quite out in their calculations as to how much they would have to pay. ' There, sir,' said a very superior tenant of mine to his Rector, who told me the story, ' in that letter is stated the amount of rent that I have got to pay at the next audit ; and — would you believe it ? — I don't know within -C=,o what it will be.' In those halcyon days tenants, though they might grumble in private at such a system, paid the rent. In these days it would lead to endless wrangles between agent and tenant, and constitute a very real grievance. A sliding scale of wages as well would complicate the matter still further. A farmer might find himself, in consequence of a rise of prices, by which he personally perhaps had chanced to profit very little, liable both to pay an increased rent to his landlord and to raise his labourers' wages. Besides this, the rate of wages is governed, to some extent at least, by causes other than the price of the article produced, and this would pro- bably prove a fertile cause of disagreements and mis- understandings. Indeed, I can hardly imagine any device of the enemv better calculated to set by the ears the three classes, which it is the object of the Agricultural Union to unite, than this plausible and innocent-looking proposal of a sliding scale for rent and wages ; and I venture THE TRUE AGRICULTURAL UNION 357 earnestly to appeal to the leaders of that Union to look into its probable working very closely before committing themselves to giving it a place in their programme. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE TRUE AGRICULTURAL UXION. To the Editor of the ' Salisbury and Winchester Journal.' Blickling, Avlsham, February 6, 1893. Sir, I read the account of the proceedings of the The South Wilts Chamber of Agriculture at Warminster in of Agricul- your paper with great satisfaction. I have felt from t " re to be J r r ° thrown the first that the best and most practicable way of open to the starting an Agricultural Union of all classes connected labourers. with the land would be to broaden the basis of the existing Chambers of Agriculture by throwing them open to the labourer and inviting him to join them, rather than to attempt either to replace them or to run a new organization representing agriculture side by side with them. It would be a great pity to destroy an established organization that has proved so useful, nor would farmers consent to its destruction. At the same time, anyone who has had any experience of the difficulty of keeping any sort of organization alive in our rural dis- tricts will know that there is not the wherewithal for two such bodies to coexist. Nor could the new Agri- cultural Union safely afford to dispense with the men whose practical knowledge and wisdom and freedom 358 LAND QUESTIONS from political party spirit have formed such a marked characteristic of the existing Chambers of Agriculture. It is hardly practical to hope, perhaps, that any but a few exceptional men among the labourers will take much part in the discussions of the Chambers of Agriculture, but it will be no small thing gained if labourers come to feel that these Chambers honestly wish and intend to represent their interests as well as those of farmers and land-owners. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. THE CONDITION OF AGRICULTURE* To the Editor of the ' Pall Mall Gazette.' Wilton House, Salisbury, February i, 1895. Sir, The enclosed admirably succinct and lucid report of a committee of the South Wilts Chamber of Agricul- ture, signed by a landlord and four farmers, all men of great authority and experience, deserves more public notice than it is likely to receive. It tells a tale of a very grave state of things — of loss of capital, of buildings falling into disrepair, of land going out of cultivation, and of labourers being driven away from the country by lack of employment ; and it points out that if nothing happens, or is done, to make * The Finance Act of 1894, introduced by Sir W. Harcourt avowedly to equalize the duties on succession to real and personal property, imposed a fine on the inheritors of landed property calculated on the capital value of the estate. THE CONDITION OF AGRICULTURE 359 cultivation less unprofitable, these evils are likely to be increased in the immediate future on a very large scale. What is happening in this neighbourhood is taking place in varying degrees in many other districts of England. With a growing disaster of such national importance Ruin of 1 r r • • a agricul- stanng us in the lace lor years, is it not a grave reiiec- ture. tion upon our system of government that we make no serious attempt to remedy it, just because the agricul- tural interest is associated with a small and unpopular class, whose vote, for various reasons, is not worth bidding for ; that instead of giving relief we actually pass measures that will increase the rates which agri- cultural land has to pay, and impose succession duties that will complete the ruin of many a struggling estate, to the distress of all who live upon it ? I know it is said that there is no agreement as to Relief re- what the remedies should be. There is one measure of f rom taxa- relief, at any rate, recommended in this report upon tlon ' which the vast majority of those interested in agricul- ture are agreed. Let agricultural land be relieved of the unjust burdens in the shape of rates and taxes that it is now plainly unable to bear. Let it be put in this matter on the same footing as the other industries and sources of wealth of this country. And let this be done, not for the sake of the landlords, who have neither more nor less right than miners or factory hands or any other class to assistance at the hands of the State, but on the broad national grounds (on which alone such assistance can ever be justified) that the ruin and de- population of the rural districts is a national evil. The excuse for not doing this is generally that any relief from a fairer adjustment of the rates would be 360 LAND QUESTIONS quite insufficient to relieve agricultural distress. But this miserable excuse for doing nothing at all is not really valid. As Mr. Rew has pointed out, in his able report on the Salisbury Plain district (and no doubt the same is the case in many others), there are many thou- sands of acres at present just on the margin of cultiva- tion. A very small difference in the profit and loss account will decide the question whether this land is to remain under cultivation or not. At least let the relief of removing unfair burdens on the industry be tried. If it fails, it will be time to try something else, or make up our minds to do nothing and accept the consequences. British agriculture is at this moment like a sound but overladen vessel, in sore stress from bad weather. Obviously the first thing to be done, if it be possible, is to lighten the ship. Yours, etc., Pembroke. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.* Febrtiary, 1885. The House of Lords has certainly, from its own point Victory of of view, scored a complete victory. It has successfully f Lords maintained its right, so insidiously assailed for the last in l885- four years, and so loudly denied last autumn, to an effective voice in political measures of the first magni- tude. It has gained its point that the Franchise and * The Parliament was approaching its end, and Mr. Gladstone had introduced in the previous year the memorable Bill for extend- ing the household franchise to the rural districts. On the debate on the second reading in the House of Lords. Lord Cairns, on July 8, carried an amendment objecting to the Bill on the ground that it was not accompanied by a scheme for the redistribution of seats. The immediate result of this was the announcement by Mr. Gladstone two days later, at a meeting of his party, that the Franchise Bill was withdrawn, and would be proceeded with at an autumn session. On July 15 the Earl of Wemyss revived the matter by a motion, seconded by Lord Shaftesbury, that the House proceed to consider the Bill on the understanding that the Re- distribution Bill be brought forward by the Government at an autumn session. This motion was indeed lost, but an amendment of Lord Cadogan, to the effect that at an autumn session the Franchise Bill already printed be considered in conjunction with the Redistribution Bill, was passed without dissent, and supplied a definite acceptance of the principle of the Franchise Bill. 364 THE HOUSE OF LORDS Seats Bills should be considered conjunctively. It has obtained into the bargain a voice in the framing of the Seats Bill. Its triumph has been magnified by the violence and contempt with which it has been attacked. From Cape Wrath to Land's End it was proclaimed that the opposition of the Peers to a majority of the Commons was something not to be borne, and that humiliation and extinction were the only terms that could be offered to them. How strangely these utter- ances read by the light of events ! The hundreds who proclaimed them, and the thousands who cheered them, must certainly consider that the Peers have won a great victory. I think that they are right, and I have no wish to underrate it. But I do not think that we ought to rest content with the appreciation and enjoyment of our triumph. Surely it will be wise to examine our position with the help of the lights cast on it by the recent agitation, and to see whether there are no weak points that might be strengthened against future attacks. There cannot be a better moment for such a work. An institution can only reform itself profitably in time of peace. Once it is assailed, reforms gain it no credit with the public to which it must look for support, and are regarded by its enemies as symptoms of weakness. But if we carry out any reform now in the first flush of our victory, it will be evident that it is freely undertaken, and not forced upon us by weakness and pressure from without, as would certainly be believed if we waited until we were again threatened with an attack. These considerations regarding the proper moment for reforms are both so unanswerable and so obvious that one cannot help wondering why they should have REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 365 been so continually disregarded, as the history of the world tells us that they have been. One reason, I am sure, is that they are nearly always met and set aside by the very conclusive rejoinder that no reform is neces- sary. And so it will be, I do not doubt, in the present instance. Many Conservatives will say, 'Why not leave well alone? How can you be sure that reforms will not weaken rather than strengthen the House ? And why do you assume that any strengthening of the position is necessary? It was strong enough to baffle our enemies this time ; why should it not be strong enough the next ?' There is some plausibility about this view, but I think it is only superficial. In the first place, it ignores too much the very important fact that the struggle was never fought out. The position was invested by an imposing show of force, and terrifically cannonaded from a distance ; but the assault never came off. No doubt the strength of the position was one of the chief reasons why the enemy preferred negotiation to battle, but we must not lose sight of the fact that there was no fight. No one can tell what would have been the end of the struggle if Mr. Gladstone had appealed to the country against the House of Lords. We have no right to consider the strength of our position in the country as unmistakably established, as it would have been if he had done so and we had beaten him. The causes which made the Government so reluctant to attack were probably somewhat complex. I doubt if they estimated the actual popularity of the House of Lords in the country very highly. It is not an institu- tion that appeals very strongly to the sort of men who belong to neither political party. No doubt the Con- 366 THE HOUSE OF LORDS servatives as a body were prepared to support it, and many of them are keenly alive to its constitutional value. But I doubt their being ready to march on Birmingham or any other place to preserve its existence. On the other hand, the Liberal Party, who are usually in the majority, dislike it almost to a man ; while the whole Radical wing hate it with an enthusiasm that greatly outweighs in intensity any feeling of their op- ponents in its favour. If the existence of the House of Lords depended solely on a balance of the senti- ment for and against it, I do not think it would last long. But Liberal leaders must have known well that the matter was not so simple as this. Disliking the House of Lords is not the same thing as abolishing it. If the quarrel had been fought out to the bitter end, the active supporters of the House would have received a con- siderable reinforcement from those who, for one reason or another, were not prepared for its abolition. There were men, amongst them several statesmen in high places, who shrank from giving such a wrench even to a Constitution as elastic as ours, and dreaded the revo- lutionary means by which alone such a change could be carried out ; there were men who, with no love for the way the House exercised its functions, vaguely felt that it was the last independent check upon the all- powerful democratic governing and legislating machine that we have gradually evolved ; there were men who were simply not ready for such a change — men who believed in the necessity of a Second Chamber, and preferred reform to abolition ; and men — I believe thousands of men — who were afraid of what the fall of the House of Lords might bring down with it. Some REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 367 at least of these would have stood aloof, or supported the Conservatives, and their defection might have ren- dered the issue doubtful. To retain their support, and to preserve its own coherency, the Ministry would have been forced to aim at reform rather than abolition ; and a reconstruction of the Second Chamber in accordance with democratic ideas is a task from which the strongest Minister might well shrink. The wide difference between such an undertaking and any of the great reforms that our reforming age has witnessed is hardly sufficiently realized. Moreover, the reform of the House of Lords is Radicals exactly what many of the leading Radicals did not and reform of do not want. They hold that a reformed House, even ^L^ds? 6 if its powers were restricted, would be so strengthened by having received the recent sanction of the countrv that it would be more difficult either to coerce or to extinguish than the present one. Add to all this the natural, if somewhat tardy, reluctance of the Liberal leaders, and especially of Mr. Gladstone, to plunge their country into so dangerous a turmoil, and it is not difficult to understand why the Government declined battle. Neither Whigs nor Radicals saw their way clearly to what they wanted ; and when Mr. Gladstone threw the weight of his great personal influence into the cause of peace, both sections of his followers were, on the whole, content to acquiesce in the arrangement. But the impression left on my mind by the recent agitation is not, I regret to say, to the effect that the House of Lords is safe for any length of time, greatly as its recent action has strengthened its position for the moment. Some of the causes which I have enumerated as telling in its favour in the late crisis seem to me to 368 THE HOUSE OF LORDS be of an evanescent or untrustworthy character. Many of them may be summed up by saying that the country was not ready for either the abolition or the reconstruc- tion of the House of Lords. So great and important a change demands serious and deliberate examination in all its details ; and even if this were not so, political parties always require time before committing them- selves to reforms of magnitude — witness the slow and gradual process by which the Liberal Party became unanimous upon the present extension of the Franchise. In addition to the real dangers of acting in a hurry, there is a half-superstitious dread of great changes which wears off as consideration renders the idea of them more familiar. The idea of ending or mending the House of Lords will be familiar enough next time the subject comes up, and the caucuses will have made up their minds which to declare for. And there was one ominous feature in the agitation which no one could fail to observe. The audiences were almost invariably in advance of the speakers. Scarcely a word of deprecation was ever to be heard, while the most violent denunciations were the most loudly cheered. Now, in these days, when it is the custom of the people to show the way, and of the leaders to follow, this fact is full of significance. If any reluctance and compunction were exhibited, it was by responsible politicians rather than their supporters. I am afraid there can be little doubt as to which will convert the other. Nor do I think it open to question that the hostility of the masses who attended these meetings will be sharpened by the way in which they have been balked, and made to look foolish. Then, again, the extension of the Franchise must add REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 369 immensely to the numerical weight of our opponent-. I think this is indisputable. To the old roll of three million electors we have added two million, nearly all belonging to one social stratum. That amongst the new voters there will be very many sensible and moderate men, I do not doubt for a moment ; but no one who reads the working man's newspapers, or studies the reports of the Trades' Union Congresses, can possiblv persuade himself that, as a class, the new voters will be favourably disposed towards such an institution as the present House of Lords. Depend upon it, we shall find the new electorate a much less sympathetic tribunal to appeal to than the old one. So very serious is this last consideration, taken with the others, that I can imagine anyone asking whether it is not futile to attempt to preserve the House of Lords as an effective political power in the face of it. I do not think so, for this reason. In one way. the position of the House of Lords isGreatneed 1 • • 1 • -II- at present stronger than at any previous period in modern history, for strong There never was a time when the need for a Second chamber Chamber was so obvious and so strong. Forty or fifty formerly years ago it might have been considered a fifth wheel } h] to the waggon. The theory that Ministers were the repre- King's quite as much as the people's, and therefore both King required constant watching by the representatives of a "^ le popular right, was scarcely extinct. Constituencies were not so highly organized as now, and members who represented them enjoyed a very considerable freedom of action. As a consequence, the House cf Commons was still, in great measure, independent of the Govern- ment, and exercised over it a strict and jealous censor- ship. The strongest Ministry was never safe from the 24 37o THE HOUSE OF LORDS possibility of its censure, and the natural end of Cabinets was to be despatched by its adverse vote. This state of things has quite passed away. The idea of Ministers owing a duty to anyone but the people only survives practically in the inconvenient and now meaningless custom of making them seek re-election on taking office under the Crown. Parties in the con- stituencies have been organized to such an extent that nearly every member comes into the House seriously pledged in all directions either to men or measures. The change was inevitable, but so are the results. As Ministers have become wholly identified with the people, the attitude of the House of Commons towards them has necessarily changed, and it has become the servant rather than the master of the Government. Its function of watching Ministers in the interests of the people has become the stalest of dead fictions. Hostile criticism, and voting that might endanger the Government, have become the monopoly of the minority in Opposition. The business of the majority is to support their party leaders through thick and thin. Woe be to those who fail to do so ! It is little use for them to appeal to the disciplined constituency whose mandate they have dis- obeyed. With a few exceptions, which only illustrate the rule, since they are cases in which the constituencies are in advance of the leaders, they do not fail. On important occasions there is hardly a pretence of voting for reasons above party. The old excitement over divisions on votes of confidence has almost wholly dis- appeared. Everyone knows now how they will go. Two very serious consequences result from this change in the character and spirit of the House of Commons. In the first place, a Minister who is a popular favourite, REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 371 and commands a working majority, can commit almost any folly without fear of a reverse in the House of Commons. Secondly, there has arisen among the minority an ominous tone of despair about resisting first-class Government measures, however bad, by any means but sheer wasting of time, which reveals one of the secret causes of the growth of obstruction. It is easy to see how these results increase the neces- sity for a Second Chamber. The House of Commons is no longer as trustworthy as it used to be, either as a censor of Ministers or as a reviser of Government measures. And the House of Lords is the only other constitutional check during the life of a Parliament upon despotic misgovernment, and the passing of unwise laws. There never was a time when its abolition would be felt so seriously by thoughtful and moderate men, or when any addition to its strength and dignity would be more cordially welcomed. There is another consideration which ought to en- Funda- .... mental re- courage us to reform. The deeper the subject is inquired construc- into, the more evident I believe it will become that no necessary. radical reconstruction is required, or even desirable. The changes most necessary for raising the House in popular estimation, and strengthening its position in the country, are of no revolutionary character, but are in harmony with the essential spirit of the institution, and will graft themselves naturally and easily on to the existing lines. Six centuries ago the House of Lords was an assembly of all the chief notables and dignitaries of the country; that is, to a great extent, what it is now — that is what I think we ought to make it more completely. I believe that such an assembly of great notables, officials, and men of distinction, responsible for their action to no 372 THE HOUSE OF LORDS electoral body or bodies, but to the country at large, and therefore free to perform their duties in a spirit of the purest patriotism, would constitute a stronger and less obnoxious Second Chamber than any elective Senate that could be devised under the conditions that exist in this country. I think one could obtain a very fair idea of what the House of Lords ought to be, and consequently of the line that reform should take, by reading the speeches that were made during the autumn in its defence. The chief points usually put forward in its favour were : That it contained the ablest debaters in Parliament. That its ranks were continually recruited by the en- nobling of the most distinguished Englishmen. That it conducted its affairs in the most business-like manner. That it was the only remaining constitutional check upon despotism. That it acted as a political second court to the Lower House, and gave the country, when necessary, oppor- tunities of reconsidering the Bills of the House of Commons before they became law. That it exercised these functions in a patriotic rather than a party spirit. That it often initiated wise legislation. Now, I think this is a very good picture of what the House of Lords should be, and — allowing for the fact that, like all advocates' statements, it only tells one side of the story — a very true picture of what it is. But its omissions are striking. There is not a word in it about the merits of great men's sons and grandsons, or of large landowners, as legislators. I believe a foreigner might have read the great bulk of the speeches that REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 373 were made on our side from end to end without dis- covering that there was a hereditary or a landowning element in the House. Considering how large these elements are, this silence is very significant. I think it shows a general feeling among the stoutest champions of the House that their preponderance is a point it is wiser not to dwell upon, and that whatever merits it has had better be kept for private appreciation. But there is no hiding or disguising the characteristic features of an institution like the House of Lords. It has to exist, if it can, under the fierce light of public criticism. What is more, it has now to become, on pain of extinction, such a Second Chamber as a great democracy will respect, or, at least, consent to tolerate. We must face this fact ; and, if we do, we must ask ourselves whether such a democracy is likely to tolerate a Second Chamber in which the hereditary element is quite overwhelming. I for one cannot believe it. The arguments that, to The . r , . . ... . hereditary some extent, justify the hereditary principle are of a principle, secondary and indirect character, by no means easily appreciated by plain men ; and the thing itself can appeal but little to the sympathies of the great mass of the people. It will be said that this argument points to nothing short of the abolition of the hereditary principle. I do not admit this. The question is one of quantity and degree. It might be felt quite tolerable to have a certain hereditary element in the House, and yet quite intoler- able that it should be overwhelming. If the English people comes, as I hope it will, to regard the House of Lords as an assembly of the great dignitaries and most 374 THE HOUSE OF LORDS distinguished men. of the country, it may see nothing very incongruous in the holding of hereditary seats by county magnates, whose properties and great responsi- bilities pass from father to son ; or, at least, may be willing to tolerate it, as many things not held to be completely justifiable are tolerated in this country. None the less, it might feel it monstrous that the Second Chamber should be swamped by such an element. And the same line of argument applies to the great preponderance of the landowners. Large landowners are very proper persons to be peers. But landowners are a class — and every class, however good, has its special defects — which renders it undesirable that any class, in such a limited sense of the word, should preponderate overwhelmingly in the national Senate. What we have to do, then, is to alter the proportion that the hereditary peers bear to those who have been ennobled for distinction ; and the obvious way to effect this is to make a limited number of eminent men life peers, and to attach life peerages to certain high offices and positions in the State. It will be asked, ' Whom would you make peers ?' I Distin- answer, ' Distinguished men of many kinds.' A seat in men. the House of Lords ought to be the natural culmination of a great and honourable career. The chief reason why it has not been so, except in a very limited way, up to now, is that for hereditary peerages great wealth is a sine qua non. You could not make Professor Huxley a hereditary peer, because his great-grandson, without even a property to qualify him, might be totally unfit for such a position. Numbers of eminent men have been excluded from the peerage on this ground, and the House of Lords has been a great loser thereby. REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 375 I have mentioned Mr. Huxley's name because he occurs to me as representative of a type that a Second Chamber ought certainly to contain. Apart from his scientific attainments, he has contributed to the political and social problems of his day more incisive and valuable thought, and more practical work, than half the people who consider themselves statesmen. I have often thought that there must be something defective in the political arrangements of a nation in which such a man cannot obtain a direct and recognized voice in the councils of the State, unless he is prepared to give up his time and his priceless labours, and to sit in Parliament as a dele- gate representing other men's opinions. I will make no attempt to enumerate now the posts and offices to which life peerages might be attached. But — merely by way of suggesting one class as an example — why should not all the judges receive ex officio seats in the House of Lords ? No intellectual class is so familiarly known to the people at large, or so generally respected and admired. They are all men who have earned their position by ability and character, and their peculiar knowledge is of special value in a legislative assembly. No one will deny, I think, that Judicial peers, the judicial peers who were instituted a short time ago have proved a valuable addition to the strength of the House. It will be said, perhaps, that the character of English judges, for the strictest impartiality and recti- tude, has always stood so high in general estimation, as compared with that of the judges of other nations, that we should be extremely careful how we risked it by dragging them into the political arena. If they were to be selected for peerages by the leaders of either party, there would be some force in the objection. But 376 THE HOUSE OF LORDS if they are to sit ex officio, it falls to the ground, unless we are to suppose that English Ministers will habitually consider political opinions in appointing judges. They need belong to no party. There would be nothing to prevent them from treating political questions in the judicial and independent spirit that I think should be a characteristic of the House of Lords. Whether it would be advisable to limit the number of hereditary peers by means of some system of selection amongst themselves, as well as to increase the number of distinguished life peers, seems to me doubtful. It would give us a less unwieldy House, and there exists a precedent for it in the elections of the Scotch and Irish peers who sit in the House. But the proposal bristles with practical difficulties. On what principle are peers to be elected to seats ? The Scotch and Irish systems, which give all the seats to the partv which has a majority, are, of course, indefensible, and out of the question. And what is to become of the rejected peers? Are they to become political outlaws, like the excluded Scotch peers at the present moment, who are unable to sit in either House of Parliament, or even to vote like ordinary citizens ? Surely they will not consent to such political extinction, and to give them admission to the other House or the right of voting for members is beyond the power of either the Crown or the House of Lords. Moreover, I confess I am not anxious to see the country peers, whose presence on great division nights so scandalizes some of our reformers, excluded from the House. I do not share the view that has been expressed from the Liberal side of the House of their unfitness for legislative duties. I believe there is many a man among REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 377 these provincial noblemen who is a far shrewder and Country peers, more valuable political unit than some of the busybodies who hang about London through the Session, letting off little speeches on a great variety of subjects, or taking part in the somewhat trivial and dreary business that forms the greater portion of our annual task. Many of them are thoroughly in touch with the local opinion of the counties in which they reside. They form some- times a truer estimate of the real importance of the political questions of the hour than we can do who live in the atmosphere of political strife. If they sometimes carry big divisions, they not unfrequently refuse to carry them, as Conservative leaders and whips could testify. A much more objectionable class are the fops and rowdies, of which there are sure to be occasionally a few in any Chamber composed on the hereditary prin- ciple. But their number is so small, and they are so seldom seen, that it is a question whether it is worth while to run any risk for the sake of getting rid of them. Whether the number of hereditary peers is diminished, or the number of life peers increased sufficiently to balance them, matters little so long as a substantial alteration in the proportion between them is effected. To that reform I believe that all others are of secondary importance. I have no sympathy whatever with proposals for making the House of Lords a representative, in the sense of an elective, House. It is not only that I believe that an assembly composed of the most distinguished men, the judges, the chief officials, and the great mag- nates of the country, would be far more likely to gain a hold upon the popular imagination than any that we 378 THE HOUSE OF LORDS The House should be likely to obtain by the best elective system should not that we could devise ; but I believe that such an assembly, be an dec- f rom the very fact of its non-representative character, and its profound consciousness thereof, can carry on the functions of a Second Chamber with less friction than any other. Its members being responsible only to the nation at large, and thus at once unhampered by obligations to constituents, and unable to shift the responsibility for their actions on to the shoulders of any electorate, it is easier for such an assembly to rise above party feelings, and to sink its own predilections in the treatment of political questions, and far easier for it to yield gracefully to the opinion of the popular Chamber. There may be a dispute between them on this question or on that as to which represents what may be called the better mind of the country ; there can never be any dispute as to which is the representa- tive House. Make the Upper Chamber an elective one, and this valuable clearness of distinction between their positions disappears. They are placed in a false position of rivalry. The duty of customary deference to the assembly which represents the people becomes less obvious, and its practice more difficult. At the same time, the inter- ference of such a Chamber is felt to be more invidious by the popular House. The very fact that its authority is based on a representative sanction inevitably suggests the question, whenever there is a difference of opinion between them, which House is the more representative of the two ; and there is a tendency to try all disputes upon this false issue. The popular House feels that the less representative Chamber ought always to give way. What right has any limited electorate to override the REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 379 suffrages of the people ? France has given us lately a very good example of the ill working of the system. It will be said, perhaps, that the American Senate is a success. The political circumstances of America are so widely different from our own that any analogy drawn from the Senate would be most unsafe as a guide. In the first place, the Americans possess in the State legislatures a set of political bodies on which to found a Senate to which we have, and can have, no equivalent in this country. These State governments rest on the widest popular basis, exercise most of the powers of independent states, and are regarded by the people with as much loyalty and respect as any other part of the constitution. No county or other divisions that we could invent on which to base a Second Chamber could possibly hold a like position in English eyes. Secondly, those constitutional questions that form the most dangerous element of friction between our two Houses are dealt with in America by neither of them, but by the judiciary. Lastly, the American House of Representatives holds American .. ,.-- ... . r House of a totally different position in popular estimation trom R e presen- the House of Commons. That House is the only power ^ v f^ in the English constitution which directly represents House of -01 a • 1 • Commons the people. The American House shares its popular compared, character, not only with the Senate as described above, but with the President, who is elected by the people, and wields more power than most constitutional Sovereigns. The same thing may perhaps be said of an English Prime Minister. But there is this difference between them. The President is independent of the House of Representatives. He owes to it neither his election nor his powers. The Prime Minister, on the 380 THE HOUSE OF LORDS Position other hand, is only connected with the people through English the medium of the House of Commons ; and his powers, Minister an( ^ even his political existence, are dependent on his and that of a biiity to conciliate and control it. He may outshine the Amen- J . can Presi- it and dwarf it, but he is too much a part of it to be its dent. . . rival. For all these reasons, the Americans feel an indif- ference to the supremacy of the House of Representa- tives that is not likely to find any parallel in English sentiment towards the House of Commons — in our day, at any rate. I look with no less distrust upon all schemes having for their object the equalizing of political parties in the House. They seem to me not merely futile, but mis- leading in a very dangerous way. It ought never to be admitted for a moment that party victories in the division lobbies should be a chief aim of leaders, or party objects paramount considerations in the House of Lords. Every peer should feel that he has a duty above and distinct from his party allegiance. And I may say that this patriotic ideal is better maintained in practice in the House of Lords than the general public is apt to fancy. Party organization, of course, there is, and party dis- The House cipline strict enough on occasion. But it can only of Lords' ... . ....... _ view of maintain existence on the condition that the leaders of national^ tne ma J OI "ity exercise it with great forbearance, and rather than take a national rather than party view of their general partisan. duty. No man could lead the House of Lords for two Sessions who did not recognize this obligation. When a Liberal Government is in power, Bills innumerable are passed, which would be rejected at once if the majority did not admit the duty of governing its con- duct by the widest view of the interests of the nation. REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 381 The cases in which it does oppose the House of Com- mons are exceptional, and seldom undertaken without great reluctance. Mr. Gladstone, during one of his Scotch speeches, seemed to be suddenly struck by this generally forgotten aspect of the conduct of the House of Lords, when he looked back on his long career, and called to mind the vast catalogue of reforms that had somehow been passed in rapid succession under its auspices. Party discipline is a necessity in such an assembly. Party Without it there would be an uncertainty and an in- consistency of legislative action that the country would soon discover to be intolerable. But the House must beware of party spirit, which constitutes the greatest and most insidious danger that it has to face and guard against. It must never be forgotten that, whenever the House of Lords comes to be seriously regarded by the country as the mere instrument of the political party which happens to predominate within its walls, its doom is sealed. The party to which it is hostile will sweep it away the first time that it obtains a large majority at the polls, and there will be no one to say it nay. If the moderate men of the country could have been persuaded last autumn that the House of Lords was nothing but the unscrupulous tool of the Tory caucuses, the im- pending attack could hardly have been stayed. The development of party spirit is a most insidious danger. The prevailing forces of the time are fostering it in several ways, and there are no practical tangible means of checking it. Party organization is still growing in the country, and the House of Lords can hardly fail to be affected by the spirit of the day. And when an institution is standing on the defensive, as the House of 382 THE HOUSE OF LORDS Lords has been doing, and is likely to do for some time, the tendency to party discipline grows as the necessity for standing firm in the ranks and trusting implicitly to leaders becomes paramount ; and the increase of dis- cipline creates the temptation to use it for party ends. Individual attempts at independence are generally misunderstood, and do more harm than good. Our chief safeguard must be a vivid consciousness of the danger ever present in the minds both of the leaders and the rank and file. And I should hope that the creation of ex officio peers, such as judges and public officials, would give us a body of men who would keep themselves fairly free from party trammels, and form an independent element. And in connection with this point, I should like to suggest a practical reform which will be smiled at as trivial, but which may not be quite unimportant. I should like to see the cross benches extended to the full width of the House. It would not hurt orthodox Tories and Whigs to sit on them, when there was no room anywhere else ; and at present the accommodation for the independent is miserably insuf- ficient. When the Prince of Wales and the royal Dukes are in the House, there is only room for about a dozen on the cross benches ; while the nondescript piece of furniture between the Lord Chancellor and the table is usually monopolized by noblemen who are hard of hearing. Nowhere else can a peer sit down without ticketing himself as a follower of Lord Granville or Lord Salisbury. The ' cross-bench mind,' which the Duke of Argyll rightly considers so valuable, does not grow quite freely on party benches. If we want to have a strong independent section in the House, I think we shall do well to provide it with a place to sit. REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 383 Let me conclude by making clear my justification for writing this article. If the country were satisfied with the present constitution of the House, I should certainly not have presumed to advance any ideas of my own for its improvement. If the question of its reform had been a sleeping one, I should have been reluctant to say any- thing that might raise it. But it is one of the burning questions of the day. It may smoulder for a few years, but it is certain to come up for settlement before long ; and woe be to us if we have not made a settlement before one is forced upon us from without. x\s soon as Parliament reassembles, Lord Rosebery intends to call attention to it with all the eloquence at his command, and no diffident silence on the part of Conservative peers can prevent an exhaustive discussion, anxiously followed by the public out of doors. I can have no hesitation, then, as a Conservative peer, in pointing out the direction which I think that reform should take, especially when I believe, as I do, that it can be carried out upon Conservative lines, and that the Conservative leaders would do well to make this question their own. Pembroke. SPEECH AT TISBURY CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION. March o> The Earl of Pembroke said he felt he ought to make them some apology for giving a second edition of the returning thanks for this toast ; but the fact was, their committee, with true political instinct, perceived that the question of the House of Lords was the most im- 384 THE HOUSE OF LORDS portant one at the present time, and they requested that both Lord Arundell and himself (Lord Pembroke) should return thanks for it. Therefore, if they were tired of hearing about the House of Lords, they must not lay the blame upon him. They knew the House of Lords had been occupied lately with the question of its own reform ; and, for his part, he was very sorry that question had been shelved. The present constitution of the House of Commons offered an admirable opportunity for deal- ing with that question, for when we had got a Radical majority in the House of Commons, it was quite impossible to pass any reform of the House of Lords that would tend to strengthen it, because the Radical majority in the House of Commons would not pass it. He was quite of opinion that the best way of dealing with it was not to hand the House of Lords over to any committee, and it would have been much better if the question had been dealt with by responsible Ministers of the Crown ; but as these had not seen fit to take up the matter, he did not think Lord Rosebery could be blamed for the action he took. But though Lord Salisbury would not accept Lord Rosebery's motion, he did express a willingness to assent to re- form in the House of Lords, so far as life peerages were concerned. And he (Lord Pembroke) was very strongly of opinion that the introduction of life peer- ages would give them something, but not all that was wanted to strengthen the House of Lords. His friend Lord Rosebery had expressed his dis- sent from that opinion chiefly on the ground that the addition of life peers would increase the already too large number of the Members of the House ; and SPEECH AT T1SBURY 385 secondly, on the ground that he could not trust the Conservative leader with an unlimited power of creating life peers. He (Lord Pembroke), however, thought that Lord Rosebery's second objection was a very poor one, because, on his own showing, the temptation would be a small one, as the Conservative leader had generally a large majority in the House of Lords. As to the question of numbers, he might say he never for a moment proposed or wished that the number of life peers which might be made should be unlimited. He supposed that a limitation would be put upon them, and his view was that, as these life peerages were created, there would be proportionately fewer hereditary peers made, and the House of Lords would remain of manageable proportions, as small as at present, and even, perhaps, it might in time become smaller. But he did not think this question of numbers was one of very great importance. It was not a great practical evil, and, on the other hand, he saw very grave reasons for doubting whether a diminution in the number of the members of the House of Lords would tend to strengthen that House. He thought Lord Rosebery laid too much stress upon this question of numbers, and he was quite sure he laid far too much stress upon the evil of the Conservative majority in the House, and the necessity of equalizing parties there. It was perfectly futile to attempt to get a balance of parties in the House of Lords, if only for this reason, that, as fast as the Liberals were made peers, and got into the independent atmosphere of the House of Lords, they turned Tories. Mr. Gladstone had made himself responsible for a large portion of the phalanx of Tory 25 3 86 THE HOUSE OF LORDS Liberal measures passed in House Lords. »i peers that so distressed Lord Rosebery. He (Lord Pembroke) would go further, and say any attempt to equalize parties in the House of Lords was mischievous, for this reason — it tended to encourage a wrong idea of the spirit and functions that should belong to the House of Lords. That House should not be a place for party contests, and attempts to win battles in the division lobbies. To do that was to make it a bad imitation of the House of Commons. It was the peculiar duty of the House of Lords to take a national view of the political questions, and it was peculiarly fitted by its constitution to do so. Members of the House of Commons were returned to that House as representatives of parties, and therefore their allegiance to parties was necessarily very strong. Members of the House of Lords were the representatives of no party, and their chief duty was directly to the nation, to which alone they were responsible. And he wished to say this ideal of the spirit that should animate the House of Lords was much more fulfilled in practice than people were in the habit of supposing. Surely Lord Rosebery might have re- membered that the long list of Liberal measures which had been passed in the present reign had all passed in the House of Lords in spite of the Con- servative majority, which he considered so great an evil, and in several instances, such as the Land Act of 1881, had received assistance, rather than obstruction, from that body. As a matter of fact, whenever the Radical Government was in power the Conservative majority of the House of Lords put their party feelings, and often their personal opinions, into their pockets again and again. A great many of their adversaries sneered SPEECH AT TISBURY 387 at them for this very reason, but he said boldly it was just this power of taking a broad national view of their political duty which fitted the House of Lords for the position it held as the Second Chamber in the country. It amused Lord Rosebery to depict the Conserva- tive majority as being a sort of inanimate and obedient weapon of which Lord Salisbury could make use when- ever he pleased. He (Lord Pembroke) did not think they would get Lord Salisbury to subscribe to that view of it. The power that Lord Salisbury exercised over the Conservative majority was great and well deserved. The Conservative peers had a great ad- miration for his talents and character, but nobody knew better than Lord Salisbury how very independent and strong a view these Conservative peers were apt to take of their duties, and they were not the sort of in- animate beings represented by Lord Rosebery. On very similar grounds to this he had no sympathy Indepen- whatever with the projects for making the House of t h epeers ' Lords representative of any electorate, however dis- vote - tinguished. For, in his view, this would trench upon the province that distinctly belonged to the House of Commons, and the only effect could be to increase the jealousy and friction between the two Houses, to put the House of Lords in a false position, and cause every dispute between them to be tried on the false issue of which was the most representative of the two. In his opinion the House of Lords ought to claim to be repre- sentative of nothing excepting a very large portion of the good sense, and talent, and patriotism, and in- dependent opinion of the country, and the more of this element they put into the House of Lords by means of life peerages and what was called ex-officio 3 88 THE HOUSE OF LORDS peerages the better he thought it would be. Lord Salisbury had expressed his willingness to entertain favourable proposals based upon these two lines, and therefore he (the speaker) did hope that this golden opportunity might not yet be lost, and this Parliament might see the real reform in the House of Lords which would tend to strengthen its position in the eyes of the country. Well, they had had so much politics that he would only say one word about the House of Commons. It seemed to him to have given them a very good illustra- tion lately of that wise American proverb, ' Never pro- phesy unless you know,' because if there was one thing more certain than another a year ago, it was that this great phantom of obstruction, which had grown steadily for the last ten or twelve years, had become one of the permanent institutions of the country. But there had been a waft of a wand, and it had all faded away like a dream, and he only hoped it would remain away. He was afraid he would offend his friend on his left (Lord Arundell) in what he was about to say, but to his mind the most interesting event of the last week or two had been Lord Salisbury's very brief, but very emphatic, declaration against Protection. That declara- tion was based, if they would notice, upon this ground — which he thought was a very strong one- — the immense disagreement and enmity it would afford between classes. That was a strong ground, and it would be a most suicidal policy for landlords to go in for Protection, for their position would be a difficult one in resisting legislative interference if it could be shown they were supported by national taxation. This reminded him of a story that was illustrated by Leech. SPEECH AT TISBURY 389 A magnificent life -guardsman was on duty, and a ragged boy was looking at him, when the life-guards- man said : ' What are you staring at ?' The little boy then looked up, and replied : ' Why shouldn't I look at yer ? I pays for yer.' It would be a very bad time for the landlords of England if ever the democracy said to them : ' Why shouldn't we do what we like with you ? We pay for you.' He thought it would be well for them all to look about them and put their House in order, and see if there was any grievance which they could mitigate before the hour of struggle came. He believed there were some, but, before making the remarks he wished to make on this point, he would like to state plainly and emphatically he was no believer in that dream of agri- cultural revolution by which the capitalist farmer was to be supplanted by the labourer or the working man on his own account. It was against common-sense and reason to suppose that the man who could afford to be content with a small profit per acre was going to be supplanted by the man who could only make a living by obtaining a high profit per acre, especially in these days of low prices. It was without reason to suppose that the man who possessed the appliances for tilling the land economically on a large scale was going to be beaten by the man whose appliances were less effective and economical. It was also against all the teaching of experience that history gave us on this subject. As far back as Arthur the last century that very shrewd and unprejudiced observer, Mr. Arthur Young, noted in the improvements that were then taking place in English agriculture that the small man was coming gradually to have to give 390 THE HOUSE OF LORDS way to the larger farmer, with whose improved methods of cultivation he was unable to compete. This move- ment became a torrent when prices fell at the end of the French war. There was an idea afloat that the small proprietors of England had been gradually driven away from the English land by the action of the English Land Laws. He believed this was a vulgar error. He could tell them this as a fact : there was no diminution in the number of English freeholders up to the date of the battle of Waterloo, but when that event took place, and war prices were brought to an end, thousands of small men who had gone struggling on as long as prices kept up were ruined and driven from the land. They were ruined by economic causes, not by the Land Laws. Their fate was shared in some degree by the small labouring farmers. Movement Since then the movement had been constantly in in the . , J direction the direction of the large farmers ; and the labourer farms farming on his own account, whether as owner or tenant, had become, over the greater part of England, a rare exception. They could no more reverse this movement to any substantial extent than they could make water run uphill. It was perfectly true that this large farm movement had been carried too far, and farms were made too large for the average capital of the men who had to occupy them, and this fact they had all become acquainted with for a long time. But it was mere folly for anyone to allow this fact to lead him into the delusion that the capitalist farmer was going to be supplanted by the labourer. The labourer could not do it, not even if he worked sixteen hours a day and took out his old woman every morning to put in the plough team alongside of the horse and the SPEECH AT TISBURY 391 donkey, as he (Lord Pembroke) had sometimes seen abroad. He had insisted very strongly on this point because in what he was going to say he was not advocating any attempt to meet or encourage such an absurd idea as he had mentioned. The only effect of any action in that direction must be to throw more of the land out of cultivation, and thus injure the people. But he did think there was something that might be done. They must not forget that a few acres of land was a very great convenience to the small tradesman — the village tradesman — or the artisan. The agricultural labourer could get a great deal of help out of a large allotment, and there were exceptional men who actually would make a living — though a very bare one — out of four or five acres. Then, again, they must not forget that the large farm system went too far, not only in the way of making farms too large for the capital of most tenants, but it worked a social evil by destroying all the stepping-stones that had existed between the positions of the farmer and the labourer. The total destruction of these small farms had made it very much more diffi- cult for the working man to rise to that position of the farmer than it used to be. For all these reasons he thought landlords and agents would do well to try to satisfy this want if they possibly could, and when a convenient piece of land came into their hands to try whether they could not manage to satisfy the wants of the small man instead of always handing it over as a matter of course to the large farmers, as was now very generally done. But if the landlords tried to meet them in that way, the small men, on their part, must be reasonable, and try to 392 THE HOUSE OE LORDS understand the necessary limitations upon such a movement. He was not going into all this that evening, but there were some great difficulties in the way of it. There was one which affected people in his part of the country more, perhaps, than it did those at Tisbury. There they had generally a little good land at the bottom and a lot of inferior land at the top of the hills. The small man could only cultivate land properly close to his house, but if they were going to take away that land from the farmers, in these days, it would not pay the farmers to cultivate the rest. If they did that, the upper land would go out of cultivation, and the whole result of their action would be that the land would support even fewer people than it did now. Then, again, landlords must have some reasonable security that land would be properly cultivated. Any- body could make farming pay by taking a bit of land, taking two or three crops off it, and then giving it up worked out. He knew a case of a landlord who was asked for some land by some labourers about two years ago, and he gave them a very nice piece all ready for sowing. They had had two crops off it, but he believed they had put nothing back at all. In another year that land would be, of course, entirely run out, and they would drop it, and very likely go back to the landlord and ask for more. He could only say a landlord who allowed such a practice deserved to have his land taken from him, for it would end in the ruin of an estate and every one who lived on it. These were some of the difficulties, but he felt con- vinced, nevertheless, that if landlords had their hearts in the right place, and were honestly bent on it, they SPEECH AT TISBURY 393 would find the means of satisfying the complaint that nobody but a big farmer could ever get a bit of land. He believed if the feeling of its scarcity could be dis- pelled, the demand for it would greatly decrease. Feel- ing they could not get it made people exaggerate its value, and there were no people so keen about allot- ments as those who had not got them. He would say only one word more on politics before he sat down. There was a temporary lull in the great political question of our time — the question of the Union. Mr. Gladstone had repeatedly and emphatically declared he would not tell us anything more as to what his new Home Rule scheme was like, because if he did it would tie his hands, whilst his opponents' would remain free. But, until he did tell us more about it, he (Lord Pembroke) did not see how things could be very much more advanced than at present. There was something amusing and audacious about this position of Mr. Gladstone. Two years ago he introduced a scheme of Home Rule. It proved to be utterly imprac- ticable, and was decisively condemned, first by the House of Commons and then by the country. What was more, it was pretty clearly shown that Home Rule was not a project upon which a satisfactory scheme could be provided. And yet Mr. Gladstone calmly said to the country, ' I am not going to tell you anything more about my Home Rule scheme until you return me to power with a mandate to grant Ireland Home Rule.' It did occur to him that Mr. Gladstone must think the constituencies were well named 'the country,' because only the simplest and most puzzle-headed countryman would ever consent to buy such a ' pig in a poke ' as that. At any rate, he hoped in South Wilts 394 THE HOUSE OF LORDS they would all firmly resolve they would not give their votes to a Home Rule candidate until they had before them some scheme of Home Rule which was plainly conducive to the safety and welfare of both countries. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. April 26, 1888. The Earl of Pembroke said that he was strongly in favour of a reform of the House of Lords, and no less strongly opposed to many of the proposals that were now current. The necessity for a strong Second Chamber had greatly increased of late years — in the first place in consequence of the extension of the suffrage ; in the second place by the fact that, owing to the increase of party organization in the constitu- encies destroying the independence of members, and Ministers having gradually come to be regarded as the people's rather than the King's, the House of Commons had ceased to be an efficient check upon the Government of the day ; and in the third place through reform of procedure in the other House, which would undoubtedly enable a temporary majority to pass many measures of which the country might not really approve, and which it ought therefore to be given a chance of reconsider- ing. He did not believe that the House of Lords, as at present constituted, was strong enough in popular estimation to do its work efficiently without causing an amount of irritation that would endanger its powers, if not its existence. Thev must remember that the SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OE LORDS 395 hereditary principle on which the House was chiefly constituted was of all others the most distasteful to the democratic spirit that prevailed in our time. He supposed he should be reminded that, in the last struggle between the Houses, the House of Lords at least held its own. But they must not forget that the battle was never fought out, and that no one could tell what the result would have been if Mr. Gladstone had appealed to the country with a cry for the reform of the House of Lords. For it was not abolition that they had to fear. With our political institutions a Second Chamber was an obvious and undeniable necessity. The danger was that, in a fit of democratic passion, the country might insist on a reform in the direction of curtailing the powers of that House to an extent that would make it too weak to be of much use as a Second Chamber. He held, therefore, that the object of any reform should be to strengthen the House in the estimation of the country without proportionately increasing the friction with the popular Chamber ; and that the extent to which they intended to do this should be the test by which all proposals for reform should be tried. The proviso which he had stated was a very important one. They might construct a Second Chamber nearly as strong as the House of Commons ; but if they did, the popular Chamber could never rest until it had crippled or destroyed it, so that its stability would be less than that of the present House of Lords. How did this Bill look when tried by such a test ? He strongly protested against the provisions which enabled peers to choose which House they would sit in. He was sure that such a scheme must greatly 396 THE HOUSE OF LORDS Weaken- weaken the personnel of the House. Many of its most mg of the ... House of distinguished members would never have been there at thedeser- a ^ ^ they had been able to remain in the House of tionofthe Commons. Young peers would be the strongest candi- young ° r ° peers to dates for the county divisions. When they were of any the other . ...... House. use the pressure put upon them by their constituencies to remain where they were would be stronger than they could resist, even when their personal inclinations pointed the other way. The result would be that, as a general rule, the strong men would stay in the Lower House and the weak ones would come there. It would be better to have no reform at all than to consent to a plan that would so seriously weaken the House. This proposal was a necessary consequence of the supposed necessity of reducing the number of the exist- ing peers under any reformed scheme. It was naturally felt that, if they were going to deprive peers of their seats, they must throw the House of Commons open to them. But let him ask what this necessitv of re- ducing their numbers amounted to. So far as it was directed to reducing the preponderance of the hereditary element, he had a certain amount of sympathy with it, though he thought the remedy worse than the evil ; but they were told that, unless that was done, they would have such an unwieldy House. What was the meaning of that cuckoo cry that everyone seemed to repeat ? What did the practical inconvenience amount to ? They did not want to march the peers all abreast through Piccadilly or the lobbies. If 200 life peers were added to their numbers they would be no larger than those of the House of Commons. But it was said they must cut down their numbers in order to exclude those peers who took no part in their proceedings as SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 397 a rule, but came up for big divisions and swamped the working members of the House by their votes. He admitted that it was a scandal that some of Value of the those peers should vote, but the evil was commonly country exaggerated. Without going into the merits of the peers * country peers, whose competency was generally under- rated, he denied that in practice they did swamp the intelligent opinion of the House. How many im- portant divisions could be pointed to in recent years in which the issue would have been different if the last reserves from the country — the ' Landsturm ' of their lordships' House — had not been called up on both sides ? And if that was so, what did it matter whether a division was won by 400 against 200, or 200 against 100 ? He did not believe that it told hardly, as was generally believed, against the opposite party. It was the London quite as much as the country peers who had come over to the Conservative side of the House. One of the most interesting sights on a big division night was certain fossil peers, if he might be allowed to call them so, on the other side of the House — in- teresting relics of a time when there was a Whig aristocracy — a happy time, when a large section of the upper classes found it possible to work in the ranks of the Liberal Party. But if it was, as he ad- mitted, some scandal that such peers should vote at all, it was not necessary to resort to such revolutionary methods as depriving peers wholesale of their seats in order to prevent them from voting, which reminded him of Charles Lamb's Chinaman burning his house down to roast his sucking-pigs. It might easily be done by rules making a certain minimum of attendance a necessary qualification for the right to vote ; and he would remark 398 THE HOUSE OF LORDS by the way that such a rule would practically settle the difficulty of the 'black sheep.' By such a scheme all the difficulties and drawbacks that inevitably followed from any provision to exclude a large section of peers would be avoided ; for he wished to point out that any large reduction in their numbers would distinctly tend to weaken the House in popular estimation. A good deal in this Bill was worthy of consideration, but its main proposal to appoint a peer from each county board was so premature, while its excision would necessitate such an entire redrafting of the Bill, that he felt that it could not pass in its present shape. This being so, he hoped he might be allowed, with the indulgence of the House, to give his views as briefly as he could of the lines on which a reform of this House should and should not proceed, always remembering that their object should be to strengthen the House in popular estimation without increasing friction. The thing that struck him most in considering this subject was the wonderful smoothness with which, on the whole, the House of Lords had performed its functions in the Constitution. In spite of its con- stitution being most repugnant to the political spirit of our time — in spite of the era of constant radical change that they had been passing through during this century — there had been wonderfully little serious collision between the House of Lords and the repre- sentatives of the people. He did not think that most would-be reformers had devoted sufficient attention to this fact, and consequently they had failed to note one or two essential points in the nature of the House of Lords that had enabled it, in spite of all drawbacks and inefficiencies, to perform the duties of a Second SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OE LORDS 399 Chamber so well. It seemed to him that two of the most important of these were, first, the fact that its constitution, and in a certain sense its duty, did not clash with those of the House of Commons ; and, secondly, the fact that its members were responsible to no electorate, but to the nation as a whole alone. These two characteristics they must seek to preserve. On this ground he was opposed to all schemes for making it a representative in the sense of an elected House. Let him say first that, if they introduced the elective element, they must be prepared for its becoming a representative Chamber altogether, for the elective and nominative elements would not harmonize. The former would always claim the superior authority, and eventually oust the other. It would say : ' We repre- sent so-and-so ; you represent no one but yourselves ' ; and a representative House would be worse fitted for a Second Chamber than the present House of Lords. It would not be nearly so easy for a House with an electorate behind it to yield gracefully to the repre- sentatives of the people as it was for this House, which had nothing but its broad national duty to consider ; and the House of Commons would be far more jealous of such an assembly than it was of the present House, because it would regard it as trenching upon its own character and function of representation. Every dis- pute between them would be tried partly on the false issue of which really represented the better mind of the country. Nothing but harm could come of such a con- fusion of constitutional functions. The House of Lords should claim to be representative of nothing but a large portion of the patriotism, good sense, talent, and in- dependent opinion of the country ; and the more of 4 oo THE HOUSE OE LORDS these they put into it by means of life and ex- officio peerages the better. On the same grounds he had no sympathy with any attempts to deal with the evil of the Conservative majority on which the noble Earl who moved for a Committee on this subject before Easter laid so much stress. In the first place, any attempt to equalize parties was futile, because Liberals became Tories nearly as fast as they could make them on coming into the independent atmosphere of this House. Secondly, it was mischievous, because it encouraged a wrong idea of what the spirit and functions of the House of Lords should be. This House should not be a place for con- stant party contest and attempts to win party victories in the division lobbies. They could not, of course, exclude altogether the spirit of party : but it was certainly the peculiar duty of this House to take a national, rather than a party, view of political questions, and for this purpose it was specially fitted by its constitution. Members of the House of Commons were returned as the repre- sentatives of parties in their constituencies, and their allegiance to party was necessarily very strong. Mem- bers of the House of Lords sat as the representatives of no party, and their chief duty was directed to the nation, to which alone they were responsible, and he wished to say that this ideal of what the spirit of the House of Lords should be was fulfilled in practice to a far greater extent than people were in the habit of thinking. Surely the noble Earl who moved for the Committee might have remembered that the long list of Liberal measures that had been passed during the present reign, SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 401 and which Liberals were so proud of, had all success- fully run the gauntlet of the Conservative majority which the noble lord regarded as so great an evil ; and in many cases in their passage through this House had been improved, rather than obstructed, as was the case with the Land Act of 1881, surely as distasteful a measure to the Tory majority as any that could be conceived. As a matter of fact there was never a session when a Radical Government was in power that the Conservative majority did not put their party pre- judices, and even their personal opinions, into their pockets again and again. Their adversaries very often sneered at them on this very ground, but he said boldly that it was just this power of taking a broad national view of its political duty that fitted the House of Lords for its position as the Second Chamber of the country. He did not believe that any revolutionary reform would have the effect of strengthening their lordships' House in the country, because any strength that might be gained in other directions would be more than counterbalanced by the loss of that strength which came from long prescription. It seemed to him absurd to believe that a brand-new House of Lords, based upon any fancy franchise, would be more stable in a consti- tutional struggle than the present House, which possessed that respect which always belonged to age, and which had proved both its right and its power to exist by seven centuries of trial. The only reform, therefore, that he wished to see was that the over- whelming preponderance of the hereditary elements should be qualified by a strong infusion of life and ex-officio peers. 26 4 o2 THE HOUSE OF LORDS There were people who failed to see that there could be any middle course between condemning the here- ditary principle altogether, and approving the present composition of the House. Surely it was an intelligible view to hold that such men as the great hereditary landowners, brought up as most of them were with a greater sense of public duty than any other class in any other country in the world, might be very proper people to have seats in the Upper Chamber, and yet to hold that to have that House almost made up of such an element was intolerable in a democratic country like ours. It was objected to this plan that the life and ex-officio peers — say, 150 or 200 strong — would still be swamped by the hereditary peers, if the latter were allowed to remain in their present numbers. He did not think that anyone who knew the modest and re- tiring nature of the great bulk of the hereditary peers would be the least afraid that they would overrule such an element either in fact or in appearance, either by their influence or by their votes. And if rules were adopted such as he advocated, for obliging them to qualify by attendance for the right to vote, there would be no danger whatever of this. It was absolutely necessary to institute life peerages if the personnel of the House was to be strengthened by the addition of able and distinguished men, for at present their selection was confined to those who were also rich. They could not make a poor man a hereditary peer, because his grandson, without even wealth and social position to qualify him, might be quite unfit for such a position, and thus some of the men who were most desirable were excluded. The noble Marquis at the head of the Government answered this argument in his SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 403 speech on the noble lord's (Lord Rosebery) motion by the remark that poor men were becoming less unwilling to accept hereditary peerages. He must say that this remark rilled him with alarm. He could hardly imagine anything that would be more fatal to their lordships' House than a body of hereditary peers, without even wealth and social position to recommend them in the absence of personal distinction, coming down from their homes in the suburbs, or perhaps begging half a day's holiday from their places of business, in order to record their votes in their lordships' House against some decision of the other House. Patient as this country was of anomalies, he did not think they would long tolerate that. Then it was objected that men would think it be- neath their dignity to accept life peerages instead of hereditary ones. His answer was that he hoped the practice of creating new hereditary peerages would be greatly diminished, if not altogether extinguished, and that when it came to be understood that life peerages were the reward of distinction, and hereditary peerages the reward of successful money-making, the former would come to be regarded as the higher honour of the two. But the most common objection to this scheme he advocated, was that it would bring about all the dangers involved in a reconstruction of the House for a very small object. He denied both in toto. It would not involve those dangers, and the object was not a small one. Its chief merit was that there was no loss to set off against whatever strength it might add to the House. It would not excite the jealousy of the House of Commons, and there was no departure in it from exist- ing lines. The principle oiex-officio peerages had already 4 o 4 THE HOUSE OF LORDS been admitted in the persons of the judicial peers, who had been such an addition to their lordships' House. They had life peerages practically represented by several distinguished men, whose presence there was owing in part to their possessing no sons. When the reform was accomplished, the House would be still what it had always been in theory, and what it was at its beginning — an assembly of the chief notables of the country. And yet he could not admit that the change would be insignificant. What he wanted to bring about was that, when the ordinary citizen was asked by a foreigner how the House of Lords was con- stituted, he should reply : ' Oh, it's in the main an assembly of all the great men in the country,' instead of saying, as he would now, that it was chiefly com- posed of hereditary landowners and plutocrats. To call such a change in the popular view of that House a small one argued to him some lack of imagination. He earnestly hoped that, if the Government could not allow this Bill to be sent to a Select Committee, they would give some pledge that, if it were withdrawn, they would deal with the question themselves. If they made the question their own, the)- could construct a scheme which would avoid the numerous dangers that were involved in this question of reform, and they had plenty of strength to resist unwelcome alterations. The opportunity was a golden one, and might not recur. They could not strengthen the House of Lords when there was a Radical majority in the Commons ; and the moment was one of profound peace. The agitation against the House was temporarily dormant, and they could reform themselves without interference or suspicion of weakness. Some would say that this SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 4°5 was a reason for leaving things alone. He answered that it was only in time of peace that the House of Lords could be properly reformed. They could not do anything to strengthen it at a moment when there was a popular agitation against its powers. He believed it would be one of those mistakes which affected the destiny of nations if the present Parliament were allowed to pass away without such a reform of this House as would tend to insure the safe working of our constitutional machinery for many a year to come. MISCELLANEOUS. MISCELLANEOUS. NOT PROVEN. To the Editor of the 'Times.' Wilton House, October 20, 1877. Sir, I cannot claim to have read all that has been written about the Penge case, but as far as I know no one has as yet pointed out the real cause of the de- plorable deadlock of contradictions to which justice has been reduced. It seems to me to be simply this — that according to the forms and usages of English criminal law the jury could not have returned any verdict that could fairly be called satisfactory. In a murder case a jury have but two findings, strictly speaking, to choose between — ' Guilty ' or ' Not guilty'; but in certain circumstances they can reduce the crime to manslaughter. No other findings are open to them, and if they refuse to find a verdict at all they are dis- charged and a fresh jury placed in the same position. I think this Penge case illustrates the imperfection of such a system in a very marked manner. There was strong, though not conclusive, evidence of 4 io MISCELLANEOUS murder, and the jury returned a verdict of ' Guilty.' We know to what dissatisfaction that verdict has given rise. Would a verdict of ' Not guilty ' have given rise to less ? I venture to assert that a large majority of the public would have felt that there had been a gross and very mischievous failure of justice. A finding of manslaughter remains to be considered. It would, doubtless, have been very convenient, but would it have been satisfactory ? I am afraid only to those somewhat muddle-headed people who think that it is less wrong in principle to give a man penal servi- tude on insufficient evidence than to hang him on the same, and that a jury are justified in bringing in a verdict of manslaughter because they are nearly, but not quite, sure that a murder has been committed. It seems to me that the manslaughter theory had con- siderably less direct evidence in its support than the theory of murder ; few people, I imagine, would dare to affirm that it was conclusively made out. A verdict of manslaughter, however convenient, could not be con- sidered really satisfactory. What, then, was a jury to do? The cause of this dilemma is patent enough. It lies in the fact that juries are forced in all cases to find positive verdicts, whether or no the evidence is sufficient to justify them in so doing, and it is quite clear that the institution of a Court of Appeal will not meet it. The wisest heads in the world cannot make insufficient evi- dence satisfactory, or produce certainty when the mate- rials do not exist. I think it is quite clear that if we are (perhaps rightly) too scrupulous to convict on that pro- bable evidence that Bishop Butler tells us is ' the guide of life,' and if we are at the same time (not unnaturally) THE EASTERN QUESTION 411 afraid to acquit those against whom there is the strongest presumption of vile guilt, there is no course open to us Not , proven, but to allow juries to pronounce negative verdicts such as the ' Not proven ' of Scotch law. I am aware there is a strong prejudice against it, as being a cowardly evasion, unsatisfactory, and cruel to the accused. But what can be more unsatisfactory than a shot in the dark when the evidence does not amount to certainty, and what more cruel than a verdict of murder based on a mistaken guess ? I do not believe that juries would often misuse it, either from timidity or from malice, and both the prosecution and the de- fence might have the right to demand a fresh trial when such a verdict was returned. Yours, etc., Pembroke. THE EASTERN QUESTION— THE POSITION OF ENGLAND IN 1878.* To the Editor of the ' Times.' Wilton, February 18, 1878. Sir, At a moment when there exists a very wide- spread discontent at the position in which this country is placed, I think it is the duty of every Englishman, before venting it on the Ministry or the Russians, to ask himself two questions. First, whether his Govern- ment could have followed any course of policy essentially * These remarks upon the inevitable Nemesis that follows the traditional practice of laissez-faire in the Eastern Question have received their latest illustration in the existing Armenian difficulty. 412 MISCELLANEOUS different from the one they have pursued ? Secondly, whether the position that so irritates him is not a natural and inevitable consequence of that policy ? And I hope you will allow me to say a few words on both points. With regard to their choice of policy, I do not think it can be made out that they had more than the pro- verbial three courses even apparently open to them, and two of these I think I can show were not merely dangerous but impossible. No reform i. They might have undertaken the support and except In a re ^ orm °f Turkey together, and forbidden Russia to state of break the peace. They might have said to Russia, peace. . . ' We agree with you upon the necessity of reform in the government of the Christian Provinces ; we are willing, and, we believe, able to effect it ; but a state of peace is necessary to such a reform, and we are bound to warn you that if you insist on attacking the Porte you will find us opposed to you.' And to Turkey, ' You shall have our support against Russia, but only on the condition that you carry out, according to our direc- tions, certain reforms in the administration of the Christian Provinces of your empire.' Such a policy as I have very roughly indicated would have had, I think, much to recommend it. It might have removed the chief source of danger to the Turkish Empire and the peace of Europe ; it might have given the Turks time to reform, if reform were possible to them ; it might have secured an indefinite period of peace to South- Eastern Europe ; and it would have effectually protected British interests, morality included. That the Turks would have jumped at such a bargain there can be little doubt. And I think its risks, so far as anyone unacquainted with the secrets of foreign THE EASTERN QUESTION 413 politics can tell, would not have been very great. Russian statesmen would have paused long before committing their country deliberately to a war against England and Turkey combined, and, besides this, their chief excuse for aggression would have been taken away. Of course, there would have been some risk of war ; but it must be remembered that no policy is devoid of risk on a question of this kind, as we are now finding out to our considerable perturbation. But, right or wrong, wise or foolish, whether it ever g 0l ^J n ^ f found favour with our Government or not, such a policy to enforce was impossible. The furious outcry against Turkey t0 resist that followed the suppression of the insurrections, the Russia - passionate demand reiterated again and again by an influential and considerable section of the country, that nothing should be done that would thwart Russia in her designs for the liberation of the Christians, or that should even look like a support of Turkey, put it entirely out of the question. An attempt to prosecute it could only have ended in either a downfall of the Ministry and a reversal of the policy, or a war with Russia, who would probably have trusted to the chance that no Constitutional Government would dare to face such an outcry. 2. We might have forced reform on Turkey in concert with the other Powers, or, to speak plain English — for only one Power was prepared to resort to force — in concert with her enemy Russia. Such a policy, it seems to me, would have been not unlike a policeman assisting a garrotter to overcome an inebriate and disorderly gentleman. Allies of such different character with such different objects in view could scarcely have maintained their amity for any length of time. They would have 4 i4 MISCELLANEOUS Incom- been agreed on the necessity of protecting the Christian of viewVof subjects of the Porte, but on nothing else. The aim of England R uss i a would have been to weaken Turkey as much as Russia, possible, and to procure advantages for herself. Eng- 3.nd there* fore im- land, on the other hand, would have felt herself bound bluf'of a k y her conscience, her interests, and the existence of a concerted strong Turkish partv in the country, to respect the policy. . . rights of the Turks and the safety of their empire, as far as was consistent with the work in hand. And as she could hardly have pleaded that she was not respon- sible for the action of her co-operator, I cannot but believe that such a policy would have ended in a quarrel that might have set all Europe in a blaze. But as some, doubtless, will disagree with these views, I prefer to base my proof of the impracticability of such a policy on surer ground. It is a fact, then, that there was at no time any party in England in favour of such a policy numerous enough to enable any Government to carry it out. Though it must have been some temptation to an Opposition to start a brilliant policy of their own which would never have had to undergo the trying ordeal of practical experiment, its advocates failed to convert the bulk of the Liberal Party ; and no one, I imagine, will urge that it would have found much favour with the Conservatives, in spite of its spirited and warlike character. These two courses, then, being impracticable, and the division of opinion in the country on the merits of the Eastern Question being what it was, I do not see that any course was open to any Government but the neutral one which they pursued. And now, sir, as to the second question, whether our present position is the natural and inevitable conse- THE EASTERN QUESTION 415 quence of this policy of neutrality. I believe that it is. inevitable I believe that it is an inevitable consequence of such quences f policy that we should be now in a worse position to neutrality. resist any aggression on the part of Russia than we were before Turkey was subdued ; that it is inevitable that some of our interests should, at least, appear to be insecure ; inevitable, and a matter of course, that the Russians should make for themselves the strongest position possible, both moral and military, before dis- cussing with possibly unfriendly Powers the terms of peace ; inevitable, and a matter of course, that after the sacrifices they have made they should ' protect their own interests ' as far as they dare ; inevitable, that at such a time they should be jealous of and indignant with any neutral Power that they suspect of an inten- tion to rob them of their spoils. These things may be unpleasant to us, but they are the inevitable conse- quences of the neutrality that the mass of the country deliberately elected to maintain, and are not therefore subjects for surprises or for the species of indignation that it produces. I think it is our duty at this moment to acknowledge this to ourselves ; to open our eyes to the fact that it is impossible to combine the advantages and economies of neutrality with the privileges of intervention, and that neutrality has dangers peculiarly its own ; and to strive to assume that happy mixture of good temper and firmness which alone can give dignity to our situa- tion, and overcome with safety the difficulties by which it is beset. Yours, etc., Pembroke. 416 MISCELLANEOUS ZULU WAR—SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY.* To the Editor of the ' Times.' Wilton, April 6, 1879. Sir, That Cetywayo should be at this moment asking for peace, and protesting that he never intended war, is to my mind a fact of the greatest significance — signi- ficance not at all diminished by any of the rumours by which it is accompanied. It may be perfectly true that at the very time that he is pleading for peace he is pre- paring for more war ; but considering that he is actually engaged with an invading army, I fail to see that this casts any doubt on the sincerity of his protestations. It may be perfectly true that his account of the origin of the battle of Isandlana is incorrect ; but that he should attempt to excuse himself about that and other matters is rather a proof of the sincerity of his wish for peace than the reverse. And if it is the case, as he declares, that he not only wants peace but never in- tended to attack us (and there is much in evidence that bears out this view), it comes simply to this, that the * The attack on the Zulus, which was justified by Government apologists as a defensive measure, was unpopular among many of their supporters, and probably contributed considerably to their overthrow in 1880. The Transvaal had been annexed in 1877 with a dowry of border-feuds and 12s. 6d. in the exchequer. The presence of Cetywayo's splendidly-organized army — the 'man- destroying celibates ' of Sir Bartle Frere— on the frontier was no doubt some danger to Natal as well as the Transvaal, and the destruction of this fine force encouraged the Boers again to claim their independence. ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 417 war is founded on a mistake, that it is an unjust and inexcusable war, and that it is the evident duty of this country to enter into negotiations to end it without delay, if this can be done without serious danger to the colon}-. Sir Bartle Frere's chief excuse for going to war is that Cetywayo was bent on hostilities, and if this belief turns out to be unfounded, what justification remains for all this slaughter of men and stealing of cattle ? Surely the rape of the surveyors' pipes when they were spying in Zulu territory ; the capture of two slaves across the boundary (for which repeated excuses and apologies were made and a fine of £50 offered) ; the raid of Umbellini, Cetywayo's complicity in which has yet to be proved ; the barbarity of his system of government, and the existence of a military organiza- tion, are, even taken collectively, miserably insufficient. What were the grounds of this conviction of Sir Bartle Frere's ? It is impossible to find them in the Blue-books. He himself admits that he cannot give satisfactory proof, and asks the Government to trust 'to his judgment and power of appreciating (such) evidence.' Such evidence as is given is hardly worthy of the name at all. It consists chiefly of native gossip, of the unreliableness of which we are constantly warned, and of uncertain rumours and unproven assumptions con- tained in reports from border agents and private cor- respondents. And what do these reports come to when they are taken one with another ? Simply this, that the Zulus are unquiet and anxious ; and Sir Bartle Frere gives no reason for his assumption that the anxiety and restlessness proceed from a desire to attack 2 7 4 i8 MISCELLANEOUS us, instead of a fear that we are going to attack them. Hear what Sir Henry Bulwer says on a report which Sir Bartle Frere adduces as if it was a plain proof that an immediate attack was impending, in a memorandum dated January 9, which I regret I cannot quote in cxtenso : Sir Henry ' j n the early part of September the gathering of a Bulwer. large body of Zulus was reported by our border agent at the Lower Tugela to be taking place on the opposite side of the river, and within a few miles of the border. It was reported also that two large Zulu regiments were there. Ostensibly, the gathering was for hunting pur- poses ; but as there was no game in the neighbourhood, the alleged object was, of course, discredited. It was supposed the gathering was a demonstration of some kind. A number of the Queen's troops had recently arrived in Natal by land and by sea, and there had, un- fortunately, been much loud and loose talk in conse- quence in Natal regarding the object for which these troops had come, it being freely and openly said that they had come with the object of invading the Zulu country. These reports did not, of course, fail to reach the King's ears, and he told the Natal messengers who took my message of the 16th of August what he had heard. . . . The border agent said that he had heard that the King had ordered the hunts to be kept up along the border A letter from the resident magistrate of the Umsingi division confirmed the news . . . and the magistrate stated that the Zulus were watching day and night along the Buffalo. The King was troubled, it was said, and thought the English were surrounding him. ' On the 20th of September we received a message, ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 419 dated the 30th of August, from the Zulu King, in which he expressed his disappointment at receiving no answer about the boundary dispute. He was becoming sus- picious, he said, and the Natal Government was turned against him and wished to deceive him. ' His suspicions, it is certain, had been aroused, as above noticed, by the arrival of so many troops in Natal, and by the rumours of an intended invasion of the Zulu country which had reached him. It was these rumours, and the apprehensions to which they gave rise, that were, no doubt, the cause of the gathering of the large body of Zulus opposite the Lower Tugela district, and not far from the border. The gathering had been ordered ostensibly for the purposes of hunting, but really with the object either of watching the border or of making a demonstration. The demonstration led to the despatch of a detachment of troops to Grey Town, and this step in its turn increased the appre- hensions of the Zulus and the suspicions of the King, though the reasons for it were at once and frankly com- municated to him. So-called hunting-parties of armed men were then established along the border to keep watch, and other preparations made by him. ' Then came the incident of the Middle Drift, where an armed party of Zulus interfered with Messrs. Smith and Deighton, who had gone there with the view of examining the condition of the Drift. While so engaged an alarm was spread among the Zulus on the opposite side, and a number of men came down and laid hold of Mr. Smith and his companion, and, forcibly detaining them, asked them a number of questions as to the object for which they were there — for the ground belonged to their King — as to the object for which the soldiers had 4 2o MISCELLANEOUS come to Grey Town, and so on. Their excitement gradually cooled down, and after detaining the two for about an hour and a half they let them go. It subse- quently appeared that the occurrence had created a good deal of excitement in the district, a report having spread that the English were crossing, and the Zulus flocked from all directions to resist the invasion. ' It is evident, indeed, from all the information re- ceived, that a feeling of disquiet and uncertainty was coming over the Zulu country. There was an uneasi- ness in the minds of many Well-disposed Zulus because of a supposed misunderstanding with the Government of Natal. ' Zulus who had cattle near the border, or cattle among their friends in Natal, came and took them away. They did not know what might happen. The land, they said, was not quiet. ' The statement of a Natal native, who was in the Zulu country in the early days of September, shows something of the manner in which, at the King's kraal and elsewhere among the Zulus, men's minds were dis- turbed at that time, when every passing event acquired unusual significance. ' Henry Bulwer.' From which it is very evident that Sir Henry Bulwer looked upon these demonstrations as symptoms, not of an impending attack upon us, but of fear that we were going to attack them — a fear that has turned out to be uncommonly well founded. Yet it is in reference to the very events above men- tioned that Sir Bartle Frere in his memorandum says of Cetywayo : ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 421 ' I had no doubt he saw, as clearly as I did, that his surest safety (?) was in action. He had already since I left Cape Town twice placed his regiments, under pre- tence of hunting, on the Natal border ; and each time their return without crossing was a subject of marvel to most well-informed persons who had experience of Zulu ways.' This is how he treats the fact that they did not cross the border. I have said that he gives no proof of the aggressive intentions of the Zulus or their King. I must add that the evidence to the contrary seems to me nearly over- whelming. Are Cetywayo's letters indicative of a desire to pick a quarrel with us and fight us ? Is it the mark of such a desire to send repeated excuses and assurances of friendship ? Even the letters in which he very frankly expresses his very just suspicions of our intentions, and those in which he remonstrates against the suspicion with which all his acts are regarded, manifest a desire to be well with us and to keep the peace. I cannot trespass on your space with quotations ; his letters are easily attainable. It cannot be urged that he was unable to find a pre- text for quarrelling if he had wished to fight us. There were the surveyors and their pipes, Sirayo's sons, the interference of the white Government with his internal affairs, and many other convenient bones of contention, not to mention the seizure of four of his messengers by Mr. Bell — a dreadful outrage on our part, at which Sir Bartle Frere has forgotten to be shocked. And as for opportunity, what could have been a better one than our late war with Secocoeni ? Yet he did not take it. 422 MISCELLANEOUS Even Sir Bartle Frere is rather staggered by this. He can give ' no reason for it except the half-heartedness of a suspicious barbarian despot,' which reason appa- rently satisfies him, for he seems to see no further significance in the fact. Yet, somehow or another, he would not, and did not, go to war until we at last sent him a preposterous ultimatum and invaded his country. The ex- And now, if the news in the Times of Saturday is into Natal correct, that the war for which he is supposed to have taken"^" been longing has come about, he still continues to ask the Zulus, for peace. The desolating raid into Natal that Sir though the . . oppor- Bartle Frere thought so imminent a few months back doing so* nas n °t taken place, though the opportunity for it is was ex- greater than could have been expected, for I imagine few people will be convinced by Sir Bartle Frere's bold contention that the present position of the forces, with one column smashed and another shut up in Ekowe, is more favourable for the defence of Natal than if they were all safe behind our border. But, in spite of all this, we are asked to believe that this war is a just war because the Zulus were bent on attacking us ; and, as I have shown, the sole foundation for the belief must be the opinion we may form of the judgment and power of appreciating evidence of Sir Bartle Frere. And what opinion are we likely to form on these qualities, as they are depicted by himself, on his own defence, in his own despatches ? The inconsistency of the arguments he makes use of is often startling — their audacity, their ingenuity, remind one of the proverbial Rights of Jesuit. His views on the independence and rights of native . . . „. races. native races do not belong to this century. They take one back as one reads to the days of Cortes and Pizarro, ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 423 in everything, except, to do him justice, his treatment of natives when once conquered and under his rule. His unfairness of mind towards the Zulus and their King is so patent and so startling, that it is only by continuously bearing in mind the peculiarity of his views that one can understand how he fails to perceive it himself. When he is discussing white encroachments on the Zulu border, he actually questions their right to claim a border at all ; when the Zulus cross this border, he treats it as a sacrilege. Any resentment of internal interference by a native chief he considers an outrage ; any remonstrance, however reasonably expressed, an insult ; any measures of defence against our gathering forces clear evidence of hostile aggression ; their very military organization not merely a danger, but an offence. But even his antiquated views about independent Unfairness • c • to Zulus. natives will not wholly explain the immense untairness he displays towards the Zulus. He seems so deter- mined to pick a quarrel with them, and to make out a case against them by violent and exaggerated language, that one is almost tempted to believe in the report that he had made up his mind to break with the Zulus in order to conciliate our discontented Dutch subjects. I might give many . instances of the total disregard he displays for Zulu susceptibilities and savage intelligence, but one will be enough. I will only mention the award ; and I choose that well-worn point because I do not think full justice has ever been done to the perversity he has displayed in defending his action in regard to it. Disputed land having been awarded to the Zulus, he ignores the fact that whatever claims the present 424 MISCELLANEOUS tenants may have are against the Transvaal Govern- ment, and not the Zulus ; and he decides that the pri- vate rights in the land shall remain intact, i.e., that the Dutch shall keep and enjoy the land all the same. He defends this in the Colenso correspondence by the plea that if the land were ceded to any civilized Power, only the sovereignty would be given over, while the private rights in it would remain intact ; and immediately shows the value of this argument by pointing out that Cetywayo, being a savage, cannot be given the sovereignty in the full civilized sense, as no white men could be left to his tender mercies. So Cetywayo is to have neither the private rights nor the real sovereignty, and Sir Bartle Frere actually plumes himself in one place on the scrupulous respect he has shown to the award of the Commissioners. And then he further justifies his course by the argument that the white in- habitants do not understand, or even believe, in the possibility of such an arrangement, and ought to be taught better. Yet the savage King at whose expense the reform is to be instituted is expected to understand it and acquiesce in it. Can human perversity go further than this ? And then he kept back this precious award six months while poor Cetywayo, who, like Sir Bartle Frere himself, seems to listen to gossip, fretted himself into only too just suspicions of the way in which he was going to be treated. And this is the man upon whose judgment we are to rely for the justification of this war. The British public is usually sensitive enough, often, indeed, silly and hysterical on such subjects as this, and I am much astonished at the cynical indifference with which this war has been assented to. This ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 425 has arisen partly, no doubt, from a feeling of the ex- treme difficulty and complexity of the whole matter ; but, as the British public is not usually diffident of its powers, I am compelled to look further. I do not think that it has made itself familiar with the rights and wrongs of the question. The Opposition cried out loud, it is true, but then they have used the same sort of language in season and out of season for the last five years, and have earned the fate of the boy who was always crying ' Wolf.' I am afraid that their cham- pionship of the Zulu was looked upon very much as a party manoeuvre. The Government by retaining Sir Bartle Frere in his post necessarily tied their tongues ; and by our peculiar Parliamentary custom of voting on two subjects as if they were one, all Conservative mem- bers of Parliament who thought the Government might be right in not recalling Sir Bartle Frere at a moment when all considerations of equity or prudence were merged in war, and when his removal would have caused consternation in the colony, voted an apparent approval of his policy. I, for one, should not have so voted could I have foreseen that even now the Zulus would be anxious to make peace. There is no telegraphic communica- tion, and what security have we, with our late ex- perience, that Sir Bartle Frere will believe in or pay attention to any peaceful protestations ? It seems to me more probable that in his next despatch he will characterize them as ' the hypocritical temporizings of a treacherous savage,' and continue the war for his own wise ends without further notice of them. I suppose I shall be reproached for attacking an absent man. Let me remind him who does so, that 426 MISCELLANEOUS the Zulus who are rotting on their native soil, and those who have still to die, are also absent men in a fuller sense of the word ; and that they, too, have a right to demand a just judgment at our hands. That the war was begun is no fault of ours ; but if, reckless of its injustice, we encourage or suffer it to continue, their blood will assuredly be upon our heads. Yours, Pembroke. To the Editor of the ' Times.' Sir, Wilton, April 11, 1879. In the letter which you kindly published yester- day I was obliged by the laws of space to confine my attention to Sir Bartle Frere's principal justification of the war, i.e., the hostile intentions and outrageous con- duct of the Zulus, and to ignore those considerations of prudence and expediency with which he accompanies it. As this gives an appearance of unfairness to my letter, I hope you will allow me to add a few words on this point. Everyone who has lived in a land that contains both colonists and savage races knows how true it is that there are rare occasions when terrible and high-handed things must be done lest worst things should happen ; that innocent blood must sometimes be shed to prevent it from flowing in streams. The use of this argument is always and justly looked upon with extreme suspicion, because it can be used to excuse such monstrous out- rages ; because it is so attractive both to the imperious and the timid colonist in times of danger : because its ZULU WAR— SIR BARTLE FRERE'S POLICY 427 prophetic character renders it so liable to error ; and because, if it does happen to be founded on mistake, the injustice it causes is so frightful. But, dangerous as it is, there is no denying its truth, and if Sir Bartle Frere had boldly and frankly rested his case upon it nearly everyone would acknowledge that he might be right, and that no one here at home was competent to decide whether he was right or wrong. But he deliberately elected not to do this. He speaks, it is true, of the numbers and the growing independence of the Caffres, of their ideas of throwing off the supremacy of the whites, of their mischievous notions about the Zulu power; but, instead of saying simply that he thinks it therefore necessary that we should show our strength and sweep away the danger by thrashing the Zulus, and that we had better do it now because of the number of troops in the colony, he chooses to treat these considerations as merely sub- ordinate to, and even consequent upon, the wantonly insulting behaviour and the hostile intentions of Cety- wayo, the evidence of which, as any reader of the Blue- books can see, is so extremely dubious and misty. A sufficient defence for the war may exist, but he has chosen to rely chiefly upon one that is lamentably in- sufficient, and he must expect to be judged by it. Some people seem to think that if it is admitted that a justification may exist, it does not much matter prac- tically whether the justification he has laid stress upon will hold water or not. It seems to me to matter very much, not only because it is not pleasant to think of one's country playing the part of wolf in the old fable of the wolf and the lamb, but because it seriously affects the question of the terms of peace that should be 428 MISCELLANEOUS granted to the Zulus. If Sir Bartle Frere's view of the origin of this war is accepted, we shall feel our- selves justified in subjecting the Zulus and annexing their kingdom without mercy. If, on the other hand, it is admitted by the Government and the country that this is, at best, a war of expediency, for which the Zulus are to be pitied rather than blamed, it will be plain that we have no right to go a step further than is necessary to insure the safety of the colony. Sir Bartle Frere's contention that the Zulus would prefer our rule to that of their own chiefs seems to be in flat contradiction to all he says about the anti-white feeling of the native races. The feeling of the colonists, excited by war and danger and the barbarities of their savage foes, is sure to be in favour of extreme measures. The Government will need all the support they can get from public opinion in this country to enable them to insist upon a settlement that shall be just and merciful as well as advantageous ; and it is for this reason that I have ventured with extreme reluctance and diffidence to ex- press my views in your columns. Pembroke. DEATH OF GENERAL GORDON* March 2, 1885. The Earl of Pembroke said he ought first to apologize to the meeting for going over again the story which he * After Arabi's defeat in 1882 at Tel-el- Kebir, the British troops were mostly withdrawn from Egypt, and the abandonment of the Soudan pressed upon the Egyptian by the English Government. DEATH OF GENERAL GORDON 429 knew most of them had read in the newspapers, about the dealings of the Government with the Soudan and the lamented General Gordon ; but his excuse must be that on Friday night there was given in the House of Commons a vote which they could not accept. From the verdict which was then delivered they must appeal, and therefore he hoped he might be forgiven for saying over again things which had been better said before. There were two difficulties in the way of dealing with this question. In the first place, as the noted swearer (of whom they might have heard) said, it was impossible to do justice to it ; and, secondly, it was impossible to know where to begin. The misconduct of the Govern- ment, their vacillation, their waiting on events, their failure to forestall dangers and to take difficulties in time, did not begin with the Soudan, did not begin with Egypt, but began with the very first question they had to deal with after assuming office. He remembered very well, though he was not vain enough to suppose they remembered it, making a speech two years ago in that very room, when they had the very pleasant duty of making a presentation to Unsuccessful operations by the Egyptian army in the next year had made the position of the Egyptian garrisons at Khartoum, Sinkat, Tokar, Kassala, Senaar, and Berber very dangerous, and it became necessary to withdraw or relieve them. General Gordon, of Chinese fame, at the urgent request of the English Government, threw up a special mission he had undertaken for the King of the Belgians, and started, January 18, 1884, alone for Khartoum to arrange for withdrawing the garrisons. He reached Khartoum in a month from leaving home, but from that time no attention was paid to his representations, and he was left to hold Khartoum as best he might, and to die at his post. He held it for a year. This disgraceful episode in English history ended with a long and wasteful desert campaign. 43Q MISCELLANEOUS their worthy member, Mr. Kennard. He then com- mented on those qualities which had already been dis- played by the Government, and warned them that if they did not turn that Government out, and replace them by a better set of men, they would infallibly be landed in national disaster. He was not likely to change that opinion now. General But he would not take them further back into ancient history than the fatal expedition of General Hicks to El Obeid in the winter of 1883. The present Govern- ment was very fond of what children called ' making believe,' and one of their favourite pretences was that the Government of Egypt was an independent Govern- ment, with which we could not interfere. Unfortu- nately, they were engaged in this pastime when General Hicks went to El Obeid. When they were told that the enterprise was dangerous, they said it was no busi- ness of theirs ; it was a matter entirely for the Khedive and the Egyptian Government, and they could not in- terfere. But when General Hicks was destroyed they changed their opinion, and told the Egyptian Govern- ment they must do what England wished, ordered them to abandon the Soudan, and forbade them even to send troops to rescue the garrisons. Abandon- He was not going to dwell upon the iniquitous the" ° folly °f proclaiming the abandonment of the Soudan Soudan before these garrisons were rescued — the thing spoke garrisons. " r for itself — but he should like to point out the position in which the Government were placed by this resolu- tion. By forbidding the Government of Egypt to rescue these people, and by refusing to do it themselves, they virtually ' kept the ring ' for the Arabs while they murdered 40,000 or 50,000 people belonging to a nation DEATH OF GENERAL GORDON 431 for which England had made itself responsible. As time went on, and as the cries for help from the be- leaguered garrisons reached this country, the Govern- ment shrank from the repulsive consequences of the policy they had taken up, and, driven to their wits' end, they decided to send out General Gordon, hoping by his great knowledge of the country, his power and in- fluence over men, and his great resources, that he would be able to deliver these unfortunate people. He (the speaker) was not one of those who said it was a mistake to send out General Gordon, but he did say this : If you send out an extraordinary man to accomplish an extraordinary feat, you must be prepared to countenance the use of extraordinary means. But this the Government were not prepared to do. They refused Gordon's requests, just as if his task was one which any capable man could accomplish in half a dozen different ways. The cardinal difficulty he had to deal with — a difficulty he saw as soon as he got to Khartoum, if not before — was the impossibility of getting these garrisons and their families away unless he had some power in the country — moral or material, it did not matter which — to hold the country and the hostile tribes down behind while he was retreating. And this was not merely because of the natural inclination of wild people to plunder and shed blood, but because every man would feel himself bound to earn grace from the coming power — that was, the Mahdi — by attacking the Egyp- tians. Well, Gordon proposed two ways of meeting this Zebehr. difficulty. ' Either,' he said, ' you must appoint Zebehr Pasha — a man of immense influence in the Soudan, though of bad character — giving him authority 43 2 MISCELLANEOUS as Governor to keep the country quiet while I am getting away ; or you must send small bodies of English or English or Indian troops to the frontier, not to fight, Indian . ~~ troops. but to keep up the prestige of the Government suffi- ciently to enable me to retire with the garrisons in peace.' These were the two things he proposed, and the Government refused them both. They might have been right in refusing, though he did not think so — it was a matter for argument — but this he would say, that they had no right, in the face of a practical diffi- culty like this, to refuse Gordon's two ways of deal- ing with it without suggesting an}' way of their own. They had no business to sit down before a question of this kind as if it were a riddle that they were not called upon to solve. They pleaded that the riddle was hope- lessly insoluble, and that there was nothing to be done. Well, there was one thing they might have done. They might have telegraphed to Gordon and said, ' If it is true that you cannot get the people away without some force to keep the country down behind you, hold on as best you can at Khartoum during the summer, and the moment the weather permits we will send you troops to get you away.' If they had done this, and had, as Gordon suggested, sent adjutants to Dongola as an earnest of their intention, he could have held out with perfect ease, and probably would have made arrange- ments with the Mahdi before the end of the summer. But the Government did nothing of the sort, and he ventured to say that such a spectacle of incapacity and cowardice had very seldom been seen in English history. Now he would pass to the next count. He wanted to know why the Government did not resolve to send DEATH OF GENERAL GORDON 433 a relief expedition before the ^th of August. Their first Incision •1 r 7 , ofthe excuse was that, unfortunately, there were two routes Govem- open to them. For a month and a half they thought mer one was the best, and for the next month and a half they thought the other was the best, and if there had been three routes, no doubt it would have taken a month and a half longer to decide between them. So thoroughly characteristic of the Government was this excuse that there must be some truth in it, but it was not the excuse on which they chiefly relied. They said that up to the 5th of August they were not persuaded that a relief expedition was necessary. Why they should have been persuaded then he really did not know, because no fresh news came at that time. They fortified this excuse by extracts out of Gordon's own despatches, in which he used expressions of courage and confidence about being able to hold his own. It was not likely that those despatches would be written in a cowardly or craven spirit ; but if the Government had searched them through they could not have failed to find passages that showed that Gordon realized the imminent danger in which he and everybody with him stood. But that was not the point at all. The question was not whether he was in danger in the summer or not, but whether he would not be in danger before the end of the year — before any tardily-sent expedition could possibly reach him. The Government knew his supply of provisions was limited, his troops cowardly, the population disaffected, and, above all, that the revolt was growing in seriousness month by month. What justification had they for thinking a relief expedition was not necessary ? 28 434 MISCELLANEOUS Well, when they were beaten on the main issues they fell back on minor and secondary ones. One thing they said was, ' After all, we only started a month too late, and if the story about the treachery at Khartoum is true, it would not have made much dif- ference whether we arrived a month earlier or not.' He must remark that the Government seemed to be very fond of that story about a treacherous agreement between the Mahdi and some of the people inside Khar- toum, whereby the Mahdi could have gone in whenever he liked. It was a very nice story, but rather difficult to believe. We had to believe that the Mahdi was of such a chivalrous or sporting character, that he pre- ferred sacrificing his best troops for months against the guns of the defenders to walking in safety through the gates at once. But this argument would not hold water. If we started a month late on a falling river, the passage would grow more and more difficult every day, and we should be, not a month late at the other end, but several months late. He had no doubt that if the expedition had started a month earlier it would have been at Khartoum by the end of November or the beginning of December at latest ; and when the Government talked about their bad luck in being only two days late, he must ask them by what right they expected Gordon to hold out so long. What right had they to count upon any man making such a mar- vellous defence and displaying such marvellous re- sources ? By what right did the Government ask for our sympathy because they were two days too late when they might have been several months earlier ? Well, he thought he had shown that the excuses of DEATH OF GENERAL GORDON 435 the Government were not worth listening to. But that was not the opinion of the House of Commons. By a majority of fourteen— or, rather, a majority of fifty-two, because we had no business to count the Irish vote, which might go the other way to-morrow — the House of Commons whitewashed the Ministry. He looked Incom- upon this vote as the greatest blow to constitutional Sf the° y government that had ever been given in this country, ^nt™ If the House of Commons would not protect the countrv against a Ministry like this, which had not merely made mistakes, but had acted disgracefully, against what sort of a Ministry would it protect the country ? He deplored the vote all the more that it had been given at a time when two million of our fellow-country- men were entering upon their duties as citizens, and looking to Parliament for political teaching and example. He wanted it to be clearly understood what a mon- strous vote this was. Not only had the Government behaved as badly as possible in the past, but it came out in the course of the debate that they were hope- lessly divided as to their future policy, so that there was not the slightest reason for hoping to get anything better from them. To make the thing still more mon- strous, the majority that voted for the Government was composed of two bodies who were bent on diametrically opposite objects in the Soudan. Could anything be more discreditable, more preposterous ? And the Govern- ment had put a serious complexion on the whole thing by talking of resigning in spite of it. It was impossible not to feel some contempt for Responsi- those members who walked into the Government lobby the con- the other day, but the constituencies were far more to s ' blame for encouraging them or permitting them to do 43 6 MISCELLANEOUS it. If it were true that the English people, for the sake of personal hopes and aims, or for the sake of class interests, or for what they wished to obtain by domestic legislation, were willing to condone such conduct as this Government had exhibited, it was the worst sign of the times he had ever seen. But he would not believe it until it was proved. He would not believe that Englishmen could be so false to the proud traditions of their national character. He would not believe that if the plain story were put before them — the truth about recent events in the Soudan — the English people would fail to take the first opportunity of showing that the vote of the House of Commons last Friday was a complete misrepresentation of their opinions. THE GORDON HALL PROPOSAL. 18S5. Will you allow me to say one word in support of the proposal, brought forward by Mr. Arnold White at Mr. Cyril Flower's house the other day, to form Gordon Halls in different parts of London, as a means of ap- proaching, entertaining, and assisting the most miser- able class in the country ? I am one of those who hold the doctrine, much misliked by the weaker sort of phil- anthropists, that both the poverty and the overcrowd- ing that are such a blot upon our great civilization are mainly due to the continual and over-rapid increase of the population in the wage-earning class ; and that until this has been checked by the growth of a more THE GORDON HALL PROPOSAL 437 provident spirit all the remedies that are so loudly advocated will prove to be but palliatives at best. Doubtless it is not the only cause ; but it is so much the most important that to name others beside it can only be misleading. From whatever side I approach this dismal subject, sooner or later I find the same con- clusion invariably forced upon me. A thousand facts point towards it. I will give but one here that is almost sufficient to prove the case by itself — the fact that, though the volume of our trade and the amount of wealth paid in wages are greater (all that is said about depression notwithstanding) than at any previous period of our history, there is a loud and an increasing com- plaint of want of work and consequent distress. There is more employment in England than there ever was before, but it is not enough for the increased and in- creasing population. What the distress would be like In spite of if there was a real falling off in the national trade, as trac ] e an j there may be some day, it is simply appalling to think amount of about. With such a rapidly growing population a pro- paid in . wages, the portionate increase in the volume of trade is necessary unem- merely to prevent poverty getting worse. Indeed, it {JJ^gl in even fails to do this ; for the joint growth of trade and numbers, population necessarily aggravate the misery and ex- pense of overcrowding. So that even were our trade capable of indefinite expansion, we should soon be brought face to face with the necessity of checking to some extent the increase in our numbers. It is just because I hold this opinion that I am anxious to say a word in favour of Mr. White's pro- posal. There is a widespread idea that when it is said that any evils are due to over-population it is implied that there is nothing to be done to cure them, and that 438 MISCELLANEOUS they had better be left entirely alone to cure themselves as far as may be by the free working of natural laws. I have never been able to detect the logical connection between these two propositions. The belief that im- provident multiplication is at the root of the trouble may certainly imply that it will be impossible to help the wage-receiving classes to greater prosperity unless they will assist by their own action ; but is there, there- fore, nothing to be done ? Does not the truth want preaching, and are there no ways of assisting them to become more provident ? Surely those who are con- fident that they perceive the true cause of the evil ought to be the last people in the world to be content to answer these questions lightly in the negative, and hastily to pronounce the problem insoluble. As to leaving such evils to cure themselves, what ground have we for feeling sure that they will ever do so ? As a good member of the Liberty and Property Defence League, I am dead against any attempt to solve such intricate and momentous problems by the clumsy and most dangerous method of State inter- ference. Any attempt to better the condition of the poor at the expense of the rich by the application of the doctrine of ransom would, as Lord Salisbury so forcibly pointed out lately, infallibly end in making destitution general among wage-receivers, instead of a lamentable exception. But Acts of Parliament are not the only channels through which human energy will act ; and before resolving not to make use of any of them, we should ask ourselves seriously how far we are justified in believing that such evils will ever cure themselves, if we let them severely alone. To me it seems more THE GORDON HALL PROPOSAL 439 than doubtful. If men were unthinking brutes and Nature were given free play, there would be much to be said for the theory. But man is a self-conscious animal, and will never let Nature alone. So that while on the one hand all experience teaches us that the very poorest people multiply the most recklessly, because they feel that neither they nor their children can fall lower than they are, on the other hand we know that the exterminatory methods of Nature which would counteract this tendency are not, and would not ever in a civilized country be, permitted to do their work un- checked. These considerations point us, I think, to the one Higher ... 1111 i standard thing that we must try to do, though there may be f H v i ng many more ways than one of doing it. Our aim must *°J^ d at be to raise the ideal of life among the wage-earning classes, by every means that will not demoralize or degrade. Once let working men set their minds, as many thousands of them have indeed already done, upon a standard of living which they are not willing to fall below, still less willing that their children after them should fall below, and the providence which is all that is necessary in a rich country like ours to bring material prosperity to the labouring class will have been acquired. What is it but this feeling that makes our great middle class and the huge class that is just above the labourer in the social scale as provident for themselves and for their children as any people in the world ? They and the labourers are literally the same flesh and blood, for there is a constant upward stream connecting the two classes, and the feelings that will appeal to the nature of one must appeal to the nature of the other. The Gordon League proposes to contribute its mite 44° MISCELLANEOUS to this great work. The Gordon Halls will supply the miserable with rest and entertainment, helping them to realize that all life is not necessarily either gloomy or vicious ; they will bring to them sympathetic men and women who will be able and willing to hold out a helping hand, and who will teach them to feel that their miser- able existence is not a thing of course to be borne at best with sullen resignation, but is something that they may live to see bettered and brightened, and the horrors of which, if they will be helped and will help themselves, their children after them may never know. UNVEILING MEMORIAL TO HENRY FAWCETT AT SALISBURY* Jime, 1887. The Earl of Pembroke then said : I have the honour to unveil to-day a statue of Henry Fawcett. Nothing could be more fitting than that this statue should stand in his native town, and nothing could be more fitting than that it should stand in the same market- place with that of the late Sidney Herbert. They were two of the most remarkable men this neighbourhood has produced, and, to my mind, there is something * Mr. Henry Fawcett, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of Trinity Hall, was born in 1833, and entered Parliament for the first time in 1868 as member for Brighton. He was returned for Hackney in April, 1874, and in 1880 accepted the office of Postmaster-General in Mr. Glad- stone's Government. He was conspicuous for his devotion to Indian business at a period when it received scanty attention in the Commons, and studied to protect the finances of that depen- dency against an undue share of Imperial burdens. UNVEILING FAWCETT MEMORIAL 441 peculiarly appropriate in their companionship — for I quite agree with what has fallen from Dr. Roberts, that, superficially unlike, there were remarkable points of likeness between the two men. They had many very rare qualities in common : the}- had the same love of truth and justice, the same passionate sympathy for the weak and oppressed, the same high-minded, unselfish devotion to duty, the same determination to do good for the oppressed in their generation, the same wholesome interest in many things great and small, the same hearty geniality towards all classes of men, the same unceasing enjoyment of all the innocent pleasures of life. There is no man, living or dead, whose statue I would so gladly see standing by the side of my father's. When I was first honoured by being invited to per- form this ceremony, I was inclined to think that such a part could be more appropriately performed by some- one belonging to the political party with which Fawcett usually acted. But if ever there was a case in which such a consideration was of little account it is in this. Henry Fawcett was a strong Liberal, I might even say a strong democratic Radical, but he was not a party man. He cared always more for truth than for part}-. No one could ever suspect him of uttering the shib- boleth of his party in defiance of his convictions. His utterances were always perfectly sincere, not merely in the sense that he believed what he said at the moment — a common virtue enough, especially among the thoughtless — but in the sense that he had always conscientiously tried to arrive at the truth with all the vigour of his powerful intellect. And for this reason, apart from the personal geniality that made 442 MISCELLANEOUS enmity impossible, no one, however opposed to his political views, could ever entertain towards him an atom of the hostility that springs from the spirit of party. Further than this, there was a great deal in his political action itself for which Conservatives especially could feel cordial sympathy. But above all the qualities that made him great were such as are not to be confined within the narrow limits of any creed or party, and men of all denominations are equally anxious to reverence them and do them honour. How splendid those qualities of intellect and character were I need hardly tell you. As a thinker and economist he reached an eminence that would have made him a remarkable man if he had possessed no other claim to distinction. He had the most earnest determination to improve the lot of his fellow-men. He possessed a courage that was marvellous, whether it was in facing and overcoming the terrible misfortune of his blindness, and all the appalling difficulties that it entailed, or in advocating with indomitable energy and perseverance unpopular causes which he believed to be right. But to my mind it was not any particular quality, but the combination of qualities in him that gave him the claim to real greatness that I for one feel that he possessed. You might name men more eminent as thinkers and political economists. You might name other men as high-minded, as passionately attached to justice, as keenly bent upon improvement, other men as warm-hearted and energetic, other men (though very few) of such a splendid courage, but you will have to look far to find a man in whom all these qualities were combined as they were in Henry Fawcett. And it was UNVEILING FAWCETT MEMORIAL 443 just this combination that made him so very uncommon and so powerful for good. There have been few men in whom the qualities have been so admirably balanced. He had the head of a political economist and the heart of a philan- thropist. While he would never allow the promptings of feeling to drown the voice of his reason, neither would he allow the habit of patient and cautious think- ing to chill the enthusiasm of his heart. On the one hand, no man was more free from the reproach of sentimentalism ; on the other, no man was less open to a charge of cold-hearted pedantry. With all his heartfelt sympathy for the poor, and his earnest desire for the amelioration of their lot, the first question he would ask when any measure regarding them was proposed was, ' How will it make for self-help ?' He believed in political economy, and was not inclined to underrate its importance ; but he never made a fetish of it, and was always ready to put economic considera- tions aside when they seemed to him to be outweighed by others of still more importance. In spite of this, he was sometimes called a doctrinaire. No man was really less of one. He had a firm belief in principles, but no one recognized more clearly that human affairs are many-sided — that there are often not one but many principles to be considered, and that a statesman must be prepared to judge each case upon its own merits. No one was more aware that there is no short cut to political wisdom and infallibility through any single principle, or less inclined to commit the folly of following out any principle with superstitious reverence until it landed him in a practical absurdity. He repeatedly showed his freedom from this defect of 444 MISCELLANEOUS the doctrinaire politician. Economist as he was, he was one of the first to point out the monstrosity of spoiling the beaut}' of the Crown Forests for the sake of making a little more money from them ; or, to take a stronger instance, he, the most thorough-going of free traders, stoutly protested against taking the duty off Manchester cotton goods in India, because of the grave difficulties that he feared to the Indian revenue. In short, both by character and creed, both by nature and political feeling, he was essentially a most thoroughly sensible, moderate, and practical man ; and the best proof of this is, that there is hardly a question that he touched on which he did not leave his mark, either in the shape of legislation, or in that of a change in the public opinion of the time ; and when at last he was placed in an official position, he showed at once and unmistakably that he possessed an administrative genius of the first order. He has left much good work behind him to testify to his worth. It would be impossible for me, on the present occasion, to give even an outline of the labours of his life. And, after all, the man was greater than his work. And I look on this statue as a memorial, not so much of his achievements, as of the man him- self, whom all that knew him loved and respected. He has now joined that heroic band of men whose characters and histories make the progress of humanity, whose .shining examples are a constant guide and help to their fellow-men who are still struggling through life. There are many things for which it will be well for us to remember Henry Fawcett. It will be well to remember his sturdy patriotism, his purity of aim, his UNVEILING FAWCETT MEMORIAL 445 freedom from prejudice and party passion, his ^eal for progress, his chivalrous devotion to the weak and help- less, his kindness and goodwill to all men. It will be well for us to remember the manliness, now, alas ! so rare, with which he, with all his generous sympathy for the suffering and the oppressed, never allowed his reason to be silenced by the appeals of sentiment. It will be well for us above all to remember the extra- ordinary courage with which he met and overcame the peculiar difficulties of his life. There are few who have not known moments in which the cares and sorrows of life seem almost too great to be endured. At such times it will be well to remember the example of Henry Fawcett. In the prime of his youthful manhood he was afflicted by what seemed one of the greatest calamities that could befall a man of his aims and ambitions. He faced it at once with the undaunted courage of a great heart. He set himself to overcome its disabilities with an energy and patience that never flagged, and a sweetness of temper that never failed. He succeeded to an extent that was truly marvellous. He reduced what would have been to most men a paralyzing disaster to a comparatively small disadvantage, and he made a life that to many men would have been useless and melancholy, not only as active, honourable, and useful, but almost as full and as happy as any human life can be. Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour to hand over to you this statue to commemorate his name. 446 MISCELLANEOUS ENTERTAINMENTS FOR THE WORKING CLASSES AT SALISBURY. iSSS. Lord Pembroke said, as that was the first entertain- ment of the season, they might expect him to say a few words. He was there that evening because he was strongly in favour of all kinds of harmless entertain- ments. There was an amusing saying of the late Sir George Lewis that cynical people would often quote, to the effect that life would be tolerable if it were not for its amusements. That was not his (the chairman's) opinion. Sir George Lewis was one of those men to whom a difficult problem in arithmetic or a column of intricate statistics was as amusing and entertaining as a good song or a good game of cricket would be to other people. But they were not all built that way, and his own idea was that life would be unendurable if it was not for its amusements. It was a better aphorism that had been quoted by John Morley, that that day was most wasted on which a man had not had a good laugh. Life, if they looked at it with cold eyes, was a very grim and dreary thing, and the only thing that made it worth living, apart from those higher duties and consolations which it would not be becoming in him to touch upon that evening, was that strange faculty of enjoyment with which human beings were all endowed. That faculty of enjoyment it lay in their power both to satisfy and develop by art of all sorts, by music and ENTERTAINMENTS AT SALISBURY 447 song and dance ; by interesting and amusing books of all kinds, and by outdoor sports and games. He knew very well there was a school of melancholy and pessimistic people who denied this, and said cultiva- tion only made a man unsettled, and that to encourage his desire for enjoyment was to make him discontented. That was a dismal doctrine, and he was glad he for one did not believe it. He believed that in the main it was quite untrue, and that it was true only in excep- tional cases. There were some men in whom culture, knowledge, and all kinds of refinement, only produced melancholy, and there was no denying the fact that the too eager pursuit of enjoyment sometimes led people to the reverse of happiness ; but as a general rule this was not the case, and it was quite undeniable that the more pleasure and varied interest men could get into their lives the better and happier they were for it. He thought they could see a curious exemplification of that proved almost every day when they took up their newspapers. They hardly ever looked at the news- paper without finding recorded some terrible tragedy or monstrous crime — a murder, or a series of murders, so unaccountable and horrible that one felt inclined to suggest that the motive must be found in insanity. What he wanted to say was that he could assure them, if they would study these cases closely, they would find that in the vast majority of instances those crimes had taken place in homes and households where life was terribly dull and dreary ; where there was no enjoy- ment known beyond the baneful enjoyment of drink ; in lives so monotonous that those evil passions which preyed upon human nature had full opportunity and 448 MISCELLANEOUS scope to take gradual and effectual possession of their unhappy victim until they led him half insane into the commission of those unaccountable and horrible crimes of which they read. He readily admitted that was a very serious kind of sermon to hang upon so slight a text as the pleasant concert of that evening, and he had only ventured to make such remarks because they conveyed the thoughts he had had in his mind when he accepted Mr. Wilson's invitation to come and preside there that evening. The fact was, he had not the slightest idea what his duties were upon the present occasion. He should like to know whether, in the extremely improbable event of one of the singers singing out of tune, he should be expected to call that singer to order in his capacity as chairman ; or whether, if a joke fell flat, he should be expected to move that it be now received with laughter. However, he hoped he should do nothing wrong in consequence of his ignorance, and he trusted that would be only the first of very many pleasant evenings which they would spend during the coming winter. FORESTERS' DINNER AT WILTON. October 20, 1888. The army. The Earl of Pembroke, having expressed his pleasure at meeting old familiar faces at Wilton, said the army was in a much more satisfactory state than it had been for the last ten or twelve years. That was mainly due to the fact that at that time the short service had only iust got out of the experimental stage, and had tempo- FORESTERS' DINNER AT WILTON 449 rarily caused a very serious deterioration indeed ; but now that the system was settled, he believed that the rank and file of the British army were the best in the world. As to the officers, and he knew a large number, there never was a time when they devoted themselves to their work more than at present. War was every day getting to be carried on more scientifically, and men going into the army as officers made the great game of war their study and profession, so that he should not be doubtful as to the result of a European war as far as England was concerned. Now, they knew that not only was he something of The navy, a soldier, but that he was also a bit of a sailor, and he should like to say a few words about the navy. The naval manoeuvres proved that it was impossible to blockade an enemy for long in port. The manoeuvres also proved that our navy was not sufficiently powerful to protect our commerce against hostile cruisers, and at the same time to protect all our great seaport towns against attack. He thought it a thoroughly wrong idea that places like Liverpool should depend upon the accident of having some of the fleet to look after them to defend them against a hostile cruiser. That was a wrong principle altogether. If the next war was not to be a very disastrous one for England, every ship almost in our fleet ought to be free to follow up the enemy's cruisers and destroy them off the face of the sea. The only way was by having a proper line of defence in places like Liverpool and great seaport towns. Each place ought to be free to do its own work in its own way. It was a thing which would cost money, but he really did not think they ought to grudge it in England when they considered what an immense advantage they 29 4So MISCELLANEOUS had over other countries in not having conscription, which was the greatest tax on talent and work under which it was possible for a country to suffer. He knew some people said that we need not get into any wars or difficulties, and that there was no real risk of war. He wished to remind such people that we were not at all in the same position as our forefathers were a generation ago. England was then practically the only colonizing country. We stood almost alone. We were hardly in contact with other Powers. But during the present generation there had been an immense land hunger, and countries like Germany, France, and Italy had been taking places. Through no fault whatever, but by some accident of circum- stances, we might be plunged into a difficulty which might end in a war at any time, and we must be ready for war. Of course, there was one way of avoiding such diffi- culties and such necessities for increasing the navy, and if that was the way the people of England were inclined to talk, they had better speak out and say so — it was by getting rid of our Indian and Colonial Empire. Then we might be able to cut down the army and navy, and we should have to cut down our dinners as well. We should then, as Lord Rosebery said the other day, be left alone with Ireland ; no doubt Ireland indissolubly bound to us by a measure of Home Rule. He did not think that was a prospect which the English people would be very ready to accept. If they were not, they must make up their minds they would not be greedy for war, but ready to defend themselves if they were attacked by having a sufficiently strong navy, and by having their most important forces pro- FORESTERS' DINNER AT WILTON 451 perly appointed. He hoped the country would give a thorough support to Lord George Hamilton, who ap- peared to have awakened to the responsibility of his office. The real power was in the hands of the people^ If the people got half-hearted and cried out about economy in the wrong place more than efficiency, they could not expect Government to behave better than they did. With regard to the reserve forces, to which he be- longed, he was glad to see the steady improvement in the volunteers. Even- year they got more complete. (A voice : How about the bicycle ?) Perhaps another year they would have bicycle men. He saw with great satisfaction that every year the volunteer battalions got more and more fit to take the field by themselves, and now at last the Government had taken a step in the right direction. He had himself long urged the organi- zation of these great forces throughout the country so as to make them of some use if they were really wanted. The authorities had now taken some steps by brigading the different battalions together ; and they were trying to invent some form of transport by which the volun- teer forces would be able to act independently in time of war. He hoped that step would be carried still further. / UBILEE MEMORIA L . 1888. The Earl of Pembroke said he had had much pleasure in unveiling to them that day the Jubilee Memorial Clock. He thought the people of Wilton were of opinion that they knew the time of day pretty well. 452 MISCELLANEOUS They would certainly know what o'clock it was in the future ; and with that shining monitor before their eyes, they would have no excuse whatever if they got behind the times, or even too much in front of them. He should like to say that he thought an illuminated clock was a very proper memorial of a long reign, full of enlightenment and full of industrial activity. In conclusion, he would only congratulate them upon their new acquisition, and say that he thought they ought to be very thankful to their Mayor for the trouble he had taken about it. SPEECH AT SALISBURY ON BI-METALLISM. March 23, 1889. The Earl of Pembroke said that he must open those proceedings with the rather startling confession that he knew very little indeed about the subject which they had met there that day to discuss. He dared say that some of them might think that that confession was not so very astonishing, but he could assure them omni- science was part of the stock-in-trade of every politician and of every journalist, and he felt that in making such an admission he was almost a traitor to his class. The question of bi-metallism was a great, complex subject, a subject which required an immense amount of time and thought, and considerable knowledge of the way in which the great business of the world was carried on, and, he might add, considerable aptitude for such problems. He was anxious it should be understood that he occupied that chair, not in the character of a bi- metallist — for he had no right to call himself such — SPEECH AT SALISBURY ON BI-METALLISM 453 but merely as a local worthy, who had been honoured by being asked to take the chair at that large and representative meeting. He might say he was ex- tremely glad to be able to do so. It seemed to him that this question of bi-metallism certainly touched a matter which was of very serious importance. He alluded to the continual and steady increase in the value of gold. He thought there could be no dispute whatever that the continual increase in the value of gold was bad for business. It was bad for commercial enterprise, if only for the simple reason that the man who hid his talent in a napkin got the same profit on it as if he had put it out to usury, and a man who kept a thousand pounds in a stocking or in the bank reaped, after a time, by the increase in the value of gold, an un- earned increment, whereas if a man put that thousand pounds into goods or trade he failed to get that un- earned increment, and not only that, but if he went to realize in money, he actually lost something in money, if not actually in value. Then, again, a great many businesses, as many of them knew, were carried on with borrowed money. Here, again, the steady increase in the value of gold was hostile to business, because the way it worked was this : A man who bor- rowed money in order to carry on business had, when the term was up, to pay back more than he borrowed. This increase in the value of gold was undoubtedly an evil, and the bi-metallists told them that they had a remedy for it. The best thing they could do was to listen to them gratefully, and to hear what they had to say. 454 MISCELLANEOUS FOUNDATION-STONE LAID BY LORD PEMBROKE. Pembroke Technical Fishery Schools, Ringsend, Ireland. June 21, 1892. The Earl of Pembroke said : I beg to return, on behalf of her ladyship and myself, our heartfelt thanks, first for the welcome you have given us here to-day, and then for the addresses that have been read, so friendly and flattering in character — the first address from the fishermen of Ringsend, and then the address from the inhabitants of Ringsend, Irishtown, and Sandymount, and, again, the address from St. Matthew's Christian and Burial Society, and, lastly, the address from my young friends of the National school. You have ex- pressed feelings of gratitude for what I have done in this matter with such kindness that I cannot help thinking them sincere, and I venture to tell you that the return that would most please Lady Pembroke and myself is that, when those schools are built, you should make full use of them. Now, it may, perhaps, not be inopportune if I take this opportunity of saying in a few words how this all came about, and what the history of it is. When I was over here last autumn, your parish priest, your schoolmistress, and other people, talked to me about the state of Ringsend, and deplored the decay of industries there, and I think it was Father Mooney who said to me that he wished the Baroness Burdett- Coutts would do for Ringsend what she was doing PEMBROKE TECHNICAL FISHERY SCHOOLS 455 for other places. I thought over the matter. I was willing to do something if something could be done, and various things were proposed ; but I could not, however, see my way for some time to do anything practical, because a man, especially if he is not a man of business, will find the effort to revive businesses that had died a natural death a desperate enterprise to enter upon. I did not see my way to revive the sail-making or net-making industry in a direct manner. At last Mr. Vernon said that the thing could be best done by instituting a Fishery and Technical School combined. On thinking the matter over, I came to much the same opinion, and Mr. Vernon and Mr. Graves laid their heads together, and have evolved the scheme which is now before you, which you now know about. To use an American expression, it caught on. The Pembroke Town Commissioners met us in a most handsome manner. Several other people offered to subscribe, and we then went to Mr. Jackson, to the Irish Office, and though, of course, it was not possible for him to promise a Government grant to a building that was not yet built, yet his attitude was extremely encouraging to us. That is the history of it. We have now arrived at that stage of proceedings to which the building of the schools would be the next step. I don't intend to give a complete list of things to be taught in these schools. In all probability those who manage them will find that they will have to change their plans more and more as they go on and learn from practical experience ; but, speaking roughly, the idea is, in the first place, to have fishery schools, and then to have technical instruction 45 6 MISCELLANEOUS in such things as sail-making and net-making and basket- making, and perhaps boat-building, and things of that sort. Some of these, I imagine — not the boat-building, of course — will be open to girls as well as boys, and one or two special classes will be for girls, I suspect, to teach them things like cookery or dressmaking. I do not wish to tie down the committee of management to any particular programme ; I am simply stating some of the things which I suppose will be done. There is one thing the teaching of which is of special importance, and that is navigation. People sometimes ask, What is it that a man could learn at a technical school which he cannot learn naturally in the course of his trade ? Well, navigation is one, at any rate. A fisherman does not learn navigation naturally in the course of his trade. I will tell you why it is. There is no trade in which men rise from the ranks so often as in the sailor's trade. I have got no figures to quote about this, but the proportion of men who rise from before the mast to be captains and mates must be enormous. In the smaller class of vessels considerably more than half do so rise. In my own small experience I have known dozens of men who have risen from the bottom of the tree to be commanders of vessels. My good captain, who is here to-day, was a fisherboy and the son of a fisherman, and a most excellent navigator he is. And the captain I had in the South Seas when yachting there, he, too, is the son of a fisherman, and began life as a fisherboy. I was talking to my captain last night, and was asking him about two men whom he had on board the yacht, and I wanted to know what had become of them. ' Oh,' he said, ' both have become mates, and one of them has PEMBROKE TECHNICAL FISHERY SCHOOLS 457 passed his examination by the Board of Trade.' I only say all these things to prove that an immense number of men rise to be officers from before the mast — in fact, those men rise more frequently than do men in any other trade or profession ; but, still, a great many stick at a certain point, and don't become more than mates or masters of small vessels, because they have had no opportunity of learning how to navigate. It is really extraordinary that so many of these men learn navigation ■ — as so many do — with the small facilities afforded them, and it cannot be doubted that many would rise to command large ships if they had only better opportunities of learning navigation as fisherboys. It would be an excellent thing if more of them could rise, because men like yourselves make much better captains of ships than many men who command ships now, who are only half sailors, and owe their commands to a large extent to the fact that they have enough scholarship to enable them to take a vessel from one part of the ocean to another. Navigation is one of the most useful and valuable things that a technical school can possibly teach in a seaside parish like Ringsend. I hope these schools will give an opportunity to every Ringsend boy who is ambitious to rise in life to do so ; and I hope before twenty or twenty-five years are past there may be more than one of the boys of Ringsend — perhaps boys in this crowd — commanding a fine ship, and feel- ing that they owe their position to the technical schools at Ringsend. It is no doubt early to talk about things like this. We are at the beginning of our endeavour ; whether the schools succeed or fail will depend on those who 458 MISCELLANEOUS administer and manage as well as on those for whose benefit they are built. Those who manage and administer these schools will come face to face, as time goes on, with all kinds of difficulties that will be fatal to these schools if they are not promptly and skilfully dealt with. They will require great zeal, constant care, and great determination to make these schools succeed. Very much also depends on those who are going to use the schools. They, too, must resolve to make these schools a real success. A great many will feel that they don't see the use of technical education. Well, I appeal to them to exercise the virtue of faith. You cannot tell unless you try, and even if what they learn do no good, it can do no harm, and the best thing to do is to try the experiment. I only appeal to you to give the schools a fair trial. I will now conclude by wishing success to the schools, hoping most earnestly from the bottom of my heart that you may find that they are beneficial to Ringsend and to the people in the neighbourhood all along the coast. A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION* To the Editor of the 'Times.' Wilton House, Salisbury, November 28, 1892. Sir, Will you allow me to put, through the medium of your columns, a simple question to political econo- * The Tariff Act, that derived its name from Mr. McKinley (Republican) of Ohio, came into force on October 6, 1890, and the consequent rise in prices was understood to have contributed largely to the defeat of the Republicans in the elections which A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION 459 mists, the answer to which is of the deepest interest just now to distressed agriculturists ? If it is true, as we have all been taught, that in inter- national trade goods are paid for by goods, so that to check imports must also be to check exports, why is it that the McKinley tariff, which has most undoubtedly checked the importation of English goods into America, has not checked the exportation of American wheat to England ? If it must do so, when is it going to begin ? Yours faithfully, Pembroke. To the Editor of the 'Times.' Panshanger, Hertford, December 2, 1892. Sir, Let me assure both Lord Chetwynd and ' R.' The J Mckinley that I did not mean to imply that the doctrine that tariff, goods are paid for by goods or services is not true. What I did mean to imply is that this doctrine requires a far more thorough and detailed elucidation than it has yet, to my knowledge, received either in Sir Thomas Farrer's ' Free Trade v. Fair Trade ' or elsewhere. For instance, Lord Chetwynd answers my question, 'Why is it that the McKinley tariff, which has un- doubtedly checked the importation of English goods into America, has not checked the exportation of closely followed. The Act imposed high import duties upon all kinds of goods, including raw materials. The duty on the latter was modified by a fresh Tariff Act passed in August, 1894, some further proposed reforms having been rejected by the Senate. Dislocation of trade has, of course, followed so stringent a measure as the McKinley Act, and the great strikes at Carnegie's works at Homestead and the railway riots belong to this period. 460 MISCELLANEOUS American wheat to England ?' by reminding me quite truly that the interchange of goods between two countries is not necessarily direct, and suggesting that England may possibly pay for its wheat from America through China. But is this the case ? Do the facts correspond with the theory ? Is the diminution of our exports to America balanced, as a matter of fact, by an in- crease of our exports to China and other countries, as the theory would lead one to suppose ? It is most important to know whether this is so or not. For, if it is, it would follow that a McKinley tariff could do our trade no substantial harm beyond what is caused by disturbance. And, further, this remarkable truth would seem to follow, that a nation cannot restrict its total imports by protective duties, because so long as there is a market for its exports (as in the case of American wheat) the imports must somehow get into the country to pay for them. Is this the orthodox doctrine ? Is it true ? Is it the case that the amount of a nation's trade depends solely on the market for her exports, and that the imports have (putting services apart) to con- form, let protective duties be what they may ? Or is the contrary doctrine true, that imports matter as well as exports, and that if they are restricted exports will suffer, so that we may not unreasonably expect a McKinley tariff to have some effect upon American, exports ? These are simple but fundamental questions that require, in my opinion, far more elucidation than they have yet received. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION 461 To the Editor of the 'Times.' Wilton House, Salisbury, December 12, 1892. Sir, The fault is mine for using a slipshod expression, but Sir Thomas Farrer has misunderstood what I mean by ' putting services apart.' I meant, and had better have said, ' supposing services ' (including under this term all methods of payment other than goods or money) ' to remain the same.' And I think that there must be some further verbal misunderstanding between us when he seems to say (a propos of my two questions) that the doctrine that both exports and imports matter (in determining the amount of a nation's trade) is the supplement rather than the contrary of the doctrine that only exports matter, and that the volume of its trade will be deter- mined solely by the amount of its exports for which there is a market. But there is no need to go into this, for Sir Thomas Exports Farrer answers my questions decisively by repudiating ports . the doctrine that only exports matter, which doctrine I showed in my last letter was an inevitable deduction from the common position that goods must be paid for by goods or services, and yet that no diminution of American exports on account of the exclusion of imports by the McKinley tariff is to be expected. ' Imports,' he writes, ' depend upon exports, and exports depend upon imports. A restriction on exports operates pro tanto as a restriction on imports, and a restriction on imports as a restriction on exports,' and ' to discourage imports must be to discourage exports.' From which it would 462 MISCELLANEOUS seem to follow that a severe protective tariff in America must sooner or later restrict American exports, unless the world can continue to find means of paying for them other than goods ; and I imagine Sir Thomas Farrer would agree to this as a matter of course, though he does not say so explicitly. I frankly admit all that Sir Thomas says as to the insufficiency of the question I originally asked — namely, ' why the McKinley tariff had not affected the importa- tion of American wheat,' regarded as any sort of test of the theory put forward by himself, Mr. Cross, and other Free Trade economists as to the processes of international trade. I asked the question to provoke this discussion. But, surely, if the trade of America is taken as a whole, the effect of a protective measure so extreme and wide- reaching as the McKinley Bill ought not to be impossible for economists to trace, even to its ultimate effect upon American exports. May I state, in conclusion, that I did not say that Sir Thomas had not explained the above-mentioned theory ? Such a statement would have justified a retort as to my understanding that he has been kind enough to spare me. What I said was that it required a far more detailed and thorough elucidation than it had yet, as far as I knew, received ; and by this I meant more especially repeated verifications of the theory in actual specific cases at every step by the facts and figures relating thereto. I have not seen the later edition of ' Free Trade v. Fair Trade ' that Sir Thomas refers to, but, speaking of such treatises generally, though the theory may be illus- trated by examples from fact, yet, when treating of inter- CRIPPS V. FREE TRADE 463 national trade as a whole, there is many a long gap in the chain of fact which ought to run parallel with the chain of theory, and which has to be filled by pro- bable assumptions and hypotheses. Sir Thomas Farrer seems to be of opinion that the processes of internal trade are altogether too compli- cated to be traced out in this way. Few will question his authority, but if he is right it will be long before the world ceases to suffer from economic fallacies about international trade. Yours faithfully, Pembroke. CRIPPS v. FREE TRADE. The paper in the March number of the National Review on ' Free Trade and the Economists,' by Mr. C. A. Cripps, is not only lucid and able, but shows, up to a certain point, a thorough understanding of the theory he attacks ; a quality sufficiently rare in this contro- versy to tempt one at times to define a Protectionist as a man who cannot understand the theory of Free Trade, and a Free Trader as a man who cannot understand the objections to it. He deals with the assumption that capital and labour, displaced by foreign competition, can find alternative employment in England. He claims, rightly, that the whole issue is involved in this assumption. For the assumption that trade driven out of one channel by the cheapness of foreign produce will be able to find an alternative channel, and the doctrine that commodities are paid for by commodities, are the very keys of the 464 MISCELLANEOUS Free Trade position. For if the latter were not true we should feel no security that the great volume of foreign imports did not represent the mere spending of the national capital and savings ; and if the former were not justified we should have no answer to those who, like Sir Edward Sullivan, make striking calcula- tions of the amount of wealth that is lost to the country by the practice of buying our food from abroad instead of producing it at home. On these two points, there- fore, the forces of attack and defence have gradually concentrated themselves, and round them the economic battle has raged most furiously for the last few years. And with what results ? I make no claim whatever to give an expert's opinion. Speaking merely as one of the crowd, who has listened rather lazily, but with an open mind, to the disputations of the champions, I am left with the impression that the defence has been victorious, but that the defenders have suffered some loss, and have been forced to give up some parts of their position as untenable. They have succeeded in proving that our excess of imports over exports is not paid for in coin of the realm or bank-notes ; but, alas ! we shall hear no more amongst the intelligent that comforting doctrine, much loved of yore by wild Free Traders, that a flow of imports necessarily produced, by some mysterious law, a corresponding flow of exports. It has been shown, I think, for reasons I will give presently, that in England capital and labour, displaced by foreign competition, have found alternative employ- ment ; but, on the other hand, it has become plain that the assumption that this must always happen is not one that can be relied upon, and that the Free CRIPPS V. FREE TRADE 465 Traders greatly underrated the loss that such a trans- ference entailed. It seems to me perfectly conceivable theoretically, though not perhaps practically likely, that a country might have all its industries more or less ruined by foreign competition in its home markets. If one industry can be so ruined, as everyone admits, why not others in the same way ? I once drew up, for the mental exercise of a Free Trade friend, a supposititious case of a country that could not produce anything quite as cheaply as some other country in the world could supply it, and asked how that country could be benefited by being intro- duced to a system of Free Trade. It seemed to me, I pointed out, that the first result would be the ruin of all the home industries from the competition of cheap foreign goods in the home markets ; and it was impos- sible that this loss should be compensated by the institution of a foreign trade, as the country had nothing that it could produce at the price ruling in the world's market. So that, after having ruined its home industries, and spent all its cash and savings in foreign goods, such a country would be forced to return to a system of internal trade, recreating its home industries by the help of an iron wall of Protection. I got no answer from my friend but a recommenda- tion to study Bastiat, which I did, without being rewarded by any conclusive solution of my diffi- culty. The way in which a poor community might be ruined by the competition of cheap foreign goods against all its industries in the home market can be brought before the mind in a rather striking way by an attempt 30 466 MISCELLANEOUS to think out a scheme which has been lately proposed, and which has, I believe, actually succeeded in the Low Countries, for settling the unemployed upon the land in communities producing for themselves all the necessaries of life. For it becomes evident immedi- ately that such a system could only maintain its existence by strictly confining exchanges to the members of the community, and excluding com- modities from the open market. For the corn and meat producers of such a community could never produce food at the current prices, nor could the clothes and boot producers compete against the cheap articles of the large factories and workshops. So that we are landed in this paradoxical conclusion, that in a condition of isolation such a community might exist in a state of rude sufficiency, but that the admission of cheap goods would bring it to ruin. Its members would be landed in a position that is a favourite one with Protectionist writers. They would have cheap goods and nothing to pay for them with, i.e., to exchange for them. I have indulged in this apparent digression because I am anxious, before criticizing Mr. Cripps's views, to make it clear that I am no fanatical believer in the universal efficacy of mere cheapness, or the infinite transferability of employment, and that I am fully alive to the loss that such a transfer must sometimes entail. The almost total destruction of West Indian pros- perity through the failure of the sugar industry is a strong instance of such loss ; and the way in which we allowed that industry to be destroyed by the temporary institution of foreign sugar bounties, without stirring a finger to avert the disaster, is as fine an example of CRIPPS v. FREE TRADE 467 narrow-minded adherence to a misleading theory as can be found in the history of politics. But Mr. Cripps's method of examining and testing the Free Trade assumption ' that capital and labour, displaced by foreign competition, can find alternative employment in England,' seems to me to have led him into palpable and serious error. He seems to me, first, to have exaggerated the assumption beyond all reason, and then to have tried it by false and inadequate tests. Surely the proper method of testing this assumption is obvious and simple. Dealing first, as he does, with the transferability of labour, we should examine the facts, and ascertain whether the displacement of English labour, chiefly in agriculture, by foreign com- petition has, or has not, been balanced by increased employment in other trades. If it is shown that there has been no such compensation, that there is no increase of employment in other trades to set off against the loss of employment in agriculture, then it will be evident that the assumption is false. But if it becomes clear that, after all due deductions have been made on account of other factors affecting the result, the loss of employment in agriculture has been far more than balanced by increase of employment in other trades, then the assumption of the Free Traders will be proved to have been justified. Tested in this way, it seems to me that the question only admits of one answer. If agricultural employ- ment has diminished, other employments have in- creased enormously. Our population has increased, and is still increasing at the rate of 320,000 a year. The volume of trade, and the amount paid in wages, go on increasing year after year, and are greater now 468 MISCELLANEOUS than they have ever been. Mr. Cripps challenges the Free Trader to bring forward the facts and figures on which he bases the assumption of the transferability of labour. Well, there they are in epitome. It would be easy to add to them in detail. The extent to which they are due to Free Trade may be, of course, open to dispute, but no one can hope to prove in the teeth of them that the Free Traders' assumption is not justified. But Mr. Cripps's method of testing it is very different. ' The test of its truth in any particular country and at any particular time,' he says, ' is the condition of the labour market. If the labour market is overcrowded, and there is a difficulty in finding work, the assumption cannot be accepted as an accurate generalization on which exclusively to found a policy.' He then adduces the evidence of distress amongst the labourers to prove that the labour market in England is so overstocked (including therein some assumptions about general diminution of employment which are at direct variance with known facts), and argues therefrom that the assumption of the Free Traders is disproved. I do not think that the argument is worth very much, even against those fanatical Free Traders who hold that the powers of labour to find fresh channels of profitable employment, when the old ones are rendered useless by cheap imports, are infinite. For even they have never held that employment was capable of infinite increase, and that under the blessed system of Free Trade a country could support as many people as you chose to put in it. To confound them he would have to prove that the fundamental cause of the distress was not the pressure of population on subsistence, but the inability of displaced labour to find employment ; and this he CRIPPS v. FREE TRADE 469 could only do by showing how, under a system of Pro- tection, the country could support a larger population than it does at present. He makes no attempt to do anything of the sort. The fact that all countries, whether under Free Trade or Protectionist systems, are liable to suffer from the pressure of increasing population on subsistence does not seem to be present to his mind. It does not seem to occur to him that the present distress may be due to the constantly and rapidly increasing number of our labourers. He assumes, without argument, that the distress is due to the displacement of labour by foreign imports. One cannot help wondering whether he would be equally ready to assume that Protection was the fundamental cause of the recent severe distress in the manufacturing districts of America. Of course, if it was the fact, as he insinuates once or twice, that there has been a diminution of employment in England under Free Trade, if it were true that there exists ' a co- incidence of diminished employment with cheapened products,' that, ' with increasing wealth/ there is a decreasing employment of the wage-earning class, and that, owing to foreign competition, 'an increased supply of labour competes for a decreased demand,' his case would be a strong one. But he is assuming in these passages just what he ought to prove, and his assump- tions are, as I have already said, in flat contradiction with well-known and indisputable facts. The amount paid in wages over the whole country has increased year by year only a little less rapidly than the popula- tion, and has been larger during the last few years than at any previous time in the history of the country. He seems to me to fail, in a similar way, to grapple 47 o MISCELLANEOUS properly with the question of the transferability of capital. He gives an account in some detail of the loss of capital that has occurred in British agriculture, but he makes no attempt to estimate the amount of capital that has been invested in other industries that have come into existence or increased in magnitude under the system of Free imports, and to compare the gain with the loss. He seems to hold that the trans- ferability of capital can be disproved in two ways : firstly, by showing that a large amount of English capital is being invested abroad ; secondly, by demon- strating the impossibility of transferring capital from an industry which foreign competition has rendered unprofitable. For the convenience of my argument, I will deal with the second point first. I have already stated my opinion that Free Traders have very generally underrated the loss involved in transferring labour and capital from one industry to another, and it is not necessary, therefore, to point out at length my cordial agreement with much that he urges on this subject. But I think that he exaggerates his case, and that this exaggeration springs from a false and misleading view of the nature of capital, which causes him to restrict the idea of its transferability to too narrow a meaning. All through the article he speaks of capital as if it was a fixed sum devoted to the employment of labour, of which no portion that is ever lost can be replaced. If a portion of English capital is invested abroad, that is so much lost to the English labourer. If the agri- cultural returns show a diminution of capital, that is so much to be deducted from the general capital fund of the whole country. CRIPPS V. FREE TRADE 471 But, in truth, this is a most misleading view of the nature of capital. It is not a fixed sum. A rich country like England may be almost said to secrete the capital it requires as opportunities of profitable investments offer themselves. Capital may be lost in one business, but new capital will be found to pour into other busi- nesses, which have become profitable in the place of it. What is meant, therefore, by the transferability of capital is not merely that particular sums can be trans- ferred from one business to another, but that the wealth of the country, which is always lying ready to invest itself under the name of capital in profitable enterprise, will seek new channels when the old ones are closed to it. But even in the narrower sense of transferability I think he overstates the case. A great deal of agri- cultural capital has actually been transferred to other industries in spite of the difficulty of realizing the capital of a failing business. An appreciable number of farmers have realized their stock, and retired, in- vesting their money in various ways ; a good many more have started their sons in other businesses : while, as every landlord knows, a very large direct transfer of capital from agricultural to other industries has taken place through the action of the banks in calling in the loans they had been in the habit of making to farmers in more profitable times, and investing the money else- where. Secondly, he thinks that the transferability of capital can be disproved by evidence of the investment of English capital abroad. His case rests chiefly on that false view of the nature of capital to which I have alluded. He assumes that every investment abroad is so much taken from the capital fund which ought, if 472 MISCELLANEOUS things were rightly ordered, to be spent for the benefit of the British workman. It does not seem to occur to him that there must be some limit to the openings for profitable investment in England, and that there may be, after all these are filled, a surplus of English wealth which naturally seeks investment in countries where capital is more scarce or timid. The amount of in- vestments abroad does not necessarily prove anything but that England has a great deal of wealth to invest. It cannot disprove the transferability of capital in England, unless it is shown at the same time that there would be more opening for the profitable investment of English capital at home under a system of Protection. But this must be proved, not assumed ; for it is just what Free Traders, who believe that our cheap pro- duction depends upon our cheap imports, would strenu- ously deny. And with the enormous annual production of British industry to show, they would certainly have a strong prima facie case. Mr. Cripps makes a good deal of the power of a Protectionist system to attract the investment of foreign capital, with a view to tapping the home market of the Protected country. He points out how by this means British capital, invested abroad, may actually compete in neutral markets against English producers, under circumstances that are very disadvantageous to the latter. Such a contingency, in spite of any profit it may bring to English pockets, is doubtless unfortunate where it exists ; but I should like to know the extent of this evil before admitting that it is a serious objection to Free Trade. One hears little of it ; and one would suppose a priori that the competition of native capitalists would keep it within very narrow limits. I doubt if it CRIPPS V. FREE TRADE 47 3 amounts to much more than is indicated by Mr. Cripps's words when he says: 'Instances can be given where English capital has been attracted abroad by the Pro- tectionist policy of foreign countries.' He gives two illustrations. In one case, ' English capitalists have established mills on the Continent to supply markets formerly supplied from England. They justify this export of capital, with its consequent withdrawal of employment from the English operatives, on the ground that they are unable to produce commodities in England at such a price as would enable them to compete for orders in a Protected market.' In the other, an English firm which produced a certain commodity for export to a foreign country, on a prohibitive duty being imposed, transferred its capital and workmen, and established a new manufacture in the Protected country. Let me ask what these stories prove beyond the fact, which few will dispute, that the Protectionist duties of foreign countries are injurious to our trade ? They do not dis- prove the transferability of capital in England, unless it can be shown, as I have said, that under a system of Protection all our capital would be required for use within our own borders. Such occurrences would not be averted by our adopting Protection ourselves. For their object is to tap the home market in other and Protected countries. As a matter of fact, there is notice of the establishment of English factories on the Continent with this object long before England was a Free Trade country, due to that spirit of commercial enterprise in which we, at least, had the start of the rest of the modern world. Mr. Cripps asks whether there are instances which shoW that ' capital has been attracted, to a correspond- 474 MISCELLANEOUS ing extent, from a Protectionist fo a Free Trade country.' Possibly not. There is but one Free Trade country of any size, and to take capital and private enterprise to England is rather like the proverbial carrying of coals to Newcastle. But I think that he will find, though I regret to say I cannot at this moment give him chapter and verse, that there is a very considerable amount of American capital invested in the English shipping trade, just because in Free Trade England ships can be built more profitably than they can in Protected America. In conclusion, let me say that a critical paper of this kind, dealing with points of difference rather than of agreement, assumes inevitably a tone of hostility and depreciation that is somewhat misleading. I have devoted myself to what seemed to me the weak points of Mr. Cripps's thesis, but I should be sorry if I appeared to treat with any disrespect an essay, much of which seems to me true, and admirably pertinent at the present time, and every line of which is luminous and suggestive. Pembroke. THE END. MILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. /. D. &> Co. ERRATA. Page 130, line 12 of note, for ' Episcopate ' read ' Episcopate.' Page 169, line 2 of note, for ' W. C. Cross ' read ' W. C. Crofts. J-US AllgCiU.S This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. or; ^ V^ Jflfc J|XN 13W Form L9-25)yi-9,'47(A5618)444 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES T.TRRARY DA Pembroke - -665 I-olit iofl l- P36A2 letters and spee eke s • /■ 3 1158 00901 4522 4 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 406 556 DA 565 P36A2 V ■~ r "fy^Hyt WKKKU •■'■■ '■'■•■■■ m ■■•■'.■..■*■• us