fW.Y~'3f the borough and county franchise, was defeated by 299 to 83. Revolution or Evolution? 143 justice or its feasibility. Derived by Mazzini from the reds of the first French Republic, it remained a mere opinion, until the success of Peel's experiments in 1842-1848 seems to have impelled Lovett to give it the first place in the new Radical creed, where it still holds a prominent place. Another link connecting 1 Chartism with more recent developments was the endeavour of O'Connor and some associates to bring- about a union of various democratic clubs in the National Charter and Social Reform Union. The title is significant. It seemed to admit that the Charter alone could scarcely lead democrats to victory. The schism caused by the fiasco of April 10, 1848, was too deep to be healed, unless new sources of enthusiasm diverted attention from the personal disputes of the past. O'Connor had always had a leaning towards social ex- periments, and he now proposed that the new union should undertake to support the co-operative movements and similar efforts for the improvement of artisan life. Had he not been naturally suspected by many genuine co-operators, possibly the new industrial movement might have marched hand in hand with reviving Chartism. It was not to be. The distrust felt in O'Connor was now redoubled, owing to the failure of his Land Company in a way which exposed him to merciless charges of dis- honesty from his former colleagues, Ernest Jones and Harney. This last blow was fatal alike to his waning reputation and to his tottering reason. The closing scenes of the great agitator's life were not devoid of pathos, as when the cottiers on the Land Company's estate at O'Connorville presented him an address of sympathy and thanks for his agrarian efforts ; or when, at the greeting accorded to Kossuth, the great Hungarian patriot, in 1851, the still stalwart Irishman ran up to the illustrious visitor on the platform and wrung his hand with maudlin effusiveness. Failing in his Land Company, 144 The Rise of Democracy. losing control over his Northern Star, and bankrupt in reputation, O'Connor sank to rest in a private lunatic asylum. The fleeting nature of the popularity which he had striven to gain and to hold was revealed by two suggestive facts. A national subscription commenced by the men of Nottingham realized only ^32 for the man who, during the first eleven years of the reign, had been the idol of the populace ; and that once formidable paper, the Northern Star, after being bought by its former printers for ,100, forthwith advised Radicals to abandon the terms Charter and Chartist as " offensive both to sight and taste ", and to concentrate their efforts on gaining universal suffrage and the ballot. The general despair felt by Chartists (except by such stalwarts as Ernest Jones and Harney), and the collapse of O'Connor's social programme, left the ground free for a far healthier influence, that of Maurice, Kingsley, and the school of Christian socialists. Amidst the excitements of the spring of 1848, and the disappointments which ensued, these two earnest leaders, by voice and pen, had striven to point the way to self-help as a safer, if less exciting, road than that of blustering demonstrations; and their manly counsels, reinforced by those of "Tom Hughes", soon strengthened the hold which co-operation was gaining over the artisans of the Midlands and the North. There was indeed every need to encourage and guide the great co-operative movement, so that it might realize the highest aims of its founders, who looked not to thrift alone, but also to the cultivation of the social virtues, and to the training of that corporate spirit in which the British workmen were so lamentably deficient. No thinking man could study the events of 1840-1850 without seeing that the failure of Chartism was due to the obstinate egotism both of leaders and of the rank and file. Quot homines tot sententice may be written as the motto of the movement, especially after each of the Revolution or Evolution? 145 rebuffs which the agitators encountered. How necessary, then, for artisans to learn on a smaller scale, and in their own community, the need of that "give and take", of that self-restraint and patience in adversity, which lubri- cates human society, and renders steady progress possible. Such was, surely, the chief practical lesson interwoven by Kingsley with the plot of his Chartist novel, Alton Locke. That there might be no mistake as to his mean- ing, he pointed his moral by reminding his readers in the preface to the second edition that democracy meant, not the rule of mere numbers, but of a people organized in demoi, in communities ; that is, of a people vitally related by community of spirit. The rule of mere numbers, he asserted, would result in that worst of all tyrannies, an ochlocracy, or mob-rule. His warnings, together with those of Maurice and Tom Hughes, derived additional force from their well-known sympathy with many of the Chartist aims, a sympathy which found expression in manly words of advice and cheering counsel in meetings, where rage at past failures seemed to portend final de- spairing efforts. Thanks to this noble trio, the desultory efforts of the Chartists were largely absorbed by the trade -union and co-operative movements, which had already begun to ameliorate the workmen's position. In the latter of these, at any rate, they learned something of that corporate spirit, and of "the obedience and self- control which it brings ", together with the lesson, so repugnant to John Bull's individualism, that "only he who can obey is fit to rule ". Such is a brief outline of the events determining the course of democracy in England in the closing years of the revolutionary period. The agitations which had burst forth on the Continent in 1789 seemed to be for ever suppressed by the complete failures of French, Italian, German, and Hungarian democrats to rear last- ing political structures in the exciting years 1848-1849. (M416) K 146 The Rise of Democracy. The earlier phases of continental democracy undoubtedly exercised a potent influence on English Radicalism in the days of Home Tooke and Tom Paine, and later on imparted to our reform movement of 1830-1832 the 6lan needful for victory. But since that time the influence of the Continent on British politics has steadily declined. The reason is not far to seek. The democratic move- ments of Italy and Germany, which caused most of the unrest of the Continent in 1830-1849, while aiming secondarily at civic rights, were mainly inspired by a longing for national unity and independence of external control. They therefore had little in common with Chartism, which, as we have seen, derived its strength from distress due to economic causes. English demo- cracy has necessarily been both insular and practical, because it has been overshadowed by the sudden growth of economic problems, unparalleled in the history of the world. These problems were being in part solved by factory legislation and fiscal changes at the very time when national claims produced the political explosions of 1848 on the Continent. The imitation by Chartists of continental revolutionary methods was therefore utterly futile, arraying against them here that force of public opinion which at Rome, Milan, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna had enthusiastically greeted the dawn of democracy. The verdict of posterity, however, will probably award to Feargus O'Connor and his associates some scanty meed of praise for unintentionally revealing the strength of British institutions, when despotism and unbridled demo- cracy reduced the Continent to a weltering chaos. Phases of Political Thought. 147 Chapter X. Phases of Political Thought. As the biting- winds of spring often render good ser- vice by checking a premature growth of vegetation, so the sharp reaction which in and after 1849 blighted the ardent hopes of democrats, was to be ultimately fruitful in good. Alike in the United Kingdom and on the Continent, important divisions in aim and method, which were not realized amidst the enthusiasm of the attack, were made patent by the failure to snatch victory by a coup de main. The disheartened hosts, falling back in confusion, revised their methods, discarded untrust- worthy leaders, strove to quicken the popular intelligence, and sought, when possible, the alliance of monarchs or statesmen who sympathized with the aspirations of their peoples. The Cannae of 1848 evidently called for a Fabian policy of prudence and delay. It was to be rewarded by signal good fortune, the peoples of Italy and Germany finding in each case their patriotic king and statesman ; while in England the cloak of Sir Robert Peel was to fall on an equally gifted successor. These are the chief facts in modern democratic develop- ments, tending not only to assuage revolutionary passion, but to invigorate and solidify the monarchical principle. In our own land, the swing of the pendulum, first towards extreme democracy, and then back towards old methods of government, was not so violent as on the Continent, doubtless owing to the long practice of a great part of our people in representative government, and the sense of responsibility and moderation which it develops. Nevertheless, English politics felt not only the influence of the events of 1848, but also of the re- actionary period which followed. Indeed, in 1850-1866, 148 The Rise of Democracy. British democracy relapsed into a condition almost of torpor when contrasted with the phenomenal activity of the two preceding decades. So remarkable was the change that a well-known Liberal statesman exclaimed in 1858: "The time is coming when we shall have to advertise for a grievance". The saying betrayed little foresight; but it illustrates the complacent optimism of a period dominated by the personality of Palmerston. How different had been the condition of our life and thought twenty years previously, when the prevalence of discontent drew from that typical Tory of the old school, Lord Eldon, the unparliamentary asseveration, that, if he had to begin life over again, he would begin as an agitator! By contrasting the two statements, we may measure the enormous influence of the work of social and financial reform carried out in the interval. There were many influences tending to pacify the working-classes of Great Britain besides the collapse of revolutionary efforts in 1848. The gold discoveries of 1849-1851 in California and Australia gave an enormous impetus to industry and commerce. The iron horse and the steamship, working in harmonious combination, were opening up all parts of the world to emigration with a cheapness and facility never dreamt of in 1837 ; and every ship-load of emigrants leaving our shores helped to relieve the pressure of population on congested districts, and to prepare the way for an economic solu- tion of the "condition-of-England question". It is true that the many Chartists, and still more the thousands of Irish malcontents, who sought homes beyond the seas, embittered our relations with our colonies, and still more with the United States. But the discontent at any rate passed from the sphere of domestic politics to that of imperial and foreign policy. Besides this cause of relief to our overwrought social system, there were the distractions caused by a remark- Phases of Political Thought. 149 able series of wars and commotions, from the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny to the great national struggles of Italy and Germany in 1859-1866, and the complica- tions resulting" from the American Civil War. Inter arma silent leges, says the Roman proverb. It holds good in modern times in more ways than one. A practical people like the English thinks but of one thing at a time ; and when public attention was riveted on the events at Sevastopol or Lucknow, on the tremendous struggles of North and South, or on the future destinies of Italy, Prussia, and Austria, little energy was left for questions of parliamentary reform. The one command- ing personality in the English politics of that age was also adverse to any change in the electorate. Lord Pal- merston used his powers of racy speech and dogged will to discourage all motions for reform, and diverted public attention as far as possible to foreign or imperial affairs and to questions of national defence. From the time of his famous "Civis Romanus sum" speech in 1850 to his decease in 1865, foreign politics accordingly held in popular esteem the position claimed in preceding years by domestic questions. The alternation of these two phases of political life has been one of the characteristics of British development, and will probably recur no less decisively in the future. Whenever the United King- dom has fallen into a state of malaise, the electorate has insisted on the postponement of all save the most press- ing considerations of colonial and foreign policy. But when the mitigation of social evils or political discontent has reinvigorated the life-blood of the empire's heart, a dilatation or expansion of effort towards the extremities becomes natural and inevitable. After the exhausting efforts which culminated at Waterloo, a long period of torpor in imperial affairs inevitably supervened, until the recuperative process, wisely directed by Lord Grey and Sir Robert Peel, enabled the mother of nations to send 150 The Rise of Democracy. forth her swarms of emigrants to occupy the lands which the prowess of her warriors or the genius of her engineers had opened up. The marvellous growth of our colonies in the new era of commercial expansion awakened both our own national pride and the jealousies of our rivals, and thus tended to discredit the views of the "Man- chester School", which regarded colonies as a burden, and foreign policy as a delusion and a snare. In truth, however, both the Cobdens and the Palmerstons exert a useful influence on a people which seeks to combine vigour and liberty at home with political and commercial influence abroad. Without her Cobdens, Peels, and Gladstones, Great Britain might possibly have degener- ated into a second Carthage. Without her Pitts, Pal- merstons, and Beaconsfields, she might have fallen to the level of the Dutch Netherlands. Such have been the chief material causes affecting the ebb and flow of English political life. But a wider question here meets us. Is there any connection be- tween the peaceful expansion of the English-speaking peoples and the political thought of the middle of this century? It may be of interest to notice certain influ- ences which the expansion of England has exerted on contemporary thought both in our own and in other countries. The marvellous growth of the English- speaking peoples has been so prominent a feature of modern life, that it could hardly be overlooked either by the politicians or thinkers on the Continent. I shall try to show that the steady growth of British institutions has helped to divert the attention of political thinkers from abstract speculation to patent facts, from the draw- ing up of paper constitutions to a study of the develop- ment of British institutions and of their famous offshoots in the New World. A century had elapsed since Montesquieu had extolled our system of balance of political powers as combining Phases of Political Thought. 151 the peculiar excellences of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in a compromise which possessed the elements of stability. This balance of powers in our constitution was, it is true, vanishing- under the en- croachments of the people's House on the prerogatives of the Crown and the House of Lords. But, it might be argued, these changes in our political customs and procedure were, after all, only the legal recognition of changes which had occurred, and were still occurring, in the life of the people. They served to register the stages of transition from the monarchical and feudal times to the present industrial age, which endows the many with an overwhelming importance. The Act of 1832 and subsequent legislation, when viewed in relation to the momentous developments of the nation's life, proved that the English constitution was, what it had always been, an organic growth vitally related to the body politic, and therefore necessarily expanding in the direc- tion indicated by the most vigorous growth. But besides possessing this feature of interest, our institutions claimed the study of political thinkers on yet wider grounds. The development of the English race beyond the seas was to demonstrate the marvellous adaptability of our methods of government to widely diverse conditions. Whatever may be urged as to the many differences between the constitution of the United States and that of the mother country, there can be little doubt as to the British origin of most of the provisions of that famous federal compact. It was this democratic offshoot of British constitutional life, applied to a number of self-governing communities, which engaged the ear- nest attention of that brilliant French thinker, de Tocque- ville. His great work, Democracy in America (1835), was destined, as we shall presently see, to exert a salutary influence on political thought in Europe ; and on no leader of public opinion was the impress of his 152 The Rise of Democracy. vigorous mind stamped more clearly than on John Stuart Mill, who justly calls him the Montesquieu of the age. In truth, de Tocqueville's great work tended to recall political thought from the sphere of abstract speculation, in which it had aimlessly careered since the advent of Rousseau, to a careful use of the comparative method in which the earlier French thinker had excelled. Ob- servation, comparison, and analysis of existing institu- tions have tended since de Tocqueville's day to resume their rightful ascendency in political thought. Another testimony to the vitality of the English con- stitution was seen in its adaptation to the needs of the two discordant provinces of Canada. After the revolts of 1837 a careful inquiry was made into the conditions of political life in Upper and Lower Canada. As a result, the Canada Act of 1840 granted full constitutional rights to these provinces, which were thenceforth united for all save local requirements, the governor appointed by the Crown continuing to discharge all, and more than all, the functions wielded by the sovereign at home. The almost complete success of this experiment afforded indisputable proof of the surprising pliability of our institutions, and tended still further to give a practical turn to the political thought of the age. Not only practical men like the Piedmontese states- man Cavour, but the foremost political thinkers of Europe, were now convinced that if representative government was to be securely gained by continental peoples, it must be of a character somewhat akin to that of England. In brief, the democratic ideals of Rousseau or of Bentham gave place to those of de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. Even before the failure of revolutionary methods in 1848-49, there had been noticeable a certain hesitation in the utterances even of ardent reformers. Was demo- cracy the true solution of all difficulties besetting the Phases of Political Thought. 153 political relations of mankind? Was it the summum bonum of all public effort? And if so, were the people endowed with the qualities necessary to its successful working-? Such doubts had scarcely ever troubled the minds of its first champions. They are the common- places of all works written since 1830 by open-minded observers, except those of the lone-brooding- seer, Maz- zini, and of the diminishing- band of disciples who were still entranced by the vision of Young- Italy and Young Europe. The Mazzinians remained as almost the sole witnesses to the unquestioning- faith of the earlier gener- ation, when Rousseau assumed as an indisputable fact the equality of man and the supremacy and infallibility of the general will. The contrast between the earlier age and the middle and latter part of this century is so marked, that a few suggestions seem to be called for as to the trend of thought from the days of Rousseau, the unconscious precursor of revolutionary thought, down to the time of Mill and Darwin. Nothing can be more absolute than the dogmatism with which Rousseau builds up his ideal democratic system. The people, having agreed by a solemn social compact to form a community for purposes of mutual defence, support, and advancement, forthwith create a state, wherein the general will, as declared directly by the people itself, without the inter- vention of representatives, is paramount. Such a com- munity or state having been formed by the writer with idyllic ease, Rousseau next deduces the attributes of the general will. Arguing with fallacious facility from adjec- tive to adjective, he proves that as the will is general it must also be inalienable, indivisible, incorruptible, unrepresentable, and indestructible. 1 Such an argument would of itself inspire distrust in the present age of dis- 1 Rousseau, Le Contrat Social (1774), bk. ii. An English edition has recently been edited by Mr. Tozer, with introduction. 154 The Rise of Democracy. illusionment ; but the literary skill of the writer and the symmetry of his completed system constituted at once the charm and the danger of the new political evangel to the men of 1789 in France, and even to the more practical Home Tookes and Tom Paines on this side of the Channel. And all this, it should be observed, was derived by verbal legerdemain from the first postu- late of Rousseau's political geometry, the assumed social contract, from which our own thinker, Hobbes, had de- duced the justice and necessity of an absolute monarchy. What wonder that Burke called Rousseau's book, and the resulting declaration of the rights of man of 1789, "chaff and rags and paltry blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man"! A dreary, bloody interval was, however, to elapse before thinkers ceased to delude mankind by their logical Utopias, and, returning to solid fact, recognized that politics was an experimental science. The conviction of the absolute truth of the democratic creed and of its superiority to all other theories of government was asserted with undiminished fervour by another great political thinker of that age, Jeremy Ben- tham. Approaching his subject by methods of inquiry, based on a careful analysis of forms of government and of the motives of human action, the Englishman never- theless arrived at conclusions well-nigh as sweeping as those of Rousseau. 1 Scorning the system of checks and balances which endeared the British constitution to Montesquieu, Bentham advocated an unbridled demo- cracy. The monarchy and the House of Lords were therefore to vanish, yielding their powers to a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, which was to enforce absolutely the will of the majority not only in legislation but by the most complete and exacting control over the executive departments of government. 1 See cb. ii. of this work. Phases of Political Thought. 155 "He exhausted" (says John Stuart Mill 1 ) "all the resources of ingenuity in devising- means for riveting the yoke of public opinion closer and closer round the necks of all public functionaries, and excluding- every possibility of the slightest or most temporary influence either by a minority or by the functionary's own notions of right." To such a length did Bentham's enthusiasm for utility carry him in the very natural disgust at the sordid Whig oligarchy of the times of Walpole and the Pelhams and the monarchical state-craft of George III. The arbitrariness of the new democratic government is not the only noticeable feature in Bentham's scheme. Equally remarkable is the baldness and rigidity of its presentment. The utilitarian philosopher urged his claims with complete disregard of historical associations and human sentiment. Great, indeed, must have been the potential vigour of his leading ideas to have made many converts, when set forth in a garb so unattractive and even repellent. "Victorious analysis" menaced mankind with a form of democracy which would have merited Burke's crushing criticism, a "multiplied ty- ranny". We seem to picture Bentham's triumphant democracy as reducing the world to a state resembling that described by astronomers, when our planet was a cheerless expanse of waters sweeping in tidal waves that were checked and diverted by no friendly continents. Such would be the flux and reflux of Bentham's all- dominating democratic opinion. The experience of the successive spasms of revolution in 1789-1799, the return to a military despotism under the great Napoleon, and the failure of the French Re- volution of 1830, discredited the rigid systems of Rous- seau and Bentham. Talleyrand's mot on taking the oath to the constitution of 1830 " It is the thirteenth" may serve as epitaph to the earlier generation of 1 J. S. Mill, Essay on Bentham, 156 The Rise of Democracy. constitution builders. In their place came leaders of a more practical turn of mind, inspired with a distrust of constitutions based on abstract reasoning, and with a deepening desire to seek some foundation in fact, some compromise with the actual. The failure of the philosophic constitution builders on the Continent of Europe, and the success attending the development of British methods of government, are the dominant facts in the history of modern politics. Their results on political thought have been considerable. Thenceforth nearly all inquirers into political science have been content to abandon all efforts to deduce results from first principles. They have generally sat- isfied themselves with a humbler but assuredly safer method, namely, the collection of facts relating to man's life and conduct as an individual and in a community, and have striven by a comparison of these data to arrive at conclusions which may be regarded provisionally as working hypotheses. The reason for this change of attitude is obvious. The schools of Rousseau and Bentham had not understood the full complexity of the problem which they attempted to solve. They un- derstood neither man as an individual nor human society. Their data being imperfect, their conclusions were bound to be faulty and one-sided. The work of their successors has therefore been to make good the gaps, to study man and society in the light of the investi- gations of natural science, and to endeavour to correlate the immense mass of facts brought to light by the biolo- gist, the economist, and the scientific school of historians. We are still in the midst of this phase ; and it therefore behoves students of political science still to adhere to the comparative and inductive methods of de Tocque- ville. Space will not permit of any notice of de Tocque- ville's work. Its chief importance for us here is that it Phases of Political Thought. 157 exercised a great influence on one of the keenest of English political thinkers, John Stuart Mill. Reared by his father, James Mill, in an atmosphere saturated with exact knowledge, he learnt from de Tocqueville the limits to the operation of logic on man's social and political relations. He ceased to be a mere Benthamite, a "mere reasoning machine". 1 He no longer regarded happiness as the sole aim of human society, utility as the only test of legislation, or the rule of the majority as the sine qua non of civic life. De Tocqueville's book proved to his keen and receptive mind the superiority of the historical and comparative method in politics over that of argument from first principles. It taught him how to trace back both the excellences and defects of American life to democratic institutions. Democracy thenceforth ceased to be to him the absolute and un- questionable truth of man's public life. He now regarded it as a method of government, desirable on the whole, liable to grave abuse in some respects, and clearly open to many improvements. Perhaps the contrast between the earlier and later phases of democratic thought will be best realized if we place side by side some characteristic utterances of the earlier and later phases of John Stuart Mill's career. The first passage represents the rigid methods of his father James Mill, a firm Benthamite, who regarded politics as a purely deductive science analogous to geometry. Its postulates and axioms being granted, the science of politics could be constructed as symmetri- cally as that of geometry, and could be proved to lead to the adoption of the will of the majority. The most perfect political system, accordingly, was that which would infallibly ensure this result. A convinced Ben- thamite like James Mill entertained as little doubt about the practical side of government as he did concerning 1 J. S. Mill's Autobiography, ch. 4 [p. 109, ist edit.] 158 The Rise of Democracy. its principles. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography states that his father had ' ' an almost unbounded con- fidence in the efficacy of two things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion. . . He felt as if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them in word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a legisla- ture to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought that when the legislature no longer represented a class interest it would aim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated in- telligence to make in general a good choice of persons to represent them ; and having done so, to leave to those whom they chose a liberal discretion." Various circumstances concurred to shake the son's faith in his father's creed. Macaulay's keen criticism of James Mill's Essay on Government convinced John Stuart Mill that his father's system was founded on too narrow a basis, since it ignored several essential factors. With his usual openness of mind, he revised his views on politics, no longer looking on representative demo- cracy as an "essential principle", but "as a question of time, place, and circumstance"; and though he still cherished his former political belief, he thenceforth re- garded "the choice of political institutions as a moral and educational question", &c. The very moderate success which the Reform Bill of 1832 attained was another disappointment; but more important was the impression produced on the young thinker by de Tocque- ville's Democracy in America, which led to a shifting of his political ideal from pure democracy to that modified form of it set forth in his later works. 1 The reasons for this toning down of his democratic 1 Autobiography, p. 191, ist edit. Phases of Political Thought. 159 ardour are set forth in many of his writings after 1835; but perhaps in none so clearly and emphatically as in his Essay on Bentham (1838). After awarding" due praise to his early master, he points out the chief practical defect in his political science. Bentham neglected to assign proper importance to differences of national character as determined by past history and habits of thought. But, besides this very obvious criticism, Mill urges one which is fundamental. He boldly challenges Bentham's assertion that the will of the majority must under all conditions be paramount : " Is it, at all times and places, good for mankind to be under the absolute authority of the majority of themselves? . . . Is it the proper condition of man in all ages and nations, to be under the despotism of Public Opinion?" Here we notice a mental attitude totally distinct from the unswerving faith of Mill's early years. The principle of ' 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is also attacked, partly because, as Mill elsewhere says, happiness is too complex a state of mind and body to serve as a satisfactory goal of human strivings; but chiefly because the rule of the majority alone will not necessarily lead to the best obtainable results. He frankly admits that an absolute democracy might tend not to level up mankind, but to level it down. He points out that the majority of mankind must always be un- skilled manual labourers, and that the rule of such a majority might tend "to make one narrow mean type of human nature universal and perpetual, and to crush every influence which tends to the further improvement of man's intellectual and moral nature. There must, we know, be some paramount power in society; and that the majority should be that power, is on the whole right, not as being just in itself, but as being less unjust than any other footing on which the matter can be placed. But it is necessary that the institutions of society should 160 The Rise of Democracy. make provision for keeping up, in some form or other, as a corrective to partial views, and a shelter for freedom of thought and individuality of character, a perpetual and standing Opposition to the will of the majority. . . A centre of resistance round which all the moral and social elements which the ruling power views with dis- favour may cluster, and behind whose bulwarks they may find shelter from the attempts of that power to hunt them out of existence, is as necessary where the opinion of the majority is sovereign, as where the ruling power is a hierarchy or an aristocracy. Where no such point d'appui exists, there the human race will inevitably de- generate; and the question whether the United States, for instance, will in time sink into another China (also a most commercial and industrious nation) resolves itself, to us, into the question whether such a centre of resist- ance will gradually evolve itself, or not." In this remarkable pronouncement the reaction from Bentham to de Tocqueville is everywhere conspicuous. The age of faith has vanished: that of criticism has dawned. If such was the case with so utilitarian a Radical as John Stuart Mill, it is not surprising that after the almost ludicrous collapse of democratic efforts in 1848, unbelievers like Thomas Carlyle should pro- claim that democracy was a self-cancelling process, leading to anarchy "happy if it be anarchy plus a street constable "- 1 As the later political utterances of Carlyle were destined to have little more than rhapsodic interest, we may be pardoned for omitting any reference to them here, especially as their contradiction by the complete - suffrage party has been noticed in chapter VIII. It will be of more practical importance to trace the further development of Mill's views on the subject of safeguarding the rights of the minority under a demo- cratic government. 1 Carlyle, Latter Day Pamphlets, No. i (1850). Phases of Political Thought. 161 These views took definite shape in his work, Con- siderations on Representative Government (1861), wherein his objections to the absolute rule of a majority lead to some practical suggestions. After asserting- that representation in proportion to numbers is the first principle of democracy, he devotes nearly a whole chap- ter to a review of various contrivances for safeguarding the rights of the minority, without which, he asserts, there can be no true democracy. Despite his admira- tion for the political spirit animating the people of the United States, Mill condemns their constitution as " a false democracy, which instead of giving representation to all, gives it only to the local majorities ". Mill here cites what is perhaps the extreme case of government by local majorities; for in the election of the Senate the majorities gained in States, which differ vastly in population and importance, determine the com- position of the august body which guards the federal compact. Over against this striking instance of what we may term federalized democracy the great philo- sopher places a system of proportional representation which, he claims, would not only save the minority from temporary political extinction, but would ensure the election of the wisest and best. He accords the highest praise to a work of Mr. Hare on The Election of Representatives (1859) as being "almost a specific" against the evils incidental to local representation. He welcomed Mr. Hare's plan of proportional representation for two reasons : first, as providing a far more accurate gauge of public opinion; and secondly, as being likely to result in the election of more intelligent members of Parliament. Before noticing the general details of Mr. Hare's plan, a word or two may not be out of place respecting the evils which it was devised to cure. The chief defect of the existing system was the predominance at election times of local over national interests. Wire- (H416) L 162 The Rise of Democracy. pullers sought, not for the ablest candidate, but for one who would do well for the town or district. Petty interests therefore usurped the place which ought to be occupied by national concerns; so that members were too often chosen, not for their ability on questions of national and imperial import, but because of their suc- cessful catering- for the interests of gas and water com- panies, or their liberal donations to the local infirmary. It must be confessed that there is great force in this objection. The result is seen in the strength of what may be called the parochial spirit in a Parliament which controls the destinies of a world-wide empire. Even so complacent a Whig as Mr. Bagehot admitted the "opu- lent profusion of dulness" in the Parliament of Lord Palmerston's day; and it may not unfairly be attributed to the bewilderment of the parochial intellect when sud- denly confronted with complex international questions. With a characteristic blending of acuteness and irony, of large-hearted hope and almost cynical scepticism, Mill noted that "the tendency of representative govern- ment, as of modern civilization, is towards collective mediocrity, and this tendency is increased by all reduc- tions and extensions of the franchise ". How much more necessary, then, that this defect of a democratic age should not be exaggerated by a faulty system of parliamentary election, but should to some extent be cured by the legislation of the wisest and best. 1 Such a result would be secured, so Hare and Mill con- tended, by substituting national for local election. According to this plan, the whole body of electors would be divided by the number of members to be returned at that time 658; and the resulting quotient would determine the number of votes needed for actual election of any one member to Parliament, though the 1 Compare Mazzini's definition of democracy, "The progress of all, through all, under the lead of the wisest and best ". Phases of Political Thought. 163 votes so given would be wholly irrespective of locality. A voter would, on this plan, be able to record his vote for any candidate in any part of the kingdom. His vote would only be counted for one candidate ; but he could add other names, in order of preference, and if the object of his first choice was not successful through not obtaining the requisite number of votes, still his vote would not be thrown away, but would probably aid the return of some member. To prevent very popular can- didates from engrossing nearly all the votes, any one of them was to be credited only with so many as were requisite to secure his return; the remainder of those who voted for him would have their votes counted for the next candidates on their respective lists. Without entering into further details of this interesting proposal, it is evidently open to very grave objections on the score of its complexity, at least for an unintel- ligent electorate; besides which the great clerical labour involved would expose it to risks of inaccuracy where so vast a number of votes had to be assessed. It is true, as is claimed by Mr. Hare in the Appendices to his third edition, that the elections to the Danish Rigsrad, or Supreme Legislative Council, had been since 1855 conducted on a somewhat similar system, and apparently with success. But it is hazardous to argue from the case of a small kingdom with an homogeneous population to a society so varied in race, interests, and intelligence as that of the United Kingdom. It may be granted, however, that proportionate representation is the ideal towards which democracy should strive. The method is logically perfect, it imposes on voters the need of an intelligent survey of national questions and of the record of other than local politicians, and above all it frees the election of the nation's represen- tatives from those petty parochial concerns which at present warp and complicate the main issues. 164 The Rise of Democracy. I propose to notice only a few other of the suggestions contained in Mill's Representative Government, namely those which have an intimate relation with practical politics, and which serve to connect the thought of his day with the Reform Bills of 1860-1867. In his chapter on the extension of the suffrage he again expresses his distrust of a form of democracy determined solely by local elections a "false democracy" he calls it, in which the minority would have no appropriate influence. He cherished a deep-rooted apprehension that the rule of the many would be a vulgar and sordid tyranny fatal to intelligence and all forms of individual excellence, and the utmost he would concede was that he would " not despair of the operation even of equal and universal suffrage, if made real by the proportional representation of all minorities, on Mr. Hare's prin- ciple". But even when this ideal plan of voting is postulated, Mill also claims that there shall be some other safeguards to intelligence and wealth against the levelling-down tendencies which he associates with the rule of a mere majority. These safeguards are to con- sist in the exclusion from the electorate of all who do not pay taxes to the state, of all paupers, bankrupts, and illiterate persons. He justifies the exclusion of the first two classes on the ground that only those who have some pecuniary interest in the state can curb the lavish expenditure prevalent, for example, in American municipal affairs, and resulting from manhood suffrage. The exclusion of illiterate persons he also claims as necessary to the intelligent conduct of public affairs and a tribute to the superiority of knowledge over ignorance. With this plea, again, it is impossible to avoid sympathy ; and it yet remains to be seen whether the enfranchise- ment of a large number of illiterates is not a danger not only to the stability but even to the liberties of the community; for it is just these who are most open, not Phases of Political Thought. 165 only to the arts of the demagogue, but to the bribes of the wealthy and of their parasites. Yet, while granting Mill's main contention, it is difficult to take quite seriously his suggestion that qualification for a vote should be withheld unless the claimant " should, in the presence of the registrar, copy a sentence from an Eng- lish book, and perform a sum in the rule of three ". Those who echo John Bright's off-hand criticism of Disraeli's Reform Bill and its "fancy franchises", may be asked to remember that some of these very franchises were proposed by John Stuart Mill himself. In the chapter from which I have quoted, the philosopher claimed the right of plurality of votes, not on the ground of wealth, which he rightly held to be a most undesir- able test of personal capacity, but by virtue of the dis- charge of difficult and responsible duties which demand skill, foresight, and intelligence. Two or three votes apiece should accordingly, he claims, be awarded to every master manufacturer, merchant, banker, or gradu- ate of a university, in fact to everyone who might be expected to be by calling or by education more intelligent than the average man. Wisely refraining from descend- ing to details on these topics, Mill contented himself with enunciating the principle that competence in business or high mental endowments should find adequate recog- nition in the most important of all civic functions, the discharge of electoral duty. To those who gibe at the proposal as academic, it may suffice to reply that the sneer will be justified when democracy of the present type has justified its existence for more than a genera- tion. At present its trial has scarcely commenced. In the history of peoples and institutions, even a century would be scarcely a sufficient space to justify the boast of latter-day prophets, that democracy of the " one man one vote " type is the final stage of human development. Quitting the unpractical sphere of prophecy, it will be 166 The Rise of Democracy. more fitting- to notice another important development in the scientific, and ultimately in the political thought of our age. The most fertile idea of the century assumed definite form when Darwin in 1859 published his famous work, The Origin of Species. It is true that the doctrine of evolution had been foreshadowed by previous writers both in the domains of natural and of social science; but Darwin's statement in successive works ensured for it an immense vogue and a triumphant justification. Into the political questions raised by Darwin's theories it is neither possible nor desirable to enter at any length. Their influence has been both to extend and complicate the issues which were prominent in the previous genera- tion. Then controversy raged mostly on the question of natural rights, especially those of the individual to a share in the government. Now the contest is between those who would strengthen and those who would minimize the authority of the state in its dealings with the individual, especially in regard to private ownership, the claims of companies, and economic or social ques- tions arising therefrom. Indeed, owing to the growth of industrialism, and the extended survey over human relations which has resulted from the researches of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, political discussions are no longer limited to the narrow channel of "natural right ", but tend to merge themselves in an illimitable sea of social and economic inquiry. One practical result of the theory of evolution may, however, be noted here. On all thinking men, and indirectly through them on the unthinking 1 , it has exer- cised a most important influence in exposing" the folly both of immobility and of sudden and reckless change in the political world. It depicts human life and society as an orderly development, proceeding not by leaps and bounds, still less with long spells of absolute torpor, but on principles of growth determined by the nature of The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 167 human society and of its environment. The study of man, of his past efforts, even of his failures in politics and social life, is therefore one essential to any intelligent forecast of his future; for the institutions and laws which embody the wisdom of his forefathers are, so to speak, the political environment which moulds his action, arouses his antipathies, or wings his aspirations. A close and reverent study of the past has therefore become more than ever necessary to the politician who would rise above the level of Little Peddlington. Such a study reveals at once the need of adapting old institu- tions to new needs, and the folly of heedlessly stripping off from the body politic customs which have shaped its growth. In brief, Darwinism has extinguished the Toryism of pre-reform days, and has all but banished from our political life the abolitionist mania of the suc- ceeding generation. Chapter XI. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867, We have now considered the causes, both in the world of fact and in the sphere of thought, which led to a sifting of the earlier democratic creed, the rejection of its more sweeping demands, and the postponement of any effective agitation on the whole question. The epoch 1850-1866 may perhaps best be described by a reference to the terms used by the followers of the French thinker St. Simon. They called certain eras in history organic when a people or a creed expanded by its sheer vitality and force; but when the time of unconscious or inevit- able expansion was succeeded by one of discussion and unrest, they applied to this new age the term critical. Now, this latter epithet may be applied to the years 168 The Rise of Democracy. 1850-1866, in regard to constitutional reform; while, on the whole, the epoch which succeeded, especially the years 1867-1873 and 1880-1885, may be described as organic in relation to democracy. Not that these epithets sum up all the characteristics of the periods to which we apply them ; but they may serve as convenient mental labels, summing up our general impressions as to the flux and reflux of the Euripus of our modern political life, in which the eddies and swirls become ever more perplexing. The most casual glance over our party history will convince the observer that the labels critical and organic, as applied to epochs, are not wholly accu- rate, still less mutually exclusive. In the period 1851- 1866 many proposals for electoral reform were brought forward. But then they all failed : and the charac- teristic of an "organic" period is the apparently irresist- ible nature of its expansion. More important is it to notice that, even in this time of sifting of opinions, two noteworthy gains were effected for the proletariate. One facilitated the enlightenment of public opinion : the other opened the doors of the House of Commons to merit irrespective of property. The former of these movements, that for the removal of the remaining "taxes on knowledge", may be con- sidered as a natural sequel to the efforts of 1836, and attained a successful issue in 1855 and I86I. 1 The repeal of the paper duty in 1861 was rendered memorable by the last serious struggle which has occurred between the Lords and Commons on a financial question. The government bill of 1860, which proposed the abolition of the paper duty, had passed its third reading in the Commons by the narrow majority of 219 to 210. This apparently emboldened the Lords to reject the measure, x For further details on this subject see The Life of John Bright, by C. A. Vince, M.A., in this series. It shows the great influence of John Bright on the political developments of his time. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 169 which was in effect, though not in form, a money bill. Technically, no doubt, this vote of the Lords was not a contravention of the constitution ; but, as was privately pointed out by Lord John Russell to his phlegmatic chief, Palmerston, "the exercise of a right which has lain dormant since the Revolution (of 1688) must give a great shock to the constitution ". However much the premier desired to hush up the imminent dispute between the two Houses, he was pushed on, not only by Lord John Russell, but by a far more vehement personality. Mr. Gladstone was the most famous of the group of " Peel- ites" who had recently rallied to the Liberal cause. Devotion to Free-trade principles and to the Italian cause, which the Palmerston cabinet championed, had at last led the former " hope of the Conservative party" into the Whig camp ; and he was now chancellor of the exchequer. The vote of the Lords on a financial ques- tion touched Mr. Gladstone in one of his tenderest points; and he fired off a "magnificently mad speech on the privilege question". 1 For a time it seemed doubtful whether Palmerston would throw down the gauntlet to the Lords or accept Mr. Gladstone's resignation. As Mr. Gladstone was a necessity, the gauntlet was thrown down. Under the plea of maintaining their privileges on money questions, the government passed resolutions safeguarding similar proposals for the future; and by including their financial scheme in one very compre- hensive bill, carried their resolutions as regards the paper duty (1861). This solution of the question is interesting, not only as marking the legal ratification of what had been only a prescriptive right of the Lower House, but also as illustrating the speedy development of democratic principles in Mr. Gladstone's nature. The other question which calls for brief notice is the 1 The expression was Earl Russell's. Life of Lord John Russell, by S. Walpole, vol. ii. p. 344. 168 The Rise of Democracy. 1850-1866, in regard to constitutional reform; while, on the whole, the epoch which succeeded, especially the years 1867-1873 and 1880-1885, may be described as organic in relation to democracy. Not that these epithets sum up all the characteristics of the periods to which we apply them ; but they may serve as convenient mental labels, summing up our general impressions as to the flux and reflux of the Euripus of our modern political life, in which the eddies and swirls become ever more perplexing. The most casual glance over our party history will convince the observer that the labels critical and organic, as applied to epochs, are not wholly accu- rate, still less mutually exclusive. In the period 1851- 1866 many proposals for electoral reform were brought forward. But then they all failed : and the charac- teristic of an "organic" period is the apparently irresist- ible nature of its expansion. More important is it to notice that, even in this time of sifting of opinions, two noteworthy gains were effected for the proletariate. One facilitated the enlightenment of public opinion : the other opened the doors of the House of Commons to merit irrespective of property. The former of these movements, that for the removal of the remaining "taxes on knowledge", may be con- sidered as a natural sequel to the efforts of 1836, and attained a successful issue in 1855 and I86:. 1 The repeal of the paper duty in 1861 was rendered memorable by the last serious struggle which has occurred between the Lords and Commons on a financial question. The government bill of 1860, which proposed the abolition of the paper duty, had passed its third reading in the Commons by the narrow majority of 219 to 210. This apparently emboldened the Lords to reject the measure, 1 For further details on this subject see The Life of John Bright, by C. A. Vince, M.A., in this series. It shows the great influence of John Bright on the political developments of his time. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 169 which was in effect, though not in form, a money bill. Technically, no doubt, this vote of the Lords was not a contravention of the constitution ; but, as was privately pointed out by Lord John Russell to his phlegmatic chief, Palmerston, "the exercise of a right which has lain dormant since the Revolution (of 1688) must give a great shock to the constitution ". However much the premier desired to hush up the imminent dispute between the two Houses, he was pushed on, not only by Lord John Russell, but by a far more vehement personality. Mr. Gladstone was the most famous of the group of " Peel- ites" who had recently rallied to the Liberal cause. Devotion to Free-trade principles and to the Italian cause, which the Palmerston cabinet championed, had at last led the former " hope of the Conservative party" into the Whig camp ; and he was now chancellor of the exchequer. The vote of the Lords on a financial ques- tion touched Mr. Gladstone in one of his tenderest points; and he fired off a "magnificently mad speech on the privilege question". 1 For a time it seemed doubtful whether Palmerston would throw down the gauntlet to the Lords or accept Mr. Gladstone's resignation. As Mr. Gladstone was a necessity, the gauntlet was thrown down. Under the plea of maintaining their privileges on money questions, the government passed resolutions safeguarding similar proposals for the future; and by including their financial scheme in one very compre- hensive bill, carried their resolutions as regards the paper duty (1861). This solution of the question is interesting, not only as marking the legal ratification of what had been only a prescriptive right of the Lower House, but also as illustrating the speedy development of democratic principles in Mr. Gladstone's nature. The other question which calls for brief notice is the i The expression was Earl Russell's. Life of Lord John Russell, by S. Walpole, vol. ii. p. 344. 172 The Rise of Democracy. reform, the question now lost its academic character, and began to arouse eager sympathy or furious hostility; for it has been alike his misfortune and his glory ever to move amidst storm-clouds of controversy and mantled with the dust of conflict. The conversion of Mr. Glad- stone to democratic principles has therefore been an event of the highest importance. His eager spirit has unconsciously but inevitably drawn him far beyond his cautious declaration of May, 1864, that parliamentary reform ought not to be left until agitation arises, but that agitation should be forestalled by wise and provi- dent measures. Much as he has doubtless desired to act as the serene Neptune, calming the storms of Parlia- ment, his fate has doomed him to be the ^olus not only of Westminster, but of the country at large. The magnitude of his influence in 1866-1885 will be obvious if we briefly estimate the aims of reformers in 1850-1865. Their chief efforts had been by various de- vices to select for admission to the franchise only the best of the unrepresented classes. For instance, the bills of Lord John Russell of 1854 and of Mr. Disraeli of 1859, though differing in details, 1 proposed to enfran- chise only those who by their amount of income, their rental, or their deposits in savings-banks, might be fairly considered as possessed of energy, intelligence, or pru- dence; and due weight was attached to education by the admission to the franchise of all graduates of univer- sities. In fact, as Disraeli said, the extension of the franchise was to be not radical but lateral, importance being also assigned to the variety of the classes and interests to be enfranchised. 2 The measures of 1850-1865 1 That of 1854 proposed a 5 rental as admitting to the borough fran- chise, and ^10 to the county franchise. 2 In Mr. Dickinson's Development of Parliament (1895), chapter ii., this thought is illustrated with scholarly thoroughness and insight. It seems to me, however, that the party tactics of 1866-67 are responsible for the change, which the able author ascribes as ultimately due to the act of 1832. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 173 aimed, in fact, at securing" a due balance of interests; so that the old electorate, while being enlarged on all sides, should not be swamped by a wholesale irruption of illiterates. The difficulty of securing this due balance amidst the tug- of party warfare and the vehement attacks of Radicals, led by John Bright, were the chief causes of the failure of the Reform Bills before 1865. But party strife, and, still more, party expediency, were soon to sweep away all the safeguards which even a Radical like John Stuart Mill recognized as desirable, if not essential, to well-ordered progress; and_by two successive plunges England entered upon a form of advanced democracy such as before 1867 no responsible statesman and few thinkers would have deemed either possible or desirable. The history of the events of 1866-1867 cannot be fully written until the correspondence of some of the chief actors is entirely revealed to the world. At present, it can only be regarded as one of the strangest and most unaccountable exploits of political legerdemain. Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866 was, on the whole, one of the old type, resembling its unfortunate predecessors of the period 1851-1865. Postponing for the present the question of redistribution of seats, he dealt only with the electoral franchise, a course of action which, as in 1884, exposed him to sharp and ultimately successful criticism. 1 He now proposed to extend the right of voting to tenants paying a rental of j a year in boroughs, and 14 in counties; while lodgers paying 10 a year and depositors having ^50 in savings-banks were like- wise to have votes. These and a few other changes 1 In view of the constitutional conflict which in 1884 was to rage around the question of separating the Franchise and Redistribution Bills, it may be well to note Mr. Gladstone's procedure in 1866. At first he proposed to keep them entirely distinct a course ably defended by Mr. Bright; but ultimately, after much discussion, he communicated the details of the Redis- tribution Bill to the House, before the Franchise Bill went into committee. 174 The Rise of Democracy. would enlarge the electorate by about 400,000, that is, by double the numbers affected by Mr. Disraeli's pro- posals of 1859 and Lord Palmerston's of 1860. It is difficult, therefore, to account for the animus at once aroused by these moderate proposals, except on the score of party jealousy or personal dislike of Mr. Glad- stone. The measure was attacked for what it was and what it was not. Mr. Laing complained that it left Honiton with as much political power as Liverpool or Manchester; while Mr. Lowe, developing sarcastic powers which surprised the House and exasperated working-men, declared that it would put power com- pletely into the hands of the working-classes, who were quite unqualified for this responsibility. He claimed that the rise of wages and general prosperity of the country placed the 10 rental well within reach of thrifty and intelligent workmen, who, according to Mr. Gladstone's own admission, already formed at least 21 per cent of the borough electorate. A reduction of the limit to j would, he maintained, tend to degrade the tone of elections and of parliamentary life. In his reply Mr. Bright twitted Mr. Lowe with desertion from the Liberal ranks, using the famous "cave of Adullam" metaphor to designate the group of malcontents. But ridicule and arguments were of no avail. It was in vain that Mr. John Stuart Mill, now member for West- minster, in a speech unsurpassed for wealth of thought, disclaimed any fears concerning the enfranchisement of the seven-pounders. It was in vain that Mr. Gladstone, in a passage of thrilling eloquence, appealed to wider influences than those of party and of Parliament "The great social forces which move onward in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does not for a moment impede or disturb those great social forces are against you : they are marshalled on our side; The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 175 and the banner which we carry in this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may droop over our sinking heads, yet soon again will float in the eye of heaven; and it will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and to a not far distant victory". In spite of this prophetic appeal, the second reading of the bill was carried by the ominously small majority of five ! "Thereupon", says an eye-witness, "there arose a wild, raging, mad-brained shout. Dozens of half-frantic Tories stood up in their seats and madly waved their hats. The Adullamites waved their hats in sympathy; and he, Lucifer, 1 the prince of the revolt, stood up flushed, triumphant, and avenged, his complexion deep- ened into something like bishop's purple." Although the government now appended a very mode- rate Redistribution Bill, their whole measure was wrecked by an amendment in committee. Thereupon the Russell ministry resigned, and for the third time Lord Derby took office in the teeth of a hostile majority. Never was victory more disastrous to the victors. If Gladstone threatened the Tories and Adullamites with whips, Disraeli was soon to chastise them with scorpions. Other causes, besides the inspiring appeals of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, tended to reanimate the social forces of the age. A sudden commercial panic, culminating in "Black Friday" (May n, 1866), roughly awakened the average Briton from his years of podgy contentment to a feeling that all was not well. Moreover, the exciting scenes at Westminster had much impressed the people ; and large meetings, almost on the scale of the Chartist gatherings, were planned to agitate for reform. Scarcely had the Derby ministry taken the reins of office when the home secretary forbade a reform demonstration in Hyde Park. It was an unwise decision. The average 1 t.e. Lowe; see Irving's Annals of Our Time, April 27, 1867. 176 The Rise of Democracy. Londoner hardly answers to Aristotle's definition : he is not a political creature ; at least, he is so only when his real or fancied rights seem threatened. Then he is up in arms. That is a question which he can understand ; and he then makes and unmakes ministries as readily as his forefathers unseated king's who tampered with civic privileges. The right of meeting in Hyde Park about any and every subject was more to him than any electoral reform. To Hyde Park accordingly Londoners thronged on July 23, broke down the railings, and stoned the policemen who endeavoured to eject them. In ordinary circumstances the riot would have been forgotten in a fortnight; but amidst the excitement caused by the commercial panic, by Fenian plots, and by a sharp attack of cholera, Lord Derby's weak govern- ment became nervous, and wavered under the strenuous attacks of John Bright and other stalwarts of reform. 1 The Conservative ministry was indeed in so false a position that it must often have sympathized with the reformers, who blamed Earl Russell for not forcing on a dissolution of Parliament. We can now see that such a course would have been the best, not only for the reform cause, but for the honour of our political life. But amidst the distractions caused by approaching war, commercial panic, Fenianism, and cholera, a general election in the summer of 1866 might well seem an evil to be averted at all costs. 2 It may also be conceded that neither Lord Derby nor Mr. Disraeli had ever opposed an extension of the suffrage. Both concurred in the desire of passing a "safe and moderate measure". Nevertheless, the oddity of the situation and the whim- sicalities *of their leader aroused many apprehensions amongst the government minority in the Lower House, J For Bright's influence at this time, and the indignation aroused by Lowe's supposed gibes at artisans, see Mr.Vince's Life of Bright, chapter v. * See S. Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell, ii. p. 430, for the queen's letters reproaching her ministers for resigning "on a matter of detail". The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. *77 at the opening- of the session, which were not allayed by Disraeli's declaration that reform ought no longer to be a question determining 1 the fate of cabinets. This, at any rate, portended finality after the various abortive efforts of 1852-66, and a secure tenure of power to those who were about to cut the Gordian knot ! Neither were Tory fears quelled by the dexterous appeal to all members of the House to divest themselves of party feeling- in considering the resolutions now forthcoming. It soon transpired that under the guise of enunciating abstract truths, the ministerial resolutions were "squeezable" to almost any extent; and it was with mixed indignation and alarm that Lowe deprecated their discussion, "while the press is hounding all on so as to bring the institu- tions of the country down to the level of democracy". He further upbraided the government for their almost open invitation to members, "Say what you like to us, only for God's sake leave us our places". By a curious irony of fate, these gibes of the Adullamite chief un- steadied the wavering governmental lines, and induced a strategic move to the rear. Disraeli consented to focus his resolutions in a "real and satisfactory" reform bill, a concession which led to the resignation of Lords Carnarvon and Cranborne, and General Peel. The out- look seemed threatening. It was evident that one more ministry was in jeopardy between Scylla and Charybdis. Two courses were open : to jettison reform, which would have lightened the craft, but enraged the owners and the crew, besides wrecking the pilot's reputation; or to allow their reform cargo to be so trimmed and readjusted as to remedy the "list" and satisfy the malcontent majority. The latter course was adopted, the officers forthwith carrying out the orders which came from the forecastle. Thus was it that the modern Ulysses saved his ship. 1 1 See Malmesbury's Memoirs of an ex-Minister. "Cabinets all May on (51410) M 178 The Rise of Democracy. It remains to consider the changes thus brought about. Out of 6 1 sections of the Reform Bill of 1867 only four were the work of the ministry, the rest were so profoundly modified in committee, with the consent of ministers, as to elicit from General Peel the caustic remark that nothing had so little vitality as a "vital point", nothing was so insecure as a "security", and nothing was so elastic as the conscience of a cabinet minister. 1 The sting of the satire lay in its accuracy. After asserting that the government would "never intro- duce household suffrage pure and simple", Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli acquiesced in its insertion, thus giving effect to one of the chief claims of the old Birmingham Political Union. Besides giving up the 6 rating limit in boroughs, the ministry reduced the 20 limit, as originally proposed for the county franchise, to 12. At the dictation of the opposition, a lodger franchise of 10 was accepted, and the distinctions between various classes of rate-payers were abolished: the provisions assigning special votes to persons having ^50 in the funds, 30 in a savings-bank, or paying 20 a year in direct taxation, were likewise withdrawn. "Lateral" extensions of the franchise, which proposed to assign votes to graduates of universities, ministers of religion, and members of any learned profession, were lopped off by John Bright's renewed denunciation of "fancy fran- chises", though philosophical Radicals had claimed such franchises as a desirable set-off to the mere counting of heads. Lastly, the redistribution of seats, as Lord Reform Bill. The laissez-aller system followed by the government, trying to make the best they could of it, but constantly yielding something. The Conservative members seem disposed to adopt everything, and to think that it is 'in for a penny, in for a pound'." It should be remembered in Disraeli's favour that when urged in 1873 to take office, though with a minority behind him, he refused, owing to the ignominy which so false a situation entailed. On the other hand, he must have foreseen in 1867 whither events were certain to lead him. 1 Buxton, Finance and Politics, vol. ii. p. 12, note. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 179 Cranborne complained, effected changes fifty per cent greater than had been originally contemplated, thereby yielding to John Bright the victory all along the line. As for the various "checks" which had been prominent in every bill since 1852, they too had gone by the board. Their only relic was a device, apparently first suggested by Earl Russell, of forming "three-cornered constitu- encies ". On a motion, at first rejected but finally accepted by ministers, three members were allotted to each of the following towns Birmingham, Leeds, Liver- pool, Manchester, and, in the act for Scotland, to Glasgow. This proposal was made by Mr. Laing, seconded by Mr. Baines, and had the support of Mr. Gladstone, but failed in the Lower House. It was re- affirmed by the House of Lords, with a proviso that each elector in those towns should have only two votes, so that the minority would naturally return one of the three members. With this clumsy and irritating expedient (doomed to disappear in 1885) the friends of minority representation were ill content. Mill had failed to secure any approval for Mr. Hare's plan of proportionate repre- sentation; and his motion in favour of according the suffrage to women was also withdrawn. The differences between the two Houses having been arranged, the bill received the royal assent on Aug. 15, 1867. Such was the change which enlarged the electorate from 1,352,970 in 1867 to 2,243,259 in 1870, a change neither loudly called for by the great masses of the people nor desired by the very men who passed it. As to the immorality of the tactics which led to the "leap in the dark ", few will harbour any doubts. Prepared in a hurry, modified beyond recognition, shuffled through helter-skelter in order to "dish the Whigs", it will stand to all time as a masterpiece of political trimming; and, on the score of political morality, few will deny some sympathy with the feelings of the Adullamite i8o The Rise of Democracy. chief, who, looking at the measure precipitated by his own headlong opposition to Mr. Gladstone's sober Act of 1866, now expressed "the shame, the rage, the scorn, the indignation, and the despair with which this measure is viewed by every Englishman who is not a slave to the trammels of party or who is not dazzled, by the glare of a temporary and ignoble success ". To which there came a characteristic personal retort from the opportunist statesman, who had dragged the Tory squires over the very brink of democratic suffrage, and a declaration that he had confidence in the national character of England, in her fame, in the tradition of a thousand years, and in that glorious future which awaited her. Opportunism, in fact, was now to be the dominant note of political life not only in Great Britain but on the Continent. The years 1866-67 are the most critical in the recent developments of democracy. Flouted and despised ever since the mad rushes of mobs in 1848, a democratic suffrage was now suddenly adopted or ac- cepted by responsible statesmen of the three great Teutonic states. Hostility to bureaucratic Austria moved Prussia to champion the principle of universal suffrage in German affairs. The victory of the northern power not only ensured the acceptance of a democratic suffrage in the North German Confederation, but com- pelled Austria to come to terms with her long restive Hungarians and other subjects. The end of the year 1867 accordingly witnessed the adoption, more or less reluctant, of parliamentary representation in all the lands between the Baltic and the Adriatic. 1 The resemblance between British and continental de- velopments was of course only superficial, though it iCf. Bismarck's admission "I accepted universal suffrage, but with repugnance, as a Frankfurt tradition" (i.e. of 1848). Busch, Our Chan- cellor, Eng. Ed. vol. ii. p. 196. The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 181 may be questioned whether the imminence of the Austro- Prussian war at midsummer, 1866, by rendering" a dis- solution of our Parliament hazardous or impossible, did not contribute to the strange events leading up to the Conservative Reform Bill. In any case, the world now saw with cynical surprise the adoption of democratic franchises at Berlin, Westminster, and Vienna by the very statesmen who previously had offered the most strenuous opposition. In reviewing these events one can- not but feel the truth of Canning's adage "Those who oppose improvement because it is innovation, may one day have to submit to innovation which is not improve- ment". For whatever views may be entertained as to the merits of the franchises granted in these years, they were undoubtedly conceded from sheer expediency, and, what is more important, without any of that preparation in the lives of the respective nations which is the very life-blood of worthy citizenship. Changes, which might have wrought nothing but good if they had come as the natural result of civic training, were hastily flung to astonished peoples as the result of partisan or diplomatic manceuvrings for place and power. In this fact we may discern one cause of the comparative failure of democ- racy to attain that higher moral development, which has ever been the goal of its worthiest champions; and possibly the want of any vital relation between civic duty and the new political privileges may account for the swift relapses into indifference which have so often recurred when the material interests of the newly-en- franchised classes have received temporary satisfaction. It will be alike impossible and undesirable to do more than notice the salient features of the memorable measures which ensued after the downfall of Mr. Dis- raeli's ministry in 1868. Coming into power with a majority of 128, Mr. Gladstone held a more commanding position than had been enjoyed by any premier since 182 The Rise of Democracy. 1832, and he now proceeded to give effect to many demands which had been postponed during the suprem- acy of Lords Palmerston and Derby. The two first great measures were prompted by a desire to remedy the chief grievances still felt by the majority of the Irish people, namely the supremacy of an alien church and the pressure of an unjust land tenure. The disestablish- ment of the Church of Ireland removed the last relic of that Protestant ascendency, which had been the central principle of British policy towards the sister island from the time of William III.'s conquest down to the con- cession of civic rights to Roman Catholics in 1829. Mr. Gladstone's act of 1869 completed the edifice of religious and civic equality, of which the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel had rather reluctantly reared the frame- work. Equally important was the endeavour of the new ministry to heal the agrarian troubles of Ireland by extending to all parts the plan of compensation for im- provements which was enjoyed by tenants in Ulster. The Irish Land Act of 1870, which passed both Houses of Parliament by large majorities in the Commons by 442 to ii is the first important effort at remedying immemorial grievances in land tenure so as to ensure something like a partnership between landlord and tenant. The act may be considered as a concession to that spirit of equality which has been increasingly applied to agrarian affairs ever since the first French Revolution. But it was also a necessity to establish a modus vivendi between an unpopular and largely non- resident landlord class, and a fast-increasing peasantry which clung to a soil that never could adequately support them. The process has been pushed on by imperious economic forces. Every railway driven into the virgin prairies of the Missouri, Saskatchewan, and La Plata has sharpened competition for the corn-growers and The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 183 graziers of the Old World; and had not Parliament striven to readjust the relations between landlord and tenant, not only in Ireland but in Great Britain, our agriculture might have fallen into the state of that of ancient Italy. Of the other great measures of the Gladstone ministry, two only need be noticed here. The Ballot Act, passed in spite of strong opposition by the Upper House, gave effect to secrecy of voting, for which Mr. Grote, and after him the Chartists, had agitated in vain. The opposition was ostensibly based either on sentimental objections to secrecy, in which some Liberals, among them John Stuart Mill, concurred; or on the more serious contention that personation at elections would be easier than heretofore. The new system has, how- ever, on the whole proved to work remarkably well, and has justified the persistence of its early champions. Another of the "points" of the People's Charter was hereby gained. In its far-reaching social results, the Act for providing Elementary Education may be pronounced to be the most important act of the whole period. Other measures altered the balance of political power; but none has entered so intimately into the life of the people, or borne results so fruitful and beneficial, as the act passed by Mr. Forster in 1870. Imperfect in some details though it was, this great measure for the first time put education within the reach of every cottager, supplementing, with- out destroying, the work which the National and British schools had nobly endeavoured to carry on. The ques- tion of religious instruction, which had been the crux in and after 1843, was now solved by the Cowper-Temple clauses in a compromise which has successfully resisted the immediate onslaughts of Mr. Miall and the Non- conformists, as well as clerical attacks in recent years. Now, at last, the people of the United Kingdom gained 184 The Rise of Democracy. that modicum of "schoolmasters' education" for which Carlyle had passionately pleaded in Past and Present. It must be confessed that Mr. Forster's measure was to some extent the result of middle-class apprehensions. In the midst of his invective against the Reform Act of 1867, Lowe had exclaimed that it was thenceforth absolutely necessary to compel our future masters to learn their letters, and that education must be pressed on without delay for the peace of the country. In an exaggerated form he expressed the fears of many thinking men of an earlier day, when the teachings of Owen and Hodgkin were agitating the working-classes. Those apprehensions were curiously expressed by John Stuart Mill. In his zeal for education, the philosopher declared that he rejoiced at the power which those level- ling notions about property still had over artisans, because fear and fear alone would compel the middle classes seriously to take up the education question in order to dispel such fallacious notions. These fears were doubt- less a trifle antiquated in 1867; but the notorious trade- union outrages at Sheffield showed that there was still grave danger in allowing our labouring population to grow up in brutalizing ignorance. The impressionable character of an untrained populace was rarely more manifested than in the speedy decline in popularity of the Gladstone cabinet in 1871-1873. Various external causes have of course been plausibly assigned for this swing of the pendulum. The distrac- tions caused by the Franco-German War, the commence- ment of those senseless menaces from Berlin which have sown discord between us and our Teutonic cousins, the rather tame surrender by the Gladstone ministry of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris in deference to Russian demands, its complaisance to the United States over the exorbitant awards in the Alabama arbitration, all these naturally reawakened our national spirit, which The Reform Bills of 1866-1867. 185 had lain dormant under the cyclonic activity of domestic legislation. Indeed, the phenomenal reforming- zeal of the years 1868-1872 tended to weld various vested in- terests on to the shattered Conservative party. Patriots enraged at the degradation of Britain to the rank of a second-rate power, employers of labour who feared the rising demands of their "hands", military officers fuming at the abolition of the time-honoured "purchase system", naval critics of Admiralty maladministration, tax-payers incensed at the increase of charges imposed by army and educational reforms, Nonconformist ultras alienated by the Education Act, clerics irritated by the abolition of religious tests at our universities, Irish Nationalists stung to the quick by the Peace Preservation Act, all were swept into the opposition drag-net. It was in vain for Mr. Gladstone to declare, shortly before the dissolu- tion of Parliament, that if he were returned to power, he would abolish the income-tax. Mr. Disraeli made exactly the same bid for power, and skilfully flattered the amour propre of the nation which Gladstone's pacific policy had ruffled. Such were the chief causes under- mining the popularity of the powerful Liberal adminis- tration. Their result was seen in the general election of 1874, which sent up to Westminster 350 Conservatives, as against 244 Liberals and 58 Home Rulers. Looking back calmly on the five years of the Gladstone administration, it must be considered as falsifying the worst fears of its opponents no less than disappointing the enthusiastic hopes of its supporters. On the one hand, the fears of the old Whigs, who regarded Demos as an insatiable Caliban, that must be taught to read and write lest perchance he might rend Prospero and engulf at once his learning and his goods, were soon seen to be the result of nightmare. Prospero and Miranda remained unharmed. Taxation was reduced, and wealth advanced with giant strides. The policy of i86 The Rise of Democracy. systematic bleeding- of the wealthy had not yet found favour with any but the smallest section of the Radicals; and these were utterly outnumbered by the men of pro- perty, who still retained their old predominance in the Commons. Just as the results of the Reform Act of 1832 were toned down by the personal ascendency of Earl Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Palmerston, so the results of the transition to democracy, accomplished in 1867, were mitigated by the ascendency of Mr. Glad- stone and of colleagues who represented still more fully the old Liberalism. Owing to this fact, to the distractions caused by Irish and continental troubles, and to the general prosperity of the country, the enthusiasm for political change speedily cooled. And yet, with the ex- ception of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, no one of Mr. Gladstone's Acts can be called destructive. Neither were the rights of property trenched upon except in some provisions of the Irish Land Act, which did little more than apply to other parts of Ireland the tenant right of Ulster. The legislation of 1868-1873 was sober, constructive, and on a level with the highest traditions of the past. Chapter XII. The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. It must be confessed by all unprejudiced observers that the Reform Act of 1867 inaugurated a period of unrest and political instability. As the competition between parties for the enjoyment of popular favours has become keener, every general election has aroused boundless hopes of the felicity to be bestowed on the nation by the new administration. " Man never is, but always to be, blest." The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 187 If Pope's verse is true of his complacent age, how much more is it correct of our own, distracted by alluring" ideals and warring programmes ! This is at once its glory and its danger. Hope has energized masses of the people that previously were sunk in torpor; but it has also swayed them heedlessly from side to side in search of the enchanted fruit of happiness temptingly dangled before their eyes. This is a natural, perhaps inevitable, result of recent reform acts. The admission to the electorate of classes that necessarily know little about the limitations which beset the action of the most benevolent law-makers, and still less about the complexity of our national interests, has tended to magnify the hopes of the nation, and also to deepen the disappointment which almost inevitably follows. Competition for the votes of the newly enfranchised leads to the cultivation of the art of programme making, and the successful claimants for power come into office weighted with an impossible programme and a discordant majority. After five years of legislative activity, the benefits of which few will now contest, Mr. Gladstone saw the majority of 128, which supported him in 1869, trans- formed by the general election of 1874 into a minority of IO6. 1 His successor, Mr. Disraeli, was to experience the same fate, the general election of 1880 changing the majority of 106 into a minority of 106, if the Home Rule vote be omitted from the comparison. As I shall show in the next chapter, the agrarian measures promised by Mr. Gladstone in 1885, and the extension of household suffrage to the rural districts, portended a continuance of Liberal predominance, until the Home Rule Bill cut athwart the plane of political life. It can hardly be said to have restored the balance of political power, for it 1 Reckoned as between Liberals and Conservatives only. The appearance of 58 Home Rulers, definitely organized as a party, confuses the statistics when compared with those of 1868. i88 The Rise of Democracy. would be absurd to use a metaphor which implies stability to denote a series of oscillations. The only regularity in our modern political life is the almost monotonous periodicity of its changes. The appended foot-note will illustrate more clearly than any description the instability of our modern political system, which may be realized by placing in contrast the conditions which obtained before the Reform Acts of 1867 and i832. a Roughly speaking, the period 1714-1793 may be de- scribed as one of unbroken predominance for the Whig governing families, disturbed by factious feuds, but not marked by any changes based on principle. The advent of militant democracy in France dissolved for ever the hitherto triumphant Whig oligarchy; and the Tories, rallied by the younger Pitt to the support of the throne, enjoyed a tenure of power, which was broken only by the reform movement of 1831-32. The great electoral change of 1832 closed the era of almost Chinese immo- bility, and ministerial changes followed with perplexing rapidity; but these changes, when not merely of a 1 The following are the results of the general elections of 1833-1895 : Liberals, &c. Conservatives. Home Rulers. 1833 ... 486 ... ... 176 273 1837 348 1841, ... 286 ... ... 367 1847 1852, i857, 1859. ... 3 2 S - ... 3IS - ... 366 ... ... 348 ... { I ... 287 3S of whom 105 were Peelites of whom 40 were Peelites 1866, .. 361 . 204 1868 ... 393 ... 265 35 1880 ... 349 ... 243 1885 ... 335 ... 249 TRA / Liberal 1886, i H R , - 394 { including 78 Lib. Unionists 58 60 86 Liberal > ^ Home Rulers f 274 The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 189 personal nature, were often due to the evenness of the parliamentary struggle, especially in the years 1847 to 1866, when the electors enfranchised by the measure of 1832 had settled down into the parties to which they had most affinity. On comparing the strength of parties in the years 1847-1866 with the figures of the next twenty years, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that each extension of the suffrage has increased the uncertainties of political life. Whether these changes will ultimately tend to the re-establishment of a new equilibrium, as happened after the electors enfranchised in 1832 had become inured to the responsibilities and disappointments of the political game, time alone can show. 1 I have already suggested some causes, both internal and external, for the instability which marks the years since Mr. Disraeli's Reform Act. On the whole, I am inclined to assign less importance than is usually done to the external causes, that is, to the opposition of "vested interests " to which a defeated party is ever wont com- placently to ascribe its disaster. It seems impossible that so great a change could have been brought about merely by a combination of vested interests, especially as these had always been more or less hostile to Mr. Gladstone's programme. It was perfectly well known what the Liberal ministry would attempt; and only in foreign and Irish affairs were any surprises in store for the electorate. It is true that the personnel of the Glad- stone ministry was not perfect. Mr. Ayrton's lofty pretensions, Robert Lowe's stinging tongue (not to speak of his match tax), even the irritating Aristides-like a The instability of opinion will be more strikingly obvious when it is remembered that the increase in the size of the average constituency has been enormous. This ought to have contributed to stability, and doubtless it will do so when political opinion has solidified. In the old rotten boroughs the transference of a score of votes frequently turned the scale. Now it generally needs a thousand or more ; but the transfer of the thousand votes is apparently quite as easy as that of the score used to be. 190 The Rise of Democracy. quality of Mr. Gladstone's character, all contributed to worry and weary the public mind. But then the people must have been singularly impressionable, not to say fickle, to have allowed such trifles to weigh in the balance with the undeniable benefits received from the ministry. Nor were these boons only prospective. Taxation had been lightened to the extent of ^"12,000,000, and the national debt had been reduced by ^26, 000,000. Trade had improved. Coming to power shortly after a com- mercial crisis, the administration left the country in a blaze of prosperity, which ought to have counterbalanced Disraeli's gibe that ministers lived in a blaze of apology. But the country forgot the boons and remembered only the jests Several ministries have fallen victims to bad harvests or commercial crises. It was reserved for the year 1874 to witness the growth of the nation's wealth by leaps and bounds, and the increasing unpopularity of an administration which had largely contributed to that prosperity. The fundamental cause of the revulsion in popular feeling seems to me to reside in the unpreparedness of the new electorate for its duties. It was certainly not educated up to the level of Mr. Gladstone's reforming zeal. Indeed, an examination of the legislation of 1869-1873 proves its motive power to have resided, not so much in the people's will as in the convictions of the premier and a few of his colleagues. The British people can stand "heroic legislation" only in small doses. John Bright expressed the feelings of the average man when, surprised at Gladstone's decision to bring in the great Education Bill only two days after the introduction of the complex Irish Land Bill, he exclaimed that it was like attempting to drive six omnibuses at once through Temple Bar. Yet the feat was accomplished ; and what is far more, the ministry carried through Parliament every important item in its programme except the ill-starred The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 191 Dublin University Bill. The pace was certainly trying to John Bull. But he had been warned of it before he paid his fare. The journey ended safely, prosperously, even happily, as it seemed ; and yet he at once transferred his custom to the opposition coach. It is difficult to believe that he was the same personage as before the change of 1867; and indeed a comparison of the election results before and after 1867 shows how important was the change then effected. The constancy to party ties, which had marked the previous generation, was replaced by a habit of "voting agin' the government", whether it does or does not carry out its programme. In 1869- 1874 the ministry apparently did too much. The country was so surfeited with reforms that the legislation of those years, which was expected to win the eternal gratitude of the newly enfranchised, aroused only a passing senti- ment. The people most benefited by the reforms were as yet too pot-bound and callous to appreciate them at their true value; and the very Ballot Act, which, it was supposed, would add to the political power of the pro- letariate and attach it to the Liberal party, served as a screen for its ingratitude in the election of 1874. It is not surprising that Mr. Gladstone soon decided to resign the thankless position of a political leader for the less transient charms of literary life, until the forlorn cries of a distressed Eastern people again appealed to his humanity, and called him once again into the arena of party strife. Mr. Gladstone has not been richly dowered by nature with that social tact or worldly wisdom which compre- hends not only the greatness but the littleness of man- kind. He could not see that the country wanted rest and comfort, pleasure and prestige, rather than epoch- marking reforms. Mr. Disraeli understood the needs of the time. The artisan class wanted a few practical measures such as would add to the comforts of life. 192 The Rise of Democracy. These the new premier granted by his factory legisla- tion, by Mr. Cross's Artisans' Dwellings Act (1875), and by the act for the proper supervision of Friendly Societies. He thus strove to emulate the enlightened example of Henri IV. of France, who boasted that in his time every peasant could have a fowl in his pot. But side by side with this pot au feu policy, Disraeli cherished vaster designs. He saw that wealthy England was weary of the narrowness of the Manchester school and of the humiliations entailed by its "peace at any price" policy. His judgment was correct. The middle classes were slowly but surely outgrowing the "little England" ideas of the days of Cobden. A pacific foreign policy and devotion to domestic legislation were doubtless desirable when England was in the throes of her industrial revolution, and was distracted by desperate strikes or Chartist demonstrations. But those days were past. The worst grievances had been healed. Free-trade had brought cheap bread to the artisan and abundant orders to the manufacturer and merchant. The very success of the Manchester school in expanding our commerce passed the death sentence on the "little England" policy which was needful in the "forties". The splendid growth of Greater Britain reawakened in the race those larger aspirations towards a world-wide Commonwealth which had lain dormant since Waterloo ; and now, when the German Empire sprang full-armed into life, and blatant militarism became the dominant note of European politics, there was imperious need that the mother land should turn her gaze seawards, and should protect her defenceless colonies and merchantmen against the jealousies, rivalries, and possible assaults of mail-clad continental powers. This phase in our national development was natural and inevitable. Our wealth had provoked envy which was far from being appeased by Mr. Gladstone's pacific concessions. The The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 193 nation therefore demanded precautionary measures and a stiffer tone in our foreign policy. Surely, though un- consciously, the nation was swinging back from what I have ventured to call the introspective or domestic phase of life to the expansive phase which must now and again mark the growth of any vigorous insular race. How- ever guilty of ingratitude towards individuals, the nation must satisfy the needs of its existence. Those needs were for the time imperialist ; and Disraeli seemed about to satisfy them by his "spirited foreign policy". The two chief aims, then, of the new premier were to promote comfort at home by soothing little instalments of social legislation and to enhance the nation's prestige abroad. For a time this deft admixture of the prosaic and the sublime seemed to give general satisfaction. The Artisans' Dwellings Act facilitated the destruction of fever-breeding dens and the erection of healthier dwellings. 1 The Friendly Societies Act, while not in- terfering unduly with the working of provident societies, provided some safeguards against the frauds and follies which had wrecked so many of these valuable institu- tions. The Factory Acts of 1875 and 1878, and other measures regulating the status of workers, bore witness to the honest intentions of the ministry, and of the premier, who in his novel Sybil had expressed his desire to rally the artisans under the banner of some modern Simon de Montfort. While these measures appealed to Saxon domesticity, the premier's foreign policy had that touch of romance which might have been expected from the author of Tancred. Disraeli knew that under John Bull's prosaic exterior there lurk ideas, if only they can J A practical result is Corporation Street, Birmingham, which, by the energy and foresight of the town-council (especially of Mr. Chamberlain), was driven through a wretched slum, and provided not only a fine thorough- fare, but ample accommodation for the hitherto badly-housed artisans. See Dolman's Municipalities at Work, p. 12. For some objections to the act of 1875 see Dr. Cunningham's Politics and Economics, p. 171. ip4 The Rise of Democracy. be made vocal by some skilful interpreter. The race which had produced Sidney, Spenser, Drake, Essex, Raleigh, Marlborough, Clive, Wolfe, and Chinese Gordon, could not be lacking in world-subduing quali- ties. These qualities must now be reawakened to con- solidate the dominions which Britons had won. That pride in the empire which moved even the gloomy poet of Olney to impassioned verse must again play its part in the history of the race. Its imperial instincts must assert their supremacy over the huckstering side of the Saxon nature. It seemed that the United Kingdom had secured the ideal policy which satisfied its duality of interests, re- conciling the desire of comfort in the cottage with the passion for world-wide renown, combining the prose of domestic interests with the glamour of eastern romance, the libertas of the Saxon with the imperium of the Roman. How came it that even the political art and rhetorical felicity of a Disraeli failed to wed these ideals in a lasting union? In brief, the prose of the western hemisphere and the passions of the eastern world conspired to destroy the new policy, by pitting against each other our industrial and imperial interests. The United Kingdom is the Janus of the modern world : it is the meeting-place of the east and the west. Politically it must perforce turn east- wards to safeguard its Australasian and Indian posses- sions. Industrially its gaze is turned westwards by the gigantic industrial and agricultural developments of the New World. There is the eternal conflict of interests which must ever tax the powers of British statesman- ship. They have never been so tested as in the years 1874-1880, which were rendered memorable by un- equalled activity in the peaceful development of the North American continent, and by popular commotions in the usually immobile east. Let us briefly examine The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 195 the concurrent effects of these events in English political life. Every reduction in the cost of iron and steel, every triumph of the engineer, whether in the construction of railroads or of steamships, has tended to annihilate distance, to place the settler of Nebraska on almost even terms with the farmer of Norfolk in competing for the London market, and thereby to reduce old English estates to something like the value of prairie land. For political and economic reasons which need not here be detailed, the results of our free-trade policy were only fully felt after 1870. Their pressure was most severe during Disraeli's tenure of power, when successive bad harvests at home threatened to involve landlord, farmer, and labourer in one common ruin. The agrarian crisis, which had long been foreseen by Free-traders, was thus swiftly and acutely developed. It seemed to portend the same results for the United Kingdom as those which were fatal to the agriculture of ancient Italy, converting its fertile plains into a wilderness of great estates, a purgatory to the cultivators and a paradise for the wealthy. Under the selfish Roman oligarchy free-trade desolated the country districts, driving the peasants into overcrowded cities, where they subsisted on government doles of Libyan corn. Was it to have an analogous result on the life of England and Ireland? Considered merely on economic grounds, our agricultural position was almost as serious as that of Rome in the days of the Gracchi. Our land system was as little suited to with- stand the strain of American competition as was that of ancient Rome when the cheap corn of Sicily, Libya, and Egypt began to flood her markets. But the moral and political conditions were altogether different. The House of Lords had by a considerable majority ratified the abolition of the Corn -laws, an act which has received all too scanty a recognition from partisan historians. 196 The Rise of Democracy. Not only had the peers of the United Kingdom by that concession exposed their rent-rolls to the full force of foreign competition, they had also assented to Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Act of 1870; and now, when its provisions were rendered obsolete by the onward rush of American competition, many of the Irish landlords accorded substantial reductions of rent. The same action was still more generally followed by landlords in Great Britain to necessitous tenants behaviour which stands in noble contrast to that of the senators of ancient Rome, who clung to every shred of legal right and hounded agrarian reformers to death. Yet, in spite of the generally enlightened and open- handed conduct of British landlords, an agricultural crisis so acute as that which began after 1875 inevitably embittered class relations, and fostered a democratic spirit such as never before had invaded the rural dis- tricts. It was in vain that Parliament passed the Agri- cultural Holdings Act (1875), granting compensation to tenants for unexhausted improvements. The measure was permissive, rendering such payment compulsory only where both landlord and tenant had agreed to abide by its provisions ; and many landlords, scared by the prospect of increasing demands on a diminishing rent-roll, contracted themselves out of its operation. It was in vain that the premier used all the resources of his facile logic to prove that the land might and must support landlord, tenant, and labourer, not to speak of tithe-receiver. For once he spoke to deaf ears, even in his own Buckinghamshire. As distress deepened and taxation increased, class hostility developed in intensity. Farmers demanded a revision of land-laws in the interests of tenants, remembering full well that Cobden and Bright had demanded such a revision as necessitated by the increased area of foreign competition. Above all, they pressed for relief from the game-laws, The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 197 under which the landlords' sport seemed to be regarded as prior to the tenants' interests. Now, on these topics Cobdenites had long been insisting- in vain. At last, under the pressure of distress, the bucolic mind gave heed; and farmers began to look to the Liberal party for agrarian reforms more drastic than any which could be expected from the holders of power. But farmers were not the only class that was induced by the pressure of American competition to coquet with democratic ideas. The movement began to agitate even the stolid agricultural labourers, who looked with envy on the position gained by trade-unions for town artisans. For the first time since the collapse of the Agricultural Labourers' Unions in 1834-1835, Hodge began to be- come a political creature and talk about his rights an important development, which, as will shortly appear, prepared the way for the agrarian policy of the Liberal party in I884. 1 Even more serious were the results of foreign competi- tion in the economic and social life of Ireland. Despite the well-meant efforts of Mr. Gladstone to readjust the relations of landlord and tenant, those relations became ever more strained. Differences of creed and of race often separated landlord and tenant in that unhappy island, where there were few industries except agricul- ture for a population whose natural increase was the greatest in Europe. Every force which could make for social unrest was therefore at work in Ireland, when a prominent member of the Home Rule party saw in the agrarian question a means not only of shattering land- lordism, but of dissolving the union between Great 1 The increased importance attached to the extension of household suffrage to the rural districts may be measured by the votes of the House of Commons on the subject. In 1872 it was rejected by 148 to 70; in 1873 i* was talked out; in 1874 it was rejected by 287 to 173; in 1875 by 268 to 166; in 1876 by 264 to 165; in 1877 by 274 to 218; in 1878 by 271 to 219; in 1879 by 291 to 226. 198 The Rise of Democracy. Britain and Ireland. In October, 1879, Mr. Davitt formed the Land League, which forthwith commenced a sys- tematic campaign against the payment of rent, and before long enabled the Home Rule party almost to snatch a victory. Such were the chief influences of American competition on the agriculture and society of the United Kingdom, tending inevitably to the modification, if not the Ameri- canizing of our laws and institutions. But while our patriarchal customs were exposed to an economic strain unparalleled in the history of the modern world, the storm-cloud of war began to appear in the East, small at first, but speedily spreading over the whole sky. A famine of unsurpassed severity in India in 1876-1878 taxed alike the powers of the Indian government and the generosity of the British public. By an unfortunate coincidence the new title of Empress of India, recently accorded by Parliament to Her Majesty, was officially proclaimed at Delhi on New Year's Day, 1877, when large tracts of India were already devastated by the famine ; and a title which was meant as a spirited retort to the advances of Russia in Turkestan, was at that time deemed by many to be the cynical avowal of an ambitious and heartless imperialism. This impression was deepened by the Afghan policy of the Indian government, which embroiled us in a serious war, and hopelessly deranged the finances of our great eastern dependency. People began to ask whether an almost bankrupt possession, which embroiled us in constant wars, gave any adequate return for the efforts of the " weary Titan". These searchings of heart were rendered more acute by the Earl of Beaconsfield's 1 policy in the Eastern Question. Into the merits of that policy it is impossible here to enter ; but now that the Bulgarian atrocities have 1 Mr. Disraeli received this title in August, 1876. The Ebb and Flow of Public Opinion. 199 paled before infinitely greater horrors, it may be safely admitted as a non-partisan statement, that the conscience of the British people was deeply shocked at the deter- mination of the ministry to uphold the integrity of the Turkish Empire on the score of British interests. There was a general feeling of repugnance, not only at the Turcophil policy of the government, but at the imperial interests which seemed to call for that policy. The feel- ing was honourable to the conscience of our people, even if it was expressed by Mr. Gladstone in his Midlothian campaign with the zeal of a prophet rather than the foresight of a statesman. However much the imperial- ism of Lord Beaconsfield may be criticised in regard to details, there can be little doubt now that he laid down the general lines of policy which must be followed by the British race if it is to hold a foremost place in the world. But even those who admit his prescience as to the broader issues of imperialism may still criticise his Indian or his Turcophil policy, either on the score of morality or of its inexpedience under existing circum- stances. There can be little doubt, indeed, that his action on these questions contributed largely to the revival of the Liberal party in 1878-1880; but it may be doubted whether the dreary succession of wars and rumours of wars would alone have hurled the Conserva- tives from power, had not our resources been grievously depleted by the agrarian troubles previously described. The depression in trade and agriculture, and the war expenditure for the East and in Zululand, were conjointly responsible for a series of deficits which in 1880 amounted in all to ; 1 0,000,000,* and that too in spite of consider- able additions to taxation. The people, who had pre- viously grown accustomed to magnificent surpluses, visited their resentment on the government, which, after 1 Puxton, Finance and Politics, ii. p. 256, 200 The Rise of Democracy. proclaiming 1 its championship of social legislation, left the classes mutually suspicious, trade and agriculture in the depths of stagnation, and our resources crippled by a heavy expenditure. It is said that the general election of 1880 was decided by the unpopular foreign policy of the government and the glowing oratory of Mr. Gladstone. To the present writer these causes seem inadequate to account for the swift change in public opinion. Probably the agrarian difficulties, and the de- pression of trade which they entailed, were of far greater potency. The pot au feu policy of the government had been a failure owing to the causes previously described ; and farmers now for once joined hands with the town artisans in helping to power the party which promised peace abroad and drastic agrarian legislation at home. This combination of various classes of malcontents pos- sessed few elements of stability; but it sufficed (as was the case in 1874) to overturn a government and to inaugurate a new period of legislative activity and social unrest, the chief features of which will be noticed in the next chapter. Chapter XIII. The Third Reform Act. In a speech delivered at Brighton amidst the turmoil aroused by the third Reform Act, Sir George (then Mr.) Trevelyan revealed the origin of the demand for the assimilation of the borough and county franchise, of which he had been the most persistent parliamentary champion. He said that his attention had been riveted on this question in 1868 by the earnest appeals of his artisan constituents in the Border burghs. They had recently been admitted to the suffrage by the second The Third Reform Act. 201 Reform Act, which, though according- votes to every householder in a parliamentary borough, still kept the limit of the county "occupation" franchise as high as a ;i2 rental. They strongly urged their member to turn his attention to the work of removing this in- equality, by which nearly all members of their class were excluded from the county franchise. He was led to devote his special energies to this task by his admiration of the motives which inspired the request "This pro- posal began in unselfishness, and it has been unselfish and disinterested to the very end ". The incident proves that the third movement for reform, which led up to the Acts of 1884-1885, owed its origin to the feelings of the working-classes as largely as that of 1830-1832. The second Reform Act had no distinctively demo- cratic origin; but the party manoeuvres which carried it led up to a compromise that no one pretended to regard as final. The resulting anomalies were scarcely less irritating than those which it removed or mitigated. The electoral device which, while according to five large towns three members apiece, really reduced their parliamentary voting power to one, was denounced in scathing terms by the veteran member for Birmingham; and while the " three-cornered " trick irritated the Radi- cals of the great towns, the inequalities between the urban and rural franchise served to awaken the artisans of suburbs and farm labourers to the fact that they too had a real grievance. Why should every holder of a rickety tenement in a parliamentary borough have a vote, while the artisans renting 11 cottages in Peck- ham or Ancoats, and the small tenant-holders of Kent and Midlothian, were still excluded from the suffrage? The inequality was exasperating, even to a people which was not imbued with the continental mania for political symmetry. Reformers, moreover, could cite the argu- ments of Mr. Disraeli in 1859 as being fatal to the 202 The Rise of Democracy. anomalies of borough and county franchise created by the Act of 1867. In introducing to the House of Com- mons Lord Derby's Reform Bill of 1859, the young Conservative leader defended the principle of a general 10 limit to the suffrage in these words " In order to bring about a general content and sympathy between the different parts of the constituent body, the govern- ment proposes to recognize the principle of identity of suffrage between counties and towns ". These words now supplied reformers with an excellent text in their new efforts for electoral reform. The claims of logic, the sympathy of town artisans for their suburban or rural brethren, the grievances which these suffered at the hands of stupid vestries or harsh landlords, the need of a completer representation of our ever-increasing manu- facturing districts, all these topics furnished inexhaustible materials for the champions of reform. The shortcom- ings of the Redistribution Bill of 1867 were mercilessly exposed. 1 It left one member apiece to 42 boroughs, all of which had fewer than 7000 inhabitants; 142 boroughs, having a total population of 1,751,000, sent, in all, 172 members to Westminster; while Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow, containing 1,832,000 inhabitants, practically counted only 4 votes in a parliamentary division. But this was not, in the main, a question for the great towns so much as for the rural districts. The climax of the industrial revolution had been reached in the years 1837-1848. The brunt of the agrarian crisis, resulting from American competition and from other causes which were explained in the last chapter, was felt most keenly in and after the year 1876. Just as the grinding pressure of want had at the earlier date en- rolled hundreds of thousands of operatives in the Chartist ranks, so now agricultural distress permeated farm 1 e.g. in Mr. John Noble's pamphlet on the Reform of Parliament. The Third Reform Act. 203 labourers, and for a time even farmers themselves, with Radical notions. As has previously been shown, the general election of 1880 was decided very largely by agrarian questions. And when the severity of the agri- cultural crisis was not appreciably mitigated by the Ground Game Act, the abolition of the malt tax, and other remedial measures, the plan of creating peasant holdings gained general favour as affording a means of solving the agricultural problem. If peasant proprietors could not successfully meet American competition in corn, yet in dairy and market - garden produce they would surely be able to hold their own against the peasants of France, Holland, and Denmark. At any rate, the formation of peasant holdings would tend to root the people in the soil, and stop the drift to the towns which was depleting the country and crowding the rookeries of London. Such were the ideas which were soon to find definite expression in the idyllic programme "three acres and a cow". Rural labourers themselves were aroused from their usual lethargy, and looked on the franchise as a means of attaining the felicity with which Feargus O'Connor had enchanted the minds of their fathers in the forties. It was evident that only the Liberals or Radicals could now effect the transfor- mation of rural Britain into the Arcadia of the poets; for only this party could or would arm Hodge with the modern diviner's wand, the franchise. Such appear to have been the chief motives which propelled onwards the democratic movement in and after 1880. Some there were who advocated household suf- frage on the same lofty motives as those which animated Joseph Sturge and the Complete- Suffrage party forty years previously. Others again saw in a drastic elec- toral change a means of ensuring the predominance of domestic reforms over foreign affairs, and of recalling the Liberal government from its Egyptian adventures, 204 The Rise of Democracy. Springing" from whatever motives, the demand of house- hold suffrage for the counties gathered force and volume through the years 1880-83, and it was skilfully enforced by Liberal clubs. But the desire for electoral reform was not by any means one-sided. The Conservative party was no more opposed to a well-considered ex- tension of the suffrage than it had been in the years 1859-1867. Conservative legislation had strengthened the bonds connecting the party with town artisans; and their party managers knew perfectly well that the greater predominance which must be given to London, to suburban districts, and to counties, would ultimately, if not immediately, tell in their favour. Events have fully justified their prescience. On the platform and in the press there was some approach to unanimity as to the need of a change. 1 The chief questions raised were those relating to the method of procedure, though some public men loudly questioned the desirability of effecting an important transfer of political power in the midst of the excitement aroused by Irish troubles and Egyptian complications. The last-named questions, however, furnished to the rank and file of the Liberal party a reason for pushing on electoral reform. The propelling power was certainly exerted by Liberal clubs; and the whole movement therefore presents a complete contrast to the course of affairs in 1867, when the debates in the House first aroused any general interest. Now the reverse was signally the case. In pursuance of resolutions passed 1 "That there must be sooner or later a change in the electoral system is admitted by all Liberals and almost all Conservatives; and it is hardly possible for men of sense to avoid the conclusion that an early and final settlement is from every point of view to be desired. If it be acknowledged that the situation created by the Act of 1867 cannot be permanently main- tained, it is clearly wise to remove at once an excuse for perpetual legislative tinkering and to establish the relations of parties on a permanent basis. The Conservative elements in English society will not be extinguished by electoral changes " (Times, Oct. 16. 1883). The Third Reform Act. 205 by the National Liberal Federation in May, 1883, a great meeting- of delegates of clubs was held at Leeds in October to confer on the whole question. The first resolution, urging the government to bring- in a Reform Bill in the next session, was passed with enthusiasm, an amendment moved by Mr. Firth in favour of giving priority to London municipal reform being- negatived. Speeches by Mr. Morley, Dr. Dale, and by that sturdy veteran in the cause of reform, John Bright, made a great impression. Those of Mr. Morley and Mr. Bright are noteworthy as advising the separation of the ques- tions of franchise and redistribution. The latter closed with a threatening reference to the Lords in case they resisted the change, or presumed to require the produc- tion of the scheme of redistribution before the fate of the Franchise Bill were decided. Mr. Morley, however, ad- mitted that the Upper House had a "legitimate right", if they chose to use it, of having the question of redis- tribution submitted to the constituencies before accepting the government plan. The precedent of 1866 could cer- tainly be urged in favour of the claim, which was soon to be urged by the Lords, that the whole scheme must be made known before any decisive votes should have been taken on the Franchise Bill. We now proceed to notice the details of the Franchise Bill, which Mr. Gladstone introduced into the House of Commons on Feb. 5, 1884. He justified the action of the government on grounds of justice and patriotism. The strength of a modern state lay in its representative institutions; and he claimed that the present proposals would lay the foundations of government broad and deep in the people's will, and would "array the people in one solid compacted mass around the ancient throne which it has loved so well, and round a constitution now to be more than ever powerful and more than ever free". The Act of 1832 had added considerably less than half 206 The Rise of Democracy. a million of voters to the electorate; the immediate results of the second Reform Act had been to extend the suffrage by about 1,080,000; while the present bill would enfranchise no fewer than 2,000,000. This would be effected mainly by the extension of household suffrage, and the lodger franchise of 1867, to counties and to suburban districts previously merged in counties. But in addition to the lodger vote of 1867 Mr. Gladstone proposed to create a "service" franchise; that is, he proposed to accord votes to officials, servants, grooms, and the like, who occupied rooms or cottages, though they paid no rent whatever. Turning to the question of redistribution of seats, he justified its separation from that of the franchise on the ground that it was infinitely complex, sectional, and local, while the right of voting should be determined on broadly national issues ; but he expressed the "hope" that the more difficult question might be settled in the following year. In the debates which followed, Lord Randolph Churchill objected to the bill as inopportune in a time of foreign complications, and also on the more general ground that agricultural labourers were, as a rule, quite unfitted for the discharge of the same political rights and duties as the far more intelligent manufacturing and mining population. Mr. W. H. Smith opposed its extension to Ireland, where it would lead to a policy of confiscation of property. On the whole, however, the opposition fastened on the separation of franchise and redistribution as the most objectionable feature of the scheme; and it would be puerile to deny that under cover of this objection many members cloaked their designs to thwart both proposals. Despite the almost open threats to the Lords if they should resist or thwart these propositions, the Upper House passed Lord Cairns' amendment, which demanded the association with the Franchise Bill of proposals for the redistribution of seats. The Third Reform Act. 207 At once there arose a furious hubbub. Charges and countercharges hurtled through the air; and the sus- picions thus aroused imported into our political life unwonted heat and violence. It was in vain that Mr. Gladstone proposed the passing of an identical resolu- tion in each House that the Franchise Bill had been or would be passed, in reliance on a promise of the ministry to introduce a Redistribution Bill in the fol- lowing session. That, exclaimed Lord Salisbury, offered no guarantee that Mr. Gladstone would not introduce a wholly objectionable scheme of redistribution, which he might force down by aid of the Franchise Bill as soon as it became law. " Show us all your plans, or we will not pass the first instalment", exclaimed the Peers and their Tory backers. "No," retorted the Liberals in effect, "you want us to link both together that you may defeat both. A two-legged race is not to our fancy." So the conflict raged. The welkin of Mid- lothian again re-echoed with oratory. Demonstrations, threatening the ending or mending of the House of Lords, darkened squares and market-places; pam- phleteers and editors raked up the precedents of 1866 to prove anything and everything; the constitution tot- tered. But amidst all the racket the small voice of common sense began to whisper of compromise. As has been already shown, the two parties were by no means irre- concilably opposed on the principle of the proposed measures. Uncompromising divergence of aims char- acterized only the intransigeants of each side, and the tacticians who saw in the conflict a means of abolishing the Upper House. But these feelings were confined to a few. The passions of the moderate men on both sides were hardly so inflamed as to defy the appeals of reason. Their resentment had been aroused by the suspicion that their opponents were working to outwit or overreach 208 The Rise of Democracy. them. The occasion evidently called for the services of two or three "honest brokers", and these now quietly arranged the conditions for a conference of the leading men on both sides. 1 When rhetoric yielded place to reason the whole thing was found to be capable of ar- rangement. The private conferences held between Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Sir Charles Dilke on the one side, and Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford North- cote as leaders of the opposition, unravelled the parlia- mentary tangle. The Upper House now agreed to pass the Franchise Bill on its second reading, with the under- standing that the forthcoming Redistribution Bill should be made "the subject of friendly communications". 2 The committee stage of the Franchise Bill and its third reading were postponed, in the House of Lords, until the Redistribution of Seats Bill had been introduced by Mr. Gladstone into the House of Commons. The general principles of this second very important measure were now explained by the premier. Without adopting the scheme of equal electoral districts, the Redistribution Bill aimed at bringing about approximate equality of representation ; but there was to be little or no abolition of historic names, such as had moved the fears of the opposition. Towns containing fewer than 15,000 inhabitants were, for electoral purposes, to be merged in the county districts to which in most cases they demised their names. Towns where the population ranged between 15,000 and 50,000 were to return one member only. These changes liberated 160 seats, in addition to which six seats, previously declared vacant for bribery, 1 In Mr. Andrew Lang's Life of Lord Iddesleigh, vol. ii. pp. 205-215, the details will be found. First the Duke of Richmond, and, later, Lord Norton, hinted at a meeting of the leaders. Lord Iddesleigh (then Sir Stafford Northcote), in a secret interview with Mr. Gladstone at St. James's Palace, helped to clear away misunderstandings. The separation of sub- urban and rural districts was desired by both. Other difficulties, viz. those of procedure, were also removed, and asperities were smoothed dow:>, 2 For details, see Hansard, Nov. 17, 18, 1884. The Third Reform Act. 209 were to ; be revived. These six were to go to England. Scotland received an increase of twelve members, while the number of members for Wales and Ireland remained unchanged. As a result, the membership of the House of Commons was raised from 658 to 670. Further, the principle of single -member divisions was generally adopted, 1 a decision which drew an unavailing protest from the champions of proportional representation, Mr. Courtney and Sir John Lubbock. In vain did they point out that the minute subdivisions of towns and counties would frequently distort the verdict of the town or county as a whole. The single-member plan evidently had the merit of being simpler, and therefore of being more easily worked by a half-educated electorate, and the cause to which John Stuart Mill had devoted his energies was accordingly shelved, as in 1867. The result is that the 670 members of Parliament are now mostly elected in a multitude of small areas, where local or parochial concerns frequently overshadow the larger national questions which are presumed to be solely under consideration. Apart from this defect, which perhaps may be to some extent remedied by the spread of education and growth of intelligence, the Redistribution Bill may be regarded as effecting an important and satisfactory change. For the first time London and the new industrial centres received their due share of political power, which hitherto had been absorbed by petty townships of the south and east. In place of 22 members, London and its vast suburban districts were to return 62; and the numbers allotted to the chief towns were as follows : Liverpool, 9 ; Man- chester and Salford, 9; Glasgow, 7; Birmingham, 7; Leeds, 5; Sheffield, 5; Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast, and Bristol, 4 each; and so on. Equally great were the 1 The exceptions were the City of London, and towns of from 50,000 to 165,000 inhabitants, which were to return two members apiece. (M416) O 210 The Rise of Democracy. gains to the manufacturing counties, Yorkshire return- ing 26 members, and Lancashire 23, apart from those sent up by their towns. Even so, the voting power of London and the great towns of England is not relatively so great as that of distant country districts, especially those of Ireland. But, as was asserted by Mr. Gladstone, the very remoteness and sparseness of population of those districts constituted a claim for departing from a strictly numerical basis. The great towns could well look after themselves, because "the actual political power in these concentrated masses is sharper, quicker, and more vehement". In many respects the Franchise Act of 1884 and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 are the most impor- tant measures of the century. Their significance can only be fully realized by the student who has traced the course of the democratic movements of the previous generations. Manhood suffrage and equal electoral dis- tricts, two of the claims of Major Cartwright and his reform committee of 1780, and, later, two of the points of the original People's Charter, were now approximately secured. The extension of prosperity to the poorer classes has brought the position of holder of a tenement, or of a lodger, within the reach of all who can by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as capable of the intelligent discharge of political duties. Indeed, the experience of recent years would seem to show that among the newly enfranchised classes the very poor give a fitful and almost unreasoning adherence to either party, and cause those swift and apparently unaccountable vacillations which are the despair of responsible poli- ticians and the joy of "wreckers". While the approach to manhood suffrage has been as close as any friends of political stability could wish, the approximation to equal electoral districts has been less pronounced. The desire to spare historic towns was The Third Reform Act. 211 prompted by a no less amiable feeling than that which perpetuated old names and areas wherever possible. As a result, the new county divisions may be regarded as a far more satisfactory compromise between the old and the new, between tradition and modern needs, than the singularly uninteresting departmental divisions imposed on France by the rigorously mathematical democrats of 1789. The different methods employed are characteristic of French and English democracy. No less noteworthy is the peaceful character of the transition to a new electoral system, which forty years earlier had been declared to be subversive of the constitution and of the rights of property. This fact is another signal instance of the adaptive powers of the English parliamentary system. In 1848 it seemed as impossible that any House of Commons should ever pass the substance of the People's Charter as, in 1830, that the borough-mongers' Parliament should pronounce sentence of death on Old Sarum. Yet both agitations achieved an almost blood- less triumph through the very Parliament which was denounced as corrupt or imperfect. Never surely has the wit of man devised any scheme which, while subject- ing all proposals to salutary sifting and delay, has so persistently left the door of hope ajar in view of the multitude which sought admittance. If, as the critic of democracy asserts, 1 satisfaction and impatience, "the two great sources of political conduct", were reasonably satisfied by our older electoral system, surely it may be admitted that the Acts of 1884-85 gave a reasonably tardy and cautiously incomplete gratification to the aims and desires cherished by democrats for two or three generations. Limits of space preclude any attempt at a detailed examination of the legislation which resulted more or less directly from the Acts of 1884-85. Nor, indeed, has 1 Sir H. Maine's Popular Government. 212 The Rise of Democracy. the time come when any such attempt can be essayed with satisfactory results. The general election of 1885 showed how strong were the feelings of agricultural labourers in favour of drastic agrarian reforms. While Conservative triumphs in the boroughs were surprisingly numerous, the voice of the two millions of enfranchised voters was given with no uncertain sound for the policy of small holdings. As a result, 334 Liberals, 250 Con- servatives, and 86 Irish Home Rulers, came up to Westminster; and the makeshift government of Lord Salisbury was ejected by the adoption of an amendment to the address expressing regret that there was no men- tion of allotments for labourers (Jan. 1886). But a surprise was in store. Mr. Gladstone, instead of basing the existence of his new government on the agricultural questions which had brought it to power, suddenly executed a strategic right turn towards Mr. Parnell's following. This action speedily ruptured the Liberal party, and brought about a new grouping in the political kaleidoscope. On the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill, Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country, which retorted by electing 316 Conservatives, 191 Liberal Home Rulers, 78 Liberal Unionists, and 85 Irish Home Rulers. The alliance between Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, the latter led by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain, has had the effect of completing the politi- cal education of the Tory party, which Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Disraeli had so strenuously commenced. Opportunism, introduced by the Act of 1867, now rushed in like a flood and began to obliterate the old party landmarks. The democratic principle was for- mally adopted by Lord Salisbury's government in its very important Local Government Bill of 1888, which introduced into counties and a few large boroughs (in- cluding London) an electoral system based on household suffrage. For the first time in our history since the The Third Reform Act. 213 decay of the old folk-moots, county affairs were placed on a completely popular basis; and the government of London regained the democratic character which it had lost since the perversion of the mediaeval trade gilds from their primitive uses. The Gladstone ministry in 1893 introduced a bill, which was passed in the following year, extending the elective principle to rural parishes having a population of 300 or more. All householders were to have votes in the parish meeting, which was to be summoned at least once a year. The parochial coun- cillors, having been elected by ballot, were to discharge nearly all the functions of the old vestry meeting a stunted survival of the old Saxon hundred-moot. The new council deals with sanitary affairs, can acquire land for allotments or for recreation, and may under certain conditions found a free library. It is, in fact, an adapta- tion of the old democratic hundred-moot to the needs of the present age. A survey of the political history of this century seems to prove that there is an irresistible tendency in the English people to hark back to the earlier conditions of the national life. Sometimes it is the result of a con- scious adoption of an earlier programme, as when the more intelligent Chartists justified their demands by reference to those of 1780; while the reformers of 1780 had also appealed to the venerable charters of English liberties. In those cases the recurrence to earlier pre- cedents was deliberate and avowed. In other instances, similar conduct has been the outcome of the unconscious but imperious instincts of a sturdy stock, which in the long run repels all the warping influences of Feudalism, and reverts to the old Saxon ways. This is at once the paradox and the salvation of English political life, that even its innovating efforts tend to the conservation or reconstruction of the old national and local institutions. The Rise of Democracy. Chapter XIV. Democracy and Labour. Though it is impossible to review the whole area of legislative activity since the inauguration of a new epoch by the Acts of 1884-85, yet it seems desirable to examine the bearing of the new developments on two very im- portant spheres of our national life, labour legislation and foreign policy. On the satisfaction of the very diverse and often antagonistic demands which confront the British government in industrial life and in foreign relations, must chiefly depend the future of this people. In attempting to review the course of recent industrial legislation it will be well at the outset to examine the question in the light of the events of 1830-1850. The persistence of national character, and even the tenacity with which working-men have clung to earlier aims and methods, will probably furnish a clue as to the meaning of present developments. What, then, were the aims which inspired artisan leaders in the period just named? Were those men communists and levellers ; or did they seek practical means for the redress of definite griev- ances? It may be urged that Chartism was closely connected with Robert Owen's propaganda and that of Hodgkin, the former of whom expressly claimed for his scheme a world-wide application ; also that several of the Chartists retained to the end the regenerating and levelling theories which they learnt from those thinkers. That statement is only partly correct. Lovett, Hetherington, and a few other moral-force Chartists were at first disciples of Owen ; and the latter strongly avowed in his Poor Man's Guardian that all distinctions of rank and property must be swept away. The prime impulse which drove Lovett Democracy and Labour. 215 and Hetherington into Radicalism was undoubtedly the teaching" of Owen and Hodgicin, which promised a speedy and effectual cure for the prevalent misery. But before the definite revival of the old democratic programme in the People's Charter, these two able artisan leaders had seen the error of their ways. Lovett broke away from his teacher in order to found a co-operative society on practical lines, and openly renounced the follies of Owenism; 1 while Hetherington, on the decease of his acrid print in 1835, found it desirable to commence another which contained more news and fewer diatribes against property. Many other proofs might be cited in proof of the declining popularity of Owen's and Hodg- kin's ideas about that time. 2 The introduction to the People's Charter drawn up by Lovett, conveys no hint that any redistribution of property was aimed at. The first number of O'Connor's Northern Star, as we have seen in chapter v., dangled before working--men the prospect of equality with their richer neighbours and of a "respectable provision" for "every unwilling idler in the state ". But even this vaguely alluring- programme was afterwards tacitly shelved, and the only practical result was the very harmless Land Scheme, which may be regarded as the precursor of "three acres and a cow". The evidence points directly to the fact that the mass of our people, even amidst the misery of the thirties and forties, were ultimately repelled rather than attracted by 1 In Appendix I. to his able work The Labour Problem (1896) Mr. G. Drage, M. P. , seems to me to assign too much importance to the supposed levelling schemes of the early Chartists. In support of his views he quotes a few phrases from the address sent by the London Working-men's Associa- tion to Belgian artisans as to the producers of wealth having the first claim to its enjoyment. But, as Lovett shows in his Autobiography, this was in 1836, and was called forth by special circumstances ; and on page 45 he states why he gave up communism, though he clung to the co-operative production of wealth. 8 See my article on "The Unstamped Press, 1815-36", in the English Historical Review of October, 1897, which shows the small circulation of Owenite and other " levelling" papers. 216 The Rise of Democracy. the levelling theories advocated more or less openly by Spence, Robert Owen, and Hodgkin. Enthusiasts like Lovett, Hetherington, and Bronterre O'Brien, who at first disseminated these notions, were gradually brought, either by their own better sense or by that strange yet almost unerring instinct which guides our people on these subjects, to abandon them altogether, or to embody them in practical demands, such as that for the due taxation of wealth, which have finally been adopted by responsible statesmen. This fact is of the utmost importance. In a time of the keenest distress, rendered additionally acute by the Corn-law and the Poor-law, English artisans turned away from the theorists who were demanding a reconstruction of society and a redistribution of property, and threw their weight almost wholly into a movement which aimed first and foremost at effecting through Parliament a remedy of their worst grievances. Well may Carlyle praise John Bull because, "after infinite tumblings and spoken platitudes innumerable from barrel-heads and parliament-benches, he does settle down somewhere about the just conclusion: you are certain that his jumblings and tumblings will end, after years or cen- turies, in stable equilibrium ". Truly so, to an extent of which the seer of Chelsea could not have dreamed. No other people has gone through such miseries, and these too enhanced by law, and has listened to the siren voice of confiscation, without heading straight for the rocks. The bearing of this on existing political conditions is fairly obvious. The people of the United States have been declared to be the despair of extreme socialists. Their individualism, their sense of what is due to individual enterprise and liberty, whether during life or in the right of bequest to posterity, is so keen that it throws off even the most potent arguments drawn from the armoury of Karl Marx. This is after all not surprising, consider- Democracy and Labour. 217 ing how pleasant are the places in which their lines are cast, and how much of the total result is due to the energy and ingenuity of individuals. But the marvel is that in our old overcrowded country, where the landlords lived at ease on broad domains while the many toiled for a pittance in noisome townships and reeking- factories, where the few made laws which pressed hard on the many, yet there was no war of classes, no general rush for division of land or distribution of wealth, but a steady resolve to use the law to mend the law, and to regain for the masses that grip on the People's House which had been the bulwark of the nation's liberties. But, while discarding the viewy schemes of Owen, our artisans always regarded political rights as a means of bettering their position by practical reforms. It was natural that they should look on politics from this practical stand-point. To gain a vote meant to regain part at least of the creature comforts which had been lost amid the shifting scenes of nineteenth-century life. Time was when some of them had been well-to-do wool- combers or hand-loom weavers ; l perchance their fathers had been freeholders in the county, and had been courted and bribed for their votes as assiduously as the stout yeoman in the village election scene depicted by Hogarth. At any rate, they had heard about the good old times before the great war, when prices were cheap, work was regular, and wages were good. Why, then, should they, the sons, sink to the position of drudges without rights and privileges, because fate had doomed them to work in a township for a master who knew them not? Such were the notions dimly hovering in the minds of the wage-earners, impelling them to demand the fran- 1 " Lancashire was once a particularly loyal county. A call was made on their patriotism to repel the gigantic power of Bonaparte: 30,000 volunteers stepped forward, and upwards of 20,000 were hand-loom weavers. . . Dare any government now call upon the services of such a people living upon three shillings a week?" (Part. Report 0/1834). 2t8 The Rise of Democracy. chise as a means of redressing the balance which the statesman and the engineer had tilted against them. Viewing the matter morally and historically, their action was completely justifiable. The details presented in my first chapter prove that the industrial and agricultural changes which rendered the first half of this century for ever memorable depressed the status of the poor even while they enhanced the wealth of the community. On the ground of justice and even of expediency the wage- earners might accordingly claim every consideration from the community in respect to all their worst griev- ances. These were an oppressive taxation, unhealthy conditions both in the cottage and the factory, inability to gain compensation for injury incurred while in the employer's service, and inadequate return for the long hours of labour. It was for the redress of these practical grievances that British artisans claimed the franchise, and not for the establishment of an ideal society or for the levelling of incomes. The close connection between industrial wrongs and the growth of Chartism is every- where obvious. Fed on the misery of 1837-42, the movement declined after that date, except where bitter and prolonged strikes went against the men. Reviving in 1847-48 amidst the trade depression, lock-outs, and reduction of wages of those years, it was lulled to rest by the gold discoveries and commercial prosperity which marked the next decade. 1 Workmen who had gained their immediate needs, regular work and better wages, could afford to wait for the future, which indeed has brought far more than any of them ever conceived in the important changes that we will now briefly examine. It is a curious fact, but easily capable of proof, that 1 The evidence afforded by the Chartist Convention of 1848 on this point is conclusive. Nearly all the speakers urged that the general misery com- pelled a forward movement. Only the Edinburgh delegate said that his constituents were not poverty-stricken Chartists, but " Chartists from prin- ciple ". See Gammage, The Chartist Movement, p. 303 (edit of 1894). Democracy and Labour. 219 the first demand for interference between the employer and employed came from philanthropists and benevolent employers, not from the workmen themselves. The earliest Factory Acts, those of 1802 and 1819, were the result of representations made by local authorities and by enlightened masters, among whom were the first Sir Robert Peel and Robert Owen, as to the miserable state of the children and young people employed in many factories. Of all Robert Owen's actions none was more beneficent than his endeavour by legislation to extend to all factories some of the benefits which he freely accorded to his work-people at New Lanark. Though meeting with only limited success, his example stimulated the action of others, even though they totally disagreed with the other features of his political and social creed. Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury), and Messrs. Sadler, Oast- ler, and Stephens, were the next champions of the factory hands. All four were Tories of the old school, resolute opponents of Whig manufacturers and laisser- faire economists; and their efforts, aided by those of Mr. Fielden, a man who had raised himself from the ranks to be a wealthy manufacturer and Radical member for Oldham, were chiefly instrumental in gaining the Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847. The last of these, limit- ing the work of all young persons and women to 10 hours a day and 58 a week, crowned with success the efforts of influential men who for nearly twenty years had chivalrously been pleading the cause of the weak and helpless. The arguments of Lord Ashley and his coad- jutors were based mainly on moral grounds, though they were careful to show that previous reductions of the hours of labour, while raising the quality of the work, had not sensibly diminished the output. 1 The Ten Hours Act, together with the Mines Act of 1842, marks the close of iSee Lord Shaftesbury's speeches in House of Commons, March 15, May 10, 1844, and January 29, 1846, in his volume of Speeches (1868). 220 The Rise of Democracy. what may be termed patriarchal legislation on this sub- ject. Other acts, it is true, especially those resulting from the royal commission of 1862-66, for which Lord Shaftesbury had moved, extended the area of state pro- tection to women and to young persons working in workshops. But the working of Tory Socialism received its most striking illustration in the earlier Acts, which were so largely due to the untiring energy and noble zeal of Lord Shaftesbury. The evidence adduced by him before the royal com- missions of inquiry seems to have aroused the attention of working-men to the advantages which they themselves might procure through the reduction of the hours of labour of women and young persons ; and the conviction spread that legislation might and must be attempted for men. This notion, all but dormant before 1837, was vitalized by the misery of the following years, when the labour question leapt to life in something resembling its present form. Strikes there had been, of course, before 1837, but none so well organized or so desperately fought as those of 1842 and 1843 in the textile, iron, and coal industries. For the present, most of the workers re- venged themselves for defeat by supporting the Chartists; but their prudent members began to turn their attention more to labour questions than to an ultra -democratic franchise. For, after all, what was the value of a vote to most of them except to redress their most crying grievances? And if other means would work as effectu- ally and far more speedily, why not adopt them rather than the "six points"? Why not try Trade-unionism rather than Chartism? The former movement brought a direct pressure to bear on the employer; while the latter staked all on the attainment of the points as a prelude to parliamentary interference. If many of their best friends looked askance at the Charter, obviously it was the best policy to drop the parliamentary question Democracy and Labour. 221 for the time and trust to those instincts of self-help which are fortunately so strong" in the breast of every Briton. As the capture of the strikes of 1842-43 by the physical- force Chartists had done harm both to Trade-unionism and to Chartism, surely it was better for Trade-unionists to leave the points to shift for themselves and to look after the sufficiently complex interests of the several trades. Such were the motives which after 1843 tended to separate the labour questions of the time from the dis- tinctively parliamentary programme of the ultra-Radicals. After the temporary collapse of the latter in 1848 the self-help movement, whether trade-unionist or co-opera- tive, received valued help from the advocacy of King-sley, Maurice, and other far-seeing friends of the working- classes, and ceased, for the time at least, to have any close connection with the franchise question. This, apparently, was one reason why the Chartist and Radical cause remained all but stationary in the ensuing- years, until the fervour of a few statesmen and the intrigues of parties placed within reach of town artisans the weapon of household suffrage for which they had vainly struggled in the "forties". It is now fairly clear that the granting- of this impor- tant political right by Disraeli's Act of 1867 decided the whole future of Trade-unionism. The year 1867 was indeed a critical one. Public opinion was deeply incensed by the trade-union outrages at Sheffield. Men listened only to the sordid details of bullying", rattening 1 , explosion and murder, forgetting- that these acts were largely due to the laws which banned Trade-unionism and allowed prejudiced judges to class as conspiracy all attempts peacefully to persuade workmen to a strike. Fortunately for all parties the searching- parliamentary inquiry, which was held in 1867-69, revealed not only the sensational details of outrage, but the leg-alized injustice under which workmen in many of the cutlery trades suffered. It 222 The Rise of Democracy. condemned the law as well as the law-breaker. Further- more, it showed that what Hallamshire needed was not less but more Trade-unionism. Outrages had been most rife in the trades which, for various reasons, had not been able fully to organize themselves. Completer organization was proved to have been accompanied by diminution of the use of brute force. Combination of the workers in legal trade-unions was therefore presum- ably a means of substituting more peaceful methods for the dastardly acts by which small groups of desperate men thought to better their position. Such a combina- tion would at least provide a recognized channel for negotiations between masters and men in case of dispute. The inquiry would certainly not have been so favour- able to the workers had they not recently been en- franchised. As their votes were now of vast importance, it was evidently desirable to conciliate them. The change in the tenor of the inquiry between 1867 and 1869 suffi- ciently shows that not only conviction as to the justice of the claims of labour, but the desire to catch the labour vote, played a part in the deliberations at West- minster. Beginning with a general conviction of the need of repressive legislation, the inquiry ended with recom- mendations generally favourable to Trade-unionism. 1 This soothing policy led to a marked change in labour questions. As Parliament now held the stirrup, it only remained for Trade-unionism lightly to vault into the saddle. One or two preliminary steps were alone necessary. The first was to form an annual Trade- union Congress, as was done in 1868. The next was to form the parliamentary committee of the Trade-union Congress, which is elected on the last day of the congress for the purpose of influencing labour legislation. The fruits of this activity were soon obvious. In 1871 came the act which gave to trade-unions a definite legal status i Schulze-Gaevernitz, Social Peace, p. 97. Democracy and Labour. 223 such as they had never previously enjoyed, and enabled them to prosecute fraudulent officials. Four years later, under a Conservative ministry, the law was modified in a sense even more favourable to trade-unionists. The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act withdrew trade-unions from the class of suspected organizations, and conceded to them the right of using all peaceful means of persuasion even at the time of a strike. Indeed, a prominent champion of the cause admitted that the two statutes of 1871 and 1875 "constituted a great and generous measure of justice which none of us expected". 1 As a result, Trade-unionism soon lost the violence which goes hand in hand with illegality, and which therefore characterizes the cognate movement on the Continent. Nothing is more gratifying than the orderly and law- abiding spirit generally characteristic of English trade- union delegates, as contrasted with the anarchic out- bursts of their continental brethren. But while English Trade-unionism has been law-abid- ing, it has also been exceedingly active in moulding the law to its will. Some little time elapsed before the mass of workmen realized the full extent of the powers freely conceded to them by Parliament; but after grasp- ing the facts of the situation, they have struggled for and obtained privileges which their forefathers would have deemed impossible. The way had also been pre- pared for them in 1864 and 1867 by factory legislation limiting the hours of labour for women and young per- sons to fifty-six per week. This restriction of time for women and young persons naturally aided the men in their endeavours to gain a similar boon ; and as a matter of fact, before the year 1880 in most industries the men's hours were fewer than the legal maximum for women. Previous to the year 1889 there was little if any de- iMr. H. Crompton: quoted in Appendix C of Howell's Handy Book of the Labour Laws (1876). 224 The Rise of Democracy. mand for universal legislation on the subject of hours of work. The cry for an eight -hours day for all trades constitutes a new and very significant departure. Par- liament, it is true, had legislated for children, young persons, and for women, working in factories and work- shops. But factory legislation for adult males was a very different matter, especially after 1867, when they had votes and were organized in powerful unions. The men of grit and independence who had fought the battles of Trade-unionism in the past protested against whole- sale parliamentary interference on complex questions which had hitherto been decided between the masters and the trade-unions themselves. Such complete re- liance on Parliament would, they maintained, cut the ground from under Trade-unionism; for what was the need of the unions, if their knowledge of the complex and shifting requirements of the several trades was all to be set aside in favour of an arbitrary code framed at Westminster? The demand for an eight-hours day by the fiat of Parliament might possibly be successful in the long run; but it would imply the abdication of Trade-unionism in favour of a State Socialism of the most rigid description. In spite of these warnings the cry for a universal Eight Hours Bill grew in intensity and volume. It seems to have been powerfully influenced by a remark- able Socialist propaganda undertaken by the Fabian Society in and after 1886. That society, then abandon- ing the cautious methods which its name seemed to imply, entered the arena of party politics. Under the generalship of Mr. Sidney Webb, 1 the Fabians girded themselves for the conflict by forming a parliamentary committee somewhat on the same lines as that of the Trade-union Congress. The duties of this new body were "to organize Socialist opinion, and to bring pres- 1 Fabian Tract, No. 41. Democracy and Labour. 225 sure to bear upon Parliament, municipalities, and other representative bodies". Labour legislation of a more drastic type than trade-unionists had hitherto favoured, occupied a prominent place in the new propaganda; and there can be no doubt that the demand for an eight- hours day was largely due to the vigorous agitation thus inaugurated. The Labour movement speedily felt the effect of the new agitation and assumed the militant form known as the New Unionism. Among the many topics which separate it from the older trade organiza- tions the most prominent is reliance on state control, which, as we have seen, had previously been viewed with distrust or dislike. It is questionable whether the new movement would have secured much support but for the worldly wisdom which associated it with the alluring programme of a universal eight- hours day. Not that this was mooted in its entirety at the outset. At first it was proposed for all men employed by govern- ment, by municipalities, and by other governing bodies. Next it was held out to miners, and secured the adhesion of the newly- formed National Federation of Miners. Finally, the proposal was brought up at the Trade-union Congress of 1890, in the following decisive form: that "steps should be taken to reduce the working hours in all trades to eight hours per day, or a maximum of forty-eight per week; and while recognizing the power and influence of trade organizations, it is of opinion that the speediest and best method to obtain this reduction for the workers generally is by parliamentary enact- ment ". This wholesale regimentation of trades by Par- liament was opposed by the delegate of the Durham miners, who moved that the "eight-hours day should be secured at once by such trades as may desire it"; but the champions of universal legislation carried the day by a majority of 8 in a meeting of 354 delegates. 1 1 Howell's Trade Unionism, New and Old, p. 174. (H416) F 226 The Rise of Democracy. Not satisfied with throwing down the gauntlet, the challenge became more sweeping and stringent. In its extreme form, the proposal is that in every trade and district, work shall in no case exceed eight hours a day, or a total of forty-eight a week, overtime and extra pay being entirely prohibited. The fortunes of this pro- gramme have been instructive. The first efforts to reduce it to practice were made by the industry which claims the utmost consideration and sympathy. If any calling demands close and careful regulation by the State it is that which involves the discomfort and risk, the strain on muscle and brain, imposed on hewers of coal. Accordingly, an Eight Hours Bill was drafted on behalf of the colliers for 1892, when it was found that out of the five miners' representatives in the House of Com- mons three refused to support it. The reasons for this refusal are to be found in the sturdy independence of the Northumberland and Durham miners, who, having by their own associations and indomitable energy im- measurably improved their position, were not desirous of outside control. Their experience of the working of the well-meant Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887 was not wholly favourable. As has recently been proved by the evidence forthcoming at the Labour Commission, they found the limitation of the hours of work for boys pro- duced a scarcity of boys, which hampered the work of the highly-paid hewers. When the majority of men in one of the most important coal-fields rejected further govern- ment interference, it was only natural that the House of Commons should reject the Eight Hours Bill of 1892, as it did by a decisive majority of 112. The opposition of the Tynesiders has accordingly retarded the accept- ance of a universal Eight Hours Bill, even by the indus- try which seemed most to require it. Into the balance of evidence for and against the general proposal for an eight-hours day it is impossible Democracy and Labour. 227 here to enter. 1 It is noteworthy, however, that the action of the miners themselves has tended to check the con- clusions somewhat hastily recorded at the Trade-union Congresses of 1890-1892; and the sifting- process, which forms a needful stage in every movement, was carried still further in the inquiry held by the Parliamentary Labour Commission of 1892-1894. The advantage of cross-examination over rhetoric has never been more strikingly illustrated than in the gradual weakening- of the case for a universal Eight Hours Bill when sifted by the royal commission. The inquiry revealed not only the complexity of the problem, but the opposing- nature of the claims urg-ed on its behalf. Those who desired to raise wages stated that the change would not check production, and consequently would not absorb the unemployed ; while those who benevolently desired to absorb the unemployed into the ranks of regular workers claimed that an eight-hours day would not increase the cost of production. Here, then, the question stands for the present. One further result of the inquiry may also be noted. Such enthusiastic champions of collectivism as Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. Tom Mann have implicitly, if not explicitly, conceded the impracticability of a wholesale regimentation of industry by national law. In his evidence given before the Commission, Mr. Mann ad- mitted that it would be advisable that exemptions be granted when claimed by a local council composed of employers and workmen, and that a three-fifths majority of the adult workers in a trade should be necessary to set in motion the local administrative machinery charge- able with the working of the measure. Mr. Sidney Webb 1 See Labour Commission of 1892-94, fifth report ; also Mr. Drage's The Labour Problem, pp. 94-129, Mr. Rae's Eight Hours for Work, Mr. S. Webb's The Eight -Hours Day, Mr. Speyer's The Labour Commission (1894), and Eight Hours by Law (Fabian Tract, No. 48). In the last, a compromise called Trade Inquiry is recommended. 228 The Rise of Democracy. also conceded the principle of local option for the smaller industries, but asserted the need of general legislation for the hours of labour in the staple industries of the land, and of its execution by a department of the state. The general impression produced by the evidence before the Labour Commission would seem to be that the interests and customs of localities, and even of different sections of the same industry, are too diverse to be ruled into line by a universal Eight Hours Bill. Many of the delegates of trade-unions who spoke in its favour evi- dently regarded it with apprehension in view of the severity of foreign competition, though others took the bull by the horns, and declared that the quality of work would be so much improved by knocking off an hour, or half an hour, as to afford the best, indeed the only, means of meeting foreign competition. Few persons would now deny that the reduction of the excessively long hours of work of the previous generation has improved the quality of work without reducing its quantity. The same may be granted with respect to the abolition of work before breakfast in some industries where the strain on brain and muscle is very great, and in cases where operatives have worked loyally and heartily under the new conditions. But it does not follow that an Eight Hours Bill would enable us to meet foreign competition. German masters, who closely watch our industrial affairs, show no great desire to shorten the hours of work, as they would assuredly have done if the argument as to the improved efficiency produced by short hours were completely sound and generally appli- cable. It would certainly be gratifying if the results of recent reductions of hours in our land were so uniformly favourable as to induce our continental rivals to curtail the length of their working day in the hope of compass- ing the ruin of England! The value of a searching investigation by means of a Democracy and Labour. 229 royal commission has rarely been more illustrated than in the question before us. The tendency of the new electorate, now that it has fully grasped the extent of its powers, is very naturally to call for wholesale remedies, in the fond belief that they will speedily pro- duce the results aimed at. Not until twenty years had elapsed from the granting of household suffrage was any distinctly able and energetic move made towards the realization of State Socialism. After 1887 the move developed almost into a rush. Trade-unionism of the old well-established type, which accepted the wage- system as a final fact, capable of being modified only by the combined action of workers in the several industries, was threatened with deposition by the so-called New Unionism. This latter-day development was the off- spring of the discontent created by the industrial stagna- tion of the eighties and of the new school of practical Socialism above referred to. It aimed at the capture of existing unions, or the formation of new unions, the latter to be merely "fighting machines", unencumbered by the provident clubs to which the older unionists had attached much importance. But the new unions were to be more than industrial fighting machines : they were to aid in the capture of Parliament and of projected local assemblies by labour representatives, who should exploit capitalistic industry in the interest of the workers. The socialistic aims of the more advanced labour leaders were set forth in the programme of the Independent Labour Party, which was formed in January, 1892. Despite its colourless title, the party put forward claims to "the collective ownership and control of the means of produc- tion, distribution, and exchange". Mr. Keir Hardie was the only successful candidate for parliamentary honours who went to the poll on this programme in 1892; and in 1895 he failed to hold his seat. At the last general election thirty Independent Labour candidates failed to 230 The Rise of Democracy. capture a single seat among them ; l but they find some consolation in the fact that 12*1 per cent of the electors in those constituencies voted for the socialist ticket. Hitherto this programme has gained only a meagre success. The reasons for the check suffered by it after the first triumphs of 1889-1892 are not easy to assign. The following suggestions are offered tentatively as explaining some at least of the tendencies of recent social and political developments. In the first place, it must be observed that the New Unionism had prospered on the discontent which inevitably accompanies stagnation of trade. Weary of uncertainty of employment and threatened reductions of wages, men naturally grasped at the new forward policy ; and in the case of the famous strike of the London dockers for their "tanner" a day extra, and of the colliers in 1893, the new fighting policy gained a striking success. But the terrible sufferings en- dured by the colliers in the effort to prevent a temporary reduction naturally tended to sober the victors, and therefore to bring the New Unionism more into line with the older trade organizations. Moreover, the very aggressiveness of the new movement had tended to magnify its difficulties by compelling masters to unite and federate in self-defence. Instead of attacking single masters, it was now confronted with powerful federations of masters, who could weather the storms of a crisis or endure the even more trying torpor of depression by the aid of resources which neither the old unions nor the new could hope to rival. 2 Besides, had not the old 1 Mr. John Burns, M.P. for Battersea, is not included in this number. 2 As Mr. Mallock has shown in his Labour and the Popular Welfare, bk. iv. chapter 4, the power of the employer to resist a trade-union increases in proportion as the demands of the latter trench more closely on the margin of profit. The amount of trade-union funds decreased by 237,545 in the year 1893, mainly owing to the great coal strike. See Mr. Brabrook's "Progress of Friendly Societies in 1884-1894", in Statistical Society 's Journal of 1895. Democracy and Labour. 231 unions enormously improved the conditions of their members by steady insistence and dexterous bargain- ing-; and would it not be better to follow more in their steps than to pursue a policy which would deplete their own funds and array capital in a solid phalanx against them? Among other causes tending to give pause to the New Unionism must also be reckoned the increasing efficacy of self-help organizations, whether working in connec- tion with, or on lines parallel to, the older trade-unions. Self-help was again slowly but surely reasserting its former influence over our wage-earning classes, as was shown by official statistics. It is true that the Liberator crash had seriously affected the position of building societies ; but despite that terrible blow to the cause of self-help, the funds of savings-banks, friendly societies, &c., showed in 1894 a net increase of ^60,008,834 over those of the year I884. 1 If progress so substantial had been made in a decade remarkable for agricultural and industrial depression, what might not be effected under ordinarily favourable conditions, provided that the claims of ability and capital on the one side, and, on the other, the demands of labourers for the requisites of a decent existence, were mutually recognized? Then, again, the labour programme of the new Fabians had to face the disadvantages which must ever attend the manipulation of party politics. It is true that the efforts put forward by the new labour party in 1890 had a considerable effect on the Radical programme, which Mr. John Morley put forward at Newcastle in Oct. 1891. An increase of the powers of the new London County Council, and the institution of district and parish councils, formed two planks of the so-called Newcastle programme. / For a time it secured the adhesion of most Liberals ; and as this enthusiasm for Hodge was fanned by the 1 Mr. Brabrook's paper just quoted. 232 The Rise of Democracy. excitement attending- the overthrow of a Conservative government, all went merrily, until Liberals realized that their Socialist allies regarded the new parochial councils as machines to be worked by collectivist steam. Then there was trepidation in the Liberal ranks, already discontented because the "old gang" as Mr. Labouchere irreverently termed it had absorbed most of the govern- mental prizes. In vain did the collectivists demand the municipalization of this and the parochialization of that. The spirit of the Manchester school was raised to warn off the new and dangerous allies, and to leave the Glad- stone ministry free to devote all its energies to Home Rule. The sequel is only too well known. The ministry, desirous of rousing the people for Home Rule and against the House of Lords, went to the country; and the country, by a vast majority, overthrew the Liberal Home Rule government. Since the general election of 1895 Liberals, Irish Nationalists, and Socialists have engaged in an interesting triangular duel, each party blaming the other two for the disaster, and declaring that, if its nostrum had been more to the front, things would have gone very differently. The Socialists stoutly affirm that had the Liberals carried through the collec- tivist programme, with which they dallied for election- eering purposes three years before, they might still hold the reins of power ; but, as it is, their ' ' Manchesterism has reduced them to this present pass". 1 As a Parthian shaft deftly sped into the uncovered flank of a former ally, the argument tells with effect. But the Liberal legionary may turn aside the bolt by reminding the Parthian irregular that the local elective councils, even the London County Council itself, were generally swamped by reactionaries ; whence it would appear that collectivism has no more abiding charms when coaxingly 1 G. Bernard Shaw in Politics in 1896, p. 97. Democracy and Labour. 233 offered in municipal or parochial doses than when con- fidently prescribed as a national recipe. For the present, then, it would seem that John Bull has elected to stand by old methods of tentative reform, and refuses to exchange his old dwelling-place, so long- as he can patch and extend it at will, for any commun- istic phalanstere. The decision is what might be expected from his eminently practical, respectable, and conven- tional personality. As our whole inquiry has shown, the typical Englishman dislikes to leap in the dark, and only does so at the urgent invitation of party leaders whom he thinks to be sound men. On the whole, he much prefers to step cautiously, to hobble along rather than to leap. Such methods do not lend themselves to sensational incidents; but they serve to build up a homely, if rather lumbering, political structure. These characteristics have led him to ponder over and sift the new and attractive programme put forward by able young leaders, and select from it only the more practic- able proposals, relegating even these to his old industrial organizations for adoption or rejection as each may decide. Never was there such exasperating eclecticism ! Well may it move the bile of adroit compilers of pro- grammes. 1 Meanwhile the interacting influence of democracy and the labour movement has served to bring about a strange reconstruction of parties. Cutting athwart the old party lines, it has necessitated strategic wheelings and move- ments to the rear, until the descendants of pre-reform Toryism find themselves, not without many searchings of heart, almost shoulder to shoulder with men who once waved the red flag of revolutionary Socialism. The party manceuvrings which led up to this result have been described in previous chapters. Disraeli's Reform Bill of 1867 gave decent burial to Toryism of the Lord 1 See Politics in 1896, p. 86. 234 The Rise of Democracy. Eldon type, and necessitated the adoption of a forward policy of social reform and imperialism, on the due co- ordination of which rest the fortunes of the whole British race. While this adroit leader was educating his party for the future, the Liberals remained wedded to the strongly individualist doctrines of the Manchester school, to which Socialists have always been more opposed than to the old Toryism. The way was therefore open for something like a rapprochement between the younger labour leaders and the more advanced Conservatives, such as Lord Randolph Churchill. The enthronement of democracy by the Liberal Reform Bills of 1884-85 tended to draw the extremes nearer together; for it inaugurated a period of sheer opportunism, in which each party strives to outbid the other in satisfying the practicable claims of labour. Thus we see the strange sight of a Conservative ministry pressing on a drastic Employers' Liability Bill, despite the plaintive groans of the ever-exploited Plugson, who imagined himself safe at least for the life of one parliament. And while a Unionist ministry is again at work "dishing the Whigs ", the modern Socialist applauds the process. For he too has changed. He no longer wears the bonnet rouge: he has donned the silk hat. Under the lead of the Fabians, he has developed a keen sense of the superiority of parliamentary action to conspiracy and barricades. He therefore no longer conspires against Parliament, but strives to take it in tow. Still less does he wage unrelenting war on the capitalist ; he exploits the exploiter. He does not kill the goose that lays the golden egg that was the mistake of his French brethren in 1848 and 1871. His aim now is rather to submit her to a strict and salutary regimen, and to municipalize the eggs, leaving behind just enough to encourage the creature. Democracy and Foreign Policy. 235 Chapter XV. Democracy and Foreign Policy. To the most casual observer it must be obvious, if he be not blinded by fanaticism, that neither on the Conti- nent nor in the British Isles has democracy accomplished the sweeping 1 changes in government which were antici- pated by its warmest friends and bitterest foes in the earlier or revolutionary phases. Some of the political influences tending to retard its progress and moderate its ardour have been noticed in previous chapters of this little work. But there are others, having a wider effect than any yet noted, that possibly are even more potent than the mania for athleticism which absorbs energies that would previously have been devoted to politics. The most serious check to democracy has undoubtedly been the embittering of national rivalries, and consequent complications in foreign policy, such as no popularly-elected Chamber can possibly unravel. Were it possible to review the course of events on the Continent, even a brief inquiry would probably suffice to prove the connection between national jealousies and that revival of autocracy which is so conspicuous a feature of the present age. A slight acquaintance with the course of recent continental politics will show that the potent force of nationality, which Mazzini believed to be essentially democratic, has strengthened the thrones of the rulers of Prussia and Italy, and more recently of Russia, who became its champions. The machinery of diplomacy and the discipline of the royal armies achieved the task which had defied the efforts of the peoples themselves. Nationality could only effect the unity of the German and Italian peoples by the aid of 236 The Rise of Democracy. state-craft; and since the triumphs of 1870, democracy has had to accept the compromise imposed by success- ful statesmen and rulers. King William of Prussia and Victor Emmanuel of Italy, along- with their shrewd advisers, may therefore be regarded as the authors of that mixed form of government which admits the people to a considerable share in the legislative functions, but reserves questions of foreign policy and national defence almost exclusively to the control of the ruler and his ministers. Now, it is clear that when a state, wielding powers so immense as those of Germany, adopts a mixed form of government, which is scarcely more democratic than that of the first Napoleon, an immense influence must be ex- erted on the polity of neighbouring states. The effect of militant autocracy on the fortunes of Western Europe has also been vastly enhanced by the pressure of the Eastern colossus. The predominance of Russia in European affairs even threatens to renew, though in a more guarded form, the Holy Alliance of the Eastern potentates, who assiduously endeavoured to put back the hands of the clock, not only in their own lands, but throughout the whole of the Continent. France, once the birthplace of new ideas, by her hostility to Germany, and her desire to gain Russia's effective help, is now reduced to a humiliating subservience to the wishes of St. Petersburg ; and annoyance at the French occupation of Tunis keeps the land of Mazzini and Garibaldi in close alliance with the two central empires. It is the old story. The jealousy of the peoples perpetuates methods of autocratic rule which the progressives of 1848 and 1860 believed to have for ever passed away. The experience of the past gives some cause for doubt- ing whether popular government can be much more than a name under the burdens imposed by a rigorous mili- tarism and the checks administered by secret diplomacy. Democracy and Foreign Policy. 237 Vast armaments imply not only a crushing- expenditure, but also methods of administration which are incompatible with free discussion and perpetual supervision by the people's representatives. Even in time of peace armies and navies must be controlled by a small number of highly-trained experts; and in general the efficacy of warlike preparations may be measured by the secrecy with which they are carried out by almost irresponsible officials, who can immediately dispose of great sums of money. Now, every one of these conditions is opposed to those claims of publicity and responsibility to the people's representatives, on which democrats have always insisted. The right to criticise officials is the alpha of popular government. It is the worst of sins in a soldier. His first duty is obedience. Partly, perhaps, for this reason our forefathers were apprehensive of a standing army, and took every means of reducing its numbers and powers lest popular liberty should gradually be undermined. It will be time to ridicule their fears when a democratic republic and a vast citizen army shall have existed side by side in France for more than one generation. Actual warfare is, of course, still more fatal to popular government. From the days of Crom- well to those of Bismarck, war has ever tended to exalt the one able leader, and to depress the authority of a Chamber. To avert the horrors of war and the political reaction which it entails, states have recourse to diplomacy. But here again democracy enters on a province alien to its true character. Diplomacy demands secrecy and the concession of large discretionary powers to its agents. Democracy demands the discussion of every important compact, even of the steps leading to such compact, by the people's Chamber. Here is the Achilles' heel of popular government, and autocrats have ever aimed their deadliest shafts at this vulnerable point. Recent 238 The Rise of Democracy. events have brought this fact prominently into notice. In the spring of 1897 the French people were on the horns of a painful dilemma. Their generous instincts bade them befriend the Cretans and Greeks, for whom they have long cherished the liveliest sympathy. On the other hand, their hostility to Germany seemed to impose on them compliance with the dictates of St. Petersburg. Which should they obey, sentiment or interest? Under an autocratic system, such as governs the foreign policy of the central powers, a division of opinion would scarcely be allowed to become apparent: it would be smothered under the secrecy of ministerial discussion. Parliamentary government, on the other hand, required the public discussion of the alternative lines of policy, and ended with a division, which decided for self-interest and against quixotic sentiment. The discussion con- cluded, in this case, with a victory for the diplomatic course of action; but the mere fact of a public official discussion called attention to the division of opinion, and might have encouraged agitators to try to reverse the vote of the Chamber, had the division been less decisive. In any case, all the world knew that the coercive action of France against the Cretan insurgents was not the action of the whole people, but was resisted by a considerable minority. The action of our Parliament and of our cabinet at that crisis is not without its features of interest, espe- cially as it may serve to illustrate the advantages of a mixed system of government. A claim similar to that urged in the French chamber was put forward by several members of Parliament, that before our war-ships in Cretan waters took any decided measures of coercion, the sanction of Parliament should be gained. The answer of Mr. Balfour was short and decisive. He emphatically repudiated the claim of Parliament to dic- tate the action of Her Majesty's Ministers on this ques- Democracy and Foreign Policy. 239 tion, and stated their determination to act without wait- ing- for any expression of parliamentary opinion. That opinion, or rather public opinion, he said, might be exerted at the next general election, when the country would have the right to endorse or reject their policy; but, for the present, they would act, undeterred by any prospective votes of censure. The difference between French and British procedure, in this instance, arose from the fact that the British ministry is, in theory at least, the ministry of the queen as well as of Parliament. On most questions, especially those dependent on money votes, the control of ministers by Parliament is tolerably effective; but in all matters of foreign policy and of administrative action the shield of the monarchy still intervenes between Parliament and the cabinet. Omitting 1 any discussion of the instance cited, it is obviously desirable on broad grounds of expediency that such matters should not be submitted to direct parliamentary control. One incident of the reign must be remembered in this connection, as upholding the prerogatives of the crown and preventing- any encroachment even by an able and masterful minister. Lord Palmerston's precipitate action in regard to foreign affairs having produced friction in several cases, Her Majesty, in 1850, sent a sharp re- monstrance to him, requiring his adherence to prescribed customs, and forbidding his interference with any deci- sions previously arrived at or documents drawn up. The secretary of state for foreign affairs accepted the merited rebuke; but on his renewed contravention of this understanding in 1851, when he hastily, though unoffi- cially, recognized and approved Louis Napoleon's coup d'dtat, he was dismissed from office by the premier. The case has a more than personal interest. It marks the resolute maintenance by the crown of a direct influ- ence and control over the details, if not the general 240 The Rise of Democracy. tenor, of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom; and few will now deny that the intimate knowledge of foreign affairs and of the wishes of rulers, possessed by Her Majesty, renders it most desirable that she should exercise a continuous control such as cannot be in the power of a cabinet minister whose tenure of office de- pends on the vox populi. Many cases might be described where our foreign policy has been compromised by publicity. But in days when the South African Committee's inquiry is still fresh in the popular memory it seems needless to dilate on the disadvantages to the public service, or the ad- vantages to proprietors of newspapers, resulting from methods suggested apparently by an admiration for the "chattering Greeks" of the late empire. On the other hand, it may be noted that in proportion to the deter- mination of a British ministry to take energetic action, to that extent is publicity curtailed and the interference of Parliament firmly repelled. The most noteworthy instance of this almost defiant independence shown by our executive is afforded by the action of the Beacons- field ministry in the early part of 1878. The threatening state of affairs at the close of the Russo-Turkish war certainly justified strenuous action. Despite the accep- tance by Turkey of the Russian preliminaries of peace, the czar's troops continued to advance towards the glittering prize of Constantinople. To prevent the seizure of that seat of empire by Russia's legions, the British ministry, without consulting the opinion of Par- liament, immediately took three decisive steps. It ordered the British fleet up the Dardanelles, it de- manded a vote of credit for ^6,000,000 more as a "vote of confidence" than as fixing a definite limit to war expenditure and in the middle of April, when new complications arose, it suddenly ordered a contingent of our Indian troops to sail for Malta. The last order was Democracy and Foreign Policy. 241 given only a day after Parliament had been soothed with assurances of a pacific character. 1 Waiving any discussion of the melodramatic manner in which these decisions were revealed to the world when they were accomplished facts, it will probably be acknowledged by open-minded persons that the swift and determined action of the British government in those four critical months was the best preservative of peace. Without entering into the rights and wrongs of the case, but viewing it merely as a choice of methods in a grave crisis, it can scarcely be doubted that the nation which vacillates and consults is lost, as surely as the general who, in the midst of an engagement, nervously calls a council of war. When the question is thus stated broadly, as a question affecting the efficiency of our diplomatic intervention, only one answer seems to be possible: that while it is the duty of Parliament to supervise the general course of foreign policy and ratify all treaties, yet the conduct of negotiations and the details of any proposed intervention must be left to responsible ministers, who in such contingencies may often be most prudently guided by the advice of the sovereign. Objections to this would seem to be founded on sheer confusion of thought as to the real nature of demo- cracy. Such objectors forget that, after all, democracy is only a form of government; 2 that while it assigns to the people a larger share in the representation and in the control of public affairs, yet it differs from mon- archy and aristocracy in degree and not in kind. Neither of these forms of government, in Western Europe at 1 See Hansard, April 16-19, 1878 ; also Buxton's Finance and Politics, ii. P- 245- 3 The confusion of thought may in part have arisen from the common blunders of using the word ' ' democracy " as if it were equivalent to ' ' people ", and "people" as equivalent to the "wage-earning classes". "Democracy" means, of course, "government by the people", i.e. the nation. 242 The Rise of Democracy. least, has ever been totally uninfluenced by public opinion. The pressure of popular feeling has always made itself felt in more or less direct ways on the most absolute of monarchs and the most selfish of oligarchs. Democracy has been mainly concerned with converting this indirect or spasmodic pressure of the multitude on the administration into a direct and regular influence. But it still remains a form of government. It is not a creed of life, as it was to Mazzini. That noble ideal vanished as the smoke of the last discharges of the Roman republicans rolled away on the fatal closing days of June, 1849. The seer, whose winged words had inspired the defenders of Rome no less than Garibaldi's heroism, looked forward to democracy as the initiatrix of a new life, a new civilization. That was not to be. The collision with actuality, the compromises, bargain- ings, and wars that followed, have left democracy merely a form of government, not a life. In the future, when the materialism of the present age has worked itself out, when selfishness has exploited everything within the walls of its prison house, when wars of nations or wars of classes have shattered the bomb-proof bulwarks of the most "civilized" states, then, at last, Humanity will assuredly recur to nobler ideals ; and a new Christendom will arise. For the present, however, democracy is little more than a machine for producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number: it is not an inspira- tion to social duty. The fact must be faced with all its consequences. Chief among these are national jeal- ousies, the resulting military expenditure which imposes the greatest burden on the greatest number, and the mutual fears which attune the Concert of the Powers to lugubrious strains. Under these circumstances, popular government must retain many of the characteristics of that of the warring Teutonic tribe. The assent of all the warriors, so Democracy and Foreign Policy. 243 Tacitus tells us, was needed for important affairs, but details were discussed by the chiefs in council. The distinction is rooted in the eternal laws of common sense, and can no more be disregarded by the present descendants of Hengist and Cerdic than by their imme- diate followers. Indeed, it is inevitable that the mere increase in the volume and complexity of the nation's concerns should relegate details of foreign policy more and more to the control of the people's chiefs. The division of powers is inevitable, and on the whole is most conducive to the due discharge of legislative business, and to the effective wielding of the nation's power in foreign affairs. As a matter of history it cannot be denied that the powers of our cabinet have increased, especially in rela- tion to international policy. The process has been so gradual as to escape general notice, except when some champion of parliamentary forms calls attention to a dangerous innovation. The increase has been partly concealed under the imposing fiction which names the ministers, Her Majesty's ministers. In this as in other respects, monarchical traditions have favoured the steady growth of administrative powers in the hands of the picked men of the predominant party. The advantages of a blending of democracy with monarchy are obvious when we contrast the generally effective control of foreign affairs by our cabinet with the crude efforts of the National Assembly of France in 1790-92 to regulate diplomacy. Ignoring the fact that democracy must under ordinary conditions remain a form of government, it endeavoured first and foremost to reduce the king's ministers to the position of head-clerks, registering the decrees of an all-powerful assembly. After realizing the impossibility of controlling the machinery of government by a crowd of debaters, it next delegated many of its new controlling powers to committees ; and in the con- 244 The Rise of Democracy. fusion produced by the outbreak of war, these or similar bodies practically absorbed all the executive functions of the state, thus paving the way for the organized bureaucracy of the Directory in 1795-99, and the despot- ism of Napoleon. The swiftness of this change may be commended to the notice of all who think that democracy implies the direct management of all public business by a popularly elected Chamber. In relation to the more complex and difficult parts of such business, notably foreign affairs, such a Chamber must be content to act as a final court of appeal, reversing actions that have been emphatically condemned by the electorate, but intrusting to its cabinet ministers and their subordinates the conduct of such affairs as cannot be controlled by a large number of legislators. Among the influences undermining the young French Republic none was more potent than the rabid suspicion of the executive enter- tained by the legislators. In the times of commotion and war that followed, the imperious needs of national safety transferred administrative control to a despotism far heavier than that from which France had escaped. But it is needless to multiply instances. The student of history is well aware that a complete and unmixed democracy has had a lengthy existence only in happy lands, which, as in the case of Switzerland, escape the burdens imposed by a complex foreign policy. Among these favoured countries the United Kingdom cannot be classed. Government by public opinion has many recommenda- tions. It is generally far more humane than the policy of diplomatists; and at present the gusts of popular passion would seem to be less dangerous to the welfare of the whole human family than the calculating selfish- ness of governments intent only on their own interests. As the power of the press begins to permeate the more Democracy and Foreign Policy. 245 backward of continental peoples, and as facilities of travel mitigate the asperities of national prejudice, it may be hoped that public opinion will everywhere oper- ate with greater power on governmental machinery, and wield it increasingly for the welfare of the whole world, and not merely of the fatherland. At present the pro- gress seems slow, sometimes even it seems to be in the wrong direction. At any rate, the United Kingdom cannot afford to disregard the warnings which are only too clearly visible in the troublous past and the ominous present. While our land has adopted democracy for its internal government, it must retain in foreign policy that administrative machinery which imparts something of consistency to popular desires and strength to the national will. No country can so ill afford to admit flabbiness and vacillation into its external relations. No people has interests so world-wide, a commerce so sensitive, wealth so assailable on all the seas. It stands face to face in the west with a republic, none too friendly, which intrusts vast executive powers to a chief during his four years of office. In the east it is confronted by an all but oriental despotism, which wields all the govern- ing powers of the Caesars, and forces ten times as vast. Lying between these two powers, competing with the one in industry, with the other in policy, Great Britain cannot dispense either with the social invigoration pro- duced by democracy or with the tenacity of purpose developed by monarchical rule. Here, then, is a barrier to British democracy which we can scarcely overthrow without abdicating our position as a world-wide power. For other peoples such an abdication would be dangerous, but not suicidal, as it must be to our own. The inhabitants of the United Kingdom live in comfort, not on the resources of these islands alone, but by means of the wealth which their industry and commerce wins from other lands. Only by 246 The Rise of Democracy. a firm and consistent policy can this easily assailable position be maintained. Hitherto it has been found difficult, if not impossible, for a purely democratic system to sustain a long struggle either in war or diplomacy against a polity constructed primarily with a view to the needs of war or diplomacy. The efforts of our people to cope with these difficulties present some interesting lessons. Specially noteworthy are the events of 1880 and of succeeding years. In 1880 it seemed that the people themselves were determined to direct the foreign policy of the land. The complexities of the task soon unfolded themselves. The Gladstone ministry, which was raised to power very largely by the generous enthusiasms of the people in foreign affairs, endeavoured to satisfy those claims. At once it found itself hampered by the obligations of the past and the difficulties of the present ; and before two years were gone it disappointed the wishes of its most ardent supporters by the retention of Cyprus and by intermeddling in the affairs of Egypt. These and many subsequent events have opened the eyes of many who in 1880 had convinced themselves that foreign policy was the offspring of Lord Beaconsfield's oriental imagination and of a desire to divert the nation's energies from domestic reforms into labyrinths of adven- ture. The sequel has dispelled those suspicions by reveal- ing the intimate connection between our commercial prosperity and the maintenance of the empire. The earth-hunger of continental states, and their determina- tion to treat their new possessions as strict commercial preserves, have induced the most insular of our manu- facturers to take broader views than were current in the previous generation. For in the meantime free -trade has diffused our commerce and our wealth, thereby com- pelling statesmen to take means of securing it from attack. "Your triumph marks the end of the grand Democracy and Foreign Policy. 247 era of English policy": these were the sentiments of M. Renan candidly expressed to Cobden. 1 Events have disproved the charge. The results of free-trade have led our manufacturers and merchants to become Im- perialists. The Little Eng-landers of the previous genera- tion have passed, or are passing, away; and the great manufacturing towns, which were once the strongholds of a somewhat narrow Radicalism, now vie with London and the counties in their desire to maintain our naval supremacy, and to secure the co-operation of all parts of the empire. The Birmingham of John Bright has become the Birmingham of Joseph Chamberlain. The changed relations of the United Kingdom to the outside world are realized by the artisans of our great industrial centres. They are becoming increasingly con- scious of the vastness and complexity of British com- mercial interests, on which their livelihood ultimately depends. The imposition of a hostile tariff by a British colony, the annexation of a large slice of Africa by France or Germany, the predominance of Russia in Northern China, may entail ruin on a British industry, or the extinction of a line of steam-ships. In this sphere Trade- unionism is absolutely helpless. Demonstrations and votes of censure will avail nothing unless they move our government to take decisive action. And such action, as I have shown, implies trust on the part of the people in responsible ministers, a trust which not only abstains from crippling their administration of the nation's funds for defensive and offensive purposes, but also enables successive governments to maintain a firm and tenacious foreign policy. We have recently been passing (perhaps we have passed) through a phase of thought which is common to every young democratic government, and which wrecked that of France a century ago. The people's 1 Notes from a Diary, by Sir M. Grant Duff. 248 The Rise of Democracy. representatives have suspected and nagged at those who are responsible for foreign affairs ; and consequently our policy has been weakened by fits of vacillation such as rarely were known in the time of Pitt, Canning, and Palmerston. If the United Kingdom is to recover its rightful influence in the world, it will be not merely by vast armaments, but by the use of different methods in foreign affairs from those which must necessarily prevail in our domestic concerns. An electorate which is largely inexperienced may, possibly for several decades, enthrone the principle of flux in our home politics; but that same electorate will assuredly learn by bitter ex- perience that unless our foreign policy is firm and con- tinuous, we shall remain without an ally, and be con- demned possibly to an unequal struggle even for the maintenance of our present possessions. Index. Adullamites, the, 174-5, J 77> X 79- Agricultural Holdings Act, 196. Agriculture, British, 19-21, 195- 203. Alabama Case, the, 184. Anti-Corn-law League, 120-1, 125, 133- Arnold, Dr., 114, 127. Artisans' Dwelling Act, 192, 193. Attwood, Thomas, 46, 90-3, 105, 108. Bagehot, Mr., 162. Baines, Mr., 75, 170, 179. Balfour, Mr., 238. Ballot, the, 12, 48, 49, 85, 144, 183, 191. Bamford, Samuel, 28. Beaconsfield, Lord, 198-200, 240. Bentham, Jeremy, 33-5, 152, 154-5. Birkbeck, Dr., 63, 65, 67. Birmingham Political Union, 46, 90-1, 93. Brabrook, Mr., 230. Bright, John, 75, 125, 139, 165, 176, 178, 190, 205, 246. Brougham, Lord, 39, 59, 98. Bull Ring Riot, the, 106-110. Burdett, Sir Francis, 26, 47. Burke, n, 22. Burns, Mr. John, 229. Carlyle, Thomas, 77, 87-8, 94, 114, 115, 126, 130, 216. Carpenter, William, 73, 103. Cartwright, Major, 12-13, *5> 2 9> 77, 210. Castlereagh, Lord, 64. Chad wick, Mr., 65, 134-5. Chamberlain, Mr., 193, 212, 246. Charter, Origin of the People's, 12, 15, 24, 28-9, 84-90. Churchill, Ld. Randolph, 206, 233. Cleave, John, 71-3. Cobbett, William, 17, 25-28, 55, 58, 59, 64, 77, 130. Cobden, Richard, 75, 119-21, 125, 150, 246. Collins, John, 93, 107-8, 116. Combination Laws, Repeal of, 36. Complete Suffrage, 119-128, 203. Constitution, English, 10-13, 3> 33- 35. 49-52. 78-9, 83-4, 121, 123, 150-1, 154, 168-171, 205-6, 210-213, 245. Conventions, Chartist National, 103, 105, 108, 1 1 1-2, 137-8, 141. Cooper, Thomas, 120, 123, 136. Co-operation, 53-4, 67-8, 144-5, 221. Corn Law, the, of 1815, 23-24. Courtney, Mr., 209. Cross, Viscount, 192. Dale, Dr., 205. Darwin, 166-7. Davitt, Mr., 198. Derby, Lord, 175-179, 202. Dilke, SirC, 208. Disraeli, Mr., 55-59, 150, 172, 176 181, 185, 187-194, 196-198. Drage, Mr., M.P., 215, 227. Eastern Question, the, 198-9, 237- 8, 240, 245. 250 The Rise of Democracy. Education Act of 1870, the, 183, 185. Eight Hours Day, 224-230. Elliott, Ebenezer, 65. Emancipation, Catholic, 36. Engel, Karl, 135. Fabian Society, the, 224-7, 2 34- Factory Acts, 193, 218-224, 226. Fielden, Mr., 55, 95, 139, 219. Firth, Mr., 205. Forster, W. E., 183-4. Fox, C. J., 12, 22. Free-trade, 192, 195. Friendly Societies Act, 193. Frost, Mr., 112. Gladstone, Mr., 150, 169-175, 179- 186, 187-192, 196-7, 199-200, 205-210, 212, 231. Grey, Earl, 39, 186. Grote, George, 73, 74, 183. Ground Game Act, the, 203. Hampden Clubs, 28-9. Hardie, Mr. Keir, 229. Hare, Mr., 161-4, I 79- Harney, G. J., 102, 103, 140-1, 143, 144. Hartington, Lord, 212. Hetherington, Henry, 71-3, 77, 87, 89, 96, 101, 214-5. Hodgkin, Lieutenant, 43-5, 53, 100, 214-5. Holyoake, Mr., 91. Home Rule, 187-8, 197, 212, 231. Howell, Mr., M.P., 223, 225. Hughes, Thomas, 144-5. Hume, Joseph, 35, 37, 39, 80, 142. Hunt, Henry, 26, 30-2, 55, 77. Independent Labour Party, 229. Irish Church, Disestablishment of the, 186. Irish Land Act of 1870, 182, 186, 190, 196. Jacobins, 12-13, T S- Jones, Ernest, 140-1, 143, 144. Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 138, 144-5, 221. Knight, Charles, 64. Kossuth, 143. Laing, Mr., 179. Local Government Bill, the, of 1888, 212-3. Locke King, 170. Lodger Franchise, 178, 210. London Working Men's Associa- tion, 74, 86, 101, 116, 215. Lovett, William, 64, 66-9, 77, 85- 87, 96-7, 107-8, in, 116-7, 124, 142, 214-5. Lowe, Robert, 174-5, l8 4i I ^9- Lubbock, Sir John, 209. Lytton, Bulwer, 74. Macaulay, Lord, 158. Maine, Sir Henry, 211. Mallock, Mr. W. H., 230. Malthus, Dr., 56-7. Mann, Mr. Tom, 227. Martineau, Miss, 57, 64. Maurice, Rev. F. D., 115, 144-5, 221. Mazzini, 87-9, 116, 142, 236, 241. Melbourne, Lord, 51, 81, 82, 186. Miall, Edward, 121-2, 127, 183. Mill, James, 35-8, 157. Mill, John Stuart, 35-6, 96, 152, ISS. IS7-I66, 173-4, 179. 183-4, 209. Milner Gibson, Mr., 75. Molesworth, Sir W., 74. Montesquieu, 150, 154. Moral -force Chartists, 87-90, 96, 103-4, IJ S' II8 - l8 3> 2l8 > 22 4- Morley, Mr. John, 205, 231. Municipal Reform Act, 61. Napoleon I., 13-14. National Debt, 16, 190. Index. 251 National Political Union, 46-9. National Union of the Working Classes, 45, 47-9. Newport Riot, the, 112-4. Noble, John, 202. Northcote, Sir Stafford, 208. Northern Star, the, 100-1, 106, 117, 144, 215. Oastler, Mr., 95, 100, 102, 219. O'Brien, Bronterre, 101, 105, in, 216. O'Connell, 26, 86-97. O'Connor, Feargus, 96, 97-101, 103, in, 117, 118, 122-5, 136, 139-141, 143-4, 146, 203, 215. Outrages, the Sheffield, 221-2. Owen, Robert, 18, 41-3, 47, 53-4, 67, 73, 87-8, 96, 215-216, 217, 219. Paine, Tom, 26. Palmerston, Lord, 51, 148, 150, 169, 186, 239, 247. Parliament, Reform of, 32, 33, 35- 40, 45-52, 83-4, 85-6, 93, 121, 123, 144-6, 161-5, 168-171, 221-2, 233- Peel, Sir Robert, 18, 51, 81, no, 121, 127, 130-5, 147, 149, 150, 219. Peterloo, 15, 31-2. Physical - force Chartists, 28, 90, 97-105, 108-114, I 35~4 I > 22I> Pitt, William, 13, 22, 150, 247. Place, Francis, 40-41, 44, 46, 87, 117. Plug Riots, the, 123-4. Police Bill, the, no. Poor Law, 52, 54-62, 77-8, 93-6, 134. Proudhon, 43. Reform Bill, the, of 1832, 32, 33- 9, 48-52, 83, 130, 151, 158, 188, 205. Reform Bill of 1866, 167-175. Reform Bill of 1867, 176-181, 186-9, 201-4, 2 6> 2 33- Reform Bills of 1884-5, 200-212, 233- Representative Government, Mill's, 161-165. Revolution, French, of 1789, 12, 18- 19- 33. 48. Revolution, French, of 1830, 36, 39- Roebuck, Mr., 86, 123. Rousseau, 34, 152, 153-4. Russell, Lord John, 46, 48, 82-4, 85, 108, in, 112, 169-72, 174-6, 179. ' ' Sacred Month ", the, 45, 104, 105. Sadler, Michael, Mr., 95, 219. Salisbury, Lord, 178-9, 207-8, 212. Shaftesbury, Lord, 55, 139, 219- 220. Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 232. Six Acts, the, 32. Smith, Adam, 55. Smith, Sydney, 57, 63, 82. Spence, Dr., 100, 216. Spencer, Herbert, 166. Spring Rice, Mr., 74, 82. Stephens, Raynor, Rev., 94-6, 100, 123. St. Simon, 167. Sturge, Joseph, no, 118-128, 203. "Taxes on Knowledge", 63-5, 70- 6, 168-9. Taylor, Dr. J. , 102, 105, 107. Ten Hours Act, 139, 219. Tocqueville, de, 151-3, 156-7. "Tom Hughes", 144-5. Tooke, Home, 12-13. Trade-unions, 53-4, 123, 145, 184, 220-230; the new, 224-232. Trevelyan, Sir G., 200-1. Unionism, the new, 224-232. Unstamped Press, the, 64-73. Victoria, Queen, 79-81, 239. 252 The Rise of Democracy. Villiers, Mr., 75. Vincent, Henry, 66, 69-71, 87, 89, 97, 101, 104, in, no. Wade, Dr., 90, 103. Watson, James, 73. Webb, Mr. Sidney, 224-7. Wellington, Duke of, 39, 46, no, 138- William IV., 80, 86. PRINTED BY BLACKIE AND SON, LIMITED, GLASGOW of California A REG '? NAL LIBRA Y FACIUTY Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library whteh It was borrowed 197* Form t THIS BOOK CARD runi u University Research Library DA ru 2) . - - - . :'. . '. ' - 3 . a , ; ' > -.'- ' ^1